The Chronicles of Barsetshire (129 page)

But the squire was not prepared to say this. He was pledged to his wife to do all that he could to oppose it; and he himself thought, that if anything could consummate the family ruin, it would be this marriage.

“I cannot say that, Frank; I cannot say that. What would you both live on? It would be madness.”

“We would go to Australia,” answered he, bitterly. “I have just said so.”

“Oh, no, my boy; you cannot do that. You must not throw the old place up altogether. There is no other one but you, Frank; and we have lived here now for so many, many years.”

“But if we cannot live here any longer, father?”

“But for this scheme of yours, we might do so. I will give up everything to you, the management of the estate, the park, all the land we have in hand, if you will give up this fatal scheme. For, Frank, it is fatal. You are only twenty-three; why should you be in such a hurry to marry?”

“You married at twenty-one, sir.”

Frank was again severe on his father, but unwittingly. “Yes, I did,” said Mr. Gresham; “and see what has come of it! Had I waited ten years longer, how different would everything have been! No, Frank, I cannot consent to such a marriage; nor will your mother.”

“It is your consent I ask, sir; and I am asking for nothing but your consent.”

“It would be sheer madness; madness for you both. My own Frank, my dear, dear boy, do not drive me to distraction! Give it up for four years.”

“Four years!”

“Yes; for four years. I ask it as a personal favour; as an obligation to myself, in order that we may be saved from ruin; you, your mother, and sisters, your family name, and the old house. I do not talk about myself; but were such a marriage to take place, I should be driven to despair.”

Frank found it very hard to resist his father, who now had hold of his hand and arm, and was thus half retaining him, and half embracing him. “Frank, say that you will forget this for four years—say for three years.”

But Frank would not say so. To postpone his marriage for four years, or for three, seemed to him to be tantamount to giving up Mary altogether; and he would not acknowledge that anyone had the right to demand of him to do that.

“My word is pledged, sir,” he said.

“Pledged! Pledged to whom?”

“To Miss Thorne.”

“But I will see her, Frank—and her uncle. She was always reasonable. I am sure she will not wish to bring ruin on her old friends at Greshamsbury.”

“Her old friends at Greshamsbury have done but little lately to deserve her consideration. She has been treated shamefully. I know it has not been by you, sir; but I must say so. She has already been treated shamefully; but I will not treat her falsely.”

“Well, Frank, I can say no more to you. I have destroyed the estate which should have been yours, and I have no right to expect you should regard what I say.”

Frank was greatly distressed. He had not any feeling of animosity against his father with reference to the property, and would have done anything to make the squire understand this, short of giving up his engagement to Mary. His feeling rather was, that, as each had a case against the other, they should cry quits; that he should forgive his father for his bad management, on condition that he himself was to be forgiven with regard to his determined marriage. Not that he put it exactly in that shape, even to himself; but could he have unravelled his own thoughts, he would have found that such was the web on which they were based.

“Father, I do regard what you say; but you would not have me be false. Had you doubled the property instead of lessening it, I could not regard what you say any more.”

“I should be able to speak in a very different tone; I feel that, Frank.”

“Do not feel it any more, sir; say what you wish, as you would have said it under any other circumstances; and pray believe this, the idea never occurs to me, that I have ground of complaint as regards the property; never. Whatever troubles we may have, do not let that trouble you.”

Soon after this Frank left him. What more was there that could be said between them? They could not be of one accord; but even yet it might not be necessary that they should quarrel. He went out, and roamed by himself through the grounds, rather more in meditation than was his wont.

If he did marry, how was he to live? He talked of a profession; but had he meant to do as others do, who make their way in professions, he should have thought of that a year or two ago!—or, rather, have done more than think of it. He spoke also of a farm, but even that could not be had in a moment; nor, if it could, would it produce a living. Where was his capital? Where his skill? and he might have asked also, where the industry so necessary for such a trade? He might set his father at defiance, and if Mary were equally headstrong with himself, he might marry her. But, what then?

As he walked slowly about, cutting off the daisies with his stick, he met Mr. Oriel, going up to the house, as was now his custom, to dine there and spend the evening, close to Beatrice.

“How I envy you, Oriel!” he said. “What would I not give to have such a position in the world as yours!”

“Thou shalt not covet a man’s house, nor his wife,” said Mr. Oriel; “perhaps it ought to have been added, nor his position.”

“It wouldn’t have made much difference. When a man is tempted, the Commandments, I believe, do not go for much.”

“Do they not, Frank? That’s dangerous doctrine; and one which, if you had my position, you would hardly admit. But what makes you so much out of sorts? Your own position is generally considered about the best which the world has to give.”

“Is it? Then let me tell you that the world has very little to give. What can I do? Where can I turn? Oriel, if there be an empty, lying humbug in the world, it is the theory of high birth and pure blood which some of us endeavour to maintain. Blood, indeed! If my father had been a baker, I should know by this time where to look for my livelihood. As it is, I am told of nothing but my blood. Will my blood ever get me half a crown?”

And then the young democrat walked on again in solitude, leaving Mr. Oriel in doubt as to the exact line of argument which he had meant to inculcate.

CHAPTER XL

The Two Doctors Change Patients

Dr. Fillgrave still continued his visits to Greshamsbury, for Lady Arabella had not yet mustered the courage necessary for swallowing her pride and sending once more for Dr. Thorne. Nothing pleased Dr. Fillgrave more than those visits.

He habitually attended grander families, and richer people; but then, he had attended them habitually. Greshamsbury was a prize taken from the enemy; it was his rock of Gibraltar, of which he thought much more than of any ordinary Hampshire or Wiltshire which had always been within his own kingdom.

He was just starting one morning with his post-horses for Greshamsbury, when an impudent-looking groom, with a crooked nose, trotted up to his door. For Joe still had a crooked nose, all the doctor’s care having been inefficacious to remedy the evil effects of Bridget’s little tap with the rolling-pin. Joe had no written credentials, for his master was hardly equal to writing, and Lady Scatcherd had declined to put herself into further personal communication with Dr. Fillgrave; but he had effrontery enough to deliver any message.

“Be you Dr. Fillgrave?” said Joe, with one finger just raised to his cocked hat.

“Yes,” said Dr. Fillgrave, with one foot on the step of the carriage, but pausing at the sight of so well-turned-out a servant. “Yes; I am Dr. Fillgrave.”

“Then you be to go to Boxall Hill immediately; before anywhere else.”

“Boxall Hill!” said the doctor, with a very angry frown.

“Yes; Boxall Hill: my master’s place—my master is Sir Louis Scatcherd, baronet. You’ve heard of him, I suppose?”

Dr. Fillgrave had not his mind quite ready for such an occasion. So he withdrew his foot from the carriage step, and rubbing his hands one over another, looked at his own hall door for inspiration. A single glance at his face was sufficient to show that no ordinary thoughts were being turned over within his breast.

“Well!” said Joe, thinking that his master’s name had not altogether produced the magic effect which he had expected; remembering, also, how submissive Greyson had always been, who, being a London doctor, must be supposed to be a bigger man than this provincial fellow. “Do you know as how my master is dying, very like, while you stand there?”

“What is your master’s disease?” said the doctor, facing Joe, slowly, and still rubbing his hands. “What ails him? What is the matter with him?”

“Oh; the matter with him? Well, to say it out at once then, he do take a drop too much at times, and then he has the horrors—what is it they call it? delicious beam-ends, or something of that sort.”

“Oh, ah, yes; I know; and tell me, my man, who is attending him?”

“Attending him? why, I do, and his mother, that is, her ladyship.”

“Yes; but what medical attendant: what doctor?”

“Why, there was Greyson, in London, and—”

“Greyson!” and the doctor looked as though a name so medicinally humble had never before struck the tympanum of his ear.

“Yes; Greyson. And then, down at what’s the name of the place, there was Thorne.”

“Greshamsbury?”

“Yes; Greshamsbury. But he and Thorne didn’t hit it off; and so since that he has had no one but myself.”

“I will be at Boxall Hill in the course of the morning,” said Dr. Fillgrave; “or, rather, you may say, that I will be there at once: I will take it in my way.” And having thus resolved, he gave his orders that the post-horses should make such a detour as would enable him to visit Boxall Hill on his road. “It is impossible,” said he to himself, “that I should be twice treated in such a manner in the same house.”

He was not, however, altogether in a comfortable frame of mind as he was driven up to the hall door. He could not but remember the smile of triumph with which his enemy had regarded him in that hall; he could not but think how he had returned fee-less to Barchester, and how little he had gained in the medical world by rejecting Lady Scatcherd’s bank-note. However, he also had had his triumphs since that. He had smiled scornfully at Dr. Thorne when he had seen him in the Greshamsbury street; and had been able to tell, at twenty houses through the county, how Lady Arabella had at last been obliged to place herself in his hands. And he triumphed again when he found himself really standing by Sir Louis Scatcherd’s bedside. As for Lady Scatcherd, she did not even show herself. She kept in her own little room, sending out Hannah to ask him up the stairs; and she only just got a peep at him through the door as she heard the medical creak of his shoes as he again descended.

We need say but little of his visit to Sir Louis. It mattered nothing now, whether it was Thorne, or Greyson, or Fillgrave. And Dr. Fillgrave knew that it mattered nothing: he had skill at least for that—and heart enough also to feel that he would fain have been relieved from this task; would fain have left this patient in the hands even of Dr. Thorne.

The name which Joe had given to his master’s illness was certainly not a false one. He did find Sir Louis “in the horrors.” If any father have a son whose besetting sin is a passion for alcohol, let him take his child to the room of a drunkard when possessed by “the horrors.” Nothing will cure him if not that.

I will not disgust my reader by attempting to describe the poor wretch in his misery: the sunken, but yet glaring eyes; the emaciated cheeks; the fallen mouth; the parched, sore lips; the face, now dry and hot, and then suddenly clammy with drops of perspiration; the shaking hand, and all but palsied limbs; and worse than this, the fearful mental efforts, and the struggles for drink; struggles to which it is often necessary to give way.

Dr. Fillgrave soon knew what was to be the man’s fate; but he did what he might to relieve it. There, in one big, best bedroom, looking out to the north, lay Sir Louis Scatcherd, dying wretchedly. There, in the other big, best bedroom, looking out to the south, had died the other baronet about a twelvemonth since, and each a victim to the same sin. To this had come the prosperity of the house of Scatcherd!

And then Dr. Fillgrave went on to Greshamsbury. It was a long day’s work, both for himself and the horses; but then, the triumph of being dragged up that avenue compensated for both the expense and the labour. He always put on his sweetest smile as he came near the hall door, and rubbed his hands in the most complaisant manner of which he knew. It was seldom that he saw any of the family but Lady Arabella; but then he desired to see none other, and when he left her in a good humour, was quite content to take his glass of sherry and eat his lunch by himself.

On this occasion, however, the servant at once asked him to go into the dining-room, and there he found himself in the presence of Frank Gresham. The fact was, that Lady Arabella, having at last decided, had sent for Dr. Thorne; and it had become necessary that some one should be entrusted with the duty of informing Dr. Fillgrave. That some one must be the squire, or Frank. Lady Arabella would doubtless have preferred a messenger more absolutely friendly to her own side of the house; but such messenger there was none: she could not send Mr. Gazebee to see her doctor, and so, of the two evils, she chose the least.

“Dr. Fillgrave,” said Frank, shaking hands with him very cordially as he came up, “my mother is so much obliged to you for all your care and anxiety on her behalf! and, so indeed, are we all.”

The doctor shook hands with him very warmly. This little expression of a family feeling on his behalf was the more gratifying, as he had always thought that the males of the Greshamsbury family were still wedded to that pseudo-doctor, that half-apothecary who lived in the village.

“It has been awfully troublesome to you, coming over all this way, I am sure. Indeed, money could not pay for it; my mother feels that. It must cut up your time so much.”

“Not at all, Mr. Gresham; not at all,” said the Barchester doctor, rising up on his toes proudly as he spoke. “A person of your mother’s importance, you know! I should be happy to go any distance to see her.”

“Ah! but, Dr. Fillgrave, we cannot allow that.”

“Mr. Gresham, don’t mention it.”

“Oh, yes; but I must,” said Frank, who thought that he had done enough for civility, and was now anxious to come to the point. “The fact is, doctor, that we are very much obliged for what you have done; but, for the future, my mother thinks she can trust to such assistance as she can get here in the village.”

Frank had been particularly instructed to be very careful how he mentioned Dr. Thorne’s name, and, therefore, cleverly avoided it.

Get what assistance she wanted in the village! What words were those that he heard? “Mr. Gresham, eh—hem—perhaps I do not completely—” Yes, alas! he had completely understood what Frank had meant that he should understand. Frank desired to be civil, but he had no idea of beating unnecessarily about the bush on such an occasion as this.

“It’s by Sir Omicron’s advice, Dr. Fillgrave. You see, this man here”—and he nodded his head towards the doctor’s house, being still anxious not to pronounce the hideous name—”has known my mother’s constitution for so many years.”

“Oh, Mr. Gresham; of course, if it is wished.”

“Yes, Dr. Fillgrave, it is wished. Lunch is coming directly:” and Frank rang the bell.

“Nothing, I thank you, Mr. Gresham.”

“Do take a glass of sherry.”

“Nothing at all, I am very much obliged to you.”

“Won’t you let the horses get some oats?”

“I will return at once, if you please, Mr. Gresham.” And the doctor did return, taking with him, on this occasion, the fee that was offered to him. His experience had at any rate taught him so much.

But though Frank could do this for Lady Arabella, he could not receive Dr. Thorne on her behalf. The bitterness of that interview had to be borne by herself. A messenger had been sent for him, and he was upstairs with her ladyship while his rival was receiving his
congé
downstairs. She had two objects to accomplish, if it might be possible: she had found that high words with the doctor were of no avail; but it might be possible that Frank could be saved by humiliation on her part. If she humbled herself before this man, would he consent to acknowledge that his niece was not the fit bride for the heir of Greshamsbury?

The doctor entered the room where she was lying on her sofa, and walking up to her with a gentle, but yet not constrained step, took the seat beside her little table, just as he had always been accustomed to do, and as though there had been no break in their intercourse.

“Well, doctor, you see that I have come back to you,” she said, with a faint smile.

“Or, rather, I have come back to you. And, believe me, Lady Arabella, I am very happy to do so. There need be no excuses. You were, doubtless, right to try what other skill could do; and I hope it has not been tried in vain.”

She had meant to have been so condescending; but now all that was put quite beyond her power. It was not easy to be condescending to the doctor: she had been trying all her life, and had never succeeded.

“I have had Sir Omicron Pie,” she said.

“So I was glad to hear. Sir Omicron is a clever man, and has a good name. I always recommend Sir Omicron myself.”

“And Sir Omicron returns the compliment,” said she, smiling gracefully, “for he recommends you. He told Mr. Gresham that I was very foolish to quarrel with my best friend. So now we are friends again, are we not? You see how selfish I am.” And she put out her hand to him.

The doctor took her hand cordially, and assured her that he bore her no ill-will; that he fully understood her conduct—and that he had never accused her of selfishness. This was all very well and very gracious; but, nevertheless, Lady Arabella felt that the doctor kept the upper hand in those sweet forgivenesses. Whereas, she had intended to keep the upper hand, at least for a while, so that her humiliation might be more effective when it did come.

And then the doctor used his surgical lore, as he well knew how to use it. There was an assured confidence about him, an air which seemed to declare that he really knew what he was doing. These were very comfortable to his patients, but they were wanting in Dr. Fillgrave. When he had completed his examinations and questions, and she had completed her little details and made her answer, she certainly was more at ease than she had been since the doctor had last left her.

“Don’t go yet for a moment,” she said. “I have one word to say to you.”

He declared that he was not the least in a hurry. He desired nothing better, he said, than to sit there and talk to her. “And I owe you a most sincere apology, Lady Arabella.”

“A sincere apology!” said she, becoming a little red. Was he going to say anything about Mary? Was he going to own that he, and Mary, and Frank had all been wrong?

“Yes, indeed. I ought not to have brought Sir Louis Scatcherd here: I ought to have known that he would have disgraced himself.”

“Oh! it does not signify,” said her ladyship in a tone almost of disappointment. “I had forgotten it. Mr. Gresham and you had more inconvenience than we had.”

“He is an unfortunate, wretched man—most unfortunate; with an immense fortune which he can never live to possess.”

“And who will the money go to, doctor?”

This was a question for which Dr. Thorne was hardly prepared. “Go to?” he repeated. “Oh, some member of the family, I believe. There are plenty of nephews and nieces.”

“Yes; but will it be divided, or all go to one?”

“Probably to one, I think. Sir Roger had a strong idea of leaving it all in one hand.” If it should happen to be a girl, thought Lady Arabella, what an excellent opportunity would that be for Frank to marry money!

“And now, doctor, I want to say one word to you; considering the very long time that we have known each other, it is better that I should be open with you. This estrangement between us and dear Mary has given us all so much pain. Cannot we do anything to put an end to it?”

“Well, what can I say, Lady Arabella? That depends so wholly on yourself.”

“If it depends on me, it shall be done at once.”

The doctor bowed. And though he could hardly be said to do so stiffly, he did it coldly. His bow seemed to say, “Certainly; if you choose to make a proper
amende
it can be done. But I think it is very unlikely that you will do so.”