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

brandy this morning, Sir Louis?”

 

“Just a little chasse-café,” said he, not exactly understanding

the word he used. “It’s all the go now; and a capital thing for the

stomach.”

 

“It’s not a capital thing for your stomach;—about the least capital

thing you can take; that is, if you wish to live.”

 

“Never mind about that now, doctor, but look here. This is what we

call the civil thing—eh?” and he showed the Greshamsbury note. “Not

but what they have an object, of course. I understand all that. Lots

of girls there—eh?”

 

The doctor took the note and read it. “It is civil,” said he; “very

civil.”

 

“Well; I shall go, of course. I don’t bear malice because he can’t

pay me the money he owes me. I’ll eat his dinner, and look at the

girls. Have you an invite too, doctor?”

 

“Yes; I have.”

 

“And you’ll go?”

 

“I think not; but that need not deter you. But, Sir Louis—”

 

“Well! eh! what is it?”

 

“Step downstairs a moment,” said the doctor, turning to the servant,

“and wait till you are called for. I wish to speak to your master.”

Joe, for a moment, looked up at the baronet’s face, as though he

wanted but the slightest encouragement to disobey the doctor’s

orders; but not seeing it, he slowly retired, and placed himself, of

course, at the keyhole.

 

And then, the doctor began a long and very useless lecture. The first

object of it was to induce his ward not to get drunk at Greshamsbury;

but having got so far, he went on, and did succeed in frightening

his unhappy guest. Sir Louis did not possess the iron nerves of

his father—nerves which even brandy had not been able to subdue.

The doctor spoke strongly, very strongly; spoke of quick, almost

immediate death in case of further excesses; spoke to him of the

certainty there would be that he could not live to dispose of his own

property if he could not refrain. And thus he did frighten Sir Louis.

The father he had never been able to frighten. But there are men

who, though they fear death hugely, fear present suffering more;

who, indeed, will not bear a moment of pain if there by any mode of

escape. Sir Louis was such: he had no strength of nerve, no courage,

no ability to make a resolution and keep it. He promised the doctor

that he would refrain; and, as he did so, he swallowed down his cup

of coffee and brandy, in which the two articles bore about equal

proportions.

 

The doctor did, at last, make up his mind to go. Whichever way he

determined, he found that he was not contented with himself. He did

not like to trust Sir Louis by himself, and he did not like to show

that he was angry. Still less did he like the idea of breaking bread

in Lady Arabella’s house till some amends had been made to Mary. But

his heart would not allow him to refuse the petition contained in

the squire’s postscript, and the matter ended in his accepting the

invitation.

 

This visit of his ward’s was, in every way, pernicious to the doctor.

He could not go about his business, fearing to leave such a man alone

with Mary. On the afternoon of the second day, she escaped to the

parsonage for an hour or so, and then walked away among the lanes,

calling on some of her old friends among the farmers’ wives. But even

then, the doctor was afraid to leave Sir Louis. What could such a

man do, left alone in a village like Greshamsbury? So he stayed at

home, and the two together went over their accounts. The baronet was

particular about his accounts, and said a good deal as to having

Finnie over to Greshamsbury. To this, however, Dr Thorne positively

refused his consent.

 

The evening passed off better than the preceding one; at least the

early part of it. Sir Louis did not get tipsy; he came up to tea, and

Mary, who did not feel so keenly on the subject as her uncle, almost

wished that he had done so. At ten o’clock he went to bed.

 

But after that new troubles came on. The doctor had gone downstairs

into his study to make up some of the time which he had lost, and

had just seated himself at his desk, when Janet, without announcing

herself, burst into the room; and Bridget, dissolved in hysterical

tears, with her apron to her eyes, appeared behind the senior

domestic.

 

“Please, sir,” said Janet, driven by excitement much beyond her

usual pace of speaking, and becoming unintentionally a little less

respectful than usual, “please sir, that ‘ere young man must go out

of this here house; or else no respectable young ‘ooman can’t stop

here; no, indeed, sir; and we be sorry to trouble you, Dr Thorne; so

we be.”

 

“What young man? Sir Louis?” asked the doctor.

 

“Oh, no! he abides mostly in bed, and don’t do nothing amiss; least

way not to us. ‘Tan’t him, sir; but his man.”

 

“Man!” sobbed Bridget from behind. “He an’t no man, nor nothing

like a man. If Tummas had been here, he wouldn’t have dared; so he

wouldn’t.” Thomas was the groom, and, if all Greshamsbury reports

were true, it was probable, that on some happy, future day, Thomas

and Bridget would become one flesh and one bone.

 

“Please sir,” continued Janet, “there’ll be bad work here if that

‘ere young man doesn’t quit this here house this very night, and I’m

sorry to trouble you, doctor; and so I am. But Tom, he be given to

fight a’most for nothin’. He’s hout now; but if that there young man

be’s here when Tom comes home, Tom will be punching his head; I know

he will.”

 

“He wouldn’t stand by and see a poor girl put upon; no more he

wouldn’t,” said Bridget, through her tears.

 

After many futile inquiries, the doctor ascertained that Mr Jonah had

expressed some admiration for Bridget’s youthful charms, and had, in

the absence of Janet, thrown himself at the lady’s feet in a manner

which had not been altogether pleasing to her. She had defended

herself stoutly and loudly, and in the middle of the row Janet had

come down.

 

“And where is he now?” said the doctor.

 

“Why, sir,” said Janet, “the poor girl was so put about that she did

give him one touch across the face with the rolling-pin, and he be

all bloody now, in the back kitchen.” At hearing this achievement of

hers thus spoken of, Bridget sobbed more hysterically than ever; but

the doctor, looking at her arm as she held her apron to her face,

thought in his heart that Joe must have had so much the worst of it,

that there could be no possible need for the interference of Thomas

the groom.

 

And such turned out to be the case. The bridge of Joe’s nose was

broken; and the doctor had to set it for him in a little bedroom at

the village public-house, Bridget having positively refused to go to

bed in the same house with so dreadful a character.

 

“Quiet now, or I’ll be serving thee the same way; thee see I’ve found

the trick of it.” The doctor could not but hear so much as he made

his way into his own house by the back door, after finishing his

surgical operation. Bridget was recounting to her champion the fracas

that had occurred; and he, as was so natural, was expressing his

admiration at her valour.