Doctor Thorne - Anthony Trollope (e novels to read TXT) 📗

marrying at present; then he suggested that it might be better to postpone the question till the season’s hunting should be over; he declared that he could not visit Courcy Castle till he got a new suit of clothes home from the tailor; and ultimately remembered that he had a particular engagement to go fly-fishing with Mr. Oriel on that day week.

None, however, of these valid reasons were sufficiently potent to turn the countess from her point.

“Nonsense, Frank,” said she, “I wonder that you can talk of fly-fishing when the property of Greshamsbury is at stake. You will go with Augusta and myself to Courcy Castle tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow, aunt!” he said, in the tone in which a condemned criminal might make his ejaculation on hearing that a very near day had been named for his execution. “Tomorrow!”

“Yes, we return tomorrow, and shall be happy to have your company. My friends, including Miss Dunstable, come on Thursday. I am quite sure you will like Miss Dunstable. I have settled all that with your mother, so we need say nothing further about it. And now, good night, Frank.”

Frank, finding that there was nothing more to be said, took his departure, and went out to look for Mary. But Mary had gone home with Janet half an hour since, so he betook himself to his sister Beatrice.

“Beatrice,” said he, “I am to go to Courcy Castle tomorrow.”

“So I heard mamma say.”

“Well; I only came of age today, and I will not begin by running counter to them. But I tell you what, I won’t stay above a week at Courcy Castle for all the de Courcys in Barsetshire. Tell me, Beatrice, did you ever hear of a Miss Dunstable?”

IX Sir Roger Scatcherd

Enough has been said in this narrative to explain to the reader that Roger Scatcherd, who was whilom a drunken stonemason in Barchester, and who had been so prompt to avenge the injury done to his sister, had become a great man in the world. He had become a contractor, first for little things, such as half a mile or so of a railway embankment, or three or four canal bridges, and then a contractor for great things, such as Government hospitals, locks, docks, and quays, and had latterly had in his hands the making of whole lines of railway.

He had been occasionally in partnership with one man for one thing, and then with another for another; but had, on the whole, kept his interests to himself, and now at the time of our story, he was a very rich man.

And he had acquired more than wealth. There had been a time when the Government wanted the immediate performance of some extraordinary piece of work, and Roger Scatcherd had been the man to do it. There had been some extremely necessary bit of a railway to be made in half the time that such work would properly demand, some speculation to be incurred requiring great means and courage as well, and Roger Scatcherd had been found to be the man for the time. He was then elevated for the moment to the dizzy pinnacle of a newspaper hero, and became one of those “whom the king delighteth to honour.” He went up one day to kiss Her Majesty’s hand, and come down to his new grand house at Boxall Hill, Sir Roger Scatcherd, Bart.

“And now, my lady,” said he, when he explained to his wife the high state to which she had been called by his exertions and the Queen’s prerogative, “let’s have a bit of dinner, and a drop of som’at hot.” Now the drop of som’at hot signified a dose of alcohol sufficient to send three ordinary men very drunk to bed.

While conquering the world Roger Scatcherd had not conquered his old bad habits. Indeed, he was the same man at all points that he had been when formerly seen about the streets of Barchester with his stonemason’s apron tucked up round his waist. The apron he had abandoned, but not the heavy prominent thoughtful brow, with the wildly flashing eye beneath it. He was still the same good companion, and still also the same hardworking hero. In this only had he changed, that now he would work, and some said equally well, whether he were drunk or sober. Those who were mostly inclined to make a miracle of him⁠—and there was a school of worshippers ready to adore him as their idea of a divine, superhuman, miracle-moving, inspired prophet⁠—declared that his wondrous work was best done, his calculations most quickly and most truly made, that he saw with most accurate eye into the far-distant balance of profit and loss, when he was under the influence of the rosy god. To these worshippers his breakings-out, as his periods of intemperance were called in his own set, were his moments of peculiar inspiration⁠—his divine frenzies, in which he communicated most closely with those deities who preside over trade transactions; his Eleusinian mysteries, to approach him in which was permitted only to a few of the most favoured.

“Scatcherd has been drunk this week past,” they would say one to another, when the moment came at which it was to be decided whose offer should be accepted for constructing a harbour to hold all the commerce of Lancashire, or to make a railway from Bombay to Canton. “Scatcherd has been drunk this week past; I am told that he has taken over three gallons of brandy.” And then they felt sure that none but Scatcherd would be called upon to construct the dock or make the railway.

But be this as it may, be it true or false that Sir Roger was most efficacious when in his cups, there can be no doubt that he could not wallow for a week in brandy, six or seven times every year, without in a great measure injuring, and permanently injuring, the outward man. Whatever immediate effect such symposiums might have on