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

CHAPTER XIV

Sentence of Exile

 

Dr Thorne did not at once go home to his own house. When he reached

the Greshamsbury gates, he sent his horse to its own stable by one of

the people at the lodge, and then walked on to the mansion. He had

to see the squire on the subject of the forthcoming loan, and he had

also to see Lady Arabella.

 

The Lady Arabella, though she was not personally attached to the

doctor with quite so much warmth as some others of her family, still

had reasons of her own for not dispensing with his visits to the

house. She was one of his patients, and a patient fearful of the

disease with which she was threatened. Though she thought the doctor

to be arrogant, deficient as to properly submissive demeanour

towards herself, an instigator to marital parsimony in her lord,

one altogether opposed to herself and her interest in Greshamsbury

politics, nevertheless, she did feel trust in him as a medical man.

She had no wish to be rescued out of his hands by any Dr Fillgrave,

as regarded that complaint of hers, much as she may have desired,

and did desire, to sever him from all Greshamsbury councils in all

matters not touching the healing art.

 

Now the complaint of which the Lady Arabella was afraid, was cancer:

and her only present confidant in this matter was Dr Thorne.

 

The first of the Greshamsbury circle whom he saw was Beatrice, and he

met her in the garden.

 

“Oh, doctor,” said she, “where has Mary been this age? She has not

been up here since Frank’s birthday.”

 

“Well, that was only three days ago. Why don’t you go down and ferret

her out in the village?”

 

“So I have done. I was there just now, and found her out. She was out

with Patience Oriel. Patience is all and all with her now. Patience

is all very well, but if they throw me over—”

 

“My dear Miss Gresham, Patience is and always was a virtue.”

 

“A poor, beggarly, sneaking virtue after all, doctor. They should

have come up, seeing how deserted I am here. There’s absolutely

nobody left.”

 

“Has Lady de Courcy gone?”

 

“Oh, yes! All the de Courcys have gone. I think, between ourselves,

Mary stays away because she does not love them too well. They have

all gone, and taken Augusta and Frank with them.”

 

“Has Frank gone to Courcy Castle?”

 

“Oh, yes; did you not hear? There was rather a fight about it. Master

Frank wanted to get off, and was as hard to catch as an eel, and then

the countess was offended; and papa said he didn’t see why Frank was

to go if he didn’t like it. Papa is very anxious about his degree,

you know.”

 

The doctor understood it all as well as though it had been described

to him at full length. The countess had claimed her prey, in order

that she might carry him off to Miss Dunstable’s golden embrace. The

prey, not yet old enough and wise enough to connect the worship of

Plutus with that of Venus, had made sundry futile feints and dodges

in the vain hope of escape. Then the anxious mother had enforced the

de Courcy behests with all a mother’s authority. But the father,

whose ideas on the subject of Miss Dunstable’s wealth had probably

not been consulted, had, as a matter of course, taken exactly the

other side of the question. The doctor did not require to be told all

this in order to know how the battle had raged. He had not yet heard

of the great Dunstable scheme; but he was sufficiently acquainted

with Greshamsbury tactics to understand that the war had been carried

on somewhat after this fashion.

 

As a rule, when the squire took a point warmly to heart, he was

wont to carry his way against the de Courcy interest. He could be

obstinate enough when it so pleased him, and had before now gone so

far as to tell his wife, that her thrice-noble sister-in-law might

remain at home at Courcy Castle—or, at any rate, not come to

Greshamsbury—if she could not do so without striving to rule him and

every one else when she got here. This had of course been repeated to

the countess, who had merely replied to it by a sisterly whisper, in

which she sorrowfully intimated that some men were born brutes, and

always would remain so.

 

“I think they all are,” the Lady Arabella had replied; wishing,

perhaps, to remind her sister-in-law that the breed of brutes was as

rampant in West Barsetshire as in the eastern division of the county.

 

The squire, however, had not fought on this occasion with all his

vigour. There had, of course, been some passages between him and his

son, and it had been agreed that Frank should go for a fortnight to

Courcy Castle.

 

“We mustn’t quarrel with them, you know, if we can help it,” said the

father; “and, therefore, you must go sooner or later.”

 

“Well, I suppose so; but you don’t know how dull it is, governor.”

 

“Don’t I!” said Gresham.

 

“There’s a Miss Dunstable to be there; did you ever hear of her,

sir?”

 

“No, never.”

 

“She’s a girl whose father used to make ointment, or something of

that sort.”

 

“Oh, yes, to be sure; the ointment of Lebanon. He used to cover all

the walls in London. I haven’t heard of him this year past.”

 

“No; that’s because he’s dead. Well, she carries on the ointment now,

I believe; at any rate, she has got all the money. I wonder what

she’s like.”

 

“You’d better go and see,” said the father, who now began to have

some inkling of an idea why the two ladies were so anxious to carry

his son off to Courcy Castle at this exact time. And so Frank had

packed up his best clothes, given a last fond look at the new black

horse, repeated his last special injunctions to Peter, and had then

made one of the stately cortège which proceeded through the county

from Greshamsbury to Courcy Castle.

 

“I am very glad of that, very,” said the squire, when he heard that

the money was to be forthcoming. “I shall get it on easier terms from

him than elsewhere; and it kills me to have continual bother about

such things.” And Mr Gresham, feeling that that difficulty was tided

over for a time, and that the immediate pressure of little debts

would be abated, stretched himself on his easy chair as though he

were quite comfortable;—one may say almost elated.

 

How frequent it is that men on their road to ruin feel elation such

as this! A man signs away a moiety of his substance; nay, that were

nothing; but a moiety of the substance of his children; he puts

his pen to the paper that ruins him and them; but in doing so he

frees himself from a score of immediate little pestering, stinging

troubles: and, therefore, feels as though fortune has been almost

kind to him.

 

The doctor felt angry with himself for what he had done when he saw

how easily the squire adapted himself to this new loan. “It will make

Scatcherd’s claim upon you very heavy,” said he.

 

Mr Gresham at once read all that was passing through the doctor’s

mind. “Well, what else can I do?” said he. “You wouldn’t have me

allow my daughter to lose this match for the sake of a few thousand

pounds? It will be well at any rate to have one of them settled. Look

at that letter from Moffat.”

 

The doctor took the letter and read it. It was a long, wordy,

ill-written rigmarole, in which that amorous gentleman spoke with

much rapture of his love and devotion for Miss Gresham; but at the

same time declared, and most positively swore, that the adverse

cruelty of his circumstances was such, that it would not allow him to

stand up like a man at the hymeneal altar until six thousand pounds

hard cash had been paid down at his banker’s.

 

“It may be all right,” said the squire; “but in my time gentlemen

were not used to write such letters as that to each other.”

 

The doctor shrugged his shoulders. He did not know how far he would

be justified in saying much, even to his friend the squire, in

dispraise of his future son-in-law.

 

“I told him that he should have the money; and one would have thought

that that would have been enough for him. Well: I suppose Augusta

likes him. I suppose she wishes the match; otherwise, I would give

him such an answer to that letter as would startle him a little.”

 

“What settlement is he to make?” said Thorne.

 

“Oh, that’s satisfactory enough; couldn’t be more so; a thousand a

year and the house at Wimbledon for her; that’s all very well. But

such a lie, you know, Thorne. He’s rolling in money, and yet he talks

of this beggarly sum as though he couldn’t possibly stir without it.”

 

“If I might venture to speak my mind,” said Thorne.

 

“Well?” said the squire, looking at him earnestly.

 

“I should be inclined to say that Mr Moffat wants to cry off,

himself.”

 

“Oh, impossible; quite impossible. In the first place, he was so very

anxious for the match. In the next place, it is such a great thing

for him. And then, he would never dare; you see, he is dependent on

the de Courcys for his seat.”

 

“But suppose he loses his seat?”

 

“But there is not much fear of that, I think. Scatcherd may be a very

fine fellow, but I think they’ll hardly return him at Barchester.”

 

“I don’t understand much about it,” said Thorne; “but such things do

happen.”

 

“And you believe that this man absolutely wants to get off the match;

absolutely thinks of playing such a trick as that on my daughter;—on

me?”