Dr Thorne (23 page)

‘It is no use,' said he to himself, ‘for that messenger has already gone to Barchester.'

‘I have sent for Dr Fillgrave,' were the first words which the contractor said to him when he again found himself by the bedside.

‘Did you call me back to tell me that?' said Thorne, who now really felt angry at the impertinent petulance of the man before him: ‘you should consider, Scatcherd, that my time may be of value to others, if not to you.'

‘Now don't be angry, old fellow,' said Scatcherd, turning to him, and looking at him with a countenance quite different from any that he had shown that day: a countenance in which there was a show of manhood – some show also of affection. ‘You ain't angry now because I've sent for Fillgrave?'

‘Not in the least,' said the doctor, very complacently. ‘Not in the least. Fillgrave will do you as much good as I can do you.'

‘And that's none at all, I suppose; eh, Thorne?'

‘That depends on yourself. He will do you good if you will tell him the truth, and will then be guided by him. Your wife, your servant, anyone can be as good a doctor to you as either he or I; as good, that is, in the main point. But you have sent for Fillgrave now; and of course you must see him. I have much to do, and you must let me go.'

Scatcherd, however, would not let him go, but held his hand fast. ‘Thorne,' said he, ‘if you like it, I'll make them put Fillgrave under the pump directly he comes here. I will indeed, and pay all the damage myself.'

This was another proposition to which the doctor could not consent; but he was utterly unable to refrain from laughing. There was an earnest look of entreaty about Sir Roger's face as he made the suggestion; and, joined to this, there was a gleam of comic satisfaction in his eye which seemed to promise, that if he received the least encouragement he would put his threat into execution. Now our doctor was not inclined to taking any steps towards subjecting his learned brother to pump discipline; but he could not but admit to himself that the idea was not a bad one.

‘I'll have it done, I will, by heavens! if you'll only say the word,' protested Sir Roger.

But the doctor did not say the word, and so the idea passed off.

‘You shouldn't be testy with a man when he's ill,' said Scatcherd, still holding the doctor's hand, of which he had again got possession; ‘specially not an old friend; and specially again when you've been a-blowing of him up.'

It was not worth the doctor's while to aver that the testiness had all been on the other side, and that he had never lost his good-humour; so he merely smiled, and asked Sir Roger if he could do anything further for him.

‘Indeed you can, doctor; and that's why I sent for you – why I sent for you yesterday. Get out of the room, Winterbones,' he then said, gruffly, as though he were dismissing from his chamber a dirty dog. Winterbones, not a whit offended, again hid his cup under his coat-tail and vanished.

‘Sit down, Thorne, sit down,' said the contractor, speaking quite in a different manner from any that he had yet assumed. ‘I know you're in a hurry, but you must give me half an hour. I may be dead before you can give me another; who knows?'

The doctor of course declared that he hoped to have many a half-hour's chat with him for many a year to come.

‘Well, that's as may be. You must stop now, at any rate. You can make the cob pay for it, you know.'

The doctor took a chair and sat down. Thus entreated to stop, he had hardly any alternative but to do so.

‘It wasn't because I'm ill that I sent for you, or rather let her ladyship send for you. Lord bless you, Thorne; do you think I don't know what it is that makes me like this? When I see that poor wretch, Winterbones, killing himself with gin, do you think I don't know what's coming to myself as well as him?'

‘Why do you take it then? Why do you do it? Your life is not like his. Oh, Scatcherd! Scatcherd!' and the doctor prepared to pour out the flood of his eloquence in beseeching this singular man to abstain from his well-known poison.

‘Is that all you know of human nature, doctor? Abstain. Can you abstain from breathing, and live like a fish does under water?'

‘But Nature has not ordered you to drink, Scatcherd.'

‘Habit is second nature, man; and a stronger nature than the
first. And why should I not drink? What else has the world given me for all that I have done for it? What other resource have I? What other gratification?'

‘Oh, my God! Have you not unbounded wealth? Can you not do anything you wish? be anything you choose?'

‘No,' and the sick man shrieked with an energy that made him audible all through the house. ‘I can do nothing that I would choose to do; be nothing that I would wish to be! What can I do? What can I be? What gratification can I have except the brandy bottle? If I go among gentlemen, can I talk to them? If they have anything to say about a railway, they will ask me a question: if they speak to me beyond that, I must be dumb. If I go among my workmen, can they talk to me? No; I am their master, and a stern master. They bob their heads and shake in their shoes when they see me. Where are my friends? Here!' said he, and he dragged a bottle from under his very pillow. ‘Where are my amusements? Here!' and he brandished the bottle almost in the doctor's face. ‘Where is my one resource, my one gratification, my only comfort after all my toils? Here, doctor; here, here, here!' and, so saying, he replaced his treasure beneath his pillow.

There was something so horrifying in this, that Dr Thorne shrank back amazed, and was for a moment unable to speak.

‘But, Scatcherd,' he said at last; ‘surely you would not die for such a passion as that?'

‘Die for it? Aye, would I. Live for it while I can live; and die for it when I can live no longer. Die for it! What is that for a man to do? Do not men die for a shilling a day? What is a man the worse for dying? What can I be the worse for dying? A man can die but once, you said just now. I'd die ten times for this.'

‘You are speaking now either in madness, or else in folly, to startle me.'

‘Folly enough, perhaps, and madness enough, also. Such a life as mine makes a man a fool, and makes him mad, too. What have I about me that I should be afraid to die? I'm worth three hundred thousand pounds; and I'd give it all to be able to go to work tomorrow with a hod and mortar, and have a fellow clap his hand upon my shoulder, and say: “Well, Roger, shall us have that 'ere other half-pint this morning?” I'll tell you what, Thorne, when a man has made three hundred thousand pounds, there's
nothing left for him but to die. It's all he's good for then. When money's been made, the next thing is to spend it. Now the man who makes it has not the heart to do that.'

The doctor, of course, in hearing all this, said something of a tendency to comfort and console the mind of his patient. Not that anything he could say would comfort or console the man; but that it was impossible to sit there and hear such fearful truths – for as regarded Scatcherd they were truths – without making some answer.

‘This is as good as a play, isn't it, doctor?' said the baronet. ‘You didn't know how I could come out like one of those actor fellows. Well, now, come; at last I'll tell you why I have sent for you. Before that last burst of mine I made my will.'

‘You had a will made before that.'

‘Yes, I had. That will is destroyed. I burnt it with my own hand, so that there should be no mistake about it. In that will I had named two executors, you and Jackson. I was then partner with Jackson in the York and Yeovil Grand Central. I thought a deal of Jackson then. He's not worth a shilling now.'

‘Well, I'm exactly in the same category.'

‘No, you're not. Jackson is nothing without money; but money'll never make you.'

‘No, nor I shan't make money,' said the doctor.

‘No, you never will. Nevertheless, there's my other will, there, under that desk there; and I've put you in as sole executor.'

‘You must alter that, Scatcherd; you must indeed; with three hundred thousand pounds to be disposed of, the trust is far too much for any one man: besides you must name a younger man; you and I are of the same age, and I may die the first.'

‘Now, doctor, doctor, no humbug; let's have no humbug from you. Remember this; if you're not true, you're nothing.'

‘Well, but, Scatcherd –'

‘Well, but, doctor, there's the will, it's already made. I don't want to consult you about that. You are named as executor, and if you have the heart to refuse to act when I'm dead, why, of course you can do so.'

The doctor was no lawyer, and hardly knew whether he had any means of extricating himself from this position in which his friend was determined to place him.

‘You'll have to see that will carried out, Thorne. Now I'll tell you what I have done.'

‘You're not going to tell me how you've disposed of your property?'

‘Not exactly; at least not all of it. One hundred thousand I've left in legacies, including, you know, what Lady Scatcherd will have.'

‘Have you not left the house to Lady Scatcherd?'

‘No; what the devil would she do with a house like this? She doesn't know how to live in it now she has got it. I have provided for her; it matters not how. The house and the estate, and the remainder of my money, I have left to Louis Philippe.'

‘What! two hundred thousand pounds?' said the doctor.

‘And why shouldn't I leave two hundred thousand pounds to my son, even to my eldest son if I had more than one? Does not Mr Gresham leave all his property to his heir? Why should not I make an eldest son as well as Lord de Courcy or the Duke of Omnium? I suppose a railway contractor ought not to be allowed an eldest son by Act of Parliament! Won't my son have a title to keep up? And that's more than the Greshams have among them.'

The doctor explained away what he said as well as he could. He could not explain that what he had really meant was this, that Sir Roger Scatcherd's son was not a man fit to be trusted with the entire control of an enormous fortune.

Sir Roger Scatcherd had but one child; that child which had been born in the days of his early troubles, and had been dismissed from his mother's breast in order that the mother's milk might nourish the young heir of Greshamsbury. The boy had grown up, but had become strong neither in mind nor body. His father had determined to make a gentleman of him, and had sent him to Eton and to Cambridge. But even this receipt, generally as it is recognised, will not make a gentleman. It is hard, indeed, to define what receipt will do so, though people do have in their own minds some certain undefined, but yet tolerably correct ideas on the subject. Be that as it may, two years at Eton, and three terms at Cambridge, did not make a gentleman of Louis Philippe Scatcherd.

Yes; he was christened Louis Philippe,
¹
after the King of the French. If one wishes to look out in the world for royal nomenclature, to find children who have been christened after kings and
queens, or the uncles and aunts of kings and queens, the search should be made in the families of democrats. None have so servile a deference for the very nail-parings of royalty; none feel so wondering an awe at the exaltation of a crowned head; none are so anxious to secure to themselves some shred or fragment that has been consecrated by the royal touch. It is the distance which they feel to exist between themselves and the throne which makes them covet the crumbs of majesty, the odds and ends and chance splinters of royalty.

There was nothing royal about Louis Philippe Scatcherd but his name. He had now come to man's estate, and his father, finding the Cambridge receipt to be inefficacious, had sent him abroad to travel with a tutor. The doctor had from time to time heard tidings of this youth; he knew that he had already shown symptoms of his father's vices, but no symptoms of his father's talents; he knew that he had begun life by being dissipated, without being generous; and that at the age of twenty-one he had already suffered from delirium tremens.

It was on this account that he had expressed disapprobation, rather than surprise, when he heard that his father intended to bequeath the bulk of his large fortune to the uncontrolled will of this unfortunate boy.

‘I have toiled for my money hard, and I have a right to do as I like with it. What other satisfaction can it give me?'

The doctor assured him that he did not at all mean to dispute this.

‘Louis Philippe will do well enough, you'll find,' continued the baronet, understanding what was passing within his companion's breast. ‘Let a young fellow sow his wild oats while he is young, and he'll be steady enough when he grows old.'

‘But what if he never lives to get through the sowing?' thought the doctor to himself. ‘What if that wild-oats operation is carried on in so violent a manner as to leave no strength in the soil for the produce of a more valuable crop?' It was of no use saying this, however, so he allowed Scatcherd to continue.

‘If I'd had a free fling when I was a youngster, I shouldn't have been so fond of the brandy bottle now. But any way, my son shall be my heir. I've had the gumption to make the money, but I haven't the gumption to spend it. My son, however, shall be able
to ruffle it with the best of them. I'll go bail he shall hold his head higher than ever young Gresham will be able to hold his. They are much of the same age, as well I have cause to remember; – and so has her ladyship there.'

Now the fact was, that Sir Roger Scatcherd felt in his heart no special love for young Gresham; but with her ladyship it might almost be a question whether she did not love the youth whom she had nursed almost as well as that other one who was her own proper offspring.

‘And will you not put any check on thoughtless expenditure? If you live ten or twenty years, as we hope you may, it will become unnecessary; but in making a will, a man should always remember he may go off suddenly.'