 1. The Greshams of Greshamsbury Before the reader is introduced to the modest country medical practitioner, who is to be the chief personage of the following tale, it will be well that he should be made acquainted with some particulars as to the locality in which and the neighbours among whom our doctor followed his profession. There is a county in the west of England, not so full of life indeed, nor so widely spoken of as some of its manufacturing Leviathan brethren in the north, but which is nevertheless very dear to those who know it well, its green pastures, its waving wheat, its deep and shady and, let us add, dirty lanes, its paths and styles, its tawny coloured well-built rural churches, its avenues of beaches and frequent Tudor mansions, its constant county hunt, its social graces and the general air of clanship which pervades it, has made it to its own inhabitants a favoured land of goshen. It is purely agricultural, agricultural in its produce, agricultural in its poor and agricultural in its pleasures. There are towns in it, of course, depots from whence are brought seeds and groceries, ribbons and fire shovels, in which markets are held and county balls are carried on, which return members to Parliament generally in spite of reform bills past, present and coming in accordance with the dictates of some neighbouring land magnet. From whence emanate the country postman and where is located the supply of post horses necessary for county visitings, but these towns add nothing to the importance of the county. They consist, with the exception of the Assized Town, of dull, all but death-like single streets. Each possesses two pumps, three hotels, ten shops, fifteen beer houses, a beetle and a marketplace. Indeed, the town population of the county reckons for nothing when the importance of the county is discussed, with the exception, as before said, of the Assized Town, which is also a cathedral city. Herein is a clerical aristocracy, which is certainly not without its due weight. A resident bishop, a resident dean, an arch-deacon, three or four resident preventaries, and all their numerous chaplains, vickers, and ecclesiastical satellites, do make up a society sufficiently powerful to be counted as something by the county's squierarchy. In other respects, the greatness of Barsicher depends wholly on the landed powers. Barsicher, however, is not now so essentially one whole as it was before the reform bill divided it. There is, in these days, an east Barsicher, and there is a west Barsicher, and people conversant with Barsicher-doings declare that they can already decipher some difference of feeling, some division of interests. The eastern moiety of the county is more purely conservative than the western. There is, or was, a taint of pelism in the latter, and then, too, the residence of two such great Whig magnets, as the Duke of Omnium and the Earl de Courcy in that locality, in some degree overshadows, and renders less influential the gentlemen who live near them. It is to east Barsicher that we are called, when the division above Spokanov was first contemplated, in those stormy days in which gallant men were still combating reform ministers, if not with hope, still with spirit, the battle was fought by none more bravely than by John Newbold Gresham of Greshamsbury, the member for Barsicher. Fate, however, and the Duke of Wellington were adverse, and the following parliament, John Newbold Gresham, was only member for east Barsicher. Whether or not it was true, as stated at the time, that the aspect of the men with whom he was called on to associate at St. Stephen's broke his heart, it is not for us now to inquire. It is certainly true that he did not live to see the first year of the reformed parliament brought to a close. The then Mr. Gresham was not an old man at the time of his death, and his eldest son, Francis Newbold Gresham, was a very young man, but not withstanding his youth, and not withstanding other grounds of objection which stood in the way of such preferment, and which must be explained, he was chosen in his father's place. The father's services had been too recent, too well appreciated, too thoroughly in unison with the feelings of those around him, to allow of any other choice, and in this way young Frank Gresham found himself member for east Barsicher, although the very men who elected him knew that they had but slender ground for trusting him with their suffragies. Frank Gresham, though then only twenty-four years of age, was a married man and a father. He had already chosen a wife, and by his choice had given much ground of distrust to the men of east Barsicher. He had married no other than Lady Arabella de Coursy, the sister of the great Whig Earl who lived at Coursy Castle in the west. That Earl, who not only voted for the reform bill, but had been infamously active in bringing over other young peers so to vote, and whose name, therefore, stank in the nostrils of the staunch Tory squires of the county. Not only had Frank Gresham so wedded, but having thus him properly and unpatriotically chosen a wife, he had added to his sins by becoming recklessly intimate with his wife's relations. It is true that he still called himself a Tory, belonged to the club of which his father had been one of the most honoured members, and, in the days of the Great Battle, got his head broken in a row on the right side. But, nevertheless, it was felt by the good men true and blue of east Barsicher, that a constant sojourner at Coursy Castle could not be regarded as a consistent Tory. When, however, his father died, that broken head served him in good stead. His sufferings in the cause were made the most of. These, in unison with his father's merits, turned the scale, and it was accordingly decided, at a meeting held at the Georgian Dragon at Barchester, that Frank Gresham should fill his father's shoes. But Frank Gresham could not fill his father's shoes. They were too big for him. He did become member for east Barsicher, but he was such a member, so lukewarm, so indifferent, so prone to associate with the enemies of the good cause, so little willing to fight the good fight, that he soon disgusted those who most dearly loved the memory of the old squire. To Coursy Castle in those days had great allurements for a young man, and all those allurements were made the most of to win over young Gresham. His wife, who was a year or too older than himself, was a fashionable woman, with thorough wig tastes and aspirations, such as became the daughter of a great wig earl. She cared for politics, or thought that she cared for them, more than her husband did. For a month or two previous to her engagement, she had been attached to the court, and had been made to believe that much of the policy of England's rulers depended on the political intrigues of England's women. She was one who would feign be doing something, if she only knew how. And the first important attempt she made was to turn her respectable young Tory husband into a second-rate wig-bantling. As this lady's character will, it is hoped, show itself in the following pages, we need not now describe it more closely. It is not a bad thing to be a son-in-law to a potent earl, member of Parliament for a county, and a possessor of a fine old English seat, and a fine old English fortune. As a very young man, Frank Gresham found the life to which he was thus introduced agreeable enough. He consoled himself as best he might for the blue looks with which he was greeted by his own party, and took his revenge by consulting more thoroughly than ever with his political adversaries. Foolishly, like a foolish moth, he flew to the bright light. And like the moths, of course, he burnt his wings. Early in 1833 he had become a member of Parliament, and in the autumn of 1834 the dissolution came. Young members of three or four and twenty do not think much of dissolutions, forget the fancies of their constituents, and are too proud of the present to calculate much as to the future. So it was with Mr. Gresham. His father had been member for Barsicher all his life, and he looked forward to similar prosperity as though it were part of his inheritance. But he failed to take any of the steps which had secured his father's seat. In the autumn of 1834 the dissolution came, and Frank Gresham, with his honourable lady wife and all the decoruses at his back, found that he had mortally offended the county. To his great disgust another candidate was brought forward as a fellow to his late colleague, and though he manfully fought the battle, and spent ten thousand pounds in the contest, he could not recover his position. A high Tory, with a great wig interest back him, is never a popular person in England. No one can trust him, though there may be those who are willing to place him untrusted in high positions. Such was the case with Mr. Gresham. There were many who were willing for family considerations to keep him in Parliament, but no one thought that he was fit to be there. The consequences were that a bitter and expensive contest ensued. Frank Gresham, when twitted with being a wig, foreswore that a coursey family, and then, when ridiculed as having been thrown over by the Tories, foreswore his father's old friends. So between the two stools he fell to the ground, and, as a politician, he never again rose to his feet. He never again rose to his feet, but twice again he made violent efforts to do so. Elections in East Barsicher, from various causes, came quick upon each other in those days, and before he was eight and twenty years of age, Mr. Gresham had three times contested the county, and been three times beaten. To speak the truth of him, his own spirit would have been satisfied with the loss of the first ten thousand pounds. But Lady Arabella was made of higher metal. She had married a man with a fine place and a fine fortune, but she had nevertheless married a commoner, and had, in so far, derogated from her high birth. She felt that her husband should be, by rights, a member of the House of Lords. But if not, that it was at least essential that he should have a seat in the lower chamber. She would, by degrees, sink into nothing if she allowed herself to sit down the mere wife of a mere county squire. Thus instigated, Mr. Gresham repeated the useless contest three times, and repeated it each time at a serious cost. He lost his money, Lady Arabella lost her temper, and things at Greshamsbury went on by no means as prosperously as they had done in the days of the Old Squire. In the first twelve years of their marriage children came fast into the nursery at Greshamsbury. The first that was born was a boy, and in those happy Halcyon days when the Old Squire was still alive, great was the joy at the birth of an heir to Greshamsbury. Bonfires gleamed through the countryside, oxen were roasted whole, and the customary paraphernalia of joy, usual to rich Britons on such occasions, were gone through with wondrous ecla. But when the tenth baby, and the ninth little girl, was brought into the world, the outward show of joy was not so great. Then other troubles came on. Some of these little girls were sickly, some very sickly. Lady Arabella had her faults, and they were such as were extremely detrimental to her husband's happiness and her own. But that of being an indifferent mother was not among them. She had worried her husband daily for years because he was not in Parliament. She had worried him because he would not furnish the house in Portman Square. She had worried him because he objected to have more people every winter at Greshamsbury Park than the house would hold. But now she changed her tune and worried him because Selena coughed, because Helena was hectic, because poor Sophie's spine was weak, and Matilda's appetite was gone. Worrying from such causes was pardonable, it will be said, so it was. But the manner was hardly pardonable. Selena's cough was certainly not fairly attributable to the old-fashioned furniture in Portman Square, nor would Sophie's spine have been materially benefited by her father having a seat in Parliament. And yet, to have heard Lady Arabella discussing those matters in family conclave, one would have thought that she would have expected such results. As it was, her poor weak darlings were carried about from London to Brighton, from Brighton to some German baths, from the German baths back to Torquay, and thence, as regarded before we have named, to that born from whence no further journey could be made under the Lady Arabella's directions. The one son and heir to Greshamsbury was named as his father, Francis Newbold Gresham. He would have been the hero of our tale, had not that place been preoccupied by the village doctor. As it is, those who please may so regard him. It is he who is to be our favourite young man, to do the love-scenes, to have his trials and his difficulties, and to win through them or not, as the case may be. I am too old now to be a hard-hearted author, and so it is probable that he may not die of a broken heart. Those who don't approve of a middle-aged bachelor country doctor as a hero may take the heir to Greshambury in his stead, and call the walk if it so pleases them, the loves and adventures of Francis Newbold Gresham the Younger. And Master Frank Gresham was not ill-adapted for playing the part of a hero of this sort. He did not share his sister's ill health, and though the only boy of the family, he excelled all his sisters in personal appearance. The Greshams from time immemorial had been handsome. They were broad-browed, blue-eyed, fair-haired, born with dimples in their chins, and that pleasant aristocratic dangerous curl of the upper lip, which can equally express good humour or scorn. Young Frank was every inch aggression, and was the darling of his father's heart. The decoracies had never been plain. There was too much order, too much pride. We may perhaps even fairly say too much nobility in their gait and manners, and even in their faces, to allow of their being considered plain. But they were not a race nurtured by Venus or Apollo. They were tall and thin, with high cheekbones, high foreheads, and large dignified cold eyes. The Dekorsi girls had all good hair, and as they also possessed easy manners and powers of talking, they managed to pass in the world for beauties till they were absorbed in the matrimonial market, and the world at large cared no longer whether they were beauties or not. The Mrs. Gresham were made in the Dekorsi mould, and were not on this account the less dear to their mother. The two eldest, Augusta and Beatrice, lived, and were apparently likely to live. The four next faded and died one after another, all in the same sad year, and were laid in the neat new cemetery at Torquay. Then came a pair, born at one birth, weak, delicate frail little flowers, with dark hair and dark eyes, and thin, long pale faces, with long bony hands and long bony feet, whom men looked on as fated to follow their sisters with quick steps. Hitherto, however, they had not followed them, nor had they suffered, as their sisters had suffered, and some people at Gresham's Brie attributed this to the fact that a change had been made in the family medical practitioner. Then came the youngest of the flock, she whose birth we have said was not heralded with loud joy, for when she came into the world, four others, with pale temples, worn worn cheeks, and skeleton white arms, were awaiting permission to leave it. Such was the family when, in the year 1854, the eldest son came of age. He had been educated at Harrow, and was now still at Cambridge. But, of course, on such a day as this, he was at home. That coming of age must be a delightful time to a young man born to inherit broad acres and wide wealth. Those full-moused congratulations, those warm prayers with which his manhood is welcomed by the grey-haired seniors of the county, the affectionate, all but motherly caresses of neighbouring mothers, who have seen him grow up from his cradle, of mothers who have daughters, perhaps, fair enough, and good enough, and sweet enough, even for him. The soft-spoken, half-bashful, but tender greetings of the girls, who now, perhaps for the first time, call him by his stern family name, instructed by instinct rather than precept, that the time has come when the familiar Charles, or familiar John, must by them be laid aside. The lucky dogs and hints of silver spoons which have poured into his ears as each young compere slaps his back, and bids him live a thousand years, and then never die, the shouting of the tenantry, the good wishes of the old farmers who come up to ring his hand, the kisses which he gets from the farmers' wives, and the kisses which he gives to the farmers' daughters. All these things must make the twenty-first birthday pleasant enough to a young heir. To a youth, however, who feels that he is now liable to arrest, and that he inherits no other privilege, the pleasure may very possibly not be quite so keen. The case with young Frank Gresham may be supposed to much nearer the former than the latter, but yet the ceremony of his coming of age was by no means like that which fate had accorded to his father. Mr. Gresham was now an embarrassed man, and though the world did not know it, or at any rate did not know that he was deeply embarrassed, he had not the heart to throw open his mansion, and receive the county with a free hand as though all things were going well with him. Nothing was going well with him. Lady Arabella would allow nothing near him or around him to be well. Everything with him now turned to vexation. He was no longer a joyous, happy man, and the people of East Barsature did not look for gala-doings on a grand scale when young Gresham came of age. Gala-doings, to a certain extent, were there. It was in July, and tables were spread under the oaks for the tenants. Tables were spread, and meat, and beer, and wine were there, and Frank, as he walked round and shook his guests by the hand, expressed a hope that their relations with each other might be long, close, and mutually advantageous. We must say a few words now about the place itself. Gresham'sbury Park was a fine old English gentleman's seat, was, and is, but we can assert it more easily in past tense, as we are speaking of it with reference to a past time. We have spoken of Gresham'sbury Park. There was a park so called, but the mansion itself was generally known as Gresham'sbury House, and did not stand in the park. We may perhaps best describe it by saying that the village of Gresham'sbury consisted of one long, straggling street, a mile in length, which in the centre turned sharp round, so that one half of the street lay directly at right angles to the other. In this angle stood Gresham'sbury House, and the gardens and grounds around it filled up the space so made. There was an entrance with large gates at each end of the village, and each gate was guarded by the effigies of two huge pagans with clubs, such being the crest borne by the family. From each entrance, a broad road quite straight, running through to a majestic avenue of lines, led up to the house. This was built in the richest, perhaps we should rather say in the purest style, of Tudor architecture. So much so that though Gresham'sbury is less complete than Longleat, less magnificent than Hatfield, it may in some sense be said to be the finest specimen of Tudor architecture of which the country can boast. It stands amid a multitude of trim gardens and stone-built terraces, divided one from another. These, to our eyes, are not so attractive as that broad expanse of lawn, by which our country-houses are generally surrounded, but the gardens of Gresham'sbury have been celebrated for two centuries, and any Gresham who would have altered them would have been considered to have destroyed one of the well-known landmarks of the family. Gresham'sbury Park, properly so called, spread far away on the other side of the village. Opposite to the two great gates leading up to the mansion were two smaller gates, the one opening onto the stables, kennels, and farmyard, and the other to the deer park. This latter was the principal entrance to the domain, and a grand and picturesque entrance it was. The avenue of lines which on one side stretched up to the house, was on the other extended for a quarter of a mile, and then appeared to be terminated only by an abrupt rise in the ground. At the entrance there were four savages and four clubs, two to each portal, and what with the massive iron gates surmounted by a stone wall, on which stood the family arms supported by two other club-bearers, the stone-built lodges, the Doric ivy-covered columns which surrounded the circle, the four grim savages, and the extent of the space itself through which the high road ran, and which just abutted on the village, the spot was sufficiently significant of old family greatness. Those who examined it more closely might see that under the arms was a scroll bearing the Gresham motto, and that the words were repeated in smaller letters under each of the savages. Garde Gresham had been chosen in the days of motto-choosing, probably by some heralded arms, as an appropriate legend for signifying the peculiar attributes of the family. Now, however, unfortunately, men were not of one mind as to the exact idea signified. Some declared, with much heraldic warmth, that it was an address to the savages calling on them to take care of their patron, while others, with whom I myself am inclined to agree, averred with equal certainty that it was an advice to the people at large, especially to those inclined to rebel against the aristocracy of the county, that they should beware the Gresham. The latter signification would be token strength, so said the holders of this doctrine, the former weakness. Now the Greshams were ever a strong people, and never addicted to a false humility. We will not pretend to decide the question, alas, either construction was now equally unsuited to the family fortunes. Such changes had taken place in England since the Greshams had founded themselves, that no savage could any longer in any way protect them. They must protect themselves, like common folk, or live unprotected. Nor now was it necessary that any neighbour should shake in his shoes when the Gresham frowned. It would have been to be wished that the present Gresham himself could have been as indifferent to the frowns of some of his neighbours. But the old symbols remained, and may such symbols long remain among us. They are still lovely and fit to be loved. They tell us of the true and manly feelings of other times. And to him who can read or write, they explain more fully, more truly than any written history can do, how Englishmen have become what they are. England is not yet a commercial country in the sense in which that epithet is used for her, and let us still hope that she will not soon become so. She might surely as well be called Fueerle England, or Chivalrous England. If in western civilised Europe there does exist a nation among whom there are high seniors, and with whom the owners of the land are the true aristocracy, the aristocracy that is trusted as being best and fittest to rule, that nation is the English. Choose out the ten leading men of each great European people. Choose them in France, in Austria, Sardinia, Prussia, Russia, Sweden, Denmark, Spain, and then select the ten in England, whose names are best known as those of leading statesmen. The result will show in which country there still exists the closest attachment to, the sincerest trust in the old feudal and now so-called landed interests, England a commercial country? Yes, as Venice was. She may excel other nations in commerce, but yet it is not that in which she most prides herself, in which she most excels. Merchants as such are not the first men among us, though it perhaps be open, barely open, to a merchant to become one of them. Buying and selling is good and necessary. It is very necessary, and may possibly be very good, but it cannot be the noblest work of man, and let us hope that it may not in our time be esteemed the noblest work of an Englishman. Gresham'sbury Park was very large. It lay on the outside of the angle formed by the village street, and stretched away on two sides, without apparent limit or boundaries visible from the village road or house. Indeed, the ground on this side was so broken up into abrupt hills and conical-shaped oak-covered excrescences, which were seen peeping up through and over each other, that the true extent of the park was much magnified to the eye. It was very possible for a stranger to get into it, and to find some difficulty in getting out again by any of its known gates, and such was the beauty of the landscape that a lover of scenery would be tempted thus to lose himself. I have said that on one side lay the kennels, and this will give me an opportunity of describing here one special episode, a long episode in the life of the existing squire. He had once represented his county and parliament, and when he ceased to do so, he still felt an ambition to be connected in some peculiar way with that county's greatness. He still desired that Gresham of Greshamsbury should be something more in East Barsature than Jackson of the Grange, or Baker of Mill Hill, or Bateson of Ansgrove. They were all his friends, and very respectable country gentlemen, but Mr. Gresham of Greshamsbury should be more than this. Even he had enough of ambition to be aware of such a longing. Therefore, when an opportunity occurred, he took to hunting the county. For this employment he was in every way well suited, unless it was in the matter of finance, though he had in his very earliest manly years given such great offence by indifference to his family politics, and had, in a certain degree, fostered the ill feeling by contesting the county in opposition to the wishes of his brother squires, nevertheless he bore a loved and popular name. Men regretted that he should not have been what they wished him to be, that he should not have been such as was the old squire, but when they found that such was the case, that he could not be great among them as a politician, they were still willing that he should be great in any other way if there were county greatness for which he was suited. Now he was known as an excellent horseman, as a thorough sportsman, as one knowing in dogs and tender hearted as a sucking mother to a litter of young foxes. He had ridden in the county since he was fifteen, had a fine voice for a view hallou, knew every hound by name, and could wind a horn with sufficient music for all hunting purposes. Moreover he had come to his property as was well known through all Barcicure with a clear income of fourteen thousand a year, thus when some old worn-out master of hounds was run to ground, about a year after Mr. Gresham's last contest for the county, it seemed to all parties to be a pleasant and rational arrangement that the hounds should go to Greshamsbury. Pleasant indeed to all except the Lady Arabella, and rational perhaps to all except the squire himself. All this time he was already considerably encumbered. He had spent much more than he should have done, and so indeed had his wife in those two splendid years in which they had figured as great among the great ones of the earth. Fourteen thousand a year ought to have been enough to allow a member of Parliament with a young wife and two or three children to live in London and keep up their country-family mansion. But then the Decorses were a very great people, and Lady Arabella chose to live as she had been accustomed to do, and as her sister-in-law the Countess lived. Now, Lord Decorsi had much more than fourteen thousand a year. Then came the three elections with their vast attendant cost, and then those costly expedience to which gentlemen are forced to have recourse, who have lived beyond their income, and find it impossible so to reduce their establishments as to live much below it. Thus, when the hounds came to Greshamsbury, Mr. Gresham was already a poor man. Lady Arabella said much to oppose their coming. But Lady Arabella, though it could hardly be said of her that she was under her husband's rule, certainly was not entitled to boast that she had him under hers, she then made her first grand attack as to the furniture in Portman Square, and was then for the first time specially informed that the furniture there was not matter of much importance, as she would not in future be required to move her family to that residence during the London seasons. The sort of conversations which grew from such a commencement may be imagined. Had Lady Arabella worried her Lord less, he might perhaps have considered with more coolness the folly of encountering so prodigious an increase to the expense of his establishment. Had he not spent so much money in a pursuit which his wife did not enjoy, she might perhaps have been more sparing in her rebukes as to his indifference to her London pleasures. As it was, the hounds came to Greshamsbury, and Lady Arabella did go to London for some period in each year, and the family expenses were by no means lessened. The canals, however, were now again empty. Two years previous to the time at which our story begins, the hounds had been carried off to the seat of some richer sportsman. This was more felt by Mr. Gresham than any other misfortune which he had yet incurred. He had been master of hounds for ten years, and that work he had at any rate done well. The popularity among his neighbours which he had lost as a politician, he had regained as a sportsman, and he would feign have remained autocratic in the hunt had it been possible. But he so remained much longer than he should have done, and at last they went away, not without signs and sounds of visible joy on the part of Lady Arabella. But we have kept the Greshamsbury tenant tree waiting under the oak trees by far too long. Yes, when young Frank came of age there was still enough left at Greshamsbury, still means enough at the squire's disposal, to light one bonfire, to roast whole in its skin, one bullock. Frank's virility came on him not quite unmarked, as that of the Parsons' son might do, or the son of the neighbouring attorney. It could still be reported in the Barsicher conservative standard that the beards wagged all at Greshamsbury, now as they had done for many centuries on similar festivals. Yes, it was so reported, but this, like so many other such reports, had but a shadow of truth in it. They poured the liquor in, certainly, those who were there, but the beards did not wag as they had been want to wag in former years. Beards won't wag for the telling. The squire was at his wit's end for money, and the tenants one and all had so heard. Rents had been raised on them, timber had fallen fast, the lawyer on the estate was growing rich. Tradesmen in Barchester, Ney and Greshamsbury itself were beginning to mutter, and the squire himself would not be merry. Under such circumstances the throats of a tenantry will still swallow, but their beards will not wag. "'I mines well,' said Farmer Euclorus to his neighbour, when the squire itself come of age. Lord Lovey, there was fun going that day. There was more Yale drunk then than's been brewed at the big house these two years.' Told Squire was a warner. "'And I mines when Squire was born.' Mines said, "'Well,' said an old Farmer, sitting opposite. Them was the days. It hadn't that long ago, neither. Squire aren't cub of fifty yet. No, nor aren't neither it, though he looks it. Things be altered at Greensbury, such was the rural pronunciation. Altered, sadly, neighbour Euclorus. Well, well, oil soon be gone, I will, and so it ain't no use darken. But utter pain one pound fifteen for them acres for more nor fifty year. I didn't think I'd ever be axed for forty shelling. Such was the style of conversation which went on at the various tables. It had certainly been of a very different tone when the squire was born, when he came of age, and when just two years subsequently his son had been born. On each of these events similar rural fates had been given and the squire himself had on these occasions been frequent among his guests. On the first he had been carried round by his father, a whole train of ladies and nurses following. On the second he had himself mixed in all the sports, the gayest of the gay, and each tenant had squeezed his way up to the lawn to get a sight of the Lady Arabella, who as was already known, was to come from Corsi Castle to Greshensbury to be their mistress. It was little they any of them cared now for the Lady Arabella. On the third he himself had borne his child in his arms, as his father had before borne him. He was then in the zenith of his pride, and though the tenantry whispered that he was somewhat less familiar with them than of yore, that he had put on somewhat too much of the decorciers, still he was their squire, their master, the rich man in whose hand they lay. The old squire was then gone, and they were proud of the young member and his Lady Bride, in spite of a little hoarder. None of them were proud of him now. He walked once round among the guests, and spoke a few words of welcome at each table, and as he did so the tenants got up and bowed, and wished health to the old squire, happiness to the young one, and prosperity to Greshensbury, but nevertheless it was but a tame affair. There were also other visitors of the gentle sort to do honour to the occasion, but not such swarms, not such a crowd at the mansion itself, and at the houses of the neighbouring gentry, as had always been collected on these former gala-doings. Indeed the party at Greshensbury was not a large one, and consisted chiefly of Lady de Coursy and her suite. Lady Arabella still kept up, as far as she was able, her close connection with Coursy Castle. She was there as much as possible, to which Mr. Gresham never objected, and she took her daughters there whenever she could. Though as regarded the two elder girls, she was interfered with by Mr. Gresham, and not unfrequently by the girls themselves. Lady Arabella had a pride in her son, though he was by no means her favourite child. He was, however, the heir of Greshensbury, of which fact she was disposed to make the most. And he was also a fine, gainly, open-hearted young man, who could not but be dear to any mother. Lady Arabella did love him dearly, though she felt a sort of disappointment in regard to him, seeing that he was not so much like a de Coursy, as he should have been. She did love him dearly, and therefore, when he came of age, she got her sister-in-law, and all the ladies Amelia, Zena, etc., to come to Greshensbury. And she also, with some difficulty, persuaded the honourable Georges and the honourable Johns to be equally condescending. Lord de Coursy himself was in attendance at the court, all said that he was, and Lord Paulock, the eldest son, simply told his aunt when he was invited, that he no more bored himself with those sort of things. Then there were the bakers and the Batesons and the Jacksons, who all lived near, and returned home at night. There was the Reverend Caleb Oriel, the High Church Rector, with his beautiful sister Patience Oriel. There was Mr. Yates Umbulbee, the attorney and agent. And there was Dr. Thorn, and the doctor's modest, quiet-looking little niece, Miss Mary. End of Chapter 1, Recording by Nick Whitley, Pearlie, United Kingdom Chapter 2 of Dr. Thorn by Anthony Trollop. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Nick Whitley, Pearlie, United Kingdom. Chapter 2 Long, Long ago As Dr. Thorn is our hero, or I should rather say my hero, a privilege of selecting for themselves in this respect being left to all my readers, and as Miss Mary Thorn is to be our heroine, a point on which no choice whatsoever is left to anyone, it is necessary that they shall be introduced and explained and described in a proper formal manner. I quite feel that an apology is due for beginning a novel with two long dull chapters full of description. I am perfectly aware of the danger of such a course. In so doing I sin against the golden rule which requires us all to put our best foot foremost, the wisdom of which is fully recognised by novelists, myself among the number. It can hardly be expected that any one will consent to go through with a fiction that offers so little of allurement in its first pages, but twist it as I will, I cannot do otherwise. I find that I cannot make poor Mr. Grasham hem and whore, and turn himself uneasily in his armchair in a natural manner, till I have said why he is uneasy. I cannot bring in my doctor speaking his mind freely among the bigwigs, till I have explained that it is in accordance with his usual character to do so. This is an artistic on my part, and shows want of imagination as well as want of skill, whether or not I can atone for these faults, by straightforward simple plain storytelling, that indeed is very doubtful. Dr. Thorn belonged to a family in one sense as good, and at any rate as old, as that of Mr. Grasham, and much older he was apt to boast than that of the Decourses. This tray and his character is mentioned first, as it was the weakness for which he was most conspicuous. He was second cousin to Mr. Thorn of Allathorn, a barcature squire living in the neighbourhood of Barchester, and who boasted that his estate had remained in his family descending from Thorn to Thorn, longer than had been the case with any other estate or any other family in the county. But Dr. Thorn was only a second cousin, and therefore though he was entitled to talk of the blood as belonging, to some extent, to himself, he had no right to lay claim to any position in the county, other than such as he might win for himself if he chose to locate himself in it. This was a fact of which no one was more fully aware than our doctor himself. His father, who had been first cousin of a former squire Thorn, had been a clerical dignitary in Barchester, but had been dead now many years. He had had two sons, one he had educated as a medical man, but the other, and the younger, whom he had intended for the bar, had not betaken himself in any satisfactory way to any calling. This son had been first rusticated from Oxford and then expelled, and thence returning to Barchester had been the cause to his father and brother of much suffering. Old Dr. Thorn the clergyman died when the two brothers were yet young men, and left behind him nothing but some household and other property of the value of about two thousand pounds, which he bequeathed to Thomas, the elder son, much more than that having been spent in liquidating debts contracted by the younger. Up to that time there had been close harmony between the Alathorn family and that of the clergyman, but a month or two before the doctor's death, the period of which we are speaking, was about two and twenty years before the commencement of our story, that then Mr. Thorn of Alathorn had made it understood that he would no longer receive at his house his cousin Henry whom he regarded as a disgrace to the family. Fathers are apt to be more lenient to their sons than uncles to their nephews or cousins to each other. Dr. Thorn still hoped to reclaim his black sheep, and thought that the head of his family showed an unnecessary harshness in putting an obstacle in the way of doing so, and if the father was warm in support of his profligate son, the young medical aspirant was warmer in support of his profligate brother. Dr. Thorn Jr. was no Rue himself, but perhaps as a young man he had not sufficient abhorrence of his brother's vices. At any rate he stuck to him manfully, and when it was signified in the close that Henry's company was not considered desirable at Alathorn, Dr. Thomas Thorn sent word to the squire that under such circumstances his visits there would also cease. This was not very prudent, as the young Galen had elected to establish himself in Barchester, very mainly an expectation of the help which his Alathorn connection would give him. This, however, in his anger he failed to consider. He was never known either in early or in middle life to consider in his anger those points which were probably best worth his consideration. This perhaps was of the less moment as his anger was of an unenduring kind evaporating frequently with more celerity than he could get the angry words out of his mouth. With the Alathorn people, however, he did establish a quarrel sufficiently permanent to be a vital injury to his medical prospects. And then the father died, and the two brothers were left living together with very little means between them. At this time there were living in Barchester people of the name of Scatchard. Of that family, as then existing, we have only to do with two, a brother and a sister. They were in a low rank of life, the one being a journeyman's stone mason, and the other an apprentice to a straw-bonnet maker. But they were nevertheless in some sort remarkable people. The sister was reputed in Barchester to be a model of female beauty of the strong and robust cast, and had also a better reputation as being a girl of good character and honest womanly conduct. Both of her beauty and of her reputation her brother was exceedingly proud, and he was the more so when he learnt that she had been asked in marriage by a decent master tradesman in the city. Roger Scatchard had also a reputation, but not for beauty or propriety of conduct. He was known for the best stone mason in the four counties, and, as the man who could on occasion drink the most alcohol in a given time, in the same localities. As a workman indeed he had higher repute 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 Thorn, among his other bad qualities, had one which his friends regarded as worse than all the others, and which perhaps justified the Ulythorn 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-roms with vulgar drinkers. So set his friends, and so set his enemies. He denied the charge as being made in the plural number, and declared that his only low co-reveller was Roger Scatchard, with Roger Scatchard at any rate he associated, and became as democratic as Roger was himself. Now the Thorns of Ulythorn were of the very highest order of Tory excellence. Whether or not Mary Scatchard 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 avert that she most positively had. The respectable tradesman himself refused to speak on the subject. It is certain, however, that Scatchard, 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. Scatchard, 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 Thorn had already heard of, and already seen, Mary Scatchard, 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. Scatchard accused him openly of having intoxicated her with drugs, and Thomas Thorn, 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 Thorn. Roger Scatchard, when the news first reached him, filled himself with drink, and then swore that he would kill them both. With manly Ross, 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 Thorn. The two brothers were then lodging together at a farmhouse close a-butting on the town. This was not an eligible abode for a medical practitioner, but the young doctor had not been able to settle himself elegibly since his father's death, and wishing to put what constraint he could upon his brother, had so located himself. To this farmhouse came Roger Scatchard 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 farm-yard, standing placidly with his cigar in his mouth, he encountered Henry Thorn. 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 Thorn. They were the last words he ever spoke. He was answered by a blow from the Black Thorn. A contest ensued which ended in Scatchard 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 Scatchard himself persisted in declaring that he had taken in his hand no weapon but the stick. Scatchard, however, was drunk, and even though he intended to tell the truth, may have been mistaken. There were, however, the facts that Thorn was dead, that Scatchard 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 Thorn and the farmer were on the spot soon after Henry Thorn had fallen. The brother was at first furious for vengeance against his brother's murderer. But as the facts came out, as he learned what had been the provocation given, what had been the feelings of Scatchard 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 obliquy 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 meditated 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. Thorn or Vallathorn 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 Vallathorn. Miss Thorn, 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. Thorn 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 Scatchard. She was saved from the necessity of encountering her brother's wrasse, 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. Thorn 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, Scatchard 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 no wise sinned at all. One man, at any rate, so thought. At twilight one evening Thorn 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 Scatchard. 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 écla 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 lads, a thousand thanks, profusest acknowledgments for his generosity to the man who showed her that he loved her so well. But nature, she said, would not let her leave her child. And what will you do for her here, Mary? said the doctor. Poor Mary replied to him with a deluge of tears. She is my niece, said the doctor, taking up the tiny infant in his huge hands. She is already the nearest thing, the only thing that I have in this world. I am her uncle, Mary. If you will go with this man, I will be father to her and mother to her, of what bread I eat, she shall eat, of what cup I drink, she shall drink. See, Mary, here is the Bible. And he covered the book with his hand. Leave her to me, and by this word she shall be my child. The mother consented at last, left her baby with the doctor, married, and went to America. All this was consummated before Roger Scatchard was liberated from jail. Some conditions the doctor made. The first was that Scatchard should not know his sister's child was thus disposed of. Dr. Thorn, in undertaking to bring up the baby, did not choose to encounter any tie with persons who might, hereafter, claim to be the girl's relations on the other side. Relations she would undoubtedly have had none had she been left to live or die as a workhouse bastard. But should the doctor succeed in life, should he ultimately be able to make this girl the darling of his own house, and then the darling of some other house, should she live and win the heart of some man whom the doctor might delight to call his friend and nephew, then relations might spring up, whose ties would not be advantageous. No man plumed himself on good blood more than Dr. Thorn. No man had greater pride in his genealogical tree, and his hundred and thirty clearly proved dissents from Macadam. No man had a stronger theory as to the advantage held by men who have grandfathers over those who have none, or have none worth talking about. Let it not be thought that our doctor was a perfect character. No indeed, most far from perfect. He had within him an inner, stubborn, self-admiring pride, which made him believe himself to be better and higher than those around him, and this from some unknown cause which he could hardly explain to himself. He had a pride in being a poor man of a high family. He had a pride in repudiating the very family of which he was proud, and he had a special pride in keeping his pride silently to himself. His father had been a Thorn, and his mother a Thorold. There was no better blood to be had in England. It was in the possession of such properties as these that he condescended to rejoice. This man, with a man's heart, a man's courage, and a man's humanity. Other doctors round the county had ditch-water in their veins. He could boast of a pure icor to which that of the great Omnium family was but a muddy puddle. It was thus that he loved to excel his brother practitioners, he who might have indulged in the pride of excelling them both in talent and in energy. We speak now of his early days, but even in his mature life the man, though mellowed, was the same. This was the man who now promised to take to his bosom as his own child, a poor bastard whose father was already dead, and whose mother's family was such as the sketchards, it was necessary that the child's history should be known to none. Except to the mother's brother it was an object of interest to no one. The mother had for some short time been talked of, but now the nine days wonder was a wonder no longer. She went off to her faraway home. Her husband's generosity was duly chronicled in the papers, and the babe was left untalked of and unknown. It was easy to explain to sketchard that the child had not lived. There was a parting interview between the brother and sister in the jail, during which, with real tears and unaffected sorrow, the mother thus accounted for the offspring of her shame. Then she started, fortunate in her coming fortunes, and the doctor took with him his charge to the new country in which they were both to live. There he found for her a fitting home, till she should be old enough to sit at his table and live in his bachelor house, and no one but old Mr. Gresham knew who she was or whence she had come. Then Roger sketchard, having completed his six-months confinement, came out of prison. Roger sketchard, though his hands were now red with blood, was to be pitted. A short time before the days of Henry Thorn's death, he had married a young wife in his own class of life, and had made many resolves that henceforward his conduct should be such as might become a married man, and might not disgrace the respectable brother-in-law he was about to have given him. Such was his condition when he first heard of his sister's plight. As has been said, he filled himself with drink and started off on the scent of blood. During his prison days his wife had to support herself as she might. The decent articles of furniture which they had put together were sold. She gave up their little house, and bowed down by misery. She also was brought near to death. When he was liberated he had once got work, but those who have watched the lives of such people know how hard it is for them to recover lost ground. She became a mother immediately after his liberation, and when her child was born they were in direst want, for sketchered was again drinking, and his resolves were blown to the wind. The doctor was then living at Greshamsbury. He had gone over there before the day on which he undertook the charge of poor Mary's baby, and soon found himself settled as the Greshamsbury doctor. This occurred very soon after the birth of the young heir. His predecessor in this career had bettered himself, or endeavoured to do so, by seeking the practice of some large town, and Lady Arabella, at a very critical time, was absolutely left with no other advice than that of a stranger, picked up, as she declared, to Lady Decorsi, somewhere about Barchester Jail, or Barchester Courthouse. She did not know which. Of course Lady Arabella could not suckle the young heir herself. Ladies Arabella never can. They are gifted with the powers of being mothers, but not nursing mothers. Nature gives them bosoms for show, but not for use. So Lady Arabella had a wet nurse. At the end of six months the new doctor found Master Frank was not doing quite so well as he should do. And after a little trouble it was discovered that the very excellent young woman, who had been sent express from Corsi Castle to Greshamsbury, a supply being kept up on the Lord's demean for the family use, was fond of brandy. She was at once sent back to the castle, of course, and as Lady Decorsi was too much indulgent to send another, Dr. Thorn was allowed to procure one. He thought of the misery of Roger Scatchard's wife, thought also of her health and strength and active habits, and thus Mrs. Scatchard became the foster mother to young Frank Gresham. One other episode we must tell of past times, previous to his father's death Dr. Thorn was in love, nor had he altogether sighed and pleaded in vain, though it had not quite come to that that the young lady's friends, or even the young lady herself, had actually accepted his suit. At that time his name stood well in Barchester. His father was a preventary, his cousins and his best friends were the thorns of Ulethorne, and the lady, who shall be nameless, was not thought to be injudicious in listening to the young doctor. But when Henry Thorn went so far astray, when the old doctor died, when the young doctor quarrelled with Ulethorne, when the brother was killed in a disgraceful quarrel, and it turned out that the physician had nothing but his profession and no settled locality in which to exercise it, then indeed the young lady's friends thought that she was injudicious, and the young lady herself had not spirit enough, or love enough, to be disobedient. In those stormy days of the trial she told Dr. Thorn that perhaps it would be wise that they should not see Java any more. Dr. Thorn so counseled at such a moment, so informed then when he most required comfort from his love, at once swore loudly that he agreed with her, he rushed forth with a bursting heart, and said to himself that the world was bad, all bad. He saw the lady no more, and if I am rightly informed never again made matrimonial overtures to any one.