Doctor Thorne - Anthony Trollope (historical books to read .txt) 📗
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nearly in those very words; but Mr Gresham never did, and never will
receive with common civility anything that comes from me.”
“I know, Rosina, he never did; and yet where would he have been
but for the de Courcys?” So exclaimed, in her gratitude, the Lady
Arabella; to speak the truth, however, but for the de Courcys, Mr
Gresham might have been at this moment on the top of Boxall Hill,
monarch of all he surveyed.
“As I was saying,” continued the countess, “I never approved of the
hounds coming to Greshamsbury; but yet, my dear, the hounds can’t
have eaten up everything. A man with ten thousand a year ought to be
able to keep hounds; particularly as he had a subscription.”
“He says the subscription was little or nothing.”
“That’s nonsense, my dear. Now, Arabella, what does he do with his
money? That’s the question. Does he gamble?”
“Well,” said Lady Arabella, very slowly, “I don’t think he does.” If
the squire did gamble he must have done it very slyly, for he rarely
went away from Greshamsbury, and certainly very few men looking like
gamblers were in the habit of coming thither as guests. “I don’t
think he does gamble.” Lady Arabella put her emphasis on the word
gamble, as though her husband, if he might perhaps be charitably
acquitted of that vice, was certainly guilty of every other known in
the civilised world.
“I know he used,” said Lady de Courcy, looking very wise, and rather
suspicious. She certainly had sufficient domestic reasons for
disliking the propensity; “I know he used; and when a man begins, he
is hardly ever cured.”
“Well, if he does, I don’t know it,” said the Lady Arabella.
“The money, my dear, must go somewhere. What excuse does he give when
you tell him you want this and that—all the common necessaries of
life, that you have always been used to?”
“He gives no excuse; sometimes he says the family is so large.”
“Nonsense! Girls cost nothing; there’s only Frank, and he can’t have
cost anything yet. Can he be saving money to buy back Boxall Hill?”
“Oh no!” said the Lady Arabella, quickly. “He is not saving anything;
he never did, and never will save, though he is so stingy to me. He
is hard pushed for money, I know that.”
“Then where has it gone?” said the Countess de Courcy, with a look of
stern decision.
“Heaven only knows! Now, Augusta is to be married. I must of course
have a few hundred pounds. You should have heard how he groaned when
I asked him for it. Heaven only knows where the money goes!” And the
injured wife wiped a piteous tear from her eye with her fine dress
cambric handkerchief. “I have all the sufferings and privations of
a poor man’s wife, but I have none of the consolations. He has no
confidence in me; he never tells me anything; he never talks to
me about his affairs. If he talks to any one it is to that horrid
doctor.”
“What, Dr Thorne?” Now the Countess de Courcy hated Dr Thorne with a
holy hatred.
“Yes; Dr Thorne. I believe that he knows everything; and advises
everything, too. Whatever difficulties poor Gresham may have, I do
believe Dr Thorne has brought them about. I do believe it, Rosina.”
“Well, that is surprising. Mr Gresham, with all his faults, is
a gentleman; and how he can talk about his affairs with a low
apothecary like that, I, for one, cannot imagine. Lord de Courcy has
not always been to me all that he should have been; far from it.” And
Lady de Courcy thought over in her mind injuries of a much graver
description than any that her sister-in-law had ever suffered; “but I
have never known anything like that at Courcy Castle. Surely Umbleby
knows all about it, doesn’t he?”
“Not half so much as the doctor,” said Lady Arabella.
The countess shook her head slowly; the idea of Mr Gresham, a country
gentleman of good estate like him, making a confidant of a country
doctor was too great a shock for her nerves; and for a while she was
constrained to sit silent before she could recover herself.
“One thing at any rate is certain, Arabella,” said the countess,
as soon as she found herself again sufficiently composed to offer
counsel in a properly dictatorial manner. “One thing at any rate is
certain; if Mr Gresham be involved so deeply as you say, Frank has
but one duty before him. He must marry money. The heir of fourteen
thousand a year may indulge himself in looking for blood, as Mr
Gresham did, my dear”—it must be understood that there was very
little compliment in this, as the Lady Arabella had always conceived
herself to be a beauty—“or for beauty, as some men do,” continued
the countess, thinking of the choice that the present Earl de Courcy
had made; “but Frank must marry money. I hope he will understand this
early; do make him understand this before he makes a fool of himself;
when a man thoroughly understands this, when he knows what his
circumstances require, why, the matter becomes easy to him. I hope
that Frank understands that he has no alternative. In his position he
must marry money.”
But, alas! alas! Frank Gresham had already made a fool of himself.
“Well, my boy, I wish you joy with all my heart,” said the Honourable
John, slapping his cousin on the back, as he walked round to the
stable-yard with him before dinner, to inspect a setter puppy of
peculiarly fine breed which had been sent to Frank as a birthday
present. “I wish I were an elder son; but we can’t all have that
luck.”
“Who wouldn’t sooner be the younger son of an earl than the eldest
son of a plain squire?” said Frank, wishing to say something civil in
return for his cousin’s civility.
“I wouldn’t for one,” said the Honourable John. “What chance have I?
There’s Porlock as strong as a horse; and then George comes next. And
the governor’s good for these twenty years.” And the young man sighed
as he reflected what small hope there was that all those who were
nearest and dearest to him should die out of his way, and leave him
to the sweet enjoyment of an earl’s coronet and fortune. “Now, you’re
sure of your game some day; and as you’ve no brothers, I suppose the
squire’ll let you do pretty well what you like. Besides, he’s not so
strong as my governor, though he’s younger.”
Frank had never looked at his fortune in this light before, and was
so slow and green that he was not much delighted at the prospect now
that it was offered to him. He had always, however, been taught to
look to his cousins, the de Courcys, as men with whom it would be
very expedient that he should be intimate; he therefore showed no
offence, but changed the conversation.
“Shall you hunt with the Barsetshire this season, John? I hope you
will; I shall.”
“Well, I don’t know. It’s very slow. It’s all tillage here, or else
woodland. I rather fancy I shall go to Leicestershire when the
partridge-shooting is over. What sort of a lot do you mean to come
out with, Frank?”
Frank became a little red as he answered, “Oh, I shall have two,” he
said; “that is, the mare I have had these two years, and the horse my
father gave me this morning.”
“What! only those two? and the mare is nothing more than a pony.”
“She is fifteen hands,” said Frank, offended.
“Well, Frank, I certainly would not stand that,” said the Honourable
John. “What, go out before the county with one untrained horse and a
pony; and you the heir to Greshamsbury!”
“I’ll have him so trained before November,” said Frank, “that
nothing in Barsetshire shall stop him. Peter says”—Peter was
the Greshamsbury stud-groom—“that he tucks up his hind legs
beautifully.”
“But who the deuce would think of going to work with one horse; or
two either, if you insist on calling the old pony a huntress? I’ll
put you up to a trick, my lad: if you stand that you’ll stand
anything; and if you don’t mean to go in leading-strings all your
life, now is the time to show it. There’s young Baker—Harry Baker,
you know—he came of age last year, and he has as pretty a string of
nags as any one would wish to set eyes on; four hunters and a hack.
Now, if old Baker has four thousand a year it’s every shilling he has
got.”
This was true, and Frank Gresham, who in the morning had been made so
happy by his father’s present of a horse, began to feel that hardly
enough had been done for him. It was true that Mr Baker had only four
thousand a year; but it was also true that he had no other child than
Harry Baker; that he had no great establishment to keep up; that he
owed a shilling to no one; and, also, that he was a great fool in
encouraging a mere boy to ape all the caprices of a man of wealth.
Nevertheless, for a moment, Frank Gresham did feel that, considering
his position, he was being treated rather unworthily.
“Take the matter in your own hands, Frank,” said the Honourable John,
seeing the impression that he had made. “Of course the governor knows
very well that you won’t put up with such a stable as that. Lord
bless you! I have heard that when he married my aunt, and that was
when he was about your age, he had the best stud in the whole county;
and then he was in Parliament before he was three-and-twenty.”
“His father, you know, died when he was very young,” said Frank.
“Yes; I know he had a stroke of luck that doesn’t fall to everyone;
but—”
Young Frank’s face grew dark now instead of red. When his cousin
submitted to him the necessity of having more than two horses for
his own use he could listen to him; but when the same monitor talked
of the chance of a father’s death as a stroke of luck, Frank was
too much disgusted to be able to pretend to pass it over with
indifference. What! was he thus to think of his father, whose face
was always lighted up with pleasure when his boy came near to him,
and so rarely bright at any other time? Frank had watched his father
closely enough to be aware of this; he knew how his father delighted
in him; he had had cause to guess that his father had many troubles,
and that he strove hard to banish the memory of them when his son was
with him. He loved his father truly, purely, and thoroughly, liked to
be with him, and would be proud to be his confidant. Could he then
listen quietly while his cousin spoke of the chance of his father’s
death as a stroke of luck?
“I shouldn’t think it a stroke of luck, John. I should think it the
greatest misfortune in the world.”
It is so difficult for a young man to enumerate sententiously a
principle of morality, or even an expression of ordinary good
feeling, without giving himself something of a ridiculous air,
without assuming something of a mock grandeur!
“Oh, of course, my dear fellow,” said the Honourable John, laughing;
“that’s a matter of course. We all understand that without saying it.
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