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Read books online » Fiction » Doctor Thorne by Anthony Trollope (interesting books to read TXT) 📖

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had been wont to wag

in former years. Beards won’t wag for the telling. The squire was at

his wits’ end for money, and the tenants one and all had so heard.

Rents had been raised on them; timber had fallen fast; the lawyer

on the estate was growing rich; tradesmen in Barchester, nay, in

Greshamsbury itself, were beginning to mutter; and the squire himself

would not be merry. Under such circumstances the throats of a

tenantry will still swallow, but their beards will not wag.

 

“I minds well,” said Farmer Oaklerath to his neighbour, “when the

squoire hisself comed of age. Lord love ‘ee! There was fun going that

day. There was more yale drank then than’s been brewed at the big

house these two years. T’old squoire was a one’er.”

 

“And I minds when squoire was borned; minds it well,” said an old

farmer sitting opposite. “Them was the days! It an’t that long ago

neither. Squoire a’nt come o’ fifty yet; no, nor an’t nigh it, though

he looks it. Things be altered at Greemsbury”—such was the rural

pronunciation—“altered sadly, neebor Oaklerath. Well, well; I’ll

soon be gone, I will, and so it an’t no use talking; but arter paying

one pound fifteen for them acres for more nor fifty year, I didn’t

think I’d ever be axed for forty shilling.”

 

Such was the style of conversation which went on at the various

tables. It had certainly been of a very different tone when the

squire was born, when he came of age, and when, just two years

subsequently, his son had been born. On each of these events similar

rural fĂȘtes had been given, and the squire himself had on these

occasions been frequent among his guests. On the first, he had been

carried round by his father, a whole train of ladies and nurses

following. On the second, he had himself mixed in all the sports, the

gayest of the gay, and each tenant had squeezed his way up to the

lawn to get a sight of the Lady Arabella, who, as was already known,

was to come from Courcy Castle to Greshamsbury to be their mistress.

It was little they any of them cared now for the Lady Arabella. On

the third, he himself had borne his child in his arms as his father

had before borne him; he was then in the zenith of his pride, and

though the tenantry whispered that he was somewhat less familiar with

them than of yore, that he had put on somewhat too much of the de

Courcy airs, still he was their squire, their master, the rich man

in whose hand they lay. The old squire was then gone, and they were

proud of the young member and his lady bride in spite of a little

hauteur. None of them were proud of him now.

 

He walked once round among the guests, and spoke a few words of

welcome at each table; and as he did so the tenants got up and bowed

and wished health to the old squire, happiness to the young one, and

prosperity to Greshamsbury; but, nevertheless, it was but a tame

affair.

 

There were also other visitors, of the gentle sort, to do honour to

the occasion; but not such swarms, not such a crowd at the mansion

itself and at the houses of the neighbouring gentry as had always

been collected on these former gala doings. Indeed, the party at

Greshamsbury was not a large one, and consisted chiefly of Lady de

Courcy and her suite. Lady Arabella still kept up, as far as she was

able, her close connexion with Courcy Castle. She was there as much

as possible, to which Mr Gresham never objected; and she took her

daughters there whenever she could, though, as regarded the two elder

girls, she was interfered with by Mr Gresham, and not unfrequently by

the girls themselves. Lady Arabella had a pride in her son, though

he was by no means her favourite child. He was, however, the heir of

Greshamsbury, of which fact she was disposed to make the most, and

he was also a fine gainly open-hearted young man, who could not but

be dear to any mother. Lady Arabella did love him dearly, though she

felt a sort of disappointment in regard to him, seeing that he was

not so much like a de Courcy as he should have been. She did love him

dearly; and, therefore, when he came of age she got her sister-in-law

and all the Ladies Amelia, Rosina etc., to come to Greshamsbury; and

she also, with some difficulty, persuaded the Honourable Georges and

the Honourable Johns to be equally condescending. Lord de Courcy

himself was in attendance at the Court—or said that he was—and Lord

Porlock, the eldest son, simply told his aunt when he was invited

that he never bored himself with those sort of things.

 

Then there were the Bakers, and the Batesons, and the Jacksons, who

all lived near and returned home at night; there was the Reverend

Caleb Oriel, the High-Church rector, with his beautiful sister,

Patience Oriel; there was Mr Yates Umbleby, the attorney and agent;

and there was Dr Thorne, and the doctor’s modest, quiet-looking

little niece, Miss Mary.

CHAPTER II

Long, Long Ago

 

As Dr Thorne is our hero—or I should rather say my hero, a privilege

of selecting for themselves in this respect being left to all my

readers—and as Miss Mary Thorne is to be our heroine, a point on

which no choice whatsoever is left to any one, it is necessary that

they shall be introduced and explained and described in a proper,

formal manner. I quite feel that an apology is due for beginning a

novel with two long dull chapters full of description. I am perfectly

aware of the danger of such a course. In so doing I sin against the

golden rule which requires us all to put our best foot foremost, the

wisdom of which is fully recognised by novelists, myself among the

number. It can hardly be expected that any one will consent to go

through with a fiction that offers so little of allurement in its

first pages; but twist it as I will I cannot do otherwise. I find

that I cannot make poor Mr Gresham hem and haw and turn himself

uneasily in his arm-chair in a natural manner till I have said why

he is uneasy. I cannot bring in my doctor speaking his mind freely

among the bigwigs till I have explained that it is in accordance

with his usual character to do so. This is unartistic on my part,

and shows want of imagination as well as want of skill. Whether or

not I can atone for these faults by straightforward, simple, plain

story-telling—that, indeed, is very doubtful.

 

Dr Thorne belonged to a family in one sense as good, and at any rate

as old, as that of Mr Gresham; and much older, he was apt to boast,

than that of the de Courcys. This trait in his character is mentioned

first, as it was the weakness for which he was most conspicuous. He

was second cousin to Mr Thorne of Ullathorne, a Barsetshire squire

living in the neighbourhood of Barchester, and who boasted that his

estate had remained in his family, descending from Thorne to Thorne,

longer than had been the case with any other estate or any other

family in the county.

 

But Dr Thorne was only a second cousin; and, therefore, though he was

entitled to talk of the blood as belonging to some extent to himself,

he had no right to lay claim to any position in the county other than

such as he might win for himself if he chose to locate himself in it.

This was a fact of which no one was more fully aware than our doctor

himself. His father, who had been first cousin of a former Squire

Thorne, had been a clerical dignitary in Barchester, but had been

dead now many years. He had had two sons; one he had educated as a

medical man, but the other, and the younger, whom he had intended

for the Bar, had not betaken himself in any satisfactory way to any

calling. This son had been first rusticated from Oxford, and then

expelled; and thence returning to Barchester, had been the cause to

his father and brother of much suffering.

 

Old Dr Thorne, the clergyman, died when the two brothers were yet

young men, and left behind him nothing but some household and

other property of the value of about two thousand pounds, which he

bequeathed to Thomas, the elder son, much more than that having been

spent in liquidating debts contracted by the younger. Up to that time

there had been close harmony between the Ullathorne family and that

of the clergyman; but a month or two before the doctor’s death—the

period of which we are speaking was about two-and-twenty years before

the commencement of our story—the then Mr Thorne of Ullathorne had

made it understood that he would no longer receive at his house his

cousin Henry, whom he regarded as a disgrace to the family.

 

Fathers are apt to be more lenient to their sons than uncles to their

nephews, or cousins to each other. Dr Thorne still hoped to reclaim

his black sheep, and thought that the head of his family showed an

unnecessary harshness in putting an obstacle in his way of doing so.

And if the father was warm in support of his profligate son, the

young medical aspirant was warmer in support of his profligate

brother. Dr Thorne, junior, was no roué himself, but perhaps, as a

young man, he had not sufficient abhorrence of his brother’s vices.

At any rate, he stuck to him manfully; and when it was signified

in the Close that Henry’s company was not considered desirable at

Ullathorne, Dr Thomas Thorne sent word to the squire that under such

circumstances his visits there would also cease.

 

This was not very prudent, as the young Galen had elected to

establish himself in Barchester, very mainly in expectation of the

help which his Ullathorne connexion would give him. This, however, in

his anger he failed to consider; he was never known, either in early

or in middle life, to consider in his anger those points which were

probably best worth his consideration. This, perhaps, was of the less

moment as his anger was of an unenduring kind, evaporating frequently

with more celerity than he could get the angry words out of his

mouth. With the Ullathorne people, however, he did establish a

quarrel sufficiently permanent to be of vital injury to his medical

prospects.

 

And then the father died, and the two brothers were left living

together with very little means between them. At this time there

were living, in Barchester, people of the name of Scatcherd. Of that

family, as then existing, we have only to do with two, a brother and

a sister. They were in a low rank of life, the one being a journeyman

stone-mason, and the other an apprentice to a straw-bonnet maker; but

they were, nevertheless, in some sort remarkable people. The sister

was reputed in Barchester to be a model of female beauty of the

strong and robuster cast, and had also a better reputation as being

a girl of good character and honest, womanly conduct. Both of her

beauty and of her reputation her brother was exceedingly proud, and

he was the more so when he learnt that she had been asked in marriage

by a decent master-tradesman in the city.

 

Roger Scatcherd had also a reputation, but not for beauty or

propriety of conduct. He was known for the best stone-mason in the

four counties, and as the man

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