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

who could, on occasion, drink the most

alcohol in a given time in the same localities. As a workman, indeed,

he had higher reputate even than this: he was not only a good and

very quick stone-mason, but he had also a capacity for turning other

men into good stone-masons: he had a gift of knowing what a man could

and should do; and, by degrees, he taught himself what five, and ten,

and twenty—latterly, what a thousand and two thousand men might

accomplish among them: this, also, he did with very little aid

from pen and paper, with which he was not, and never became, very

conversant. He had also other gifts and other propensities. He could

talk in a manner dangerous to himself and others; he could persuade

without knowing that he did so; and being himself an extreme

demagogue, in those noisy times just prior to the Reform Bill,

he created a hubbub in Barchester of which he himself had had no

previous conception.

 

Henry Thorne among his other bad qualities had one which his friends

regarded as worse than all the others, and which perhaps justified

the Ullathorne people in their severity. He loved to consort with

low people. He not only drank—that might have been forgiven—but he

drank in tap-rooms with vulgar drinkers; so said his friends, and so

said his enemies. He denied the charge as being made in the plural

number, and declared that his only low co-reveller was Roger

Scatcherd. With Roger Scatcherd, at any rate, he associated, and

became as democratic as Roger was himself. Now the Thornes of

Ullathorne were of the very highest order of Tory excellence.

 

Whether or not Mary Scatcherd at once accepted the offer of the

respectable tradesman, I cannot say. After the occurrence of certain

events which must here shortly be told, she declared that she never

had done so. Her brother averred that she most positively had. The

respectable tradesman himself refused to speak on the subject.

 

It is certain, however, that Scatcherd, who had hitherto been silent

enough about his sister in those social hours which he passed with

his gentleman friend, boasted of the engagement when it was, as he

said, made; and then boasted also of the girl’s beauty. Scatcherd, in

spite of his occasional intemperance, looked up in the world, and the

coming marriage of his sister was, he thought, suitable to his own

ambition for his family.

 

Henry Thorne had already heard of, and already seen, Mary Scatcherd;

but hitherto she had not fallen in the way of his wickedness. Now,

however, when he heard that she was to be decently married, the devil

tempted him to tempt her. It boots not to tell all the tale. It came

out clearly enough when all was told, that he made her most distinct

promises of marriage; he even gave her such in writing; and having

in this way obtained from her her company during some of her little

holidays—her Sundays or summer evenings—he seduced her. Scatcherd

accused him openly of having intoxicated her with drugs; and Thomas

Thorne, who took up the case, ultimately believed the charge. It

became known in Barchester that she was with child, and that the

seducer was Henry Thorne.

 

Roger Scatcherd, when the news first reached him, filled himself with

drink, and then swore that he would kill them both. With manly wrath,

however, he set forth, first against the man, and that with manly

weapons. He took nothing with him but his fists and a big stick as he

went in search of Henry Thorne.

 

The two brothers were then lodging together at a farm-house close

abutting on the town. This was not an eligible abode for a medical

practitioner; but the young doctor had not been able to settle

himself eligibly since his father’s death; and wishing to put what

constraint he could upon his brother, had so located himself. To this

farm-house came Roger Scatcherd one sultry summer evening, his anger

gleaming from his bloodshot eyes, and his rage heightened to madness

by the rapid pace at which he had run from the city, and by the

ardent spirits which were fermenting within him.

 

At the very gate of the farmyard, standing placidly with his

cigar in his mouth, he encountered Henry Thorne. He had thought

of searching for him through the whole premises, of demanding his

victim with loud exclamations, and making his way to him through

all obstacles. In lieu of that, there stood the man before him.

 

“Well, Roger, what’s in the wind?” said Henry Thorne.

 

They were the last words he ever spoke. He was answered by a blow

from the blackthorn. A contest ensued, which ended in Scatcherd

keeping his word—at any rate, as regarded the worst offender. How

the fatal blow on the temple was struck was never exactly determined:

one medical man said it might have been done in a fight with a

heavy-headed stick; another thought that a stone had been used; a

third suggested a stone-mason’s hammer. It seemed, however, to be

proved subsequently that no hammer was taken out, and Scatcherd

himself persisted in declaring that he had taken in his hand no

weapon but the stick. Scatcherd, however, was drunk; and even though

he intended to tell the truth, may have been mistaken. There were,

however, the facts that Thorne was dead; that Scatcherd had sworn

to kill him about an hour previously; and that he had without delay

accomplished his threat. He was arrested and tried for murder; all

the distressing circumstances of the case came out on the trial: he

was found guilty of manslaughter, and sentenced to be imprisoned for

six months. Our readers will probably think that the punishment was

too severe.

 

Thomas Thorne and the farmer were on the spot soon after Henry Thorne

had fallen. The brother was at first furious for vengeance against

his brother’s murderer; but, as the facts came out, as he learnt

what had been the provocation given, what had been the feelings of

Scatcherd when he left the city, determined to punish him who had

ruined his sister, his heart was changed. Those were trying days for

him. It behoved him to do what in him lay to cover his brother’s

memory from the obloquy which it deserved; it behoved him also to

save, or to assist to save, from undue punishment the unfortunate man

who had shed his brother’s blood; and it behoved him also, at least

so he thought, to look after that poor fallen one whose misfortunes

were less merited than those either of his brother or of hers.

 

And he was not the man to get through these things lightly, or with

as much ease as he perhaps might conscientiously have done. He would

pay for the defence of the prisoner; he would pay for the defence of

his brother’s memory; and he would pay for the poor girl’s comforts.

He would do this, and he would allow no one to help him. He stood

alone in the world, and insisted on so standing. Old Mr Thorne

of Ullathorne offered again to open his arms to him; but he had

conceived a foolish idea that his cousin’s severity had driven his

brother on to his bad career, and he would consequently accept no

kindness from Ullathorne. Miss Thorne, the old squire’s daughter—a

cousin considerably older than himself, to whom he had at one time

been much attached—sent him money; and he returned it to her under a

blank cover. He had still enough for those unhappy purposes which he

had in hand. As to what might happen afterwards, he was then mainly

indifferent.

 

The affair made much noise in the county, and was inquired into

closely by many of the county magistrates; by none more closely than

by John Newbold Gresham, who was then alive. Mr Gresham was greatly

taken with the energy and justice shown by Dr Thorne on the occasion;

and when the trial was over, he invited him to Greshamsbury. The

visit ended in the doctor establishing himself in that village.

 

We must return for a moment to Mary Scatcherd. She was saved from the

necessity of encountering her brother’s wrath, for that brother was

under arrest for murder before he could get at her. Her immediate

lot, however, was a cruel one. Deep as was her cause for anger

against the man who had so inhumanly used her, still it was natural

that she should turn to him with love rather than with aversion. To

whom else could she in such plight look for love? When, therefore,

she heard that he was slain, her heart sank within her; she turned

her face to the wall, and laid herself down to die: to die a double

death, for herself and the fatherless babe that was now quick within

her.

 

But, in fact, life had still much to offer, both to her and to her

child. For her it was still destined that she should, in a distant

land, be the worthy wife of a good husband, and the happy mother of

many children. For that embryo one it was destined—but that may not

be so quickly told: to describe her destiny this volume has yet to be

written.

 

Even in those bitterest days God tempered the wind to the shorn

lamb. Dr Thorne was by her bedside soon after the bloody tidings

had reached her, and did for her more than either her lover or her

brother could have done. When the baby was born, Scatcherd was still

in prison, and had still three months’ more confinement to undergo.

The story of her great wrongs and cruel usage was much talked of,

and men said that one who had been so injured should be regarded as

having in nowise sinned at all.

 

One man, at any rate, so thought. At twilight, one evening, Thorne

was surprised by a visit from a demure Barchester hardware dealer,

whom he did not remember ever to have addressed before. This was the

former lover of poor Mary Scatcherd. He had a proposal to make, and

it was this:—if Mary would consent to leave the country at once, to

leave it without notice from her brother, or talk or éclat on the

matter, he would sell all that he had, marry her, and emigrate.

There was but one condition; she must leave her baby behind her.

The hardware-man could find it in his heart to be generous, to be

generous and true to his love; but he could not be generous enough to

father the seducer’s child.

 

“I could never abide it, sir, if I took it,” said he; “and she,—why

in course she would always love it the best.”

 

In praising his generosity, who can mingle any censure for such

manifest prudence? He would still make her the wife of his bosom,

defiled in the eyes of the world as she had been; but she must be

to him the mother of his own children, not the mother of another’s

child.

 

And now again our doctor had a hard task to win through. He saw at

once that it was his duty to use his utmost authority to induce the

poor girl to accept such an offer. She liked the man; and here was

opened to her a course which would have been most desirable, even

before her misfortune. But it is hard to persuade a mother to part

with her first babe; harder, perhaps, when the babe had been so

fathered and so born than when the world has shone brightly on its

earliest hours. She at first refused stoutly: she sent a thousand

loves, a thousand thanks, profusest acknowledgements for his

generosity to the man who showed her that he loved her so well; but

Nature,