Doctor Thorne, Anthony Trollope [an ebook reader .TXT] 📗

And then, the doctor began a long and very useless lecture. The first object of it was to induce his ward not to get drunk at Greshamsbury; but having got so far, he went on, and did succeed in frightening his unhappy guest. Sir Louis did not possess the iron nerves of his father⁠—nerves which even brandy had not been able to subdue. The doctor spoke strongly, very strongly; spoke of quick, almost immediate death in case of further excesses; spoke to him of the certainty there would be that he could not live to dispose of his own property if he could not refrain. And thus he did frighten Sir Louis. The father he had never been able to frighten. But there are men who, though they fear death hugely, fear present suffering more; who, indeed, will not bear a moment of pain if there be any mode of escape. Sir Louis was such: he had no strength of nerve, no courage, no ability to make a resolution and keep it. He promised the doctor that he would refrain; and, as he did so, he swallowed down his cup of coffee and brandy, in which the two articles bore about equal proportions.

The doctor did, at last, make up his mind to go. Whichever way he determined, he found that he was not contented with himself. He did not like to trust Sir Louis by himself, and he did not like to show that he was angry. Still less did he like the idea of breaking bread in Lady Arabella’s house till some amends had been made to Mary. But his heart would not allow him to refuse the petition contained in the squire’s postscript, and the matter ended in his accepting the invitation.

This visit of his ward’s was, in every way, pernicious to the doctor. He could not go about his business, fearing to leave such a man alone with Mary. On the afternoon of the second day, she escaped to the parsonage for an hour or so, and then walked away among the lanes, calling on some of her old friends among the farmers’ wives. But even then, the doctor was afraid to leave Sir Louis. What could such a man do, left alone in a village like Greshamsbury? So he stayed at home, and the two together went over their accounts. The baronet was particular about his accounts, and said a good deal as to having Finnie over to Greshamsbury. To this, however, Dr. Thorne positively refused his consent.

The evening passed off better than the preceding one; at least the early part of it. Sir Louis did not get tipsy; he came up to tea, and Mary, who did not feel so keenly on the subject as her uncle, almost wished that he had done so. At ten o’clock he went to bed.

But after that new troubles came on. The doctor had gone downstairs into his study to make up some of the time which he had lost, and had just seated himself at his desk, when Janet, without announcing herself, burst into the room; and Bridget, dissolved in hysterical tears, with her apron to her eyes, appeared behind the senior domestic.

“Please, sir,” said Janet, driven by excitement much beyond her usual pace of speaking, and becoming unintentionally a little less respectful than usual, “please sir, that ’ere young man must go out of this here house; or else no respectable young ’ooman can’t stop here; no, indeed, sir; and we be sorry to trouble you, Dr. Thorne; so we be.”

“What young man? Sir Louis?” asked the doctor.

“Oh, no! he abides mostly in bed, and don’t do nothing amiss; least way not to us. ’Tan’t him, sir; but his man.”

“Man!” sobbed Bridget from behind. “He an’t no man, nor nothing like a man. If Tummas had been here, he wouldn’t have dared; so he wouldn’t.” Thomas was the groom, and, if all Greshamsbury reports were true, it was probable, that on some happy, future day, Thomas and Bridget would become one flesh and one bone.

“Please sir,” continued Janet, “there’ll be bad work here if that ’ere young man doesn’t quit this here house this very night, and I’m sorry to trouble you, doctor; and so I am. But Tom, he be given to fight a’most for nothin’. He’s hout now; but if that there young man be’s here when Tom comes home, Tom will be punching his head; I know he will.”

“He wouldn’t stand by and see a poor girl put upon; no more he wouldn’t,” said Bridget, through her tears.

After many futile inquiries, the doctor ascertained that Mr. Jonah had expressed some admiration for Bridget’s youthful charms, and had, in the absence of Janet, thrown himself at the lady’s feet in a manner which had not been altogether pleasing to her. She had defended herself stoutly and loudly, and in the middle of the row Janet had come down.

“And where is he now?” said the doctor.

“Why, sir,” said Janet, “the poor girl was so put about that she did give him one touch across the face with the rolling-pin, and he be all bloody now, in the back kitchen.” At hearing this achievement of hers thus spoken of, Bridget sobbed more hysterically than ever; but the doctor, looking at her arm as she held her apron to her face, thought in his heart that Joe must have had so much the worst of it, that there could be no possible need for the interference of Thomas the groom.

And such turned out to be the case. The bridge of Joe’s nose was broken; and the doctor had to set it for him in a little bedroom at the village public-house, Bridget having positively refused to go to bed in the same house with so dreadful a character.

“Quiet now, or I’ll be serving thee the same way; thee see I’ve found the trick of it.” The doctor could not but hear so much as he made his