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

>some slight accidental peep into those mysteries from whence

all corruption has been so thoroughly expelled; and then, how

delightfully refreshing is the sight, when, perhaps, some ex-member,

hurled from his paradise like a fallen peri, reveals the secret of

that pure heaven, and, in the agony of his despair, tells us all

that it cost him to sit for –- through those few halcyon years!

 

But Mr Nearthewinde is a safe man, and easy to be employed with but

little danger. All these stringent bribery laws only enhance the

value of such very safe men as Mr Nearthewinde. To him, stringent

laws against bribery are the strongest assurance of valuable

employment. Were these laws of a nature to be evaded with ease, any

indifferent attorney might manage a candidate’s affairs and enable

him to take his seat with security.

 

It would have been well for Sir Roger if he had trusted solely to

Mr Closerstil; well also for Mr Romer had he never fished in those

troubled waters. In due process of time the hearing of the petition

came on, and then who so happy, sitting at his ease at his London

Inn, blowing his cloud from a long pipe, with measureless content, as

Mr Reddypalm? Mr Reddypalm was the one great man of the contest. All

depended on Mr Reddypalm; and well he did his duty.

 

The result of the petition was declared by the committee to be as

follows:—that Sir Roger’s election was null and void—that the

election altogether was null and void—that Sir Roger had, by his

agent, been guilty of bribery in obtaining a vote, by the payment

of a bill alleged to have been previously refused payment—that Sir

Roger himself knew nothing about it;—this is always a matter of

course;—but that Sir Roger’s agent, Mr Romer, had been wittingly

guilty of bribery with reference to the transaction above described.

Poor Sir Roger! Poor Mr Romer.

 

Poor Mr Romer indeed! His fate was perhaps as sad as well might be,

and as foul a blot to the purism of these very pure times in which

we live. Not long after those days, it so happening that some

considerable amount of youthful energy and quidnunc ability were

required to set litigation afloat at Hong-Kong, Mr Romer was sent

thither as the fittest man for such work, with rich assurance of

future guerdon. Who so happy then as Mr Romer! But even among the

pure there is room for envy and detraction. Mr Romer had not yet

ceased to wonder at new worlds, as he skimmed among the islands of

that southern ocean, before the edict had gone forth for his return.

There were men sitting in that huge court of Parliament on whose

breasts it lay as an intolerable burden, that England should be

represented among the antipodes by one who had tampered with the

purity of the franchise. For them there was no rest till this great

disgrace should be wiped out and atoned for. Men they were of that

calibre, that the slightest reflection on them of such a stigma

seemed to themselves to blacken their own character. They could not

break bread with satisfaction till Mr Romer was recalled. He was

recalled, and of course ruined—and the minds of those just men were

then at peace.

 

To any honourable gentleman who really felt his brow suffused with

a patriotic blush, as he thought of his country dishonoured by Mr

Romer’s presence at Hong-Kong—to any such gentleman, if any such

there were, let all honour be given, even though the intensity of his

purity may create amazement to our less finely organised souls. But

if no such blush suffused the brow of any honourable gentleman; if Mr

Romer was recalled from quite other feelings—what then in lieu of

honour shall we allot to those honourable gentlemen who were most

concerned?

 

Sir Roger, however, lost his seat, and, after three months of the

joys of legislation, found himself reduced by a terrible blow to the

low level of private life.

 

And the blow to him was very heavy. Men but seldom tell the truth of

what is in them, even to their dearest friends; they are ashamed of

having feelings, or rather of showing that they are troubled by any

intensity of feeling. It is the practice of the time to treat all

pursuits as though they were only half important to us, as though

in what we desire we were only half in earnest. To be visibly eager

seems childish, and is always bad policy; and men, therefore,

nowadays, though they strive as hard as ever in the service of

ambition—harder than ever in that of mammon—usually do so with

a pleasant smile on, as though after all they were but amusing

themselves with the little matter in hand.

 

Perhaps it had been so with Sir Roger in those electioneering days

when he was looking for votes. At any rate, he had spoken of his seat

in Parliament as but a doubtful good. “He was willing, indeed, to

stand, having been asked; but the thing would interfere wonderfully

with his business; and then, what did he know about Parliament?

Nothing on earth: it was the maddest scheme, but nevertheless, he was

not going to hang back when called upon—he had always been rough and

ready when wanted,—and there he was now ready as ever, and rough

enough too, God knows.”

 

‘Twas thus that he had spoken of his coming parliamentary honours;

and men had generally taken him at his word. He had been returned,

and this success had been hailed as a great thing for the cause and

class to which he belonged. But men did not know that his inner heart

was swelling with triumph, and that his bosom could hardly contain

his pride as he reflected that the poor Barchester stone-mason was

now the representative in Parliament of his native city. And so, when

his seat was attacked, he still laughed and joked. “They were welcome

to it for him,” he said; “he could keep it or want it; and of the

two, perhaps, the want of it would come most convenient to him. He

did not exactly think that he had bribed any one; but if the bigwigs

chose to say so, it was all one to him. He was rough and ready, now

as ever,” &c., &c.

 

But when the struggle came, it was to him a fearful one; not the

less fearful because there was no one, no, not one friend in all the

world, to whom he could open his mind and speak out honestly what

was in his heart. To Dr Thorne he might perhaps have done so had his

intercourse with the doctor been sufficiently frequent; but it was

only now and again when he was ill, or when the squire wanted to

borrow money, that he saw Dr Thorne. He had plenty of friends, heaps

of friends in the parliamentary sense; friends who talked about

him, and lauded him at public meetings; who shook hands with him on

platforms, and drank his health at dinners; but he had no friend

who could sit with him over his own hearth, in true friendship, and

listen to, and sympathise with, and moderate the sighings of the

inner man. For him there was no sympathy; no tenderness of love; no

retreat, save into himself, from the loud brass band of the outer

world.

 

The blow hit him terribly hard. It did not come altogether

unexpectedly, and yet, when it did come, it was all but unendurable.

He had made so much of the power of walking into that august chamber,

and sitting shoulder to shoulder in legislative equality with the

sons of dukes and the curled darlings of the nation. Money had given

him nothing, nothing but the mere feeling of brute power: with his

three hundred thousand pounds he had felt himself to be no more

palpably near to the goal of his ambition than when he had chipped

stones for three shillings and sixpence a day. But when he was led up

and introduced at that table, when he shook the old premier’s hand

on the floor of the House of Commons, when he heard the honourable

member for Barchester alluded to in grave debate as the greatest

living authority on railway matters, then, indeed, he felt that he

had achieved something.

 

And now this cup was ravished from his lips, almost before it was

tasted. When he was first told as a certainty that the decision of

the committee was against him, he bore up against the misfortune like

a man. He laughed heartily, and declared himself well rid of a very

profitless profession; cut some little joke about Mr Moffat and his

thrashing, and left on those around him an impression that he was

a man so constituted, so strong in his own resolves, so steadily

pursuant of his own work, that no little contentions of this kind

could affect him. Men admired his easy laughter, as, shuffling his

half-crowns with both his hands in his trouser-pockets, he declared

that Messrs Romer and Reddypalm were the best friends he had known

for this many a day.

 

But not the less did he walk out from the room in which he was

standing a broken-hearted man. Hope could not buoy him up as she may

do other ex-members in similarly disagreeable circumstances. He could

not afford to look forward to what further favours parliamentary

future might have in store for him after a lapse of five or six

years. Five or six years! Why, his life was not worth four years’

purchase; of that he was perfectly aware: he could not now live

without the stimulus of brandy; and yet, while he took it, he knew he

was killing himself. Death he did not fear; but he would fain have

wished, after his life of labour, to have lived, while yet he could

live, in the blaze of that high world to which for a moment he had

attained.

 

He laughed loud and cheerily as he left his parliamentary friends,

and, putting himself into the train, went down to Boxall Hill. He

laughed loud and cheerily; but he never laughed again. It had not

been his habit to laugh much at Boxall Hill. It was there he kept his

wife, and Mr Winterbones, and the brandy bottle behind his pillow. He

had not often there found it necessary to assume that loud and cheery

laugh.

 

On this occasion he was apparently well in health when he got home;

but both Lady Scatcherd and Mr Winterbones found him more than

ordinarily cross. He made an affectation at sitting very hard to

business, and even talked of going abroad to look at some of his

foreign contracts. But even Winterbones found that his patron did not

work as he had been wont to do; and at last, with some misgivings, he

told Lady Scatcherd that he feared that everything was not right.

 

“He’s always at it, my lady, always,” said Mr Winterbones.

 

“Is he?” said Lady Scatcherd, well understanding what Mr

Winterbones’s allusion meant.

 

“Always, my lady. I never saw nothing like it. Now, there’s me—I can

always go my half-hour when I’ve had my drop; but he, why, he don’t

go ten minutes, not now.”

 

This was not cheerful to Lady Scatcherd; but what was the poor woman

to do? When she spoke to him on any subject he only snarled at her;

and now that the heavy fit was on him, she did not dare even to

mention the subject of his drinking. She had never known him so

savage in his humour as he was now, so bearish in his habits, so

little inclined to humanity, so determined to rush headlong down,

with his head