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

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person in England. No one can trust him, though there may be those

who are willing to place him, untrusted, in high positions. Such

was the case with Mr Gresham. There were many who were willing, for

family considerations, to keep him in Parliament; but no one thought

that he was fit to be there. The consequences were, that a bitter

and expensive contest ensued. Frank Gresham, when twitted with being

a Whig, foreswore the de Courcy family; and then, when ridiculed as

having been thrown over by the Tories, foreswore his father’s old

friends. So between the two stools he fell to the ground, and, as a

politician, he never again rose to his feet.

 

He never again rose to his feet; but twice again he made violent

efforts to do so. Elections in East Barsetshire, from various

causes, came quick upon each other in those days, and before he was

eight-and-twenty years of age Mr Gresham had three times contested

the county and been three times beaten. To speak the truth of him,

his own spirit would have been satisfied with the loss of the first

ten thousand pounds; but Lady Arabella was made of higher mettle. She

had married a man with a fine place and a fine fortune; but she had

nevertheless married a commoner and had in so far derogated from her

high birth. She felt that her husband should be by rights a member of

the House of Lords; but, if not, that it was at least essential that

he should have a seat in the lower chamber. She would by degrees sink

into nothing if she allowed herself to sit down, the mere wife of a

mere country squire.

 

Thus instigated, Mr Gresham repeated the useless contest three times,

and repeated it each time at a serious cost. He lost his money, Lady

Arabella lost her temper, and things at Greshamsbury went on by no

means as prosperously as they had done in the days of the old squire.

 

In the first twelve years of their marriage, children came fast into

the nursery at Greshamsbury. The first that was born was a boy; and

in those happy halcyon days, when the old squire was still alive,

great was the joy at the birth of an heir to Greshamsbury; bonfires

gleamed through the country-side, oxen were roasted whole, and

the customary paraphernalia of joy, usual to rich Britons on such

occasions were gone through with wondrous éclat. But when the tenth

baby, and the ninth little girl, was brought into the world, the

outward show of joy was not so great.

 

Then other troubles came on. Some of these little girls were sickly,

some very sickly. Lady Arabella had her faults, and they were such as

were extremely detrimental to her husband’s happiness and her own;

but that of being an indifferent mother was not among them. She had

worried her husband daily for years because he was not in Parliament,

she had worried him because he would not furnish the house in Portman

Square, she had worried him because he objected to have more people

every winter at Greshamsbury Park than the house would hold; but now

she changed her tune and worried him because Selina coughed, because

Helena was hectic, because poor Sophy’s spine was weak, and Matilda’s

appetite was gone.

 

Worrying from such causes was pardonable it will be said. So it was;

but the manner was hardly pardonable. Selina’s cough was certainly

not fairly attributable to the old-fashioned furniture in Portman

Square; nor would Sophy’s spine have been materially benefited by

her father having a seat in Parliament; and yet, to have heard Lady

Arabella discussing those matters in family conclave, one would have

thought that she would have expected such results.

 

As it was, her poor weak darlings were carried about from London to

Brighton, from Brighton to some German baths, from the German baths

back to Torquay, and thence—as regarded the four we have named—to

that bourne from whence no further journey could be made under the

Lady Arabella’s directions.

 

The one son and heir to Greshamsbury was named as his father, Francis

Newbold Gresham. He would have been the hero of our tale had not that

place been pre-occupied by the village doctor. As it is, those who

please may so regard him. It is he who is to be our favourite young

man, to do the love scenes, to have his trials and his difficulties,

and to win through them or not, as the case may be. I am too old now

to be a hard-hearted author, and so it is probable that he may not

die of a broken heart. Those who don’t approve of a middle-aged

bachelor country doctor as a hero, may take the heir to Greshamsbury

in his stead, and call the book, if it so please them, “The Loves and

Adventures of Francis Newbold Gresham the Younger.”

 

And Master Frank Gresham was not ill adapted for playing the part

of a hero of this sort. He did not share his sisters’ ill-health,

and though the only boy of the family, he excelled all his sisters

in personal appearance. The Greshams from time immemorial had been

handsome. They were broad browed, blue eyed, fair haired, born with

dimples in their chins, and that pleasant, aristocratic dangerous

curl of the upper lip which can equally express good humour or scorn.

Young Frank was every inch a Gresham, and was the darling of his

father’s heart.

 

The de Courcys had never been plain. There was too much hauteur, too

much pride, we may perhaps even fairly say, too much nobility in

their gait and manners, and even in their faces, to allow of their

being considered plain; but they were not a race nurtured by Venus

or Apollo. They were tall and thin, with high cheek-bones, high

foreheads, and large, dignified, cold eyes. The de Courcy girls had

all good hair; and, as they also possessed easy manners and powers

of talking, they managed to pass in the world for beauties till they

were absorbed in the matrimonial market, and the world at large cared

no longer whether they were beauties or not. The Misses Gresham were

made in the de Courcy mould, and were not on this account the less

dear to their mother.

 

The two eldest, Augusta and Beatrice, lived, and were apparently

likely to live. The four next faded and died one after another—all

in the same sad year—and were laid in the neat, new cemetery at

Torquay. Then came a pair, born at one birth, weak, delicate, frail

little flowers, with dark hair and dark eyes, and thin, long, pale

faces, with long, bony hands, and long bony feet, whom men looked on

as fated to follow their sisters with quick steps. Hitherto, however,

they had not followed them, nor had they suffered as their sisters

had suffered; and some people at Greshamsbury attributed this to the

fact that a change had been made in the family medical practitioner.

 

Then came the youngest of the flock, she whose birth we have said was

not heralded with loud joy; for when she came into the world, four

others, with pale temples, wan, worn cheeks, and skeleton, white

arms, were awaiting permission to leave it.

 

Such was the family when, in the year 1854, the eldest son came of

age. He had been educated at Harrow, and was now still at Cambridge;

but, of course, on such a day as this he was at home. That coming of

age must be a delightful time to a young man born to inherit broad

acres and wide wealth. Those full-mouthed congratulations; those

warm prayers with which his manhood is welcomed by the grey-haired

seniors of the county; the affectionate, all but motherly caresses of

neighbouring mothers who have seen him grow up from his cradle, of

mothers who have daughters, perhaps, fair enough, and good enough,

and sweet enough even for him; the soft-spoken, half-bashful, but

tender greetings of the girls, who now, perhaps for the first time,

call him by his stern family name, instructed by instinct rather than

precept that the time has come when the familiar Charles or familiar

John must by them be laid aside; the “lucky dogs,” and hints of

silver spoons which are poured into his ears as each young compeer

slaps his back and bids him live a thousand years and then never die;

the shouting of the tenantry, the good wishes of the old farmers who

come up to wring his hand, the kisses which he gets from the farmers’

wives, and the kisses which he gives to the farmers’ daughters; all

these things must make the twenty-first birthday pleasant enough to

a young heir. To a youth, however, who feels that he is now liable

to arrest, and that he inherits no other privilege, the pleasure may

very possibly not be quite so keen.

 

The case with young Frank Gresham may be supposed to much nearer the

former than the latter; but yet the ceremony of his coming of age

was by no means like that which fate had accorded to his father. Mr

Gresham was now an embarrassed man, and though the world did not know

it, or, at any rate, did not know that he was deeply embarrassed, he

had not the heart to throw open his mansion and receive the county

with a free hand as though all things were going well with him.

 

Nothing was going well with him. Lady Arabella would allow nothing

near him or around him to be well. Everything with him now turned to

vexation; he was no longer a joyous, happy man, and the people of

East Barsetshire did not look for gala doings on a grand scale when

young Gresham came of age.

 

Gala doings, to a certain extent, there were there. It was in July,

and tables were spread under the oaks for the tenants. Tables were

spread, and meat, and beer, and wine were there, and Frank, as he

walked round and shook his guests by the hand, expressed a hope that

their relations with each other might be long, close, and mutually

advantageous.

 

We must say a few words now about the place itself. Greshamsbury

Park was a fine old English gentleman’s seat—was and is; but we can

assert it more easily in past tense, as we are speaking of it with

reference to a past time. We have spoken of Greshamsbury Park; there

was a park so called, but the mansion itself was generally known as

Greshamsbury House, and did not stand in the park. We may perhaps

best describe it by saying that the village of Greshamsbury consisted

of one long, straggling street, a mile in length, which in the centre

turned sharp round, so that one half of the street lay directly at

right angles to the other. In this angle stood Greshamsbury House,

and the gardens and grounds around it filled up the space so made.

There was an entrance with large gates at each end of the village,

and each gate was guarded by the effigies of two huge pagans with

clubs, such being the crest borne by the family; from each entrance a

broad road, quite straight, running through to a majestic avenue of

limes, led up to the house. This was built in the richest, perhaps we

should rather say in the purest, style of Tudor architecture; so much

so that, though Greshamsbury is less complete than Longleat, less

magnificent than Hatfield, it may in some sense be said to be the

finest specimen of Tudor architecture of which the country can boast.

 

It stands amid a multitude of trim gardens and stone-built terraces,

divided one from another: these to our eyes are not so attractive as