Doctor Thorne by Anthony Trollope (interesting books to read TXT) 📖

of his counting and his

writing never stayed with him from one hour to another; nay, not from

one folio to another. Let him, however, be adequately screwed up with

gin, and adequately screwed down by the presence of his master, and

then no amount of counting and writing would be too much for him.

This was Mr Winterbones, confidential clerk to the great Sir Roger

Scatcherd.

 

“We must send Winterbones away, I take it,” said the doctor.

 

“Indeed, doctor, I wish you would. I wish you’d send him to Bath, or

anywhere else out of the way. There is Scatcherd, he takes brandy;

and there is Winterbones, he takes gin; and it’d puzzle a woman to

say which is worst, master or man.”

 

It will seem from this, that Lady Scatcherd and the doctor were on

very familiar terms as regarded her little domestic inconveniences.

 

“Tell Sir Roger I am here, will you?” said the doctor.

 

“You’ll take a drop of sherry before you go up?” said the lady.

 

“Not a drop, thank you,” said the doctor.

 

“Or, perhaps, a little cordial?”

 

“Not of drop of anything, thank you; I never do, you know.”

 

“Just a thimbleful of this?” said the lady, producing from some

recess under a sideboard a bottle of brandy; “just a thimbleful? It’s

what he takes himself.”

 

When Lady Scatcherd found that even this argument failed, she led the

way to the great man’s bedroom.

 

“Well, doctor! well, doctor! well, doctor!” was the greeting with

which our son of Galen was saluted some time before he entered the

sick-room. His approaching step was heard, and thus the ci-devant

Barchester stone-mason saluted his coming friend. The voice was loud

and powerful, but not clear and sonorous. What voice that is nurtured

on brandy can ever be clear? It had about it a peculiar huskiness, a

dissipated guttural tone, which Thorne immediately recognised, and

recognised as being more marked, more guttural, and more husky than

heretofore.

 

“So you’ve smelt me out, have you, and come for your fee? Ha! ha!

ha! Well, I have had a sharpish bout of it, as her ladyship there

no doubt has told you. Let her alone to make the worst of it. But,

you see, you’re too late, man. I’ve bilked the old gentleman again

without troubling you.”

 

“Anyway, I’m glad you’re something better, Scatcherd.”

 

“Something! I don’t know what you call something. I never was better

in my life. Ask Winterbones there.”

 

“Indeed, now, Scatcherd, you ain’t; you’re bad enough if you only

knew it. And as for Winterbones, he has no business here up in your

bedroom, which stinks of gin so, it does. Don’t you believe him,

doctor; he ain’t well, nor yet nigh well.”

 

Winterbones, when the above ill-natured allusion was made to

the aroma coming from his libations, might be seen to deposit

surreptitiously beneath the little table at which he sat, the cup

with which he had performed them.

 

The doctor, in the meantime, had taken Sir Roger’s hand on the

pretext of feeling his pulse, but was drawing quite as much

information from the touch of the sick man’s skin, and the look of

the sick man’s eye.

 

“I think Mr Winterbones had better go back to the London office,”

said he. “Lady Scatcherd will be your best clerk for some time, Sir

Roger.”

 

“Then I’ll be d–- if Mr Winterbones does anything of the kind,”

said he; “so there’s an end of that.”

 

“Very well,” said the doctor. “A man can die but once. It is my duty

to suggest measures for putting off the ceremony as long as possible.

Perhaps, however, you may wish to hasten it.”

 

“Well, I am not very anxious about it, one way or the other,” said

Scatcherd. And as he spoke there came a fierce gleam from his eye,

which seemed to say—“If that’s the bugbear with which you wish to

frighten me, you will find that you are mistaken.”

 

“Now, doctor, don’t let him talk that way, don’t,” said Lady

Scatcherd, with her handkerchief to her eyes.

 

“Now, my lady, do you cut it; cut at once,” said Sir Roger, turning

hastily round to his better-half; and his better-half, knowing that

the province of a woman is to obey, did cut it. But as she went she

gave the doctor a pull by the coat’s sleeve, so that thereby his

healing faculties might be sharpened to the very utmost.

 

“The best woman in the world, doctor; the very best,” said he, as the

door closed behind the wife of his bosom.

 

“I’m sure of it,” said the doctor.

 

“Yes, till you find a better one,” said Scatcherd. “Ha! ha! ha! but

good or bad, there are some things which a woman can’t understand,

and some things which she ought not to be let to understand.”

 

“It’s natural she should be anxious about your health, you know.”

 

“I don’t know that,” said the contractor. “She’ll be very well off.

All that whining won’t keep a man alive, at any rate.”

 

There was a pause, during which the doctor continued his medical

examination. To this the patient submitted with a bad grace; but

still he did submit.

 

“We must turn over a new leaf, Sir Roger; indeed we must.”

 

“Bother,” said Sir Roger.

 

“Well, Scatcherd; I must do my duty to you, whether you like it or

not.”

 

“That is to say, I am to pay you for trying to frighten me.”

 

“No human nature can stand such shocks as these much longer.”

 

“Winterbones,” said the contractor, turning to his clerk, “go down,

go down, I say; but don’t be out of the way. If you go to the

public-house, by G–-, you may stay there for me. When I take a

drop,—that is if I ever do, it does not stand in the way of work.”

So Mr Winterbones, picking up his cup again, and concealing it in

some way beneath his coat flap, retreated out of the room, and the

two friends were alone.

 

“Scatcherd,” said the doctor, “you have been as near your God, as any

man ever was who afterwards ate and drank in this world.”

 

“Have I, now?” said the railway hero, apparently somewhat startled.

 

“Indeed you have; indeed you have.”

 

“And now I’m all right again?”

 

“All right! How can you be all right, when you know that your limbs

refuse to carry you? All right! why the blood is still beating round

your brain with a violence that would destroy any other brain but

yours.”

 

“Ha! ha! ha!” laughed Scatcherd. He was very proud of thinking

himself to be differently organised from other men. “Ha! ha! ha!

Well, and what am I to do now?”

 

The whole of the doctor’s prescription we will not give at length.

To some of his ordinances Sir Roger promised obedience; to others he

objected violently, and to one or two he flatly refused to listen.

The great stumbling-block was this, that total abstinence from

business for two weeks was enjoined; and that it was impossible, so

Sir Roger said, that he should abstain for two days.

 

“If you work,” said the doctor, “in your present state, you will

certainly have recourse to the stimulus of drink; and if you drink,

most assuredly you will die.”

 

“Stimulus! Why do you think I can’t work without Dutch courage?”

 

“Scatcherd, I know that there is brandy in the room at this moment,

and that you have been taking it within these two hours.”

 

“You smell that fellow’s gin,” said Scatcherd.

 

“I feel the alcohol working within your veins,” said the doctor, who

still had his hand on his patient’s arm.

 

Sir Roger turned himself roughly in the bed so as to get away from

his Mentor, and then he began to threaten in his turn.

 

“I’ll tell you what it is, doctor; I’ve made up my mind, and I’ll do

it. I’ll send for Fillgrave.”

 

“Very well,” said he of Greshamsbury, “send for Fillgrave. Your case

is one in which even he can hardly go wrong.”

 

“You think you can hector me, and do as you like because you had me

under your thumb in other days. You’re a very good fellow, Thorne,

but I ain’t sure that you are the best doctor in all England.”

 

“You may be sure I am not; you may take me for the worst if you will.

But while I am here as your medical adviser, I can only tell you the

truth to the best of my thinking. Now the truth is this, that another

bout of drinking will in all probability kill you; and any recourse

to stimulus in your present condition may do so.”

 

“I’ll send for Fillgrave—”

 

“Well, send for Fillgrave, only do it at once. Believe me at any

rate in this, that whatever you do, you should do at once. Oblige

me in this; let Lady Scatcherd take away that brandy bottle till Dr

Fillgrave comes.”

 

“I’m d–- if I do. Do you think I can’t have a bottle of brandy in

my room without swigging?”

 

“I think you’ll be less likely to swig it if you can’t get at it.”

 

Sir Roger made another angry turn in his bed as well as his

half-paralysed limbs would let him; and then, after a few moments’

peace, renewed his threats with increased violence.

 

“Yes; I’ll have Fillgrave over here. If a man be ill, really ill,

he should have the best advice he can get. I’ll have Fillgrave, and

I’ll have that other fellow from Silverbridge to meet him. What’s his

name?—Century.”

 

The doctor turned his head away; for though the occasion was serious,

he could not help smiling at the malicious vengeance with which his

friend proposed to gratify himself.

 

“I will; and Rerechild too. What’s the expense? I suppose five or six

pound apiece will do it; eh, Thorne?”

 

“Oh, yes; that will be liberal I should say. But, Sir Roger, will you

allow me to suggest what you ought to do? I don’t know how far you

may be joking—”

 

“Joking!” shouted the baronet; “you tell a man he’s dying and joking

in the same breath. You’ll find I’m not joking.”

 

“Well I dare say not. But if you have not full confidence in me—”

 

“I have no confidence in you at all.”

 

“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, you know.”