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

“A prisoner! no, surely not.”

“It seems very much like it at present. Your servant here⁠—that old woman⁠—takes it upon her to say she’ll do nothing without your orders.”

“Well; she’s right there.”

“Right! I don’t know what you call right; but I won’t stand it. You are not going to make a child of me, Dr. Thorne; so you need not think it.”

And then there was a long quarrel between them, and but an indifferent reconciliation. The baronet said that he would go to Boxall Hill, and was vehement in his intention to do so because the doctor opposed it. He had not, however, as yet ferreted out the squire, or given a bit of his mind to Mr. Gazebee, and it behoved him to do this before he took himself off to his own country mansion. He ended, therefore, by deciding to go on the next day but one.

“Let it be so, if you are well enough,” said the doctor.

“Well enough!” said the other, with a sneer. “There’s nothing to make me ill that I know of. It certainly won’t be drinking too much here.”

On the next day, Sir Louis was in a different mood, and in one more distressing for the doctor to bear. His compelled abstinence from intemperate drinking had, no doubt, been good for him; but his mind had so much sunk under the pain of the privation, that his state was piteous to behold. He had cried for his servant, as a child cries for its nurse, till at last the doctor, moved to pity, had himself gone out and brought the man in from the public-house. But when he did come, Joe was of but little service to his master, as he was altogether prevented from bringing him either wine or spirits; and when he searched for the liqueur-case, he found that even that had been carried away.

“I believe you want me to die,” he said, as the doctor, sitting by his bedside, was trying, for the hundredth time, to make him understand that he had but one chance of living.

The doctor was not the least irritated. It would have been as wise to be irritated by the want of reason in a dog.

“I am doing what I can to save your life,” he said calmly; “but, as you said just now, I have no power over you. As long as you are able to move and remain in my house, you certainly shall not have the means of destroying yourself. You will be very wise to stay here for a week or ten days: a week or ten days of healthy living might, perhaps, bring you round.”

Sir Louis again declared that the doctor wished him to die, and spoke of sending for his attorney, Finnie, to come to Greshamsbury to look after him.

“Send for him if you choose,” said the doctor. “His coming will cost you three or four pounds, but can do no other harm.”

“And I will send for Fillgrave,” threatened the baronet. “I’m not going to die here like a dog.”

It was certainly hard upon Dr. Thorne that he should be obliged to entertain such a guest in the house;⁠—to entertain him, and foster him, and care for him, almost as though he were a son. But he had no alternative; he had accepted the charge from Sir Roger, and he must go through with it. His conscience, moreover, allowed him no rest in this matter: it harassed him day and night, driving him on sometimes to great wretchedness. He could not love this incubus that was on his shoulders; he could not do other than be very far from loving him. Of what use or value was he to anyone? What could the world make of him that would be good, or he of the world? Was not an early death his certain fate? The earlier it might be, would it not be the better?

Were he to linger on yet for two years longer⁠—and such a space of life was possible for him⁠—how great would be the mischief that he might do; nay, certainly would do! Farewell then to all hopes for Greshamsbury, as far as Mary was concerned. Farewell then to that dear scheme which lay deep in the doctor’s heart, that hope that he might, in his niece’s name, give back to the son the lost property of the father. And might not one year⁠—six months be as fatal. Frank, they all said, must marry money; and even he⁠—he the doctor himself, much as he despised the idea for money’s sake⁠—even he could not but confess that Frank, as the heir to an old, but grievously embarrassed property, had no right to marry, at his early age, a girl without a shilling. Mary, his niece, his own child, would probably be the heiress of this immense wealth; but he could not tell this to Frank; no, nor to Frank’s father while Sir Louis was yet alive. What, if by so doing he should achieve this marriage for his niece, and that then Sir Louis should live to dispose of his own? How then would he face the anger of Lady Arabella?

“I will never hanker after a dead man’s shoes, neither for myself nor for another,” he had said to himself a hundred times; and as often did he accuse himself of doing so. One path, however, was plainly open before him. He would keep his peace as to the will; and would use such efforts as he might use for a son of his own loins to preserve the life that was so valueless. His wishes, his hopes, his thoughts, he could not control; but his conduct was at his own disposal.

“I say, doctor, you don’t really think that I’m going to die?” Sir Louis said, when Dr. Thorne again visited him.

“I don’t think at all; I am sure you will kill yourself if you continue to live as you have lately done.”

“But suppose I