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

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 shortsighted, and a pair of eyeglasses 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 stonemason, 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 thumbnail.

“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