‘Then why not send to London? Expense is no object to you.’
‘It is an object; a great object.’
‘Nonsense! Send to London for Sir Omicron Pie: send for some man whom you will really trust when you see him.
‘There’s not one of the lot I’d trust as soon as Fillgrave. I’ve known Fillgrave all my life and I trust him. I’ll send for Fillgrave and put my case in his hands. If any one can do anything for me, Fillgrave is the man.’
‘Then in God’s name send for Fillgrave,’ said the doctor. ‘And now, good-bye, Scatcherd; and as you do send for him, give him a fair chance. Do not destroy yourself by more brandy before he comes.’
‘That’s my affair, and his; not yours,’ said the patient.
‘So be it; give me your hand, at any rate, before I go. I wish you well through it, and when you are well, I’ll come and see you.’
‘Good-bye — good-bye; and look here, Thorne, you’ll be talking to Lady Scatcherd downstairs I know; now, no nonsense. You understand me, eh? no nonsense.’
Chapter 10 Sir Roger’s Will
Dr Thorne left the room and went downstairs, being fully aware that he could not leave the house without having some communication with Lady Scatcherd. He was not sooner within the passage than he heard the sick man’s bell ring violently; and then the servant, passing him on the staircase, received orders to send a mounted messenger immediately to Barchester. Dr Fillgrave was to be summoned to come as quickly as possible to the sick man’s room, and Mr Winterbones was to be sent up to write the note.
Sir Roger was quite right in supposing that there would be some words between the doctor and her ladyship. How, indeed, was the doctor to get out of the house without such, let him wish it ever so much? There were words; and these were protracted, while the doctor’s cob was being ordered round, till very many were uttered which the contractor would probably have regarded as nonsense.
Lady Scatcherd was no fit associate for the wives of English baronets;— was no doubt by education and manners much better fitted to sit in their servants’ halls; but not on that account was she a bad wife or a bad woman. She was painfully, fearfully, anxious for that husband of hers, whom she honoured and worshipped, as it behoved her to do, above all other men. She was fearfully anxious as to his life, and faithfully believed, that if any man could prolong it, it was that old and faithful friend whom she had known to be true to her lord since their early married troubles.
When, therefore, she found that she had been dismissed, and that a stranger was to be sent for in his place, her heart sank below within her.
‘But, doctor,’ she said, with her apron up to her eyes, ‘you ain’t going to leave him, are you?’
Dr Thorne did not find it easy to explain to her ladyship that medical etiquette would not permit him to remain in attendance on her husband after he had been dismissed and another physician called in his place.
‘Etiquette!’ said she, crying. ‘What’s etiquette to do with it when a man is a-killing hisself with brandy?’
‘Fillgrave will forbid that quite as strongly as I can do.’
‘Fillgrave!’ said she. ‘Fiddlesticks! Fillgrave, indeed!’
Dr Thorne could almost have embraced her for the strong feeling of thorough confidence on the one side, and thorough distrust on the other, which she contrived to throw into those few words.
‘I’ll tell you what, doctor; I won’t let that messenger go. I’ll bear the brunt of it. He can’t do much now he ain’t up, you know. I’ll stop the boy; we won’t have no Fillgrave here.’
This, however, was a step to which Dr Thorne would not assent. He endeavoured to explain to the anxious wife, that after what had passed he could not tender his medical services till they were again asked for.
‘But you can slip in as a friend, you know; and then by degrees you can come round him, eh? can’t you now, doctor? And as to payment —’
All that Dr Thorne said on the subject may easily be imagined. And in this way, and in partaking of the lunch which was forced upon him, an hour had nearly passed between his leaving Sir Roger’s bedroom and putting his foot in the stirrup. But no sooner had the cob begun to move on the gravel-sweep before the house than one of the upper windows opened, and the doctor was summoned to another conference with the sick man.
‘He says you are to come back, whether or no,’ said Mr Winterbones, screeching out of the window, and putting all his emphasis on the last words.
‘Thorne! Thorne! Thorne!’ shouted the sick man from his sick-bed, so loudly that the doctor heard him, seated as he was on horseback out before the house.
‘You’re to come back, whether or no,’ repeated Winterbones, with more emphasis, evidently conceiving that there was a strength of injunction in that ‘whether or no’ which would be found quite invincible.
Whether actuated by these magic words, or by some internal process of thought, we will not say; but the doctor did slowly, and as though unwillingly, dismount again from his steed, and slowly retrace his steps into the house.
‘It is no use,’ he said to himself, ‘for that messenger has already gone to Barchester.’
‘I have sent for Dr Fillgrave,’ were the first words which the contractor said to him when he again found himself by the bedside.
‘Did you call me back to tell me that?’ said Thorne, who now felt really angry at the impertinent petulance of the man before him: ‘you should consider, Scatcherd, that my time may be of value to others, if not to you.’
‘Now don’t be angry, old fellow,’ said Scatcherd, turning to him, and looking at him with a countenance quite different from any that he had shown that day; a countenance in which there was a show of manhood,— some show also of affection. ‘You ain’t angry now because I’ve sent for Fillgrave?’
‘Not in the least,’ said the doctor very complacently. ‘Not in the least. Fillgrave will do as much good as I can do.’
‘And that’s none at all, I suppose; eh, Thorne?’
‘That depends on yourself. He will do you good if you will tell him the truth, and will then be guided by him. Your wife, your servant, any one can be as good a doctor to you as either he or I; as good, that is, in the main point. But you have sent for Fillgrave now; and of course you must see him. I have much to do, and you must let me go.’
Scatcherd, however, would not let him go, but held his hand fast. ‘Thorne,’ said he, ‘if you like it, I’ll make them put Fillgrave under the pump directly he comes here. I will indeed, and pay all the damage myself.’
This was another proposition to which the doctor could not consent; but he was utterly unable to refrain from laughing. There was an earnest look of entreaty about Sir Roger’s face as he made the suggestion; and, joined to this, there was a gleam of comic satisfaction in his eye which seemed to promise, that if he received the least encouragement he would put his threat into execution. Now our doctor was not inclined to taking any steps towards subjecting his learned brother to pump discipline; but he could not but admit to himself that the idea was not a bad one.
‘I’ll have it done, I will, by heavens! if you’ll only say the word,’ protested Sir Roger.
But the doctor did not say the word, and so the idea was passed off.
‘You shouldn’t be so testy with a man when he is ill,’ said Scatcherd, still holding the doctor’s hand, of which he had again got possession; ‘specially not an old friend; and specially again when you’re been a-blowing him up.’
It was not worth the doctor’s while to aver that the testiness had all been on the other side, and that he had never lost his good-humour; so he merely smiled, and asked Sir Roger if he could do anything further for him.
‘Indeed you can, doctor; and that’s why I sent for you,— why I sent for you yesterday. Get out of the room, Winterbones,’ he then said gruffly, as though he were dismissing from his chamber a dirty dog. Winterbones, not a whit offended, again hid his cup under his coat-tail and vanished.
‘Sit down, Thorne, sit down,’ said the contractor, speaking in quite a different manner from any that he had yet assumed. ‘I know you’re in a hurry, but you must give me half an hour. I may be dead before you can give me another; who knows?’
The doctor of course declared that he hoped to have many a half-hour’s chat with him for many a year to come.
‘Well, that’s as may be. You must stop now, at any rate. You can make the cob pay for it, you know.’
The doctor took a chair and sat down. Thus entreated to stop, he had hardly any alternative but to do so.
‘It wasn’t because I’m ill that I sent for you, or rather let her ladyship send for you. Lord bless you, Thorne; do you think I don’t know what it is that makes me like this? When I see that poor wretch Winterbones, killing himself with gin, do you think I don’t know what’s coming to myself as well as him?
‘Why do you take it then? Why do you do it? Your life is not like his. Oh, Scatcherd! Scatcherd!’ and the doctor prepared to pour out the flood of his eloquence in beseeching this singular man to abstain from his well-known poison.
‘Is that all you know of human nature, doctor? Abstain. Can you abstain from breathing, and live like a fish does under water?’
‘But Nature has not ordered you to drink, Scatcherd.’
‘Habit is second nature, man; and a stronger nature than the first. And why should I not drink? What else has the world given me for all that I have done for it? What other resource have I? What other gratification?’
‘Oh, my God! Have you not unbounded wealth? Can you not do anything you wish? be anything you choose?’
‘No,’ and the sick man shrieked with an energy that made him audible all through the house. ‘I can do nothing that I would choose to do; be nothing that I would wish to be! What can I do? What can I be? What gratification can I have except the brandy bottle? If I go among gentlemen, can I talk to them? If they have anything to say about a railway, they will ask me a question: if they speak to me beyond that, I must be dumb. If I go among my workmen, can they talk to me? No; I am their master, and a stern master. They bob their heads and shake in their shoes when they see me. Where are my friends? Here!’ said he, and he dragged a bottle from under his very pillow. ‘Where are my amusements? Here!’ and he brandished the bottle almost in the doctor’s face. ‘Where is my one resource, my one gratification, my only comfort after all my toils. Here, doctor; here, here, here!’ and, so saying, he replaced his treasure beneath his pillow.
There was something so horrifying in this, that Dr Thorne shrank back amazed, and was for a moment unable to speak.
‘But, Scatcherd,’ he said at last; ‘surely you would not die for such a passion as that?’ ‘Die for it? Aye, would I. Live for it while I can live; and die for it when I can live no longer. Die for it! What is that for a man to do? What is a man the worse for dying? What can I be the worse for dying? A man can die but once, you said just now. I’d die ten times for this.’
‘You are speaking now either in madness, or else in folly, to startle me.’
‘Folly enough, perhaps, and madness enough, also. Such a life as mine makes a man a fool, and makes him mad too. What have about me that I should be afraid to die? I’m worth three hundred thousand pounds; and I’d give it all to be able to go to work tomorrow with a hod and mortar, and have a fellow clap his hand upon my shoulder, and say: “Well, Roger, shall us have that ’ere other half-pint this morning?” I’ll tell you what, Thorne, when a man has made three hundred thousand pounds, there’s nothing left for him but to die. It’s all he’s good for then. When money’s been made, the next thing is to spend it. Now the man who makes it has not the heart to do that.’
The doctor, of course, in hearing all this, said something of a tendency to comfort and console the mind of his patient. Not that anything he could say would comfort or console the man; but that it was impossible to sit there and hear such fearful truths — for as regarded Scatcherd they were truths — without making some answer.’
‘This is as good as a play, isn’t, doctor?’ said the baronet. ‘You didn’t know how I could come out like one of those actor fellows. Well, now, come; at last I’ll tell you why I have sent for you. Before that last burst of mine I made my will.’
‘You had made a will before that.’
‘Yes, I had. That will is destroyed. I burnt it with my own hand, so that there should be no mistake about it. In that will I had named two executors, you and Jackson. I was then partner with Jackson in the York and Yeovil Grand Central. I thought a deal of Jackson then. He’s not worth a shilling now.’
‘Well, I’m exactly in the same category.’
‘No, you’re not. Jackson is nothing without money; but money’ll never make you.’
‘No, nor I shan’t make money,’ said the doctor.
‘No, you never will. Nevertheless, there’s my other will, there, under that desk there; and I’ve put you in as sole executor.’
‘You must alter that, Scatcherd; you must indeed; with three hundred thousand pounds to be disposed of, the trust is far too much for any one man: besides you must name a younger man; you and I are of the same age, and I may die first.’
‘Now, doctor, no humbug; let’s have no humbug from you. Remember this; if you’re not true, you’re nothing.’
‘Well, but, Scatcherd —’
‘Well, but doctor, there’s the will, it’s already made. I don’t want to consult you about that. You are named as executor, and if you have the heart to refuse to act when I’m dead, why, of course, you can do so.’
The doctor was not lawyer, and hardly knew whether he had any means of extricating himself from this position in which his friend was determined to place him.
‘You’ll have to see that will carried out, Thorne. Now I’ll tell you what I have done.’
‘You’re not going to tell me how you have disposed of your property?’
‘Not exactly; at least not all of it. One hundred thousand I’ve in legacies, including, you know, what Lady Scatcherd will have.’
‘Have you not left the house to Lady Scatcherd?’
‘No; what the devil would she do with a house like this? She doesn’t know how to live in it now she has got it. I have provided for her; it matters not how. The house and the estate, and the remainder of my money I have left to Louis Philippe.’
‘What! two hundred thousand pounds?’ said the doctor.
‘And why shouldn’t I leave two hundred thousand pounds to my son, even to my eldest son if I have more than one? Does not Mr Gresham leave all his property to his heir? Why should not I make an eldest son as well as Lord de Courcy or the Duke of Omnium? I suppose a railway contractor ought not to be allowed an eldest son by Act of Parliament! Won’t my son have a title to keep up? And that’s more than the Greshams have among them.’
The doctor explained away what he said as well as he could. He could not explain that what he had really meant was this, that Sir Roger Scatcherd’s son was not a man fit to be trusted with the entire control of an enormous fortune.
Sir Roger Scatcherd had but one child; that child which had been born in the days of his early troubles, and had been dismissed from his mother’s breast in order that the mother’s milk might nourish the young heir of Greshamsbury. The boy had grown up, but had become strong neither in mind nor body. His father had determined to make a gentleman of him, and had sent to Eton and Cambridge. But even this receipt, generally as it is recognized, will not make a gentleman. It is hard, indeed, to define what receipt will do so, though people do have in their own minds some certain undefined, but yet tolerably correct ideas on the subject. Be that as it may, two years at Eton, and three terms at Cambridge, did not make a gentleman of Louis Philippe Scatcherd.
Yes; he was christened Louis Philippe, after the King of the French. If one wishes to look out in the world for royal nomenclature, to find children who have been christened after kings and queens, or the uncles and aunts of kings and queens, the search should be made in the families of democrats. None have so servile a deference for the very nail-parings of royalty; none feel so wondering an awe at the exaltation of a crowned head; none are so anxious to secure themselves some shred or fragment that has been consecrated by the royal touch. It is the distance which they feel to exist between themselves, and the throne which makes them covet the crumbs of majesty, the odds and ends and chance splinters of royalty.
There was nothing royal about Louis Philippe Scatcherd but his name. He had now come to man’s estate, and his father, finding the Cambridge receipt to be inefficacious, had sent him abroad to travel with a tutor. The doctor had from time to time heard tidings of this youth; he knew that he had already shown symptoms of his father’s vices, but no symptoms of his father’s talents; he knew that he had begun life by being dissipated, without being generous; and that at the age of twenty-one he had already suffered from delirium tremens.
It was on this account that he had expressed disapprobation, rather than surprise, when he heard that his father intended to bequeath the bulk of his large fortune to the uncontrolled will of this unfortunate boy.
‘I have toiled for my money hard, and I have a right to do as I like with it. What other satisfaction can it give me?’
The doctor assured him that he did not at all mean to dispute this.
‘Louis Philippe will do well enough, you’ll find,’ continued the baronet, understanding what was passing within his companion’s breast. ‘Let a young fellow sow his wild oats while he is young, and he’ll be steady enough when he grows old.’
‘But what if he never lives to get through the sowing?’ thought the doctor to himself. ‘What if the wild-oats operation is carried on in so violent a manner as to leave no strength in the soil for the product of a more valuable crop?’ It was of no use saying this, however, so he allowed Scatcherd to continue.
‘If I’d had a free fling when I was a youngster, I shouldn’t have been so fond of the brandy bottle now. But any way, my son shall be my heir. I’ve had the gumption to make the money, but I haven’t the gumption to spend it. My son, however, shall be able to ruffle it with the best of them. I’ll go bail he shall hold his head higher than ever young Gresham will be able to hold his. They are much of the same age, as well I have cause to remember;— and so has her ladyship here.’
Now the fact was, that Sir Roger Scatcherd felt in his heart no special love for young Gresham; but with her ladyship it might almost be a question whether she did not love the youth whom she had nursed almost as well as that other one who was her own proper offspring.
‘And will you not put any check on thoughtless expenditure? If you live ten or twenty years, as we hope you may, it will become unnecessary; but in making a will, a man should always remember he may go off suddenly.’
‘Especially if he goes to bed with a brandy bottle under his head; eh, doctor? But, mind, that’s a medical secret, you know; not a word of that out of the bedroom.’
Dr Thorne could but sigh. What could he say on such a subject to such a man as this?
‘Yes, I have put a check on his expenditure. I will not let his daily bread depend on any man; I have therefore let him five hundred a year at his own disposal, from the day of my death. Let him make what ducks and drakes of that he can.’
‘Five hundred a year is certainly not much,‘said the doctor.
‘No; nor do I want to keep him to that. Let him have whatever he wants if he sets about spending it properly. But the bulk of the property — this estate of Boxall Hill, and the Greshamsbury mortgage, and those other mortgages — I have tied up in this way: they shall be all his at twenty-five; and up to that age it shall be in your power to give him what he wants. If he shall die without children before he shall be twenty-five years of age, they are all to go to Mary’s eldest child.’
Now Mary was Sir Roger’s sister, the mother, therefore, of Miss Thorne, and, consequently, the wife of the respectable ironmonger who went to America, and the mother of a family there.
‘Mary’s eldest child!’ said the doctor, feeling that the perspiration had nearly broken out on his forehead, and that he could hardly control his feelings. ‘Mary’s eldest child! Scatcherd, you should be more particular in your description, or you will leave your best legacy to the lawyers.’
‘I don’t know, and never heard the name of one of them.’
‘But do you mean a boy or a girl?’
‘They may be all girls for what I know, or all boys; besides, I don’t care which it is. A girl would probably do best with it. Only you’d have to see that she married some decent fellow; you’d be her guardian.’
‘Pooh, nonsense,’ said the doctor. ‘Louis will be five-and-twenty in a year or two.’
‘In about four years.’
‘And for all that’s come and gone yet, Scatcherd, you are not going to leave us yourself quite so soon as all that.’
‘Not if I can help it; but that’s as may be.’
‘The chances are ten to one that such a clause in your will will never come to bear.’
‘Quite so, quite so. If I die, Louis Philippe won’t, but I thought it right to put in something to prevent his squandering it all before he comes to his senses.’
‘Oh! quite right, quite right. I think I would have named a later age than twenty-five.’
‘So would not I. Louis Philippe will be all right by that time. That’s my lookout. And now, doctor, you know my will; and if I die tomorrow, you will know what I want you to do for me.’
‘You have merely said the eldest child, Scatcherd?’
‘That’s all; give it here; and I’ll read it to you.’
‘No; no; never mind. The eldest child! You should be more particular, Scatcherd; you should, indeed. Consider what an enormous interest may have to depend on those words.’
‘Why, what the devil could I say? I don’t know their names; never even heard them. But the eldest is the eldest, all the world over. Perhaps I ought to say the youngest, seeing that I am only a railway contractor.’
Scatcherd began to think that the doctor might now as well go away and leave him to the society of Winterbones and the brandy; but, much as our friend had before expressed himself in a hurry, he now seemed inclined to move very leisurely. He sat there by the bedside, resting his hands on his knees and gazing unconsciously at the counterpane. At last he gave a deep sigh, and then he said, ‘Scatcherd, you must be more particular in this. If I am to have anything to do with it, you must, indeed, be more explicit.’
‘Why, how the deuce can I be more explicit? Isn’t her eldest living child plain enough, whether he be Jack, or she be Gill?’
‘What did your lawyer say to this, Scatcherd?’
‘Lawyer! You don’t suppose I let my lawyer know what I was putting. No; I got the form and the paper, and all that from him, and I did it in another. It’s all right enough. Though Winterbones wrote it, he did it in such a way he did not know what he was writing.’
The doctor sat a while longer, still looking at the counter-pane, and then got up to depart. ‘I’ll see you again soon,’ said he; ‘tomorrow, probably.’
‘To-morrow!’ said Sir Roger, not at all understanding why Dr Thorne should talk of returning so soon. ‘To-morrow! why I ain’t so bad as that, man, am I? If you come so often as that you will ruin me.’
‘Oh, not as a medical man; not as that; but about this will, Scatcherd. I must think if over; I must, indeed.’
‘You need not give yourself the least trouble in the world about my will till I’m dead; not the least. And who knows — may be, I may be settling your affairs yet; eh, doctor? looking after your niece when you’re dead and gone, and getting a husband for her, eh? Ha! ha! ha!’
And then, without further speech, the doctor went his way.
Chapter 11 The Doctor Drinks His Tea
The doctor got on his cob and went his way, returning duly to Greshamsbury. But, in truth, as he went he hardly knew whither he was going, or what he was doing. Sir Roger had hinted that the cob would be compelled to make up for lost time by extra exertion on the road; but the cob had never been permitted to have his own way as to pace more satisfactorily than on the present occasion. The doctor, indeed, hardly knew that he was on horseback, so completely was he enveloped in the cloud of his own thoughts.
In the first place, that alternative which it had become him to put before the baronet as one unlikely to occur — that of the speedy death of both father and son — was one which he felt in his heart of hearts might very probably come to pass.
‘The chances are ten to one that such a clause will never be brought to bear.’ This he had said partly to himself, so as to ease the thoughts which came crowding on his brain; partly, also, in pity for the patient and the father. But now that he thought the matter over, he felt that there were no such odds. Were not the odds the other way? Was it not almost probable that both these men might be gathered to their long account within the next four years? One, the elder, was a strong man, indeed; one who might yet live for years to come if he could but give himself fair play. But then, he himself protested, and protested with a truth too surely grounded, that fair play to himself was beyond his own power to give. The other, the younger, had everything against him. Not only was he a poor, puny creature, without physical strength, one of whose life a friend could never feel sure under any circumstances, but he also was already addicted to his father’s vices; he also was already killing himself with alcohol.
And then, if these two men did die within the prescribed period, if this clause of Sir Roger’s will were brought to bear, it should become his, Dr Thorne’s, duty to see that clause carried out, how would he be bound to act? That woman’s eldest child was his own niece, his adopted bairn, his darling, the pride of his heart, the cynosure of his eye, his child also, his own Mary. Of all his duties on this earth, next to that one great duty to his God and conscience, was his duty to her. What, under these circumstances, did his duty to her require of him?
But then, that one great duty, that duty which she would be the first to expect from him; what did that demand of him? Had Scatcherd made his will without saying what its clauses were, it seemed to Thorne that Mary must have been the heiress, should that clause become necessarily operative. Whether she were so or not would at any rate be for lawyers to decide. But now the case was very different. This rich man had confided in him, and would it not be a breach of confidence, an act of absolute dishonesty — an act of dishonesty both to Scatcherd and to that far-distant American family, to that father, who, in former days, had behaved so nobly, and to that eldest child of his, would it not be gross dishonesty to them all if he allowed this man to leave a will by which his property might go to a person never intended to be his heir?
Long before he had arrived at Greshamsbury his mind on this point had been made up. Indeed, it had been made up while sitting there by Scatcherd’s bedside. It had not been difficult to make up his mind to so much; but then, his way out of this dishonesty was not so easy for him to find. How should he set this matter right to as to inflict no injury on his niece, and no sorrow to himself — if that indeed could be avoided?
And then other thoughts crowded on his brain. He had always professed — professed at any rate to himself and to her — that of all the vile objects of a man’s ambition, wealth, wealth merely for its own sake, was the vilest. They, in their joint school of inherent philosophy, had progressed to ideas which they might find it not easy to carry out, should they be called on by events to do so. And if this would have been difficult to either when acting on behalf of self alone, how much more difficult when one might have to act for the other! This difficulty had now come to the uncle. Should he, in this emergency, take upon himself to fling away the golden chance which might accrue to his niece if Scatcherd should be encouraged to make her partly his heir?
‘He’d want her to go and live there — to live with him and his wife. All the money in the Bank of England would not pay her for such misery,’ said the doctor to himself, as he slowly rode into is own yard.
On one point, and one only, had he definitely made up his mind. On the following day he would go over again to Boxall Hill, and would tell Scatcherd the whole truth. Come what might, the truth must be best. And so, with some gleam of comfort, he went into the house, and found his niece in the drawing-room with Patience Oriel.
‘Mary and I have been quarrelling,’ said Patience. ‘She says the doctor is the greatest man in a village; and I say the parson is of course.’
‘I only say that the doctor is the most looked after,’ said Mary. ‘There’s another horrid message for you to go to Silverbridge, uncle. Why can’t that Dr Century manage his own people?’
‘She says,’ continued Miss Oriel, ‘that if a parson was away for a month, no one would miss him; but that a doctor is so precious that his very minutes are counted.’
‘I am sure uncle’s are. They begrudge him his meals. Mr Oriel never gets called away to Silverbridge.’
‘No; we in the Church manage our parish arrangements better than you do. We don’t let strange practitioners in among our flocks because the sheep may chance to fancy them. Our sheep have to put up with our spiritual doses whether they like them or not. In that respect we are much the best off. I advise you, Mary, to marry a clergyman, by all means.’
‘I will when you marry a doctor,’ said she.
‘I am sure nothing on earth would give me greater pleasure,’ said Miss Oriel, getting up and curtseying very low to Dr Thorne; ‘but I am not quite prepared for the agitation of an offer this morning, so I’ll run away.’
And so she went; and the doctor, getting to his other horse, started again for Silverbridge, wearily enough. ‘She’s happy now where she is,’ said he to himself, as he rode along. ‘They all treat her there as an equal at Greshamsbury. What though she be no cousin to the Thornes of Ullathorne. She has found her place there among them all, and keeps it on equal terms with the best of them. There is Miss Oriel; her family is high; she is rich, fashionable, a beauty, courted by every one; but yet she does not look down on Mary. They are equal friends together. But how would it be if she were taken to Boxall Hill, even as a recognized niece of the rich man there? Would Patience Oriel and Beatrice Gresham go there after her? Could she be happy there as she is in my house here, poor though it be? It would kill her to pass a month with Lady Scatcherd and put up with that man’s humours, to see his mode of life, to be dependent on him, to belong to him.’ And then the doctor, hurrying on to Silverbridge, again met Dr Century at the old lady’s bedside, and having made his endeavours to stave off the inexorable coming of the grim visitor, again returned to his own niece and his own drawing-room.
‘You must be dead, uncle,’ said Mary, as she poured out his tea for him, and prepared the comforts of that most comfortable meal-tea, dinner, and supper, all in one. ‘I wish Silverbridge was fifty miles off.’
‘That would only make the journey worse; but I am not dead yet, and, what is more to the purpose, neither is my patient.’ And as he spoke he contrived to swallow a jorum of scalding tea, containing in measure somewhat near a pint. Mary, not a whit amazed at this feat, merely refilled the jorum without any observation; and the doctor went on stirring the mixture with his spoon, evidently oblivious that any ceremony had been performed by either of them since the first supply had been administered to him.
When the clatter of knives and forks was over, the doctor turned himself to the hearthrug, and putting one leg over the other, he began to nurse it as he looked with complacency at his third cup of tea, which stood untasted beside him. The fragments of the solid banquet had been removed, but no sacrilegious hand had been laid on the teapot and the cream-jug.
‘Mary,’ said he, ‘suppose you were to find out tomorrow morning that, by some accident, you had become a great heiress, would you be able to suppress your exultation?’
‘The first thing I’d do, would be to pronounce a positive edict that you should never go to Silverbridge again; at least without a day’s notice.’
‘Well, and what next? what would you do next?’
‘The next thing — the next thing would be to send to Paris for a French bonnet exactly like the one Patience Oriel had on. Did you see it?’
‘Well I can’t say I did; bonnets are invisible now; besides I never remark anybody’s clothes, except yours.’
‘Oh! do look at Miss Oriel’s bonnet the next time you see her. I cannot understand why it should be so, but I am sure of this — no English fingers put together such a bonnet as that; and I am nearly sure that no French fingers could do it in England.’
‘But you don’t care so much about bonnets, Mary!’ This the doctor said as an assertion; but there was, nevertheless, somewhat of a question involved in it.
‘Don’t I though?’ said she. ‘I do care very much about bonnets; especially since I saw Patience this morning. I asked how much it cost — guess.’
‘Oh! I don’t know — a pound?’
‘A pound, uncle!’
‘What! a great deal more? Ten pounds?’
‘Oh, uncle.’
‘What! more than ten pounds? Then I don’t think even Patience Oriel ought to give it.’
‘No, of course she would not; but, uncle, it really cost a hundred francs!’
‘Oh! a hundred francs; that’s four pounds, isn’t it? Well, and how much did your last new bonnet cost?’
‘Mine! oh, nothing — five and ninepence, perhaps; I trimmed it myself. If I were left a great fortune, I’d send to Paris tomorrow; no, I’d go myself to Paris to buy a bonnet, and I’d take you with me to choose it.’
The doctor sat silent for a while meditating about this, during which he unconsciously absorbed the tea beside him; and Mary again replenished his cup.
‘Come, Mary,’ he said at last, ‘I’m in a generous mood; and as I am rather more rich than usual, we’ll send to Paris for a French bonnet. The going for it must wait a while longer I am afraid.’
‘You’re joking.’
‘No, indeed. If you know the way to send — that I must confess would puzzle me; but if you’ll manage the sending, I’ll manage the paying; and you shall have a French bonnet.’
‘Uncle!’ said she, looking up at him.
‘Oh, I’m not joking; I owe you a present, and I’ll give you that.’
‘And if you do, I’ll tell you what I’ll do with it. I’ll cut it into fragments, and burn them before your face. Why, uncle, what do you take me for? You’re not a bit nice to-night to make such an offer as that to me; not a bit, not a bit.’ And then she came over from her seat at the tea-tray and sat down on a foot-stool close at his knee. ‘Because I’d have a French bonnet if I had a large fortune, is that a reason why I should like one now? if you were to pay four pounds for a bonnet for me, it would scorch my head every time I put it on.’
‘I don’t see that: four pounds would not ruin me. However, I don’t think you’d look a bit better if you had it; and, certainly, I should not like to scorch these locks,’ and putting his hand upon her shoulders, he played with her hair.
‘Patience has a pony-phaeton, and I’d have one if I were rich; and I’d have all my books bound as she does; and, perhaps, I’d give fifty guineas for a dressing-case.’
‘Fifty guineas!’
‘Patience did not tell me; but so Beatrice says. Patience showed it to me once, and it is a darling. I think I’d have the dressing-case before the bonnet. But, uncle —’
‘Well?’
‘You don’t suppose I want such things?’
‘Not improperly. I am sure you do not.’
‘Not properly, or improperly; not much, or little. I covet many things; but nothing of that sort. You know, or should know, that I do not. Why do you talk of buying a French bonnet for me?’
Dr Thorne did not answer this question, but went on nursing his leg.
‘After all,’ said he, ‘money is a fine thing.’
‘Very fine, when it is well come by,’ she answered; ‘that is, without detriment to the heart and soul.’
‘I should be a happier man if you were provided for as Miss Oriel. Suppose, now, I could give you up to a rich man who would be able to insure you against all wants?’
‘Insure me against all wants! Oh, that would be a man. That would be selling me, wouldn’t it, uncle? Yes, selling me; and the price you would receive would be freedom from future apprehensions as regards me. It would be a cowardly sale for you to make; and then, as to me — me the victim. No, uncle; you must bear the misery of having to provide for me — bonnets and all. We are in the same boat, and you shan’t turn me overboard.’
‘But if I were to die, what would you do then?’
‘And if I were to die, what would you do? People must be bound together. They must depend on each other. Of course, misfortunes may come; but it is cowardly to be afraid of them beforehand. You and I are bound together, uncle; and though you say these things to tease me, I know you do not wish to get rid of me.’
‘Well, well; we shall win through, doubtless; if not in one way, then in another.’
‘Win through! Of course we shall; who doubts our winning? but, uncle —’
‘But, Mary.’
‘Well?’
‘You haven’t got another cup of tea, have you?’
‘Oh, uncle! you have had five.’
‘No, my dear! not five; only four — only four. I assure you; I have been very particular to count. I had one while I was —’
‘Five uncle; indeed and indeed.’
‘Well, then, as I hate the prejudice which attaches luck to an odd number, I’ll have the sixth to show that I am not superstitious.’
While Mary was preparing the sixth jorum, there came a knock at the door. Those late summonses were hateful to Mary’s ear, for they were usually forerunners of a midnight ride through the dark lanes to some farmer’s house. The doctor had been in the saddle all day, and, as Janet brought the note into the room, Mary stood up as though to defend her uncle from any further invasion on his rest.
‘A note from the house, miss,’ said Janet: now ‘the house’, in Greshamsbury parlance, always meant the squire’s mansion.
‘No one ill at the house, I hope,’ said the doctor, taking the note from Mary’s hand. ‘Oh — ah — yes; it’s from the squire — there’s nobody ill: wait a minute, Janet, and I’ll write a line. Mary, lend me your desk.’
The squire, anxious as usual for money, had written to ask what success the doctor had had in negotiating the new loan with Sir Roger. That fact, however, was, that in his visit to Boxall Hill, the doctor had been altogether unable to bring on the carpet the matter of this loan. Subjects had crowded themselves in too quickly during that interview — those two interviews at Sir Roger’s bedside; and he had been obliged to leave without even alluding to the question.
‘I must at any rate go back now,’ he said to himself. So he wrote to the squire, saying that he was to be at Boxall Hill again on the following day, and that he would call at the house on his return.
‘That’s all settled, at any rate,’ said he.
‘What’s settled?’ said Mary.
‘Why, I must go to Boxall Hill again tomorrow. I must go early, too, so we’d better both be off to bed. Tell Janet I must breakfast at half-past seven.’
‘You couldn’t take me, could you? I should so like to see that Sir Roger.’
‘To see Sir Roger! Why, he’s ill in bed.’
‘That’s an objection, certainly; but some day, when he’s well, could you not take me over? I have the greatest desire to see a man like that; a man who began with nothing and now has more than enough to buy the whole parish of Greshamsbury.’
‘I don’t think you’d like him at all.’
‘Why not? I am sure I should; I am sure I should like him, and Lady Scatcherd too. I’ve heard you say that she is an excellent woman.’
‘Yes, in her way; and he, too, is good in his way; but they are neither of them in your way: they are extremely vulgar —’
‘Oh! I don’t mind that; that would make them more amusing; one doesn’t go to those sort of people for polished manners.’
‘I don’t think you’d find the Scatcherds pleasant acquaintances at all,’ said the doctor, taking his bed-candle, and kissing his niece’s forehead as he left the room.
Chapter 12 When Greek Meets Greek, then Comes the Tug of War
The doctor, that is our doctor, had thought nothing more of the message which had been sent to that other doctor, Dr Fillgrave; nor in truth did the baronet. Lady Scatcherd had thought of it, but her husband during the rest of the day was not in a humour which allowed her to remind him that he would soon have a new physician on his hands; so she left the difficulty to arrange itself, waiting in some little trepidation till Dr Fillgrave should show himself.
It was well that Sir Roger was not dying for want of his assistance, for when the message reached Barchester, Dr Fillgrave was some five or six miles out of town, at Plumstead; and as he did not get back till late in the evening, he felt himself necessitated to put off his visit to Boxall Hill till next morning. Had he chanced to have been made acquainted with that little conversation about the pump, he would probably have postponed it even yet a while longer.
He was, however, by no means sorry to be summoned to the bedside of Sir Roger Scatcherd. It was well known at Barchester, and very well known to Dr Fillgrave, that Sir Roger and Dr Thorne were old friends. It was very well known to him also, that Sir Roger, in all his bodily ailments, had hitherto been contented to entrust his safety to the skill of his old friend. Sir Roger was in his way a great man, and much talked of in Barchester, and rumour had already reached the ears of the Barchester Galen, that the great railway contractor was ill. When, therefore, he received a peremptory summons to go over to Boxall Hill, he could not but think that some pure light had broken in upon Sir Roger’s darkness, and taught him at last where to look for true medical accomplishment.
And then, also, Sir Roger was the richest man in the county, and to county practitioners a new patient with large means is a godsend; how much greater a godsend when not only acquired, but taken also from some rival practitioner, need hardly be explained.
Dr Fillgrave, therefore, was somewhat elated when, after an early breakfast, he stepped into the post-chaise which was to carry him to Boxall Hill. Dr Fillgrave’s professional advancement had been sufficient to justify the establishment of a brougham, in which he paid his ordinary visits round Barchester; but this was a special occasion, requiring special speed, and about to produce no doubt a special guerdon, and therefore a pair of post-horses were put into request.
It was hardly yet nine when the post-boy somewhat loudly rang the bell at Sir Roger’s door; and then Dr Fillgrave, for the first time, found himself in the new grand hall of Boxall Hill house.
‘I’ll tell my lady,’ said the servant, showing him into the grand dining-room; and there for some fifteen minutes or twenty minutes Dr Fillgrave walked up and down the length of the Turkey carpet all alone.
Dr Fillgrave was not a tall man, and was perhaps rather more inclined to corpulence than became his height. In his stocking-feet, according to the usually received style of measurement, he was five feet five; and he had a little round abdominal protuberance, which an inch and a half added to the heels of his boots hardly enabled him to carry off as well as he himself would have wished. Of this he was apparently conscious, and it gave to him an air of not being entirely at his ease. There was, however, a personal dignity in his demeanour, a propriety in his gait, and an air of authority in his gestures which should prohibit one from stigmatizing those efforts at altitude as a failure. No doubt he did achieve much; but, nevertheless, the effort would occasionally betray itself, and the story of the frog and the ox would irresistibly force itself into one’s mind at those moments when it most behoved Dr Fillgrave to be magnificent.
But if the bulgy roundness of his person and the shortness of his legs in any way detracted from his personal importance, these trifling defects were, he was well aware, more than atoned for by the peculiar dignity of his countenance. If his legs were short, his face was not; if there was any undue preponderance below the waistcoat, all was in due symmetry above the necktie. His hair was grey, not grizzled, nor white, but properly grey; and stood up straight from his temples on each side, with an unbending determination of purpose. His whiskers, which were of an admirable shape, coming down and turning gracefully at the angle of his jaw, were grey also, but somewhat darker than his hair. His enemies in Barchester declared that their perfect shade was produced by a leaden comb. His eyes were not brilliant, but were very effective, and well under command. He was rather short-sighted, and a pair of eye-glasses was always on his nose, or in his hand. His nose was long, and well pronounced, and his chin, also, was sufficiently prominent; but the great feature of his face was his mouth. The amount of secret medical knowledge of which he could give assurance by the pressure of those lips was truly wonderful. By his lips, also, he could be most exquisitely courteous, or most sternly forbidding. And not only could he be either the one or the other; but he could at his will assume any shade of difference between the two, and produce any mixture of sentiment.
When Dr Fillgrave was first shown into Sir Roger’s dining-room, he walked up and down the room for a while with easy, jaunty step, with his hands joined together behind his back, calculating the price of the furniture, and counting the heads which might be adequately entertained in a room of such noble proportions; but in seven or eight minutes an air of impatience might have been seen to suffuse his face. Why could he not be shown into the sick man’s room? What necessity could there be for keeping him there, as though he were some apothecary with a box of leeches in his pocket? He then rang the bell, perhaps a little violently. ‘Does Sir Roger know that I am here?’ he said to the servant. ‘I’ll tell my lady,’ said the man, again vanishing.
For five minutes more he walked up and down, calculating no longer the value of the furniture, but rather that of his own importance. He was not wont to be kept waiting in this way; and though Sir Roger Scatcherd was at present a great and rich man, Dr Fillgrave had remembered him a very small and a very poor man. He now began to think of Sir Roger as the stone-mason, and to chafe somewhat more violently at being so kept by such a man.
When one is impatient, five minutes is as the duration of all time, and a quarter of an hour is eternity. At the end of twenty minutes the step of Dr Fillgrave up and down the room had become very quick, and he had just made up his mind that he would not stay there all day to the serious detriment, perhaps fatal injury, of his other expectant patients. His hand was again on the bell, and was about to be used with vigour, when the door opened and Lady Scatcherd entered.
‘Oh, laws!’ Such had been her first exclamation on hearing that the doctor was in the dining-room. She was standing at the time with her housekeeper in a small room in which she kept her linen and jam, and in which, in company with the same housekeeper, she spent the happiest moments of her life.
‘Oh laws! now, Hannah, what shall we do?’
‘Send ’un up at once to master, my lady! let John take ’un up.’
‘There’ll be such a row in the house, Hannah; I know there will.’
‘But surely didn’t he send for ’un? Let the master have the row himself, then; that’s what I’d do, my lady,’ added Hannah, seeing that her ladyship still stood trembling in doubt, biting her thumb-nail.
‘You couldn’t go up to the master yourself, could now, Hannah?’ said Lady Scatcherd in her most persuasive tone.
‘Why no,’ said Hannah, after a little deliberation; ‘no, I’m afeard I couldn’t.’
‘Then I must just face it myself.’ And up went the wife to tell her lord that the physician for whom he had sent had come to attend his bidding.
In the interview which then took place the baronet had not indeed been violent, but he had been very determined. Nothing on earth, he said, should induce him to see Dr Fillgrave and offend his dear old friend Dr Thorne.
‘But Roger,’ said her ladyship, half crying, or rather pretending to cry in vexation, ‘what shall I do with the man? How shall I get him out of the house?’
‘Put him under the pump,’ said the baronet; and he laughed his peculiar low guttural laugh, which told so plainly of the havoc which brandy had made in his throat.
‘That’s nonsense, Roger; you know I can’t put him under the pump. Now you are ill, and you’d better see him just for five minutes. I’ll make it right with Dr Thorne.’
‘I’ll be d —— if I do, my lady.’ All the people about Boxall Hill called poor Lady Scatcherd ‘my lady’ as if there was some excellent joke in it; and, so, indeed, there was.
‘You know you needn’t mind nothing he says, nor yet take nothing he sends: and I’ll tell him not to come no more. Now do ‘ee see him, Roger.’
But there was not coaxing Roger over now, indeed ever: he was a wilful, headstrong, masterful man; a tyrant always though never a cruel one; and accustomed to rule his wife and household as despotically as he did his gangs of workmen. Such men it is not easy to coax over.
‘You go down and tell him I don’t want him, and won’t see him, and that’s an end of it. If he chose to earn his money, why didn’t he come yesterday when he was sent for? I’m well now, and don’t want him; and what’s more, I won’t have him. Winterbones, lock the door.’
So Winterbones, who during this interview had been at work at his little table, got up to lock the door, and Lady Scatcherd had no alternative but to pass through it before the last edict was obeyed.
Lady Scatcherd, with slow step, went downstairs and again sought counsel with Hannah, and the two, putting their heads together, agreed that the only cure for the present evil was to found in a good fee. So Lady Scatcherd, with a five-pound note in her hand, and trembling in every limb, went forth to encounter the august presence of Dr Fillgrave.
As the door opened, Dr Fillgrave dropped the bell-rope which was in his hand, and bowed low to the lady. Those who knew the doctor well, would have known from his bow that he was not well pleased; it was as much as though he said, ‘Lady Scatcherd, I am your most obedient servant; at any rate it appears that it is your pleasure to treat me as such.’
Lady Scatcherd did not understand all this; but she perceived at once that he was angry.
‘I hope Sir Roger does not find himself worse,’ said the doctor. ‘The morning is getting on; shall I step up and see him?’
‘Hem! ha! oh! Why, you see, Dr Fillgrave, Sir Roger finds hisself vastly better this morning, vastly so.’
‘I’m very glad to hear it; but as the morning is getting on, shall I step up to see Sir Roger?’
‘Why, Dr Fillgrave, sir, you see, he finds hisself so much hisself this morning, that he a’most thinks it would be a shame to trouble you.’
‘A shame to trouble me!’ This was the sort of shame which Dr Fillgrave did not at all comprehend. ‘A shame to trouble me! Why Lady Scatcherd —’
Lady Scatcherd saw that she had nothing for it but to make the whole matter intelligible. Moreover, seeing that she appreciated more thoroughly the smallness of Dr Fillgrave’s person more thoroughly than she did the peculiar greatness of his demeanour, she began to be a shade less afraid of him than she had thought she should have been.
‘Yes, Dr Fillgrave; you see, when a man like he gets well, he can’t abide the idea of doctors: now, yesterday, he was all for sending for you; but today he comes to hisself, and don’t seem to want no doctor at all.’
Then did Dr Fillgrave seem to grow out of his boots, so suddenly did he take upon himself sundry modes of expansive attitude;— to grow out of his boots and to swell upwards, till his angry eyes almost looked down on Lady Scatcherd, and each erect hair bristled up towards the heavens.
‘This is very singular, very singular, Lady Scatcherd; very singular indeed; very singular; quite unusual. I have come here from Barchester, at some considerable inconvenience, at some very considerable inconvenience, I may say, to my regular patients; and — and — and — I don’t know that anything so very singular ever occurred to me before.’ And then Dr Fillgrave, with a compression of his lips which almost made the poor woman sink into the ground, moved towards the door.
Then Lady Scatcherd bethought of her great panacea. ‘It isn’t about the money, you know, doctor,’ said she; ‘of course Sir Roger don’t expect you to come here with post-horses for nothing.’ In this, by the by, Lady Scatcherd did not stick quite close to veracity, for Sir Roger, had he known it, would by no means have assented to any payment; and the note which her ladyship held in her hand was taken from her own private purse. ‘It ain’t about the money, doctor;’ and then she tendered the bank-note, which she thought would immediately make all things smooth.
Now Dr Fillgrave dearly loved a five-pound fee. What physician is so unnatural as not to love it? He dearly loved a five-pound fee; but he loved his dignity better. He was angry also; and like all angry men, he loved his grievance. He felt that he had been badly treated; but if he took the money he would throw away his right to indulge in any such feeling. At that moment his outraged dignity and cherished anger were worth more than a five-pound note. He looked at it with wishful but still averted eyes, and then sternly refused the tender.
‘No, madam,’ said he; ‘no, no;’ and with his right hand raised with his eye-glasses in it, he motioned away the tempting paper. ‘No; I should have been happy to have given Sir Roger the benefit of any medical skill I may have, seeing that I was specially called in-’
‘But, doctor; if the man’s well, you know —’
‘Oh, of course; if he’s well, and does not choose to see me, there’s an end of it. Should he have any relapse, as my time is valuable, he will perhaps oblige me by sending elsewhere. Madam, good morning. I will, if you will allow me, ring for my carriage — that is, post-chaise.’
‘But, doctor, you’ll take the money; you must take the money; indeed you’ll take the money,’ said Lady Scatcherd, who had now become really unhappy at the idea of her husband’s unpardonable whim had brought this man with post-horses all the way from Barchester, and that he was to be paid nothing for his time or costs.
‘No, madam, no. I could not think of it. Sir Roger, I have no doubt, will know better another time. It is not a question of money; not at all.’
‘But it is a question of money, doctor; and you really shall, you must.’ And poor Lady Scatcherd, in her anxiety to acquit herself at any rate of any pecuniary debt to the doctor, came to personal close quarters with him, with a view of forcing the note into his hands.
‘Quite impossible, quite impossible,’ said the doctor, still cherishing his grievance, and valiantly rejecting the root of all evil. ‘I shall not do anything of the kind, Lady Scatcherd.’
‘Now doctor, do ‘ee; to oblige me.’
‘Quite out of the question.’ And so, with his hands and hat behind his back, in token of his utter refusal to accept any pecuniary accommodation of his injury, he made his way backwards to the door, her ladyship perseveringly pressing him in front. So eager had been the attack on him, that he had not waited to give his order about the post-chaise, but made his way at once towards the hall.
‘Now, do ‘ee take it, do ‘ee,’ pressed Lady Scatcherd.
‘Utterly out of the question,’ said Dr Fillgrave, with great deliberation, as he backed his way into the hall. As he did so, of course he turned round,— and he found himself almost in the arms of Dr Thorne.
As Burley might have glared at Bothwell when they rushed together in the dread encounter on the mountain side; as Achilles may have glared at Hector when at last they met, each resolved to test in fatal conflict the prowess of the other, so did Dr Fillgrave glare at his foe from Greshamsbury, when, on turning round on his exalted heel, he found his nose on a level with the top button of Dr Thorne’s waistcoat.
And here, if it be not too tedious, let us pause a while to recapitulate and add up the undoubted grievances of the Barchester practitioner. He had made no effort to ingratiate himself into the sheepfold of that other shepherd-dog; it was not by his seeking that he was not at Boxall Hill; much as he hated Dr Thorne, full sure as he felt of that man’s utter ignorance, of his incapacity to administer properly even a black dose, of his murdering propensities and his low, mean, unprofessional style of practice; nevertheless, he had done nothing to undermine him with these Scatcherds. Dr Thorne might have sent every mother’s son at Boxall Hill to his long account, and Dr Fillgrave would not have interfered;— would not have interfered unless specially and duly called upon to do so.
But he had been and duly called on. Before such a step was taken some words must undoubtedly have passed on the subject between Thorne and Scatcherds. Thorne must have known what was to be done. Having been so called, Dr Fillgrave had come — had come all the way in a post-chaise — had been refused admittance to the sick man’s room, on the plea that the sick man was no longer sick; and just as he was about to retire fee-less — for the want of the fee was not the less a grievance from the fact of its having been tendered and refused — feeless, dishonoured, and in dudgeon, he encountered this other doctor — this very rival whom he had been sent to supplant; he encountered him in the very act of going to the sick man’s room.
What mad fanatic Burley, what god-succoured insolent Achilles, ever had such cause to swell with wrath as at that moment had Dr Fillgrave? Had I the pen of Moliere, I could fitly tell of such medical anger, but with no other pen can it be fitly told. He did swell, and when the huge bulk of his wrath was added to his natural proportions, he loomed gigantic before the eyes of the surrounding followers of Sir Roger.
Dr Thorne stepped back three steps and took his hat from his head, having, in the passage from the hall-door to the dining-room, hitherto omitted to do so. It must be borne in mind that he had no conception whatever that Sir Roger had declined to see the physician for whom he had sent; none whatever that the physician was now about to return, feeless, to Barchester.
Dr Thorne and Dr Fillgrave were doubtless well-known enemies. All the world of Barchester, and all that portion of the world of London which is concerned with the lancet and the scalping-knife, were well aware of this: they were continually writing against each other; continually speaking against each other; but yet they had never hitherto come to that positive personal collision which is held to justify a cut direct. They very rarely saw each other; and when they did meet, it was in some casual way in the streets of Barchester or elsewhere, and on such occasions their habit had been to bow with very cold propriety.
On the present occasion, Dr Thorne of course felt that Dr Fillgrave had the whip-hand of him; and, with a sort of manly feeling on such a point, he conceived it to be most compatible with his own dignity to show, under such circumstances, more than his usual courtesy — something, perhaps, amounting almost to cordiality. He had been supplanted, quoad doctor, in the house of this rich, eccentric, railway baronet, and he would show that he bore no malice on that account.
So he smiled blandly as he took off his hat, and in a civil speech he expressed a hope that Dr Fillgrave had not found his patient to be in any very unfavourable state.
Here was an aggravation to the already lacerated feelings of the injured man. He had been brought thither to be scoffed at and scorned at, that he might be a laughing-stock to his enemies, and food for mirth to the vile-minded. He swelled with noble anger till he would have burst, had it not been for the opportune padding of his frock-coat.
‘Sir,’ said he; ‘sir:’ and he could hardly get his lips open to give vent to the tumult of his heart. Perhaps he was not wrong; for it may be that his lips were more eloquent than would have been his words.
‘What’s the matter?’ said Dr Thorne, opening his eyes wide, and addressing Lady Scatcherd over his head and across the hairs of the irritated man below him. ‘What on earth is the matter? Is anything wrong with Sir Roger?’
‘Oh, laws, doctor!’ said her ladyship. ‘Oh, laws; I’m sure it ain’t my fault. Here’s Dr Fillgrave, in a taking, and I’m quite ready to pay him — quite. If a man gets paid, what more can he want?’ And she again held out the five-pound note over Dr Fillgrave’s head.
What more, indeed, Lady Scatcherd, can any of us want, if only we could keep our tempers and feelings a little in abeyance? Dr Fillgrave, however, could not so keep his; and, therefore, he did want something more, though at the present moment he could hardly have said what.
Lady Scatcherd’s courage was somewhat resuscitated by the presence of her ancient trusty ally; and, moreover, she began to conceive that the little man before her was unreasonable beyond all conscience with his anger, seeing that that for which he was ready to work had been offered him without any work at all.
‘Madam,’ said he, again turning round at Lady Scatcherd, ‘I was never before treated in such a way in any house in Barchester — never — never.’
‘Good heavens, Dr Fillgrave!’ said he of Greshamsbury, ‘what is the matter?’
‘I’ll let you know what is the matter, sir,’ said he, turning round again as quickly as before. ‘I’ll let you know what is the matter. I’ll publish this, sir, to the medical world;’ and as he shrieked out the words of the threat, he stood on tiptoes and brandished his eye-glasses up almost into his enemy’s face.
‘Don’t be angry with Dr Thorne,’ said Lady Scatcherd. ‘Any ways, you needn’t be angry with him. If you must be angry with anybody —’
‘I shall be angry with him, madam,’ ejaculated Dr Fillgrave, making another sudden demi-pirouette. ‘I am angry with him — or, rather, I despise him;’ and completing the circle, Dr Fillgrave again brought himself round in full front of his foe.
Dr Thorne raised his eyebrows and looked inquiringly at Lady Scatcherd; but there was a quiet sarcastic motion round his mouth which by no means had the effect of throwing oil on the troubled waters.
‘I’ll publish the whole of this transaction to the medical world, Dr Thorne — the whole of it; and if that has not the effect of rescuing the people of Greshamsbury out of your hands, then — then — then, I don’t know what will. Is my carriage — that is, the post-chaise there?’ and Dr Fillgrave, speaking very loudly, turned majestically to one of the servants.
‘What have I done to you, Dr Fillgrave,’ said Dr Thorne, now absolutely laughing, ‘that you should determined to take the bread out of my mouth? I am not interfering with your patient. I have come here simply with reference to money matters appertaining to Sir Roger.’
‘Money matters! Very well — very well; money matters. That is your idea of medical practice. Very well — very well. Is my post-chaise at the door? I’ll publish it all to the medical world — every word — every word of it, every word of it.’
‘Publish what, you unreasonable man?’
‘Man! sir; whom do you call a man? I’ll let you know whether I’m a man — post-chaise there!’
‘Don’t ‘ee call him names now, doctor; don’t ‘ee pray don’t ‘ee,’ said Lady Scatcherd.
By this time they had all got somewhere nearer the hall-door; but the Scatcherd retainers were too fond of the row to absent themselves willingly at Dr Fillgrave’s bidding, and it did not appear that any one went in search of the post-chaise.
‘Man! sir; I’ll let you know what it is to speak to me in that style. I think, sir, you hardly know who I am.’
‘All that I know of you at present is, that you are my friend Sir Roger’s physician, and I cannot conceive what has occurred to make you so angry.’ And as he spoke, Dr Thorne looked carefully at him to see whether that pump-discipline had in truth been applied. There were no signs whatever that cold water had been thrown upon Dr Fillgrave.
‘My post-chaise — is my post-chaise there? The medical world shall know all; you may be sure, sir, the medical world shall know it all;’ and thus, ordering his post-chaise and threatening Dr Thorne with the medical world, Dr Fillgrave made his way to the door.
But the moment he put on his hat he returned. ‘No, madam,’ said he. ‘No; quite out of the question: such an affair is not to be arranged by such means. I’ll publish it all to the medical world — post-chaise there!’ and then, using all his force, he flung as far as he could into the hall a light bit of paper. It fell at Dr Thorne’s feet, who, raising it, found that it was a five-pound note.
‘I put it into his hat just while he was in his tantrum,’ said Lady Scatcherd. ‘And I thought that perhaps he would not find it till he got to Barchester. Well I wish he’d been paid, certainly, although Sir Roger wouldn’t see him;’ and in this manner Dr Thorne got some glimpse of understanding into the cause of the great offence.
‘I wonder whether Sir Roger will see me,’ said he, laughing.
Chapter 13 The Two Uncles
‘Ha! ha! ha! Ha! ha! ha!’ laughed Sir Roger, lustily, as Dr Thorne entered the room. ‘Well, if that ain’t rich, I don’t know what is. Ha! ha! ha! But why didn’t they put him under the pump, doctor?’
The doctor, however, had too much tact, and too many things of importance to say, to allow of his giving up much time to the discussion of Dr Fillgrave’s wrath. He had come determined to open the baronet’s eyes as to what would be the real effect of his will, and he had also to negotiate a loan for Mr Gresham, if that might be possible. Dr Thorne therefore began about the loan, that being the easier subject, and found that Sir Roger was quite clear-headed as to his many money concerns, in spite of his illness. Sir Roger was willing enough to lend Mr Gresham more money — six, eight, ten, twenty thousand; but then, in doing so, he should insist on possession of the title-deeds.
‘What! the title-deeds of Greshamsbury for a few thousand pounds?’ said the doctor.
‘I don’t know whether you call ninety thousand pounds a few thousands; but the debt will about amount to that.’
‘Ah! that’s the old debt.’
‘Old and new together, of course; every shilling I lend more weakens my security for what I have lent before.’
‘But you have the first claim, Sir Roger.’
‘It ought to be first and last to cover such a debt as that. If he wants further accommodation, he must part with his deeds, doctor.’
The point was argued backwards and forwards for some time without avail, and the doctor then thought it well to introduce the other subject.
‘Sir Roger, you’re a hard man.’
‘No I ain’t,’ said Sir Roger; ‘not a bit hard; that is, not a bit too hard. Money is always hard. I know I found it hard to come by; and there is no reason why Squire Gresham should expect to find me so very soft.’
‘Very well; there is an end of that. I thought you would have done as much to oblige me, that is all.’
‘What! take bad security too oblige you?’
‘Well, there’s an end of that.’
‘I’ll tell you what; I’ll do as much to oblige a friend as any one. I’ll lend you five thousand pounds, you yourself, without security at all, if you want it.’
‘But you know I don’t want it; or, at any rate, shan’t take it.’
‘But to ask me to go on lending money to a third party, and he over head and ears in debt, by way of obliging you, why, it’s a little too much.’
‘Well, there’s and end of it. Now I’ve something to say to you about that will of yours.’
‘Oh! that’s settled.’
‘No, Scatcherd; it isn’t settled. It must be a great deal more settled before we have done with it, as you’ll find when you hear what I have to tell you.’
‘What you have to tell me!’ said Sir Roger, sitting up in bed; ‘and what have you to tell me?’
‘Your will says you sister’s eldest child.’
‘Yes; but that’s only in the event of Louis Philippe dying before he is twenty-five.’
‘Exactly; and now I know something about your sister’s eldest child, and, therefore, I have come to tell you.’
‘You know something about Mary’s eldest child?’
‘I do, Scatcherd; it is a strange story, and maybe it will make you angry. I cannot help it if it does so. I should not tell you this if I could avoid it; but as I do tell you, for your sake, as you will see, and not for my own, I must implore you not to tell my secret to others.’
Sir Roger now looked at him with an altered countenance. There was something in his voice of the authoritative tone of other days, something in the doctor’s look which had on the baronet the same effect which in former days it had sometimes had on the stone-mason.
‘Can you give me a promise, Scatcherd, that what I am about to tell you shall not be repeated?’
‘A promise! Well, I don’t know what it’s about, you know. I don’t like promises in the dark.’
‘Then I must leave it to your honour; for what I have to say must be said. You remember my brother, Scatcherd?’
Remember his brother! thought the rich man to himself. The name of the doctor’s brother had not been alluded to between them since the days of that trial; but still it was impossible but that Scatcherd should well remember him.
‘Yes, yes; certainly. I remember your brother,’ said he. ‘I remember him well; there’s no doubt about that.’
‘Well, Scatcherd,’ and, as he spoke, the doctor laid his hand with kindness on the other’s arm. ‘Mary’s eldest child was my brother’s child as well.
‘But there is no such child living,’ said Sir Roger; and, in his violence, as he spoke he threw from off him the bedclothes, and tried to stand up on the floor. He found, however, that he had no strength for such an effort, and was obliged to remain leaning on the bed and resting on the doctor’s arm.
‘There was no such child ever lived,’ said he. ‘What do you mean by this?’
Dr Thorne would say nothing further till he had got the man into bed again. This he at last affected, and then he went on with the story in his own way.
‘Yes, Scatcherd, that child is alive; and for fear that you should unintentionally make her your heir, I have thought it right to tell you this.’
‘A girl, is it?’
‘Yes, a girl.’
‘And why should you want to spite her? If she is Mary’s child, she is your brother’s child also. If she is my niece, she must be your niece also. Why should you want to spite her? Why should you try to do her such a terrible injury?’
‘I do not want to spite her.’
‘Where is she? Who is she? What is she called? Where does she live?’
The doctor did not at once answer all these questions. He had made up his mind that he would tell Sir Roger that this child was living, but he had not as yet resolved to make known all the circumstances of her history. He was not even yet quite aware whether it would be necessary to say that this foundling orphan was the cherished darling of his own house.
‘Such a child, is, at any rate, living,’ said he; ‘of that I give you my assurance; and under your will, as now worded, it might come to pass that that child should be your heir. I do not want to spite her, but I should be wrong to let you make your will without such knowledge, seeing that I am in possession of it myself.’
‘But where is the girl?’
‘I do not know that that signifies.’
‘Signifies! Yes; it does signify, a great deal. But, Thorne, Thorne, now that I remember it, now that I can think of things, it was — was it not you yourself who told me that the baby did not live?’
‘Very possibly.’
‘And was it a lie that you told me?’
‘If so, yes. But it is no lie that I tell you now.’
‘I believed you then, Thorne; then, when I was a poor, broken-down day-labourer, lying in jail, rotting there; but I tell you fairly, I do not believe you now. You have some scheme in this.’
‘Whatever scheme I may have, you can frustrate by making another will. What can I gain by telling you this? I only do so to induce you to be more explicit in naming your heir.’
They both remained silent for a while, during which the baronet poured out from his hidden resource a glass of brandy and swallowed it.
‘When a man is taken aback suddenly by such tidings as these, he must take a drop of something, eh, doctor?’
Dr Thorne did not see the necessity; but the present, he felt, was no time for arguing the point.
‘Come, Thorne, where is the girl? You must tell me that. She is my niece, and I have a right to know. She shall come here, and I will do something for her. By the Lord! I would as soon she had the money as anyone else, if she’s anything of a good ’un;— some of it, that is. Is she a good ’un?’
‘Good!’ said the doctor, turning away his face. ‘Yes; she is good enough.’
‘She must be grown up by now. None of your light skirts, eh?’
‘She is a good girl,’ said the doctor somewhat loudly and sternly. He could hardly trust himself to say much on this point.
‘Mary was a good girl, a very good girl, till’— and Sir Roger raised himself up in his bed with his fist clenched, as though he were again about to strike that fatal blow at the farm-yard gate. ‘But come, it’s no good thinking of that; you behaved well and manly, always. And so poor Mary’s child is alive; at least, you say so.’
‘I say so, and you may believe it. Why should I deceive you?’
‘No, no; I don’t see why. But then why did you deceive me before?’
To this the doctor chose to make no answer, and again there was silence for a while.
‘What do you call her, doctor?’
‘Her name is Mary.’
‘The prettiest women’s name going; there’s no name like it,’ said the contractor, with an unusual tenderness in his voice. ‘Mary — yes; but Mary what? What other name does she go by?’
Here the doctor hesitated.
‘Mary Scatcherd — eh?’
‘No. Not Mary Scatcherd.’
‘Not Mary Scatcherd! Mary what, then? you, with your d —— pride, wouldn’t let her be called Mary Thorne, I know.’
This was too much for the doctor. He felt that there were tears in his eyes, so he walked away to the window to dry them, unseen. He had fifty names, each more sacred than the other, the most sacred of them all would hardly have been good enough for her.
‘Mary what, doctor? Come, if the girl is to belong to me, if I am to provide for her, I must know what to call her, and where to look for her.’
‘Who talked of your providing for her?,’ said the doctor, turning round at the rival uncle. ‘Who said that she was to belong to you? She will be no burden to you; you are only told of this that you may not leave your money to her without knowing it. She is provided for — that is, she wants nothing; she will do well enough; you need not trouble yourself about her.’
‘But is she’s Mary’s child, Mary’s child in real truth, I will trouble myself about her. Who else should do so? For the matter of that, I’d soon say her as any of those others in America. What do I care about blood? I shan’t mind her being a bastard. That is to say, of course, if she’s decently good. Did she ever get any kind of teaching; book-learning, or anything of that sort?’
Dr Thorne at this moment hated his friend the baronet with almost a deadly hatred; that he, rough brute as he was — for he was a rough brute — that he should speak in such language of the angel who gave to that home in Greshamsbury so many of the joys of Paradise — that he should speak of her as in some degree his own, that he should inquire doubtingly as to her attributes and her virtues. And then the doctor thought of her Italian and French readings, of her music, of her nice books, and sweet lady ways, of her happy companionship with Patience Oriel, and her dear, bosom friendship with Beatrice Gresham. He thought of her grace, and winning manners, and soft, polished feminine beauty; and, as he did so, he hated Sir Roger Scatcherd, and regarded him with loathing, as he might have regarded a wallowing-hog.
At last a light seemed to break in upon Sir Roger’s mind. Dr Thorne, he perceived, did not answer his last question. He perceived, also, that the doctor was affected with some more than ordinary emotion. Why should it be that this subject of Mary Scatcherd’s child moved him so deeply? Sir Roger had never been at the doctor’s house at Greshamsbury, had never seen Mary Thorne, but he had heard that there lived with the doctor some young female relative; and thus a glimmering light seemed to come in upon Sir Roger’s bed.
He had twitted the doctor with his pride; had said that it was impossible that the girl should be called Mary Thorne. What if she were so called? What if she were now warming herself at the doctor’s hearth?
‘Well, come, Thorne, what is it you call her? Tell it out, man. And, look you, if it’s your name she bears, I shall think more of you, a deal more than ever I did yet. Come, Thorne, I’m her uncle too. I have a right to know. She is Mary Thorne, isn’t she?’
The doctor had not the hardihood nor the resolution to deny it. ‘Yes,’ said he, ‘that is her name; she lives with me.’
‘Yes, and lives with all those grand folks at Greshamsbury too. I have heard of that.’
‘She lives with me, and belongs to me, and is as my daughter.’
‘She shall come over here. Lady Scatcherd shall have her to stay with her. She shall come to us. And as for my will, I’ll make another. I’ll —’
‘Yes, make another will — or else alter that one. But as to Miss Thorne coming here —’
‘What! Mary —’
‘Well, Mary. As to Mary Thorne coming here, that I fear will not be possible. She cannot have two homes. She has cast her lot with one of her uncles, and she must remain with him now.’
‘Do you mean to say that she must have any relation but one?’
‘But one such as I am. She would not be happy over here. She does not like new faces. You have enough depending on you; I have but her.’
‘Enough! why, I have only Louis Philippe. I could provide for a dozen girls.’
‘Well, well, well, we will not talk about that.’
‘Ah! but, Thorne, you have told me of this girl now, and I cannot but talk of her. If you wished to keep the matter dark, you should have said nothing about it. She is my niece as much as yours. And, Thorne, I loved my sister Mary quite as well as you loved your brother; quite as well.’
Any one who might have heard and seen the contractor would have hardly thought him to be the same man who, a few hours before, was urging that the Barchester physician should be put under the pump.
‘You have your son, Scatcherd. I have no one but that girl.’
‘I don’t want to take her from you. I don’t want to take her; but surely there can be no harm in her coming here to see us? I can provide for her, Thorne, remember that. I can provide for her without reference to Louis Philippe. What are ten or fifteen thousand pounds to me? Remember that, Thorne.’
Dr Thorne did remember it. In that interview he remembered many things, and much passed through his mind on which he felt himself compelled to resolve somewhat too suddenly. Would he be justified in rejecting, on behalf of Mary, the offer of pecuniary provision which this rich relative would be so well inclined to make? Or, if he accepted ti, would be in truth be studying her interests? Scatcherd was a self-willed, obstinate man — now indeed touched by unwonted tenderness; but he was one of those whose lasting tenderness Dr Thorne would be very unwilling to trust his darling. He did resolve, that on the whole he should best discharge his duty, even to her, by keeping her to himself, and rejecting, on her behalf, any participation in the baronet’s wealth. As Mary herself had said, ‘some people must be bound together;’ and their destiny, that of himself and his niece, seemed to have so bound them. She had found her place at Greshamsbury, her place in the world; and it would be better for her now to keep it, than to go forth and seek another that would be richer, but at the same time less suited to her.
‘No, Scatcherd,’ he said at last, ‘she cannot come here; she would not be happy here, and, to tell the truth I do not wish her to know that she has other relatives.’
‘Ah! she would be ashamed of her mother, you mean, and of her mother’s brother too, eh? She’s too fine a lady, I suppose, to take me by the hand and give me a kiss, and call me her uncle? I and Lady Scatcherd would not be grand enough for her, eh?’
‘You may say what you please, Scatcherd: I of course cannot stop you.’
‘But I don’t know how you’ll reconcile what you are doing with your conscience. What right can you have to throw away the girl’s chance, now that she has a chance? What fortune can you give her?’
‘I have done what little I could,’ said Thorne, proudly.
‘Well, well, well, well, I never heard such a thing in my life; never. Mary’s child, my own Mary’s child, and I’m not to see her! But, Thorne, I tell you what; I will see her. I’ll go over to her, I’ll go to Greshamsbury, and tell her who I am, and what I can do for her. I tell you fairly I will. You shall not keep her away from those who belong to her, and can do her a good turn. Mary’s daughter; another Mary Scatcherd! I almost wish she were called Mary Scatcherd. Is she like her, Thorne? Come tell me that; is she like her mother.’
‘I do not remember her mother; at least not in health.’
‘Not remember her! ah, well. She was the handsomest girl in Barchester, anyhow. That was given up to her. Well, I didn’t think to be talking of her again. Thorne, you cannot but expect that I shall go over and see Mary’s child?’
‘Now, Scatcherd, look here,’ and the doctor, coming away from the window, where he had been standing, sat himself down by the bedside, ‘you must not come over to Greshamsbury.’
‘Oh! but I shall.’
‘Listen to me, Scatcherd. I do not want to praise myself in any way; but when that girl was an infant, six months old, she was like to be a thorough obstacle to her mother’s fortune in life. Tomlinson was willing to marry your sister, but he would not marry the child too. Then I took the baby, and I promised her mother that I would be to her as a father. I have kept my word as fairly as I have been able. She has sat at my hearth, and drunk of my cup, and been to me as my own child. After that, I have the right to judge what is best for her. Her life is not like your life, and her ways are not as your ways —’
‘Ah, that is just it; we are too vulgar for her.’
‘You may take it as you will,’ said the doctor, who was too much in earnest to be in the least afraid of offending his companion. ‘I have not said so; but I do say that you and she are unlike in the way of living.’
‘She wouldn’t like an uncle with a brandy bottle under his head, eh?’

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