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

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 a will made 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 the first.”

 

“Now, doctor, 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 no 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 left

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 had 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 to Cambridge. But

even this receipt, generally as it is recognised, 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 there.”

 

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 left 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 certainly is 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, doctor; 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

to-morrow, 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