Doctor Thorne by Anthony Trollope (interesting books to read TXT) đź“–
- Author: Anthony Trollope
- Performer: -
Book online «Doctor Thorne by Anthony Trollope (interesting books to read TXT) 📖». Author Anthony Trollope
“And what will you do for her here, Mary?” said the doctor. Poor Mary
replied to him with a deluge of tears.
“She is my niece,” said the doctor, taking up the tiny infant in his
huge hands; “she is already the nearest thing, the only thing that I
have in this world. I am her uncle, Mary. If you will go with this
man I will be father to her and mother to her. Of what bread I eat,
she shall eat; of what cup I drink, she shall drink. See, Mary, here
is the Bible;” and he covered the book with his hand. “Leave her to
me, and by this word she shall be my child.”
The mother consented at last; left her baby with the doctor, married,
and went to America. All this was consummated before Roger Scatcherd
was liberated from jail. Some conditions the doctor made. The first
was, that Scatcherd should not know his sister’s child was thus
disposed of. Dr Thorne, in undertaking to bring up the baby, did not
choose to encounter any tie with persons who might hereafter claim
to be the girl’s relations on the other side. Relations she would
undoubtedly have had none had she been left to live or die as a
workhouse bastard; but should the doctor succeed in life, should he
ultimately be able to make this girl the darling of his own house,
and then the darling of some other house, should she live and win the
heart of some man whom the doctor might delight to call his friend
and nephew; then relations might spring up whose ties would not be
advantageous.
No man plumed himself on good blood more than Dr Thorne; no man had
greater pride in his genealogical tree, and his hundred and thirty
clearly proved descents from MacAdam; no man had a stronger theory
as to the advantage held by men who have grandfathers over those who
have none, or have none worth talking about. Let it not be thought
that our doctor was a perfect character. No, indeed; most far from
perfect. He had within him an inner, stubborn, self-admiring pride,
which made him believe himself to be better and higher than those
around him, and this from some unknown cause which he could hardly
explain to himself. He had a pride in being a poor man of a high
family; he had a pride in repudiating the very family of which he
was proud; and he had a special pride in keeping his pride silently
to himself. His father had been a Thorne, and his mother a Thorold.
There was no better blood to be had in England. It was in the
possession of such properties as these that he condescended to
rejoice; this man, with a man’s heart, a man’s courage, and a man’s
humanity! Other doctors round the county had ditch-water in their
veins; he could boast of a pure ichor, to which that of the great
Omnium family was but a muddy puddle. It was thus that he loved to
excel his brother practitioners, he who might have indulged in the
pride of excelling them both in talent and in energy! We speak now
of his early days; but even in his maturer life, the man, though
mellowed, was the same.
This was the man who now promised to take to his bosom as his own
child a poor bastard whose father was already dead, and whose
mother’s family was such as the Scatcherds! It was necessary that
the child’s history should be known to none. Except to the mother’s
brother it was an object of interest to no one. The mother had for
some short time been talked of; but now the nine-days’ wonder was a
wonder no longer. She went off to her far-away home; her husband’s
generosity was duly chronicled in the papers, and the babe was left
untalked of and unknown.
It was easy to explain to Scatcherd that the child had not lived.
There was a parting interview between the brother and sister in the
jail, during which, with real tears and unaffected sorrow, the mother
thus accounted for the offspring of her shame. Then she started,
fortunate in her coming fortunes; and the doctor took with him his
charge to the new country in which they were both to live. There he
found for her a fitting home till she should be old enough to sit
at his table and live in his bachelor house; and no one but old Mr
Gresham knew who she was, or whence she had come.
Then Roger Scatcherd, having completed his six months’ confinement,
came out of prison.
Roger Scatcherd, though his hands were now red with blood, was to be
pitied. A short time before the days of Henry Thorne’s death he had
married a young wife in his own class of life, and had made many
resolves that henceforward his conduct should be such as might become
a married man, and might not disgrace the respectable brother-in-law
he was about to have given him. Such was his condition when he first
heard of his sister’s plight. As has been said, he filled himself
with drink and started off on the scent of blood.
During his prison days his wife had to support herself as she might.
The decent articles of furniture which they had put together were
sold; she gave up their little house, and, bowed down by misery, she
also was brought near to death. When he was liberated he at once got
work; but those who have watched the lives of such people know how
hard it is for them to recover lost ground. She became a mother
immediately after his liberation, and when her child was born they
were in direst want; for Scatcherd was again drinking, and his
resolves were blown to the wind.
The doctor was then living at Greshamsbury. He had gone over there
before the day on which he undertook the charge of poor Mary’s baby,
and soon found himself settled as the Greshamsbury doctor. This
occurred very soon after the birth of the young heir. His predecessor
in this career had “bettered” himself, or endeavoured to do so, by
seeking the practice of some large town, and Lady Arabella, at a very
critical time, was absolutely left with no other advice than that of
a stranger, picked up, as she declared to Lady de Courcy, somewhere
about Barchester jail, or Barchester court-house, she did not know
which.
Of course Lady Arabella could not suckle the young heir herself.
Ladies Arabella never can. They are gifted with the powers of being
mothers, but not nursing-mothers. Nature gives them bosoms for show,
but not for use. So Lady Arabella had a wet-nurse. At the end of six
months the new doctor found Master Frank was not doing quite so well
as he should do; and after a little trouble it was discovered that
the very excellent young woman who had been sent express from Courcy
Castle to Greshamsbury—a supply being kept up on the lord’s demesne
for the family use—was fond of brandy. She was at once sent back to
the castle, of course; and, as Lady de Courcy was too much in dudgeon
to send another, Dr Thorne was allowed to procure one. He thought of
the misery of Roger Scatcherd’s wife, thought also of her health,
and strength, and active habits; and thus Mrs Scatcherd became the
foster-mother to young Frank Gresham.
One other episode we must tell of past times. Previous to his
father’s death, Dr Thorne was in love. Nor had he altogether sighed
and pleaded in vain; though it had not quite come to that, that the
young lady’s friends, or even the young lady herself, had actually
accepted his suit. At that time his name stood well in Barchester.
His father was a prebendary; his cousins and his best friends were
the Thornes of Ullathorne, and the lady, who shall be nameless, was
not thought to be injudicious in listening to the young doctor. But
when Henry Thorne went so far astray, when the old doctor died, when
the young doctor quarrelled with Ullathorne, when the brother was
killed in a disgraceful quarrel, and it turned out that the physician
had nothing but his profession and no settled locality in which to
exercise it; then, indeed, the young lady’s friends thought that she
was injudicious, and the young lady herself had not spirit enough, or
love enough, to be disobedient. In those stormy days of the trial she
told Dr Thorne that perhaps it would be wise that they should not see
each other any more.
Dr Thorne, so counselled, at such a moment,—so informed then, when
he most required comfort from his love, at once swore loudly that he
agreed with her. He rushed forth with a bursting heart, and said to
himself that the world was bad, all bad. He saw the lady no more;
and, if I am rightly informed, never again made matrimonial overtures
to any one.
Dr Thorne
And thus Dr Thorne became settled for life in the little village of
Greshamsbury. As was then the wont with many country practitioners,
and as should be the wont with them all if they consulted their own
dignity a little less and the comforts of their customers somewhat
more, he added the business of a dispensing apothecary to that of
physician. In doing so, he was of course much reviled. Many people
around him declared that he could not truly be a doctor, or, at any
rate, a doctor to be so called; and his brethren in the art living
around him, though they knew that his diplomas, degrees, and
certificates were all en règle, rather countenanced the report.
There was much about this new-comer which did not endear him to his
own profession. In the first place he was a new-comer, and, as such,
was of course to be regarded by other doctors as being de trop.
Greshamsbury was only fifteen miles from Barchester, where there was
a regular dépôt of medical skill, and but eight from Silverbridge,
where a properly established physician had been in residence for the
last forty years. Dr Thorne’s predecessor at Greshamsbury had been a
humble-minded general practitioner, gifted with a due respect for
the physicians of the county; and he, though he had been allowed to
physic the servants, and sometimes the children of Greshamsbury, had
never had the presumption to put himself on a par with his betters.
Then, also, Dr Thorne, though a graduated physician, though entitled
beyond all dispute to call himself a doctor, according to all the
laws of all the colleges, made it known to the East Barsetshire
world, very soon after he had seated himself at Greshamsbury, that
his rate of pay was to be seven-and-sixpence a visit within a
circuit of five miles, with a proportionally increased charge at
proportionally increased distances. Now there was something low,
mean, unprofessional, and democratic in this; so, at least, said the
children of Æsculapius gathered together in conclave at Barchester.
In the first place, it showed that this Thorne was always thinking
of his money, like an apothecary, as he was; whereas, it would have
behoved him, as a physician, had he had the feelings of a physician
under his hat, to have regarded his own pursuits in a purely
philosophical spirit, and to have taken any gain which might have
accrued as an accidental adjunct to his station in life. A physician
should take his fee without letting his left hand know what his right
hand was doing; it should be taken without a thought, without a look,
without a move of the facial
Comments (0)