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

CHAPTER XXXIV

A Barouche and Four Arrives at Greshamsbury

 

During the last twelve months Sir Louis Scatcherd had been very

efficacious in bringing trouble, turmoil, and vexation upon

Greshamsbury. Now that it was too late to take steps to save himself,

Dr Thorne found that the will left by Sir Roger was so made as to

entail upon him duties that he would find it almost impossible to

perform. Sir Louis, though his father had wished to make him still

a child in the eye of the law, was no child. He knew his own rights

and was determined to exact them; and before Sir Roger had been dead

three months, the doctor found himself in continual litigation with

a low Barchester attorney, who was acting on behalf of his, the

doctor’s, own ward.

 

And if the doctor suffered so did the squire, and so did those who

had hitherto had the management of the squire’s affairs. Dr Thorne

soon perceived that he was to be driven into litigation, not only

with Mr Finnie, the Barchester attorney, but with the squire himself.

While Finnie harassed him, he was compelled to harass Mr Gresham. He

was no lawyer himself; and though he had been able to manage very

well between the squire and Sir Roger, and had perhaps given himself

some credit for his lawyer-like ability in so doing, he was utterly

unable to manage between Sir Louis and Mr Gresham.

 

He had, therefore, to employ a lawyer on his own account, and it

seemed probable that the whole amount of Sir Roger’s legacy to

himself would by degrees be expended in this manner. And then, the

squire’s lawyers had to take up the matter; and they did so greatly

to the detriment of poor Mr Yates Umbleby, who was found to have made

a mess of the affairs entrusted to him. Mr Umbleby’s accounts were

incorrect; his mind was anything but clear, and he confessed, when

put to it by the very sharp gentleman that came down from London,

that he was “bothered;” and so, after a while, he was suspended from

his duties, and Mr Gazebee, the sharp gentleman from London, reigned

over the diminished rent-roll of the Greshamsbury estate.

 

Thus everything was going wrong at Greshamsbury—with the one

exception of Mr Oriel and his love-suit. Miss Gushing attributed

the deposition of Mr Umbleby to the narrowness of the victory which

Beatrice had won in carrying off Mr Oriel. For Miss Gushing was a

relation of the Umblebys, and had been for many years one of their

family. “If she had only chosen to exert herself as Miss Gresham had

done, she could have had Mr Oriel, easily; oh, too easily! but she

had despised such work,” so she said. “But though she had despised

it, the Greshams had not been less irritated, and, therefore, Mr

Umbleby had been driven out of his house.” We can hardly believe

this, as victory generally makes men generous. Miss Gushing, however,

stated it as a fact so often that it is probable she was induced to

believe it herself.

 

Thus everything was going wrong at Greshamsbury, and the squire

himself was especially a sufferer. Umbleby had at any rate been his

own man, and he could do what he liked with him. He could see him

when he liked, and where he liked, and how he liked; could scold him

if in an ill-humour, and laugh at him when in a good humour. All this

Mr Umbleby knew, and bore. But Mr Gazebee was a very different sort

of gentleman; he was the junior partner in the firm of Gumption,

Gazebee & Gazebee, of Mount Street, a house that never defiled

itself with any other business than the agency business, and that in

the very highest line. They drew out leases, and managed property

both for the Duke of Omnium and Lord de Courcy; and ever since her

marriage, it had been one of the objects dearest to Lady Arabella’s

heart, that the Greshamsbury acres should be superintended by the

polite skill and polished legal ability of that all but elegant firm

in Mount Street.

 

The squire had long stood firm, and had delighted in having

everything done under his own eye by poor Mr Yates Umbleby. But now,

alas! he could stand it no longer. He had put off the evil day as

long as he could; he had deferred the odious work of investigation

till things had seemed resolved on investigating themselves; and

then, when it was absolutely necessary that Mr Umbleby should go,

there was nothing for him left but to fall into the ready hands of

Messrs Gumption, Gazebee and Gazebee.

 

It must not be supposed that Messrs Gumption, Gazebee & Gazebee

were in the least like the ordinary run of attorneys. They wrote

no letters for six-and-eightpence each: they collected no debts,

filed no bills, made no charge per folio for “whereases” and “as

aforesaids;” they did no dirty work, and probably were as ignorant

of the interior of a court of law as any young lady living in their

Mayfair vicinity. No; their business was to manage the property of

great people, draw up leases, make legal assignments, get the family

marriage settlements made, and look after wills. Occasionally, also,

they had to raise money; but it was generally understood that this

was done by proxy.

 

The firm had been going on for a hundred and fifty years, and the

designation had often been altered; but it always consisted of

Gumptions and Gazebees differently arranged, and no less hallowed

names had ever been permitted to appear. It had been Gazebee, Gazebee

& Gumption; then Gazebee & Gumption; then Gazebee, Gumption &

Gumption; then Gumption, Gumption & Gazebee; and now it was Gumption,

Gazebee & Gazebee.

 

Mr Gazebee, the junior member of this firm, was a very elegant young

man. While looking at him riding in Rotten Row, you would hardly have

taken him for an attorney; and had he heard that you had so taken

him, he would have been very much surprised indeed. He was rather

bald; not being, as people say, quite so young as he was once. His

exact age was thirty-eight. But he had a really remarkable pair of

jet-black whiskers, which fully made up for any deficiency as to his

head; he had also dark eyes, and a beaked nose, what may be called a

distinguished mouth, and was always dressed in fashionable attire.

The fact was, that Mr Mortimer Gazebee, junior partner in the firm

Gumption, Gazebee & Gazebee, by no means considered himself to be

made of that very disagreeable material which mortals call small

beer.

 

When this great firm was applied to, to get Mr Gresham through his

difficulties, and when the state of his affairs was made known to

them, they at first expressed rather a disinclination for the work.

But at last, moved doubtless by their respect for the de Courcy

interest, they assented; and Mr Gazebee, junior, went down to

Greshamsbury. The poor squire passed many a sad day after that before

he again felt himself to be master even of his own domain.

 

Nevertheless, when Mr Mortimer Gazebee visited Greshamsbury, which

he did on more than one or two occasions, he was always received _en

grand seigneur_. To Lady Arabella he was by no means an unwelcome

guest, for she found herself able, for the first time in her life, to

speak confidentially on her husband’s pecuniary affairs with the man

who had the management of her husband’s property. Mr Gazebee also was

a pet with Lady de Courcy; and being known to be a fashionable man in

London, and quite a different sort of person from poor Mr Umbleby,

he was always received with smiles. He had a hundred little ways of

making himself agreeable, and Augusta declared to her cousin, the

Lady Amelia, after having been acquainted with him for a few months,

that he would be a perfect gentleman, only, that his family had

never been anything but attorneys. The Lady Amelia smiled in her own

peculiarly aristocratic way, shrugged her shoulders slightly, and

said, “that Mr Mortimer Gazebee was a very good sort of a person,

very.” Poor Augusta felt herself snubbed, thinking perhaps of the

tailor’s son; but as there was never any appeal against the Lady

Amelia, she said nothing more at that moment in favour of Mr Mortimer

Gazebee.

 

All these evils—Mr Mortimer Gazebee being the worst of them—had Sir

Louis Scatcherd brought down on the poor squire’s head. There may be

those who will say that the squire had brought them on himself, by

running into debt; and so, doubtless, he had; but it was not the less

true that the baronet’s interference was unnecessary, vexatious, and

one might almost say, malicious. His interest would have been quite

safe in the doctor’s hands, and he had, in fact, no legal right to

meddle; but neither the doctor nor the squire could prevent him. Mr

Finnie knew very well what he was about, if Sir Louis did not; and

so the three went on, each with his own lawyer, and each of them

distrustful, unhappy, and ill at ease. This was hard upon the doctor,

for he was not in debt, and had borrowed no money.

 

There was not much reason to suppose that the visit of Sir Louis to

Greshamsbury would much improve matters. It must be presumed that he

was not coming with any amicable views, but with the object rather

of looking after his own; a phrase which was now constantly in his

mouth. He might probably find it necessary while looking after his

own at Greshamsbury, to say some very disagreeable things to the

squire; and the doctor, therefore, hardly expected that the visit

would go off pleasantly.

 

When last we saw Sir Louis, now nearly twelve months since, he

was intent on making a proposal of marriage to Miss Thorne. This

intention he carried out about two days after Frank Gresham had done

the same thing. He had delayed doing so till he had succeeded in

purchasing his friend Jenkins’s Arab pony, imagining that such a

present could not but go far in weaning Mary’s heart from her other

lover. Poor Mary was put to the trouble of refusing both the baronet

and the pony, and a very bad time she had of it while doing so. Sir

Louis was a man easily angered, and not very easily pacified, and

Mary had to endure a good deal of annoyance; from any other person,

indeed, she would have called it impertinence. Sir Louis, however,

had to bear his rejection as best he could, and, after a perseverance

of three days, returned to London in disgust; and Mary had not seen

him since.

 

Mr Greyson’s first letter was followed by a second; and the second

was followed by the baronet in person. He also required to be

received en grand seigneur, perhaps more imperatively than Mr

Mortimer Gazebee himself. He came with four posters from the

Barchester Station, and had himself rattled up to the doctor’s door

in a way that took the breath away from all Greshamsbury. Why! the

squire himself for a many long year had been contented to come home

with a pair of horses; and four were never seen in the place, except

when the de Courcys came to Greshamsbury, or Lady Arabella with all

her daughters returned from her hard-fought metropolitan campaigns.