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

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“It is so cruel,” Beatrice would say; “so very, very, cruel. You

would have suited him in every way.”

 

“Nonsense, Trichy; I should have suited him in no possible way at

all; nor he me.”

 

“Oh, but you would—exactly. Papa loves you so well.”

 

“And mamma; that would have been so nice.”

 

“Yes; and mamma, too—that is, had you had a fortune,” said the

daughter, naïvely. “She always liked you personally, always.”

 

“Did she?”

 

“Always. And we all love you so.”

 

“Especially Lady Alexandrina.”

 

“That would not have signified, for Frank cannot endure the de

Courcys himself.”

 

“My dear, it does not matter one straw whom your brother can endure

or not endure just at present. His character is to be formed, and his

tastes, and his heart also.”

 

“Oh, Mary!—his heart.”

 

“Yes, his heart; not the fact of his having a heart. I think he has a

heart; but he himself does not yet understand it.”

 

“Oh, Mary! you do not know him.”

 

Such conversations were not without danger to poor Mary’s comfort.

It came soon to be the case that she looked rather for this sort

of sympathy from Beatrice, than for Miss Oriel’s pleasant but less

piquant gaiety.

 

So the days of the doctor’s absence were passed, and so also the

first week after his return. During this week it was almost daily

necessary that the squire should be with him. The doctor was now the

legal holder of Sir Roger’s property, and, as such, the holder also

of all the mortgages on Mr Gresham’s property; and it was natural

that they should be much together. The doctor would not, however,

go up to Greshamsbury on any other than medical business; and it

therefore became necessary that the squire should be a good deal at

the doctor’s house.

 

Then the Lady Arabella became unhappy in her mind. Frank, it was

true, was away at Cambridge, and had been successfully kept out

of Mary’s way since the suspicion of danger had fallen upon Lady

Arabella’s mind. Frank was away, and Mary was systematically

banished, with due acknowledgement from all the powers in

Greshamsbury. But this was not enough for Lady Arabella as long as

her daughter still habitually consorted with the female culprit, and

as long as her husband consorted with the male culprit. It seemed to

Lady Arabella at this moment as though, in banishing Mary from the

house, she had in effect banished herself from the most intimate of

the Greshamsbury social circles. She magnified in her own mind the

importance of the conferences between the girls, and was not without

some fear that the doctor might be talking the squire over into very

dangerous compliance.

 

She resolved, therefore, on another duel with the doctor. In the

first she had been pre-eminently and unexpectedly successful. No

young sucking dove could have been more mild than that terrible enemy

whom she had for years regarded as being too puissant for attack. In

ten minutes she had vanquished him, and succeeded in banishing both

him and his niece from the house without losing the value of his

services. As is always the case with us, she had begun to despise

the enemy she had conquered, and to think that the foe, once beaten,

could never rally.

 

Her object was to break off all confidential intercourse between

Beatrice and Mary, and to interrupt, as far as she could do it, that

between the doctor and the squire. This, it may be said, could be

more easily done by skilful management within her own household. She

had, however, tried that and failed. She had said much to Beatrice as

to the imprudence of her friendship with Mary, and she had done this

purposely before the squire; injudiciously however,—for the squire

had immediately taken Mary’s part, and had declared that he had no

wish to see a quarrel between his family and that of the doctor; that

Mary Thorne was in every way a good girl, and an eligible friend for

his own child; and had ended by declaring, that he would not have

Mary persecuted for Frank’s fault. This had not been the end, nor

nearly the end of what had been said on the matter at Greshamsbury;

but the end, when it came, came in this wise, that Lady Arabella

determined to say a few words to the doctor as to the expediency

of forbidding familiar intercourse between Mary and any of the

Greshamsbury people.

 

With this view Lady Arabella absolutely bearded the lion in his den,

the doctor in his shop. She had heard that both Mary and Beatrice

were to pass a certain afternoon at the parsonage, and took that

opportunity of calling at the doctor’s house. A period of many years

had passed since she had last so honoured that abode. Mary, indeed,

had been so much one of her own family that the ceremony of calling

on her had never been thought necessary; and thus, unless Mary had

been absolutely ill, there would have been nothing to bring her

ladyship to the house. All this she knew would add to the importance

of the occasion, and she judged it prudent to make the occasion as

important as it might well be.

 

She was so far successful that she soon found herself tête-à-tête

with the doctor in his own study. She was no whit dismayed by the

pair of human thigh-bones which lay close to his hand, and which,

when he was talking in that den of his own, he was in the constant

habit of handling with much energy; nor was she frightened out of her

propriety even by the little child’s skull which grinned at her from

off the chimney-piece.

 

“Doctor,” she said, as soon as the first complimentary greetings were

over, speaking in her kindest and most would-be-confidential tone,

“Doctor, I am still uneasy about that boy of mine, and I have thought

it best to come and see you at once, and tell you freely what I

think.”

 

The doctor bowed, and said that he was very sorry that she should

have any cause for uneasiness about his young friend Frank.

 

“Indeed, I am very uneasy, doctor; and having, as I do have, such

reliance on your prudence, and such perfect confidence in your

friendship, I have thought it best to come and speak to you openly:”

thereupon the Lady Arabella paused, and the doctor bowed again.

 

“Nobody knows so well as you do the dreadful state of the squire’s

affairs.”

 

“Not so very dreadful; not so very dreadful,” said the doctor,

mildly: “that is, as far as I know.”

 

“Yes they are, doctor; very dreadful; very dreadful indeed. You know

how much he owes to this young man: I do not, for the squire never

tells anything to me; but I know that it is a very large sum of

money; enough to swamp the estate and ruin Frank. Now I call that

very dreadful.”

 

“No, no, not ruin him, Lady Arabella; not ruin him, I hope.”

 

“However, I did not come to talk to you about that. As I said before,

I know nothing of the squire’s affairs, and, as a matter of course,

I do not ask you to tell me. But I am sure you will agree with me in

this, that, as a mother, I cannot but be interested about my only

son,” and Lady Arabella put her cambric handkerchief to her eyes.

 

“Of course you are; of course you are,” said the doctor; “and, Lady

Arabella, my opinion of Frank is such, that I feel sure that he

will do well;” and, in his energy, Dr Thorne brandished one of the

thigh-bones almost in the lady’s face.

 

“I hope he will; I am sure I hope he will. But, doctor, he has such

dangers to contend with; he is so warm and impulsive that I fear

his heart will bring him into trouble. Now, you know, unless Frank

marries money he is lost.”

 

The doctor made no answer to this last appeal, but as he sat and

listened a slight frown came across his brow.

 

“He must marry money, doctor. Now we have, you see, with your

assistance, contrived to separate him from dear Mary—”

 

“With my assistance, Lady Arabella! I have given no assistance, nor

have I meddled in the matter; nor will I.”

 

“Well, doctor, perhaps not meddled; but you agreed with me, you know,

that the two young people had been imprudent.”

 

“I agreed to no such thing, Lady Arabella; never, never. I not only

never agreed that Mary had been imprudent, but I will not agree to it

now, and will not allow any one to assert it in my presence without

contradicting it:” and then the doctor worked away at the thigh-bones

in a manner that did rather alarm her ladyship.

 

“At any rate, you thought that the young people had better be kept

apart.”

 

“No; neither did I think that: my niece, I felt sure, was safe from

danger. I knew that she would do nothing that would bring either her

or me to shame.”

 

“Not to shame,” said the lady, apologetically, as it were, using the

word perhaps not exactly in the doctor’s sense.

 

“I felt no alarm for her,” continued the doctor, “and desired no

change. Frank is your son, and it is for you to look to him. You

thought proper to do so by desiring Mary to absent herself from

Greshamsbury.”

 

“Oh, no, no, no!” said Lady Arabella.

 

“But you did, Lady Arabella; and as Greshamsbury is your home,

neither I nor my niece had any ground of complaint. We acquiesced,

not without much suffering, but we did acquiesce; and you, I think,

can have no ground of complaint against us.”

 

Lady Arabella had hardly expected that the doctor would reply to her

mild and conciliatory exordium with so much sternness. He had yielded

so easily to her on the former occasion. She did not comprehend that

when she uttered her sentence of exile against Mary, she had given

an order which she had the power of enforcing; but that obedience to

that order had now placed Mary altogether beyond her jurisdiction.

She was, therefore, a little surprised, and for a few moments

overawed by the doctor’s manner; but she soon recovered herself,

remembering, doubtless, that fortune favours none but the brave.

 

“I make no complaint, Dr Thorne,” she said, after assuming a tone

more befitting a de Courcy than that hitherto used, “I make no

complaint either as regards you or Mary.”

 

“You are very kind, Lady Arabella.”

 

“But I think that it is my duty to put a stop, a peremptory stop to

anything like a love affair between my son and your niece.”

 

“I have not the least objection in life. If there is such a love

affair, put a stop to it—that is, if you have the power.”

 

Here the doctor was doubtless imprudent. But he had begun to think

that he had yielded sufficiently to the lady; and he had begun to

resolve, also, that though it would not become him to encourage even

the idea of such a marriage, he would make Lady Arabella understand

that he thought his niece quite good enough for her son, and that

the match, if regarded as imprudent, was to be regarded as equally

imprudent on both sides. He would not suffer that Mary and her heart

and feelings and interest should be altogether postponed to those

of the young heir; and, perhaps, he was unconsciously encouraged in

this determination by the reflection that Mary herself might perhaps

become a young heiress.

 

“It is my