Doctor Thorne, Anthony Trollope [best book reader .txt] 📗
- Author: Anthony Trollope
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alcohol in a given time in the same localities. As a workman, indeed,
he had higher reputate even than this: he was not only a good and
very quick stone-mason, but he had also a capacity for turning other
men into good stone-masons: he had a gift of knowing what a man could
and should do; and, by degrees, he taught himself what five, and ten,
and twenty—latterly, what a thousand and two thousand men might
accomplish among them: this, also, he did with very little aid
from pen and paper, with which he was not, and never became, very
conversant. He had also other gifts and other propensities. He could
talk in a manner dangerous to himself and others; he could persuade
without knowing that he did so; and being himself an extreme
demagogue, in those noisy times just prior to the Reform Bill,
he created a hubbub in Barchester of which he himself had had no
previous conception.
Henry Thorne among his other bad qualities had one which his friends
regarded as worse than all the others, and which perhaps justified
the Ullathorne people in their severity. He loved to consort with
low people. He not only drank—that might have been forgiven—but he
drank in tap-rooms with vulgar drinkers; so said his friends, and so
said his enemies. He denied the charge as being made in the plural
number, and declared that his only low co-reveller was Roger
Scatcherd. With Roger Scatcherd, at any rate, he associated, and
became as democratic as Roger was himself. Now the Thornes of
Ullathorne were of the very highest order of Tory excellence.
Whether or not Mary Scatcherd at once accepted the offer of the
respectable tradesman, I cannot say. After the occurrence of certain
events which must here shortly be told, she declared that she never
had done so. Her brother averred that she most positively had. The
respectable tradesman himself refused to speak on the subject.
It is certain, however, that Scatcherd, who had hitherto been silent
enough about his sister in those social hours which he passed with
his gentleman friend, boasted of the engagement when it was, as he
said, made; and then boasted also of the girl’s beauty. Scatcherd, in
spite of his occasional intemperance, looked up in the world, and the
coming marriage of his sister was, he thought, suitable to his own
ambition for his family.
Henry Thorne had already heard of, and already seen, Mary Scatcherd;
but hitherto she had not fallen in the way of his wickedness. Now,
however, when he heard that she was to be decently married, the devil
tempted him to tempt her. It boots not to tell all the tale. It came
out clearly enough when all was told, that he made her most distinct
promises of marriage; he even gave her such in writing; and having
in this way obtained from her her company during some of her little
holidays—her Sundays or summer evenings—he seduced her. Scatcherd
accused him openly of having intoxicated her with drugs; and Thomas
Thorne, who took up the case, ultimately believed the charge. It
became known in Barchester that she was with child, and that the
seducer was Henry Thorne.
Roger Scatcherd, when the news first reached him, filled himself with
drink, and then swore that he would kill them both. With manly wrath,
however, he set forth, first against the man, and that with manly
weapons. He took nothing with him but his fists and a big stick as he
went in search of Henry Thorne.
The two brothers were then lodging together at a farm-house close
abutting on the town. This was not an eligible abode for a medical
practitioner; but the young doctor had not been able to settle
himself eligibly since his father’s death; and wishing to put what
constraint he could upon his brother, had so located himself. To this
farm-house came Roger Scatcherd one sultry summer evening, his anger
gleaming from his bloodshot eyes, and his rage heightened to madness
by the rapid pace at which he had run from the city, and by the
ardent spirits which were fermenting within him.
At the very gate of the farmyard, standing placidly with his
cigar in his mouth, he encountered Henry Thorne. He had thought
of searching for him through the whole premises, of demanding his
victim with loud exclamations, and making his way to him through
all obstacles. In lieu of that, there stood the man before him.
“Well, Roger, what’s in the wind?” said Henry Thorne.
They were the last words he ever spoke. He was answered by a blow
from the blackthorn. A contest ensued, which ended in Scatcherd
keeping his word—at any rate, as regarded the worst offender. How
the fatal blow on the temple was struck was never exactly determined:
one medical man said it might have been done in a fight with a
heavy-headed stick; another thought that a stone had been used; a
third suggested a stone-mason’s hammer. It seemed, however, to be
proved subsequently that no hammer was taken out, and Scatcherd
himself persisted in declaring that he had taken in his hand no
weapon but the stick. Scatcherd, however, was drunk; and even though
he intended to tell the truth, may have been mistaken. There were,
however, the facts that Thorne was dead; that Scatcherd had sworn
to kill him about an hour previously; and that he had without delay
accomplished his threat. He was arrested and tried for murder; all
the distressing circumstances of the case came out on the trial: he
was found guilty of manslaughter, and sentenced to be imprisoned for
six months. Our readers will probably think that the punishment was
too severe.
Thomas Thorne and the farmer were on the spot soon after Henry Thorne
had fallen. The brother was at first furious for vengeance against
his brother’s murderer; but, as the facts came out, as he learnt
what had been the provocation given, what had been the feelings of
Scatcherd when he left the city, determined to punish him who had
ruined his sister, his heart was changed. Those were trying days for
him. It behoved him to do what in him lay to cover his brother’s
memory from the obloquy which it deserved; it behoved him also to
save, or to assist to save, from undue punishment the unfortunate man
who had shed his brother’s blood; and it behoved him also, at least
so he thought, to look after that poor fallen one whose misfortunes
were less merited than those either of his brother or of hers.
And he was not the man to get through these things lightly, or with
as much ease as he perhaps might conscientiously have done. He would
pay for the defence of the prisoner; he would pay for the defence of
his brother’s memory; and he would pay for the poor girl’s comforts.
He would do this, and he would allow no one to help him. He stood
alone in the world, and insisted on so standing. Old Mr Thorne
of Ullathorne offered again to open his arms to him; but he had
conceived a foolish idea that his cousin’s severity had driven his
brother on to his bad career, and he would consequently accept no
kindness from Ullathorne. Miss Thorne, the old squire’s daughter—a
cousin considerably older than himself, to whom he had at one time
been much attached—sent him money; and he returned it to her under a
blank cover. He had still enough for those unhappy purposes which he
had in hand. As to what might happen afterwards, he was then mainly
indifferent.
The affair made much noise in the county, and was inquired into
closely by many of the county magistrates; by none more closely than
by John Newbold Gresham, who was then alive. Mr Gresham was greatly
taken with the energy and justice shown by Dr Thorne on the occasion;
and when the trial was over, he invited him to Greshamsbury. The
visit ended in the doctor establishing himself in that village.
We must return for a moment to Mary Scatcherd. She was saved from the
necessity of encountering her brother’s wrath, for that brother was
under arrest for murder before he could get at her. Her immediate
lot, however, was a cruel one. Deep as was her cause for anger
against the man who had so inhumanly used her, still it was natural
that she should turn to him with love rather than with aversion. To
whom else could she in such plight look for love? When, therefore,
she heard that he was slain, her heart sank within her; she turned
her face to the wall, and laid herself down to die: to die a double
death, for herself and the fatherless babe that was now quick within
her.
But, in fact, life had still much to offer, both to her and to her
child. For her it was still destined that she should, in a distant
land, be the worthy wife of a good husband, and the happy mother of
many children. For that embryo one it was destined—but that may not
be so quickly told: to describe her destiny this volume has yet to be
written.
Even in those bitterest days God tempered the wind to the shorn
lamb. Dr Thorne was by her bedside soon after the bloody tidings
had reached her, and did for her more than either her lover or her
brother could have done. When the baby was born, Scatcherd was still
in prison, and had still three months’ more confinement to undergo.
The story of her great wrongs and cruel usage was much talked of,
and men said that one who had been so injured should be regarded as
having in nowise sinned at all.
One man, at any rate, so thought. At twilight, one evening, Thorne
was surprised by a visit from a demure Barchester hardware dealer,
whom he did not remember ever to have addressed before. This was the
former lover of poor Mary Scatcherd. He had a proposal to make, and
it was this:—if Mary would consent to leave the country at once, to
leave it without notice from her brother, or talk or éclat on the
matter, he would sell all that he had, marry her, and emigrate.
There was but one condition; she must leave her baby behind her.
The hardware-man could find it in his heart to be generous, to be
generous and true to his love; but he could not be generous enough to
father the seducer’s child.
“I could never abide it, sir, if I took it,” said he; “and she,—why
in course she would always love it the best.”
In praising his generosity, who can mingle any censure for such
manifest prudence? He would still make her the wife of his bosom,
defiled in the eyes of the world as she had been; but she must be
to him the mother of his own children, not the mother of another’s
child.
And now again our doctor had a hard task to win through. He saw at
once that it was his duty to use his utmost authority to induce the
poor girl to accept such an offer. She liked the man; and here was
opened to her a course which would have been most desirable, even
before her misfortune. But it is hard to persuade a mother to part
with her first babe; harder, perhaps, when the babe had been so
fathered and so born than when the world has shone brightly on its
earliest hours. She at first refused stoutly: she sent a thousand
loves, a thousand thanks, profusest acknowledgements for his
generosity to the man who showed her that he loved her so well; but
Nature,
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