Dr Thorne (67 page)

And then the doctor began a long and very useless lecture. The first object of it was to induce his ward not to get drunk at Greshamsbury; but having got so far, he went on, and did succeed in frightening his unhappy guest. Sir Louis did not possess the iron nerves of his father – nerves which even brandy had not been able to subdue. The doctor spoke strongly, very strongly; spoke of quick, almost immediate death in case of further excesses; spoke to him of the certainty there would be that he could not live to dispose of his own property if he could not refrain. And thus he did frighten Sir Louis. The father he had never been able to frighten. But there are men who, though they fear death hugely, fear present suffering more; who, indeed, will not bear a moment of pain if there be any mode of escape. Sir Louis was such: he had no strength of nerve, no courage, no ability to make a resolution and keep it. He promised the doctor that he would refrain; and, as he did so, he swallowed down his cup of coffee and brandy, in which the two articles bore about equal proportions.

The doctor did, at last, make up his mind to go. Whichever way he determined, he found that he was not contented with himself. He did not like to trust Sir Louis by himself, and he did not like to show that he was angry. Still less did he like the idea of breaking bread in Lady Arabella's house till some amends had been made to Mary. But his heart would not allow him to refuse the petition contained in the squire's postscript, and the matter ended in his accepting the invitation.

This visit of his ward's was, in every way, pernicious to the doctor. He could not go about his business, fearing to leave such a man alone with Mary. On the afternoon of the second day, she escaped to the parsonage for an hour or so, and then walked away among the lanes, calling on some of her old friends among the farmers' wives. But even then, the doctor was afraid to leave Sir Louis. What could such a man do, left alone in a village like Greshamsbury? So he stayed at home, and the two together went over their accounts. The baronet was particular about his accounts, and said a good deal as to having Finnie over to Greshamsbury. To this, however, Dr Thorne positively refused his consent.

The evening passed off better than the preceding one; at least, the early part of it. Sir Louis did not get tipsy: he came up to tea, and Mary, who did not feel so keenly on the subject as her uncle,
almost wished that he had done so. At ten o'clock he went to bed.

But after that new troubles came on. The doctor had gone downstairs into his study to make up some of the time which he had lost, and had just seated himself at his desk, when Janet, without announcing herself, burst into the room; and Bridget, dissolved in hysterical tears, with her apron to her eyes, appeared behind the senior domestic.

‘Please, sir,' said Janet, driven by excitement much beyond her usual pace of speaking, and becoming unintentionally a little less respectful than usual, ‘please, sir, that 'ere young man must go out of this here house; or else no respectable young 'ooman can't stop here; no, indeed, sir; and we be sorry to trouble you, Dr Thorne; so we be.'

‘What young man? Sir Louis?' asked the doctor.

‘Oh, no! he abides mostly in bed, and don't do nothing amiss; least way not to us. ‘Tan't him, sir; but his man.'

‘Man!' sobbed Bridget from behind. ‘He an't no man, nor nothing like a man. If Tummas had been here, he wouldn't have dared; so he wouldn't.' Thomas was the groom, and, if all Greshamsbury reports were true, it was probable, that on some happy, future day, Thomas and Bridget would become one flesh and one bone.

‘Please, sir,' continued Janet, ‘there'll be bad work here if that 'ere young man doesn't quit this here house this very night, and I'm sorry to trouble you, doctor; and so I am. But Tom, he be given to fight a'most for nothin'. He's hout now; but if that there young man be's here when Tom comes home, Tom will be punching his head; I know he will.'

‘He wouldn't stand by and see a poor girl put upon; no more he wouldn't,' said Bridget, through her tears.

After many futile inquiries, the doctor ascertained, that Mr Jonah had expressed some admiration for Bridget's youthful charms, and had, in the absence of Janet, thrown himself at the lady's feet in a manner which had not been altogether pleasing to her. She had defended herself stoutly and loudly, and in the middle of the row Janet had come down.

‘And where is he now?' said the doctor.

‘Why, sir,' said Janet, ‘the poor girl was so put about that she did give him one touch across the face with the rolling-pin, and he
be all bloody now, in the back kitchen.' At hearing this achievement of hers thus spoken of, Bridget sobbed more hysterically than ever; but the doctor, looking at her arm as she held her apron to her face, thought in his heart that Joe must have had so much the worst of it, that there could be no possible need for the interference of Thomas the groom.

And such turned out to be the case. The bridge of Joe's nose was broken; and the doctor had to set it for him in a little bedroom at the village public-house, Bridget having positively refused to go to bed in the same house with so dreadful a character.

‘Quiet now, or I'll be serving thee the same way; thee see I've found the trick of it.' The doctor could not but hear so much as he made his way into his own house by the back door, after finishing his surgical operation. Bridget was recounting to her champion the fracas that had occurred; and he, as was so natural, was expressing his admiration at her valour.

T
HE
next day Joe did not make his appearance, and Sir Louis, with many execrations, was driven to the terrible necessity of dressing himself. Then came an unexpected difficulty: how were they to get up to the house? Walking out to dinner, though it was merely through the village and up the avenue, seemed to Sir Louis to be a thing impossible. Indeed, he was not well able to walk at all, and positively declared that he should never be able to make his way over the gravel in pumps. His mother would not have thought half as much of walking from Boxall Hill to Greshamsbury and back again. At last, the one village fly was sent for, and the matter was arranged.

When they reached the house, it was easy to see that there was some unwonted bustle. In the drawing-room there was no one but Mr Mortimer Gazebee, who introduced himself to them both. Sir Louis, who knew that he was only an attorney, did not take much notice of him, but the doctor entered into conversation.

‘Have you heard that Mr Gresham has come home?' said Mr Gazebee.

‘Mr Gresham! I did not know that he had been away.'

‘Mr Gresham, junior, I mean.' No, indeed; the doctor had not heard. Frank had returned unexpectedly just before dinner, and he was now undergoing his father's smiles, his mother's embraces, and his sisters' questions.

‘Quite unexpectedly,' said Mr Gazebee. ‘I don't know what has brought him back before his time. I suppose he found London too hot.'

‘Deuced hot,' said the baronet. ‘I found it so, at least. I don't know what keeps men in London when it's so hot; except those fellows who have business to do: they're paid for it.'

Mr Mortimer Gazebee looked at him. He was managing an estate which owed Sir Louis an enormous sum of money, and, therefore, he could not afford to despise the baronet; but he thought to himself, what a very abject fellow the man would be if he were not a baronet, and had not a large fortune!

And then the squire came in. His broad, honest face was covered with a smile when he saw the doctor.

‘Thorne,' he said, almost in a whisper, ‘you're the best fellow breathing; I have hardly deserved this.' The doctor, as he took his old friend's hand, could not but be glad that he had followed Mary's counsel.

‘So Frank has come home?'

‘Oh, yes; quite unexpectedly. He was to have stayed a week longer in London. You would hardly know him if you met him. Sir Louis, I beg your pardon.' And the squire went up to his other guest, who had remained somewhat sullenly standing in one corner of the room. He was the man of highest rank present, or to be present, and he expected to be treated as such.

‘I am happy to have the pleasure of making your acquaintance, Mr Gresham,' said the baronet, intending to be very courteous. ‘Though we have not met before, I very often see your name in my accounts – ha! ha! ha!' and Sir Louis laughed as though he had said something very good.

The meeting between Lady Arabella and the doctor was rather distressing to the former; but she managed to get over it. She shook hands with him graciously, and said that it was a fine day. The doctor said that it was fine, only perhaps a little rainy. And then they went into different parts of the room.

When Frank came in, the doctor hardly did know him. His hair was darker than it had been, and so was his complexion; but his chief disguise was in a long silken beard, which hung down over his cravat. The doctor had hitherto not been much in favour of long beards, but he could not deny that Frank looked very well with the appendage.

‘Oh, doctor, I am so delighted to find you here,' said he, coming up to him; ‘so very, very glad': and, taking the doctor's arm, he led him away into a window, where they were alone. ‘And how is Mary?' said he, almost in a whisper. ‘Oh, I wish she were here! But, doctor, it shall all come in time. But tell me, doctor, there is no news about her, is there?'

‘News – what news?'

‘Oh, well; no news is good news: you will give her my love, won't you?'

The doctor said that he would. What else could he say? It appeared quite clear to him that some of Mary's fears were groundless.

Frank was again very much altered. It has been said, that though he was a boy at twenty-one, he was a man at twenty-two. But now, at twenty-three, he appeared to be almost a man of the world. His manners were easy, his voice under his control, and words were at his command: he was no longer either shy or noisy; but, perhaps, was open to the charge of seeming, at least, to be too conscious of his own merits. He was, indeed, very handsome; tall, manly, and powerfully built, his form was such as women's eyes have ever loved to look upon. ‘Ah, if he would but marry money!' said Lady Arabella to herself, taken up by a mother's natural admiration for her son. His sisters clung round him before dinner, all talking to him at once. How proud a family of girls are of one big, tall, burly brother!

‘You don't mean to tell me, Frank, that you are going to eat soup with that beard?' said the squire, when they were seated round the table. He had not ceased to rally his son as to this patriarchal adornment; but, nevertheless, anyone could have seen, with half an eye, that he was as proud of it as were the others.

‘Don't I, sir? All I require is a relay of napkins for every course': and he went to work, covering it with every spoonful, as men with beards always do.

‘Well, if you like it!' said the squire, shrugging his shoulders.

‘But I do like it,' said Frank.

‘Oh, papa, you wouldn't have him cut it off,' said one of the twins. ‘It is so handsome.'

‘I should like to work it into a chair-back instead of floss-silk,' said the other twin.

‘Thank'ee, Sophy; I'll remember you for that.'

‘Doesn't it look nice, and grand, and patriarchal?' said Beatrice, turning to her neighbour.

‘Patriarchal, certainly,' said Mr Oriel. ‘I should grow one myself if I had not the fear of the archbishop before my eyes.'

What was next said to him was in a whisper, audible only to himself.

‘Doctor, did you know Wildman, of the 9th? He was left as surgeon at Scutari
¹
for two years. Why, my beard to his is only a little down.'

‘A little way down, you mean,' said Mr Gazebee.

‘Yes,' said Frank, resolutely set against laughing at Mr Gazebee's pun. ‘Why, his beard descends to his ankles, and he is obliged to tie it in a bag at night, because his feet get entangled in it when he is asleep!'

‘Oh, Frank!' said one of the girls.

This was all very well for the squire, and Lady Arabella, and the girls. They were all delighted to praise Frank, and talk about him. Neither did it come amiss to Mr Oriel and the doctor, who had both a personal interest in the young hero. But Sir Louis did not like it at all. He was the only baronet in the room, and yet nobody took any notice of him. He was seated in the post of honour, next to Lady Arabella; but even Lady Arabella seemed to think more of her own son than of him. Seeing how he was illused, he meditated revenge; but not the less did it behove him to make some effort to attract attention.

‘Was your ladyship long in London, this season?' said he.

Lady Arabella had not been in London at all this year, and it was a sore subject with her. ‘No,' said she, very graciously; ‘circumstances have kept us at home.'

Sir Louis only understood one description of ‘circumstances'. Circumstances, in his idea, meant the want of money, and he immediately took Lady Arabella's speech as a confession of poverty.