Dr Thorne (26 page)

When Dr Fillgrave was first shown into Sir Roger's dining-room, he walked up and down the room for a while with easy, jaunty step, with his hands joined together behind his back, calculating the price of the furniture, and counting the heads which might be adequately entertained in a room of such noble proportions; but in seven or eight minutes an air of impatience might have been seen to suffuse his face. Why could he not be shown up into the sick man's room? What necessity could there be for keeping him there, as though he were some apothecary with a box of leeches in his pocket? He then rang the bell, perhaps a little violently. ‘Does Sir Roger know that I am here?' he said to the servant. ‘I'll tell my lady,' said the man, again vanishing.

For five minutes more he walked up and down, calculating no longer the value of the furniture, but rather that of his own importance. He was not wont to be kept waiting in this way; and though Sir Roger Scatcherd was at present a great and a rich man, Dr Fillgrave had remembered him a very small and a very poor man. He now began to think of Sir Roger as the stone-mason, and to chafe somewhat more violently at being so kept by such a man.

When one is impatient, five minutes is as the duration of all time, and a quarter of an hour is eternity. At the end of twenty minutes the step of Dr Fillgrave up and down the room had become very quick, and he had just made up his mind that he would not stay there all day to the serious detriment, perhaps fatal injury, of his other expectant patients. His hand was again on the bell, and was about to be used with vigour, when the door opened and Lady Scatcherd entered.

The door opened and Lady Scatcherd entered; but she did so very slowly, as though she were afraid to come into her own dining-room. We must go back a little and see how she had been employed during those twenty minutes.

‘Oh, laws!' Such had been her first exclamation on hearing that the doctor was in the dining-room. She was standing at the time with her housekeeper in a small room in which she kept her linen and jam, and in which, in company with the same housekeeper, she spent the happiest moments of her life.

‘Oh laws! now, Hannah, what shall we do?'

‘Send 'un up at once to the master, my lady! let John take 'un up.'

‘There'll be such a row in the house, Hannah; I know there will.'

‘But sure-ly didn't he send for 'un? Let the master have the row himself, then; that's what I'd do, my lady,' added Hannah, seeing that her ladyship still stood trembling in doubt, biting her thumbnail.

‘You couldn't go up to the master yourself, could you now, Hannah?' said Lady Scatcherd in her most persuasive tone.

‘Why no,' said Hannah, after a little deliberation; ‘no, I'm afeard I couldn't.'

‘Then I must just face it myself.' And up went the wife to tell her lord that the physician for whom he had sent had come to attend his bidding.

In the interview which then took place the baronet had not indeed been violent, but he had been very determined. Nothing on earth, he said, should induce him to see Dr Fillgrave and offend his dear old friend Thorne.

‘But, Roger,' said her ladyship, half crying, or rather pretending to cry in her vexation, ‘what shall I do with the man? How shall I get him out of the house?'

‘Put him under the pump,' said the baronet; and he laughed his peculiar low guttural laugh, which told so plainly of the havoc which brandy had made in his throat.

‘That's nonsense, Roger; you know I can't put him under the pump. Now you are ill, and you'd better see him just for five minutes. I'll make it all right with Dr Thorne.'

‘I'll be d—— if I do, my lady.' All the people about Boxall Hill called poor Lady Scatcherd ‘my lady,' as if there was some excellent joke in it; and so, indeed, there was.

‘You know you needn't mind nothing he says, nor yet take nothing he sends: and I'll tell him not to come no more. Now do 'ee see him, Roger.'

But there was no coaxing Roger over now, or indeed ever: he was a wilful, headstrong, masterful man; a tyrant always, though never a cruel one; and accustomed to rule his wife and household as despotically as he did his gangs of workmen. Such men it is not easy to coax over.

‘You go down and tell him I don't want him, and won't see him, and that's an end of it. If he chose to earn his money why didn't he come yesterday when he was sent for? I'm well now and don't want him; and what's more, I won't have him. Winterbones, lock the door.'

So Winterbones, who during this interview had been at work at his little table, got up to lock the door, and Lady Scatcherd had no alternative but to pass through it before the last edict was obeyed.

Lady Scatcherd, with slow step, went downstairs and again sought counsel with Hannah, and the two, putting their heads together, agreed that the only cure for the present evil was to be found in a good fee. So Lady Scatcherd, with a five-pound note in her hand, and trembling in every limb, went forth to encounter the august presence of Dr Fillgrave.

As the door opened, Dr Fillgrave dropped the bell-rope which was in his hand, and bowed low to the lady. Those who knew the doctor well, would have known from his bow that he was not well pleased; it was as much as though he said, ‘Lady Scatcherd, I am your most obedient humble servant; at any rate it appears that it is your pleasure to treat me as such.'

Lady Scatcherd did not understand all this; but she perceived at once that the man was angry.

‘I hope Sir Roger does not find himself worse,' said the doctor. ‘The morning is getting on; shall I step up and see him?'

‘Hem! ha! oh! Why, you see, Dr Fillgrave, Sir Roger finds hisself vastly better this morning, vasdy so.'

‘I'm very glad to hear it, very; but as the morning is getting on, shall I step up to see Sir Roger?'

‘Why, Dr Fillgrave, sir, you see, he finds hisself so much hisself this morning, that he a'most thinks it would be a shame to trouble you.'

‘A shame to trouble me!' This was a sort of shame which Dr Fillgrave did not at all comprehend. ‘A shame to trouble me! Why, Lady Scatcherd –'

Lady Scatcherd saw that she had nothing for it but to make the whole matter intelligible. Moreover, seeing that she appreciated more thoroughly the smallness of Dr Fillgrave's person than she did the peculiar greatness of his demeanour, she began to be a shade less afraid of him than she had thought she should have been.

‘Yes, Dr Fillgrave; you see, when a man like he gets well, he can't abide the idea of doctors: now yesterday, he was all for sending for you; but today he comes to hisself, and don't seem to want no doctor at all.'

Then did Dr Fillgrave seem to grow out of his boots, so suddenly did he take upon himself sundry modes of expansive altitude; – to grow out of his boots and to swell upwards, till his angry eyes almost looked down on Lady Scatcherd, and each erect hair bristled up towards the heavens.

‘This is very singular, very singular, Lady Scatcherd; very singular, indeed; very singular; quite unusual. I have come here from Barchester, at some considerable inconvenience, at some very considerable inconvenience, I may say, to my regular patients; and – and – and – I don't know that anything so very singular ever occurred to me before.' And then Dr Fillgrave, with a compression of his lips which almost made the poor woman sink into the ground, moved towards the door.

Then Lady Scatcherd bethought her of her great panacea. ‘It isn't about the money, you know, doctor,' said she; ‘of course Sir Roger don't expect you to come here with post-horses for nothing.' In this, by the by, Lady Scatcherd did not stick quite close to
veracity, for Sir Roger, had he known it, would by no means have assented to any payment; and the note which her ladyship held in her hand was taken from her own private purse. ‘It ain't at all about the money, doctor;' and then she tendered the bank-note, which she thought would immediately make all things smooth.

Now Dr Fillgrave dearly loved a five-pound fee. What physician is so unnatural as not to love it? He dearly loved a five-pound fee; but he loved his dignity better. He was angry also; and like all angry men, he loved his grievance. He felt that he had been badly treated; but if he took the money he would throw away his right to indulge any such feeling. At that moment his outraged dignity and his cherished anger were worth more to him than a five-pound note. He looked at it with wishful but still averted eyes, and then sternly refused the tender.

‘No, madam,' said he; ‘no, no;' and with his right hand raised with his eye-glasses in it, he motioned away the tempting paper. ‘No; I should have been happy to have given Sir Roger the benefit of any medical skill I may have, seeing that I was specially called in –'

‘But, doctor; if the man's well, you know –'

‘Oh, of course; if he's well, and does not choose to see me, there's an end of it. Should he have any relapse, as my time is valuable, he will perhaps oblige me by sending elsewhere. Madam, good morning. I will, if you will allow me, ring for my carriage – that is, post-chaise.'
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‘But, doctor, you'll take the money; you must take the money; indeed you'll take the money,' said Lady Scatcherd, who had now become really unhappy at the idea that her husband's unpardonable whim had brought this man with post-horses all the way from Barchester, and that he was to be paid nothing for his time nor costs.

‘No, madam, no. I could not think of it. Sir Roger, I have no doubt, will know better another time. It is not a question of money; not at all.'

‘But it is a question of money, doctor; and you really shall, you must.' And poor Lady Scatcherd, in her anxiety to acquit herself at any rate of any pecuniary debt to the doctor, came to personal close quarters with him, with the view of forcing the note into his hands.

‘Quite impossible, quite impossible,' said the doctor, still cherishing his grievance, and valiantly rejecting the root of all evil. ‘I shall not do anything of the kind, Lady Scatcherd.'

‘Now doctor, do 'ee; to oblige me.'

‘Quite out of the question.' And so, with his hands and hat behind his back, in token of his utter refusal to accept any pecuniary accommodation of his injury, he made his way backwards to the door, her ladyship perseveringly pressing him in front. So eager had been the attack on him, that he had not waited to give his order about the post-chaise, but made his way at once towards the hall.

‘Now, do 'ee take it, do 'ee,' pressed Lady Scatcherd.

‘Utterly out of the question,' said Dr Fillgrave, with great deliberation, as he backed his way into the hall. As he did so, of course he turned round – and he found himself almost in the arms of Dr Thorne.

As Burley must have glared at Bothwell
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when they rushed together in that dread encounter on the mountain side; as Achilles may have glared at Hector
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when at last they met, each resolved to test in fatal conflict the prowess of the other, so did Dr Fillgrave glare at his foe from Greshamsbury, when, on turning round on his exalted heel, he found his nose on a level with the top button of Dr Thorne's waistcoat.

And here, if it be not too tedious, let us pause a while to recapitulate and add up the undoubted grievances of the Barchester practitioner. He had made no effort to ingratiate himself into the sheepfold of that other shepherd-dog; it was not by his seeking that he was now at Boxall Hill; much as he hated Dr Thorne, full sure as he felt of that man's utter ignorance, of his incapacity to administer properly even a black dose, of his murdering propensities, and his low, mean, unprofessional style of practice; nevertheless, he had done nothing to undermine him with these Scatcherds. Dr Thorne might have sent every mother's son at Boxall Hill to his long account, and Dr Fillgrave would not have interfered; – would not have interfered unless specially and duly called upon to do so.

But he had been specially and duly called on. Before such a step was taken some words must undoubtedly have passed on the subject between Thorne and the Scatcherds. Thorne must have
known what was to be done. Having been so called, Dr Fillgrave had come – had come all the way in a post-chaise – had been refused admittance to the sick man's room, on the plea that the sick man was no longer sick; and just as he was about to retire feeless – for the want of the fee was not the less a grievance from the fact of its having been tendered and refused – fee-less, dishonoured, and in dudgeon, he encountered this other doctor – this very rival whom he had been sent to supplant; he encountered him in the very act of going to the sick man's room.

What mad fanatic Burley, what god-succoured insolent Achilles, ever had such cause to swell with wrath as at that moment had Dr Fillgrave? Had I the pen of Molière, I could fitly tell of such medical anger, but with no other pen can it be fitly told. He did swell, and when the huge bulk of his wrath was added to his natural proportions, he loomed gigantic before the eyes of the surrounding followers of Sir Roger.

Dr Thorne stepped back three steps and took his hat from his head, having, in the passage from the hall-door to the dining-room, hitherto omitted to do so. It must be borne in mind that he had no conception whatever that Sir Roger had declined to see the physician for whom he had sent; none whatever that that physician was now about to return, fee-less, to Barchester.

Dr Thorne and Dr Fillgrave were doubtless well-known enemies. All the world of Barchester, and all that portion of the world of London which is concerned with the lancet and the scalping-knife, were well aware of this: they were continually writing against each other; continually speaking against each other; but yet they had never hitherto come to that positive personal collision which is held to justify a cut direct. They very rarely saw each other; and when they did meet, it was in some casual way in the streets of Barchester or elsewhere, and on such occasions their habit had been to bow with very cold propriety.