Doctor Thorne - Anthony Trollope (historical books to read .txt) 📗

and whose will that be?”

 

“That will be my son, and a very fine lad he will be; and I hope

he’ll make a better speech than his father. Mr Baker said I was every

inch a Gresham. Well, I hope I am.” Here the countess began to look

cold and angry. “I hope the day will never come when my father won’t

own me for one.”

 

“There’s no fear, no fear,” said the doctor, who was almost put out

of countenance by the orator’s intense gaze. The countess looked

colder and more angry, and muttered something to herself about a

bear-garden.

 

“Gardez Gresham; eh? Harry! mind that when you’re sticking in a gap

and I’m coming after you. Well, I am sure I am very obliged to you

for the honour you have all done me, especially the ladies, who don’t

do this sort of thing on ordinary occasions. I wish they did; don’t

you, doctor? And talking of the ladies, my aunt and cousins have come

all the way from London to hear me make this speech, which certainly

is not worth the trouble; but, all the same I am very much obliged

to them.” And he looked round and made a little bow at the countess.

“And so I am to Mr and Mrs Jackson, and Mr and Mrs and Miss Bateson,

and Mr Baker—I’m not at all obliged to you, Harry—and to Mr Oriel

and Miss Oriel, and to Mr Umbleby, and to Dr Thorne, and to Mary—I

beg her pardon, I mean Miss Thorne.” And then he sat down, amid the

loud plaudits of the company, and a string of blessings which came

from the servants behind him.

 

After this the ladies rose and departed. As she went, Lady Arabella,

kissed her son’s forehead, and then his sisters kissed him, and one

or two of his lady-cousins; and then Miss Bateson shook him by the

hand. “Oh, Miss Bateson,” said he, “I thought the kissing was to go

all round.” So Miss Bateson laughed and went her way; and Patience

Oriel nodded at him, but Mary Thorne, as she quietly left the room,

almost hidden among the extensive draperies of the grander ladies,

hardly allowed her eyes to meet his.

 

He got up to hold the door for them as they passed; and as they went,

he managed to take Patience by the hand; he took her hand and pressed

it for a moment, but dropped it quickly, in order that he might go

through the same ceremony with Mary, but Mary was too quick for him.

 

“Frank,” said Mr Gresham, as soon as the door was closed, “bring

your glass here, my boy;” and the father made room for his son close

beside himself. “The ceremony is now over, so you may have your place

of dignity.” Frank sat himself down where he was told, and Mr Gresham

put his hand on his son’s shoulder and half caressed him, while the

tears stood in his eyes. “I think the doctor is right, Baker, I think

he’ll never make us ashamed of him.”

 

“I am sure he never will,” said Mr Baker.

 

“I don’t think he ever will,” said Dr Thorne.

 

The tones of the men’s voices were very different. Mr Baker did not

care a straw about it; why should he? He had an heir of his own as

well as the squire; one also who was the apple of his eye. But the

doctor,—he did care; he had a niece, to be sure, whom he loved,

perhaps as well as these men loved their sons; but there was room in

his heart also for young Frank Gresham.

 

After this small exposé of feeling they sat silent for a moment or

two. But silence was not dear to the heart of the Honourable John,

and so he took up the running.

 

“That’s a niceish nag you gave Frank this morning,” he said to his

uncle. “I was looking at him before dinner. He is a Monsoon, isn’t

he?”

 

“Well I can’t say I know how he was bred,” said the squire. “He shows

a good deal of breeding.”

 

“He’s a Monsoon, I’m sure,” said the Honourable John. “They’ve all

those ears, and that peculiar dip in the back. I suppose you gave a

goodish figure for him?”

 

“Not so very much,” said the squire.

 

“He’s a trained hunter, I suppose?”

 

“If not, he soon will be,” said the squire.

 

“Let Frank alone for that,” said Harry Baker.

 

“He jumps beautifully, sir,” said Frank. “I haven’t tried him myself,

but Peter made him go over the bar two or three times this morning.”

 

The Honourable John was determined to give his cousin a helping hand,

as he considered it. He thought that Frank was very ill-used in being

put off with so incomplete a stud, and thinking also that the son had

not spirit enough to attack his father himself on the subject, the

Honourable John determined to do it for him.

 

“He’s the making of a very nice horse, I don’t doubt. I wish you had

a string like him, Frank.”

 

Frank felt the blood rush to his face. He would not for worlds have

his father think that he was discontented, or otherwise than pleased

with the present he had received that morning. He was heartily

ashamed of himself in that he had listened with a certain degree of

complacency to his cousin’s tempting; but he had no idea that the

subject would be repeated—and then repeated, too, before his father,

in a manner to vex him on such a day as this, before such people as

were assembled there. He was very angry with his cousin, and for a

moment forgot all his hereditary respect for a de Courcy.

 

“I tell you what, John,” said he, “do you choose your day, some day

early in the season, and come out on the best thing you have, and

I’ll bring, not the black horse, but my old mare; and then do you try

and keep near me. If I don’t leave you at the back of Godspeed before

long, I’ll give you the mare and the horse too.”

 

The Honourable John was not known in Barsetshire as one of the most

forward of its riders. He was a man much addicted to hunting, as far

as the get-up of the thing was concerned; he was great in boots and

breeches; wondrously conversant with bits and bridles; he had quite

a collection of saddles; and patronised every newest invention for

carrying spare shoes, sandwiches, and flasks of sherry. He was

prominent at the cover side;—some people, including the master

of hounds, thought him perhaps a little too loudly prominent;

he affected a familiarity with the dogs, and was on speaking

acquaintance with every man’s horse. But when the work was cut out,

when the pace began to be sharp, when it behoved a man either to ride

or visibly to decline to ride, then—so at least said they who had

not the de Courcy interest quite closely at heart—then, in those

heart-stirring moments, the Honourable John was too often found

deficient.

 

There was, therefore, a considerable laugh at his expense when Frank,

instigated to his innocent boast by a desire to save his father,

challenged his cousin to a trial of prowess. The Honourable John

was not, perhaps, as much accustomed to the ready use of his tongue

as was his honourable brother, seeing that it was not his annual

business to depict the glories of the farmers’ daughters; at any

rate, on this occasion he seemed to be at some loss for words; he

shut up, as the slang phrase goes, and made no further allusion to

the necessity of supplying young Gresham with a proper string of

hunters.

 

But the old squire had understood it all; had understood the meaning

of his nephew’s attack; had thoroughly understood also the meaning of

his son’s defence, and the feeling which actuated it. He also had

thought of the stableful of horses which had belonged to himself when

he came of age; and of the much more humble position which his son

would have to fill than that which his father had prepared for him.

He thought of this, and was sad enough, though he had sufficient

spirit to hide from his friends around him the fact, that the

Honourable John’s arrow had not been discharged in vain.

 

“He shall have Champion,” said the father to himself. “It is time for

me to give it up.”

 

Now Champion was one of the two fine old hunters which the squire

kept for his own use. And it might have been said of him now, at the

period of which we are speaking, that the only really happy moments

of his life were those which he spent in the field. So much as to its

being time for him to give up.