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

CHAPTER XL

The Two Doctors Change Patients

 

Dr Fillgrave still continued his visits to Greshamsbury, for Lady

Arabella had not yet mustered the courage necessary for swallowing

her pride and sending once more for Dr Thorne. Nothing pleased Dr

Fillgrave more than those visits.

 

He habitually attended grander families, and richer people; but then,

he had attended them habitually. Greshamsbury was a prize taken from

the enemy; it was his rock of Gibraltar, of which he thought much

more than of any ordinary Hampshire or Wiltshire which had always

been within his own kingdom.

 

He was just starting one morning with his post-horses for

Greshamsbury, when an impudent-looking groom, with a crooked nose,

trotted up to his door. For Joe still had a crooked nose, all the

doctor’s care having been inefficacious to remedy the evil effects

of Bridget’s little tap with the rolling-pin. Joe had no written

credentials, for his master was hardly equal to writing, and

Lady Scatcherd had declined to put herself into further personal

communication with Dr Fillgrave; but he had effrontery enough to

deliver any message.

 

“Be you Dr Fillgrave?” said Joe, with one finger just raised to his

cocked hat.

 

“Yes,” said Dr Fillgrave, with one foot on the step of the carriage,

but pausing at the sight of so well-turned-out a servant. “Yes; I am

Dr Fillgrave.”

 

“Then you be to go to Boxall Hill immediately; before anywhere else.”

 

“Boxall Hill!” said the doctor, with a very angry frown.

 

“Yes; Boxall Hill: my master’s place—my master is Sir Louis

Scatcherd, baronet. You’ve heard of him, I suppose?”

 

Dr Fillgrave had not his mind quite ready for such an occasion. So he

withdrew his foot from the carriage step, and rubbing his hands one

over another, looked at his own hall door for inspiration. A single

glance at his face was sufficient to show that no ordinary thoughts

were being turned over within his breast.

 

“Well!” said Joe, thinking that his master’s name had not altogether

produced the magic effect which he had expected; remembering, also,

how submissive Greyson had always been, who, being a London doctor,

must be supposed to be a bigger man than this provincial fellow.

“Do you know as how my master is dying, very like, while you stand

there?”

 

“What is your master’s disease?” said the doctor, facing Joe, slowly,

and still rubbing his hands. “What ails him? What is the matter with

him?”

 

“Oh; the matter with him? Well, to say it out at once then, he do

take a drop too much at times, and then he has the horrors—what is

it they call it? delicious beam-ends, or something of that sort.”

 

“Oh, ah, yes; I know; and tell me, my man, who is attending him?”

 

“Attending him? why, I do, and his mother, that is, her ladyship.”

 

“Yes; but what medical attendant: what doctor?”

 

“Why, there was Greyson, in London, and—”

 

“Greyson!” and the doctor looked as though a name so medicinally

humble had never before struck the tympanum of his ear.

 

“Yes; Greyson. And then, down at what’s the name of the place, there

was Thorne.”

 

“Greshamsbury?”

 

“Yes; Greshamsbury. But he and Thorne didn’t hit it off; and so since

that he has had no one but myself.”

 

“I will be at Boxall Hill in the course of the morning,” said Dr

Fillgrave; “or, rather, you may say, that I will be there at once: I

will take it in my way.” And having thus resolved, he gave his orders

that the post-horses should make such a detour as would enable him

to visit Boxall Hill on his road. “It is impossible,” said he to

himself, “that I should be twice treated in such a manner in the same

house.”

 

He was not, however, altogether in a comfortable frame of mind as he

was driven up to the hall door. He could not but remember the smile

of triumph with which his enemy had regarded him in that hall; he

could not but think how he had returned fee-less to Barchester, and

how little he had gained in the medical world by rejecting Lady

Scatcherd’s bank-note. However, he also had had his triumphs since

that. He had smiled scornfully at Dr Thorne when he had seen him in

the Greshamsbury street; and had been able to tell, at twenty houses

through the county, how Lady Arabella had at last been obliged to

place herself in his hands. And he triumphed again when he found

himself really standing by Sir Louis Scatcherd’s bedside. As for Lady

Scatcherd, she did not even show herself. She kept in her own little

room, sending out Hannah to ask him up the stairs; and she only just

got a peep at him through the door as she heard the medical creak of

his shoes as he again descended.

 

We need say but little of his visit to Sir Louis. It mattered

nothing now, whether it was Thorne, or Greyson, or Fillgrave. And Dr

Fillgrave knew that it mattered nothing: he had skill at least for

that—and heart enough also to feel that he would fain have been

relieved from this task; would fain have left this patient in the

hands even of Dr Thorne.

 

The name which Joe had given to his master’s illness was certainly

not a false one. He did find Sir Louis “in the horrors.” If any

father have a son whose besetting sin is a passion for alcohol, let

him take his child to the room of a drunkard when possessed by “the

horrors.” Nothing will cure him if not that.

 

I will not disgust my reader by attempting to describe the poor

wretch in his misery: the sunken, but yet glaring eyes; the emaciated

cheeks; the fallen mouth; the parched, sore lips; the face, now dry

and hot, and then suddenly clammy with drops of perspiration; the

shaking hand, and all but palsied limbs; and worse than this, the

fearful mental efforts, and the struggles for drink; struggles to

which it is often necessary to give way.

 

Dr Fillgrave soon knew what was to be the man’s fate; but he did what

he might to relieve it. There, in one big, best bedroom, looking out

to the north, lay Sir Louis Scatcherd, dying wretchedly. There, in

the other big, best bedroom, looking out to the south, had died the

other baronet about a twelvemonth since, and each a victim to the

same sin. To this had come the prosperity of the house of Scatcherd!

 

And then Dr Fillgrave went on to Greshamsbury. It was a long day’s

work, both for himself and the horses; but then, the triumph of being

dragged up that avenue compensated for both the expense and the

labour. He always put on his sweetest smile as he came near the hall

door, and rubbed his hands in the most complaisant manner of which he

knew. It was seldom that he saw any of the family but Lady Arabella;

but then he desired to see none other, and when he left her in a good

humour, was quite content to take his glass of sherry and eat his

lunch by himself.

 

On this occasion, however, the servant at once asked him to go into

the dining-room, and there he found himself in the presence of Frank

Gresham. The fact was, that Lady Arabella, having at last decided,

had sent for Dr Thorne; and it had become necessary that some one

should be entrusted with the duty of informing Dr Fillgrave. That

some one must be the squire, or Frank. Lady Arabella would doubtless

have preferred a messenger more absolutely friendly to her own side

of the house; but such messenger there was none: she could not send

Mr Gazebee to see her doctor, and so, of the two evils, she chose the

least.

 

“Dr Fillgrave,” said Frank, shaking hands with him very cordially as

he came up, “my mother is so much obliged to you for all your care

and anxiety on her behalf! and, so indeed, are we all.”

 

The doctor shook hands with him very warmly. This little expression

of a family feeling on his behalf was the more gratifying, as he had

always thought that the males of the Greshamsbury family were still

wedded to that pseudo-doctor, that half-apothecary who lived in the

village.

 

“It has been awfully troublesome to you, coming over all this way, I

am sure. Indeed, money could not pay for it; my mother feels that. It

must cut up your time so much.”

 

“Not at all, Mr Gresham; not at all,” said the Barchester doctor,

rising up on his toes proudly as he spoke. “A person of your mother’s

importance, you know! I should be happy to go any distance to see

her.”

 

“Ah! but, Dr Fillgrave, we cannot allow that.”

 

“Mr Gresham, don’t mention it.”

 

“Oh, yes; but I must,” said Frank, who thought that he had done

enough for civility, and was now anxious to come to the point. “The

fact is, doctor, that we are very much obliged for what you have

done; but, for the future, my mother thinks she can trust to such

assistance as she can get here in the village.”

 

Frank had been particularly instructed to be very careful how he

mentioned Dr Thorne’s name, and, therefore, cleverly avoided it.

 

Get what assistance she wanted in the village! What words were those

that he heard? “Mr Gresham, eh—hem—perhaps I do not completely—”

Yes, alas! he had completely understood what Frank had meant that he

should understand. Frank desired to be civil, but he had no idea of

beating unnecessarily about the bush on such an occasion as this.

 

“It’s by Sir Omicron’s advice, Dr Fillgrave. You see, this man

here”—and he nodded his head towards the doctor’s house, being still

anxious not to pronounce the hideous name—“has known my mother’s

constitution for so many years.”

 

“Oh, Mr Gresham; of course, if it is wished.”

 

“Yes, Dr Fillgrave, it