Doctor Thorne - Anthony Trollope (historical books to read .txt) 📗
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to Boxall Hill. Dr Fillgrave’s professional advancement had been
sufficient to justify the establishment of a brougham, in which he
paid his ordinary visits round Barchester; but this was a special
occasion, requiring special speed, and about to produce no doubt a
special guerdon, and therefore a pair of post-horses were put into
request.
It was hardly yet nine when the postboy somewhat loudly rang the
bell at Sir Roger’s door; and then Dr Fillgrave, for the first time,
found himself in the new grand hall of Boxall Hill house.
“I’ll tell my lady,” said the servant, showing him into the grand
dining-room; and there for some fifteen minutes or twenty minutes Dr
Fillgrave walked up and down the length of the Turkey carpet all
alone.
Dr Fillgrave was not a tall man, and was perhaps rather more inclined
to corpulence than became his height. In his stocking-feet, according
to the usually received style of measurement, he was five feet five;
and he had a little round abdominal protuberance, which an inch and a
half added to the heels of his boots hardly enabled him to carry off
as well as he himself would have wished. Of this he was apparently
conscious, and it gave to him an air of not being entirely at his
ease. There was, however, a personal dignity in his demeanour, a
propriety in his gait, and an air of authority in his gestures which
should prohibit one from stigmatizing those efforts at altitude as a
failure. No doubt he did achieve much; but, nevertheless, the effort
would occasionally betray itself, and the story of the frog and the
ox would irresistibly force itself into one’s mind at those moments
when it most behoved Dr Fillgrave to be magnificent.
But if the bulgy roundness of his person and the shortness of his
legs in any way detracted from his personal importance, these
trifling defects were, he was well aware, more than atoned for by the
peculiar dignity of his countenance. If his legs were short, his face
was not; if there was any undue preponderance below the waistcoat,
all was in due symmetry above the necktie. His hair was grey, not
grizzled nor white, but properly grey; and stood up straight from off
his temples on each side with an unbending determination of purpose.
His whiskers, which were of an admirable shape, coming down and
turning gracefully at the angle of his jaw, were grey also, but
somewhat darker than his hair. His enemies in Barchester declared
that their perfect shade was produced by a leaden comb. His eyes were
not brilliant, but were very effective, and well under command. He
was rather short-sighted, and a pair of eye-glasses was always on his
nose, or in his hand. His nose was long, and well pronounced, and his
chin, also, was sufficiently prominent; but the great feature of his
face was his mouth. The amount of secret medical knowledge of which
he could give assurance by the pressure of those lips was truly
wonderful. By his lips, also, he could be most exquisitely courteous,
or most sternly forbidding. And not only could he be either the one
or the other; but he could at his will assume any shade of difference
between the two, and produce any mixture of sentiment.
When Dr Fillgrave was first shown into Sir Roger’s dining-room, he
walked up and down the room for a while with easy, jaunty step, with
his hands joined together behind his back, calculating the price
of the furniture, and counting the heads which might be adequately
entertained in a room of such noble proportions; but in seven or
eight minutes an air of impatience might have been seen to suffuse
his face. Why could he not be shown into the sick man’s room? What
necessity could there be for keeping him there, as though he were
some apothecary with a box of leeches in his pocket? He then rang
the bell, perhaps a little violently. “Does Sir Roger know that I am
here?” he said to the servant. “I’ll tell my lady,” said the man,
again vanishing.
For five minutes more he walked up and down, calculating no longer
the value of the furniture, but rather that of his own importance.
He was not wont to be kept waiting in this way; and though Sir Roger
Scatcherd was at present a great and rich man, Dr Fillgrave had
remembered him a very small and a very poor man. He now began to
think of Sir Roger as the stone-mason, and to chafe somewhat more
violently at being so kept by such a man.
When one is impatient, five minutes is as the duration of all time,
and a quarter of an hour is eternity. At the end of twenty minutes
the step of Dr Fillgrave up and down the room had become very quick,
and he had just made up his mind that he would not stay there all
day to the serious detriment, perhaps fatal injury, of his other
expectant patients. His hand was again on the bell, and was about to
be used with vigour, when the door opened and Lady Scatcherd entered.
The door opened and Lady Scatcherd entered; but she did so very
slowly, as though she were afraid to come into her own dining-room.
We must go back a little and see how she had been employed during
those twenty minutes.
“Oh, laws!” Such had been her first exclamation on hearing that the
doctor was in the dining-room. She was standing at the time with her
housekeeper in a small room in which she kept her linen and jam,
and in which, in company with the same housekeeper, she spent the
happiest moments of her life.
“Oh laws! now, Hannah, what shall we do?”
“Send ‘un up at once to master, my lady! let John take ‘un up.”
“There’ll be such a row in the house, Hannah; I know there will.”
“But sure-ly didn’t he send for ‘un? Let the master have the row
himself, then; that’s what I’d do, my lady,” added Hannah, seeing
that her ladyship still stood trembling in doubt, biting her
thumb-nail.
“You couldn’t go up to the master yourself, could you now, Hannah?”
said Lady Scatcherd in her most persuasive tone.
“Why no,” said Hannah, after a little deliberation; “no, I’m afeard I
couldn’t.”
“Then I must just face it myself.” And up went the wife to tell her
lord that the physician for whom he had sent had come to attend his
bidding.
In the interview which then took place the baronet had not indeed
been violent, but he had been very determined. Nothing on earth, he
said, should induce him to see Dr Fillgrave and offend his dear old
friend Dr Thorne.
“But Roger,” said her ladyship, half crying, or rather pretending to
cry in her vexation, “what shall I do with the man? How shall I get
him out of the house?”
“Put him under the pump,” said the baronet; and he laughed his
peculiar low guttural laugh, which told so plainly of the havoc which
brandy had made in his throat.
“That’s nonsense, Roger; you know I can’t put him under the pump. Now
you are ill, and you’d better see him just for five minutes. I’ll
make it all right with Dr Thorne.”
“I’ll be d–- if I do, my lady.” All the people about Boxall Hill
called poor Lady Scatcherd “my lady” as if there was some excellent
joke in it; and, so, indeed, there was.
“You know you needn’t mind nothing he says, nor yet take nothing he
sends: and I’ll tell him not to come no more. Now do ‘ee see him,
Roger.”
But there was no coaxing Roger over now, or indeed ever: he was a
wilful, headstrong, masterful man; a tyrant always though never
a cruel one; and accustomed to rule his wife and household as
despotically as he did his gangs of workmen. Such men it is not easy
to coax over.
“You go down and tell him I don’t want him, and won’t see him, and
that’s an end of it. If he chose to earn his money, why didn’t he
come yesterday when he was sent for? I’m well now, and don’t want
him; and what’s more, I won’t have him. Winterbones, lock the door.”
So Winterbones, who during this interview had been at work at his
little table, got up to lock the door, and Lady Scatcherd had no
alternative but to pass through it before the last edict was obeyed.
Lady Scatcherd, with slow step, went downstairs and again sought
counsel with Hannah, and the two, putting their heads together,
agreed that the only cure for the present evil was to found in a
good fee. So Lady Scatcherd, with a five-pound note in her hand, and
trembling in every limb, went forth to encounter the august presence
of Dr Fillgrave.
As the door opened, Dr Fillgrave dropped the bell-rope which was in
his hand, and bowed low to the lady. Those who knew the doctor well,
would have known from his bow that he was not well pleased; it was
as much as though he said, “Lady Scatcherd, I am your most obedient
humble servant; at any rate it appears that it is your pleasure to
treat me as such.”
Lady Scatcherd did not understand all this; but she perceived at once
that the man was angry.
“I hope Sir Roger does not find himself worse,” said the doctor. “The
morning is getting on; shall I step up and see him?”
“Hem! ha! oh! Why, you see, Dr Fillgrave, Sir Roger finds hisself
vastly better this morning, vastly so.”
“I’m very glad to hear it; but as the morning is getting on, shall I
step up to see Sir Roger?”
“Why, Dr Fillgrave, sir, you see, he finds hisself so much hisself
this morning, that he a’most thinks it would be a shame to trouble
you.”
“A shame to trouble me!” This was the sort of shame which Dr
Fillgrave did not at all comprehend. “A shame to trouble me! Why Lady
Scatcherd—”
Lady Scatcherd saw that she had nothing for it but to make the whole
matter intelligible. Moreover, seeing that she appreciated more
thoroughly the smallness of Dr Fillgrave’s person than she did the
peculiar greatness of his demeanour, she began to be a shade less
afraid of him than she had thought she should have been.
“Yes, Dr Fillgrave; you see, when a man like he gets well, he can’t
abide the idea of doctors: now, yesterday, he was all for sending for
you; but to-day he comes to hisself, and don’t seem to want no doctor
at all.”
Then did Dr Fillgrave seem to grow out of his boots, so suddenly did
he take upon himself sundry modes of expansive attitude;—to grow out
of his boots and to swell upwards, till his angry eyes almost looked
down on Lady Scatcherd, and each erect hair bristled up towards the
heavens.
“This is very singular, very singular, Lady Scatcherd; very singular,
indeed; very singular; quite unusual. I have come here from
Barchester, at some considerable inconvenience, at some very
considerable inconvenience, I may say, to my regular patients;
and—and—and—I don’t know that anything so very singular ever
occurred to me before.” And then Dr Fillgrave, with a compression of
his lips which almost made the poor woman sink into the ground, moved
towards the door.
Then Lady Scatcherd bethought her of her great panacea. “It isn’t
about the money, you know, doctor,” said she; “of course Sir Roger
don’t expect you to come here with
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