The Chronicles of Barsetshire (123 page)

But Mr. Gazebee’s proposition opened a door by which her point might be gained. “Well,” said she, at last, with infinite self-denial, “if you think it is for Mr. Gresham’s advantage, and if he chooses to ask Dr. Thorne, I will not refuse to receive him.”

Mr. Gazebee’s next task was to discuss the matter with the squire. Nor was this easy, for Mr. Gazebee was no favourite with Mr. Gresham. But the task was at last performed successfully. Mr. Gresham was so glad at heart to find himself able, once more, to ask his old friend to his own house; and, though it would have pleased him better that this sign of relenting on his wife’s part should have reached him by other means, he did not refuse to take advantage of it; and so he wrote the above letter to Dr. Thorne.

The doctor, as we have said, read it twice; and he at once resolved stoutly that he would not go.

“Oh, do, do go!” said Mary. She well knew how wretched this feud had made her uncle. “Pray, pray go!”

“Indeed, I will not,” said he. “There are some things a man should bear, and some he should not.”

“You must go,” said Mary, who had taken the note from her uncle’s hand, and read it. “You cannot refuse him when he asks you like that.”

“It will greatly grieve me; but I must refuse him.”

“I also am angry, uncle; very angry with Lady Arabella; but for him, for the squire, I would go to him on my knees if he asked me in that way.”

“Yes; and had he asked you, I also would have gone.”

“Oh! now I shall be so wretched. It is his invitation, not hers: Mr. Gresham could not ask me. As for her, do not think of her; but do, do go when he asks you like that. You will make me so miserable if you do not. And then Sir Louis cannot go without you,”—and Mary pointed upstairs—”and you may be sure that he will go.”

“Yes; and make a beast of himself.”

This colloquy was cut short by a message praying the doctor to go up to Sir Louis’s room. The young man was sitting in his dressing-gown, drinking a cup of coffee at his toilet-table, while Joe was preparing his razor and hot water. The doctor’s nose immediately told him that there was more in the coffee-cup than had come out of his own kitchen, and he would not let the offence pass unnoticed.

“Are you taking brandy this morning, Sir Louis?”

“Just a little
chasse-café
,” said he, not exactly understanding the word he used. “It’s all the go now; and a capital thing for the stomach.”

“It’s not a capital thing for your stomach—about the least capital thing you can take; that is, if you wish to live.”

“Never mind about that now, doctor, but look here. This is what we call the civil thing—eh?” and he showed the Greshamsbury note. “Not but what they have an object, of course. I understand all that. Lots of girls there—eh?”

The doctor took the note and read it. “It is civil,” said he; “very civil.”

“Well; I shall go, of course. I don’t bear malice because he can’t pay me the money he owes me. I’ll eat his dinner, and look at the girls. Have you an invite too, doctor?”

“Yes; I have.”

“And you’ll go?”

“I think not; but that need not deter you. But, Sir Louis—”

“Well! eh! what is it?”

“Step downstairs a moment,” said the doctor, turning to the servant, “and wait till you are called for. I wish to speak to your master.” Joe, for a moment, looked up at the baronet’s face, as though he wanted but the slightest encouragement to disobey the doctor’s orders; but not seeing it, he slowly retired, and placed himself, of course, at the keyhole.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What young man? Sir Louis?” asked the doctor.

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

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

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

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

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

“And where is he now?” said the doctor.

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

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

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

CHAPTER XXXV

Sir Louis Goes Out to Dinner

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

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

“Have you heard that Mr. Gresham has come home?” said Mr. Gazebee.

“Mr. Gresham! I did not know that he had been away.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“So Frank has come home?”

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

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

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

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

“Oh, doctor, I am so delighted to find you here,” said he, coming 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 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 ill-used, 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.

“Ah, indeed! I am very sorry for that; that must be very distressing to a person like your ladyship. But things are mending, perhaps?”

Lady Arabella did not in the least understand him. “Mending!” she said, in her peculiar tone of aristocratic indifference; and then turned to Mr. Gazebee, who was on the other side of her.

Sir Louis was not going to stand this. He was the first man in the room, and he knew his own importance. It was not to be borne that Lady Arabella should turn to talk to a dirty attorney, and leave him, a baronet, to eat his dinner without notice. If nothing else would move her, he would let her know who was the real owner of the Greshamsbury title-deeds.

“I think I saw your ladyship out to-day, taking a ride.” Lady Arabella had driven through the village in her pony-chair.

“I never ride,” said she, turning her head for one moment from Mr. Gazebee.

“In the one-horse carriage, I mean, my lady. I was delighted with the way you whipped him up round the corner.”

Whipped him up round the corner! Lady Arabella could make no answer to this; so she went on talking to Mr. Gazebee. Sir Louis, repulsed, but not vanquished—resolved not to be vanquished by any Lady Arabella—turned his attention to his plate for a minute or two, and then recommenced.

“The honour of a glass of wine with you, Lady Arabella,” said he.

“I never take wine at dinner,” said Lady Arabella. The man was becoming intolerable to her, and she was beginning to fear that it would be necessary for her to fly the room to get rid of him.

The baronet was again silent for a moment; but he was determined not to be put down.

“This is a nice-looking country about her,” said he.

“Yes; very nice,” said Mr. Gazebee, endeavouring to relieve the lady of the mansion.

“I hardly know which I like best; this, or my own place at Boxall Hill. You have the advantage here in trees, and those sort of things. But, as to the house, why, my box there is very comfortable, very. You’d hardly know the place now, Lady Arabella, if you haven’t seen it since my governor bought it. How much do you think he spent about the house and grounds, pineries included, you know, and those sort of things?”

Lady Arabella shook her head.

“Now guess, my lady,” said he. But it was not to be supposed that Lady Arabella should guess on such a subject.

“I never guess,” said she, with a look of ineffable disgust.

“What do you say, Mr. Gazebee?”

“Perhaps a hundred thousand pounds.”

“What! for a house! You can’t know much about money, nor yet about building, I think, Mr. Gazebee.”

“Not much,” said Mr. Gazebee, “as to such magnificent places as Boxall Hill.”

“Well, my lady, if you won’t guess, I’ll tell you. It cost twenty-two thousand four hundred and nineteen pounds four shillings and eightpence. I’ve all the accounts exact. Now, that’s a tidy lot of money for a house for a man to live in.”

Sir Louis spoke this in a loud tone, which at least commanded the attention of the table. Lady Arabella, vanquished, bowed her head, and said that it was a large sum; Mr. Gazebee went on sedulously eating his dinner; the squire was struck momentarily dumb in the middle of a long chat with the doctor; even Mr. Oriel ceased to whisper; and the girls opened their eyes with astonishment. Before the end of his speech, Sir Louis’s voice had become very loud.

“Yes, indeed,” said Frank; “a very tidy lot of money. I’d have generously dropped the four and eightpence if I’d been the architect.”

“It wasn’t all one bill; but that’s the tot. I can show the bills:” and Sir Louis, well pleased with his triumph, swallowed a glass of wine.

Almost immediately after the cloth was removed, Lady Arabella escaped, and the gentlemen clustered together. Sir Louis found himself next to Mr. Oriel, and began to make himself agreeable.

“A very nice girl, Miss Beatrice; very nice.”

Now Mr. Oriel was a modest man, and, when thus addressed as to his future wife, found it difficult to make any reply.

“You parsons always have your own luck,” said Sir Louis. “You get all the beauty, and generally all the money, too. Not much of the latter in this case, though—eh?”

Mr. Oriel was dumbfounded. He had never said a word to any creature as to Beatrice’s dowry; and when Mr. Gresham had told him, with sorrow, that his daughter’s portion must be small, he had at once passed away from the subject as one that was hardly fit for conversation, even between him and his future father-in-law; and now he was abruptly questioned on the subject by a man he had never before seen in his life. Of course, he could make no answer.

“The squire has muddled his matters most uncommonly,” continued Sir Louis, filling his glass for the second time before he passed the bottle. “What do you suppose now he owes me alone; just at one lump, you know?”

Mr. Oriel had nothing for it but to run. He could make no answer, nor would he sit there to hear tidings as to Mr. Gresham’s embarrassments. So he fairly retreated, without having said one word to his neighbour, finding such discretion to be the only kind of valour left to him.

“What, Oriel! off already?” said the squire. “Anything the matter?”

“Oh, no; nothing particular. I’m not just quite—I think I’ll go out for a few minutes.”

“See what it is to be in love,” said the squire, half-whispering to Dr. Thorne. “You’re not in the same way, I hope?”

Sir Louis then shifted his seat again, and found himself next to Frank. Mr. Gazebee was opposite to him, and the doctor opposite to Frank.

“Parson seems peekish, I think,” said the baronet.

“Peekish?” said the squire, inquisitively.

“Rather down on his luck. He’s decently well off himself, isn’t he?”

There was another pause, and nobody seemed inclined to answer the question.

“I mean, he’s got something more than his bare living.”

“Oh, yes,” said Frank, laughing. “He’s got what will buy him bread and cheese when the Rads shut up the Church—unless, indeed, they shut up the Funds too.”

“Ah, there’s nothing like land,” said Sir Louis: “nothing like the dirty acres; is there, squire?”

“Land is a very good investment, certainly,” said the Mr. Gresham.

“The best going,” said the other, who was now, as people say when they mean to be good-natured, slightly under the influence of liquor. “The best going—eh, Gazebee?”

Mr. Gazebee gathered himself up, and turned away his head, looking out of the window.

“You lawyers never like to give an opinion without money, ha! ha! ha! Do they, Mr. Gresham? You and I have had to pay for plenty of them, and will have to pay for plenty more before they let us alone.”