Dr Thorne - Anthony Trollope [75]
CHAPTER X
Sir Roger’s Will
DR THORNE left the room and went downstairs, being fully aware that he could not leave the house without having some communication with Lady Scatcherd. He was no sooner within the passage than he heard the sick man’s bell ring violently; and then the servant, passing him on the staircase, received orders to send a mounted messenger immediately to Barchester. Dr Fillgrave was to be summoned to come as quickly as possible to the sick man’s room, and Mr Winterboncs was to be sent up to write the note.
Sir Roger was quite right in supposing that there would be some words between the doctor and her ladyship. How, indeed, was the doctor to get out of the house without such, let him wish it ever so much? There were words; and these were protracted, while the doctor’s cob was being ordered round, till very many were uttered which the contractor would probably have regarded as nonsense.
Lady Scatcherd was no fit associate for the wives of English baronets; – was no doubt by education and manners much better fitted to sit in their servants’ halls; but not on that account was she a bad wife or a bad woman. She was painfully, fearfully anxious for that husband of hers, whom she honoured and worshipped, as it behoved her to do, above all other men. She was fearfully anxious as to his life, and faithfully believed, that if any man could prolong it, it was that old and faithful friend whom she had known to be true to her lord since their early married troubles.
When, therefore, she found that he had been dismissed, and that a stranger was to be sent for in his place, her heart sank low within her.
‘But, doctor,’ she said, with her apron up to her eyes, ‘you ain’t going to leave him, are you?’
Dr Thorne did not find it easy to explain to her ladyship that medical etiquette would not permit him to remain in attendance on her husband, after he had been dismissed and another physician called in his place.
‘Etiquette!’ said she, crying. ‘What’s etiquette to do with it when a man is a-killing hisself with brandy?’
‘Fillgrave will forbid that quite as strongly as I can do.’
‘Fillgrave!’ said she. ‘Fiddlestick! Fillgrave, indeed!’
Dr Thorne could almost have embraced her for the strong feeling of thorough confidence on the one side, and thorough distrust on the other, which she contrived to throw into those few words.
‘I’ll tell you what, doctor; I won’t let the messenger go. I’ll bear the brunt of it. He can’t do much now he ain’t up, you know. I’ll stop the boy; we won’t have no Fillgraves here.’
This, however, was a step to which Dr Thorne would not assent. He endeavoured to explain to the anxious wife, that after what had passed he could not tender his medical services till they were again asked for.
‘But you can slip in as a friend, you know; and then by degrees you can come round him, eh? can’t you now, doctor? And as to the payment –’
All that Dr Thorne said on the subject may easily be imagined. And in this way, and in partaking of the lunch which was forced upon him, an hour had nearly passed between his leaving Sir Roger’s bedroom and putting his foot into the stirrup. But no sooner had the cob begun to move on the gravel-sweep before the house, than one of the upper windows opened, and the doctor was summoned to another conference with the sick man.
‘He says you are to come back, whether or no,’ said Mr Winterbones, screeching out of the window, and putting all his emphasis on the last words.
‘Thorne! Thorne! Thorne!’ shouted the sick man from his sickbed, so loudly that the doctor heard him, seated as he was on horseback out before the house.
‘You’re to come back, whether or no,’ repeated Winterbones, with more emphasis, evidently conceiving that there was a strength of injunction in that ‘whether or no’ which would be found quite invincible.
Whether actuated by these magic words, or by some internal process of thought, we will not say; but the doctor did slowly, and as though unwillingly, dismount again from