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

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 postboy 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 off

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.

 

The door opened and Lady Scatcherd entered; but she did so very

slowly, as though she were afraid to come into her own dining-room.

We must go back a little and see how she had been employed during

those twenty minutes.

 

“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 sure-ly 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 you 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 her 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 all 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 no coaxing Roger over now, or 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

humble 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 the man 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 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 to-day 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 her 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