Long, Long Ago
As Dr Thorne 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 Thorne is to be our heroine, a point on
which no choice whatsoever is left to any one, 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 Gresham hem and haw and turn himself
uneasily in his arm-chair 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 unartistic 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
story-telling--that, indeed, is very doubtful.
Dr Thorne belonged to a family in one sense as good, and at any rate
as old, as that of Mr Gresham; and much older, he was apt to boast,
than that of the de Courcys. This trait in his character is mentioned
first, as it was the weakness for which he was most conspicuous. He
was second cousin to Mr Thorne of Ullathorne, a Barsetshire squire
living in the neighbourhood of Barchester, and who boasted that his
estate had remained in his family, descending from Thorne to Thorne,
longer than had been the case with any other estate or any other
family in the county.
But Dr Thorne 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
Thorne, 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 Thorne, 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 Ullathorne 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--the then Mr Thorne of Ullathorne 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 Thorne still hoped to reclaim
his black sheep, and thought that the head of his family showed an
unnecessary harshness in putting an obstacle in his 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 Thorne, junior, was no roué 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
Ullathorne, Dr Thomas Thorne 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 in expectation of the
help which his Ullathorne connexion 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 Ullathorne people, however, he did establish a
quarrel sufficiently permanent to be of 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 Scatcherd. 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
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 robuster 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 Scatcherd 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 reputate 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 Thorne among his other bad qualities had one which his friends
regarded as worse than all the others, and which perhaps justified
the Ullathorne 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-rooms with vulgar drinkers; so said his friends, and so
said his enemies. He denied the charge as being made in the plural
number, and declared that his only low co-reveller was Roger
Scatcherd. With Roger Scatcherd, at any rate, he associated, and
became as democratic as Roger was himself. Now the Thornes of
Ullathorne were of the very highest order of Tory excellence.
Whether or not Mary Scatcherd 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 averred that she most positively had. The
respectable tradesman himself refused to speak on the subject.
It is certain, however, that Scatcherd, 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. Scatcherd, 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 Thorne had already heard of, and already seen, Mary Scatcherd;
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. Scatcherd
accused him openly of having intoxicated her with drugs; and Thomas
Thorne, 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 Thorne.
Roger Scatcherd, when the news first reached him, filled himself with
drink, and then swore that he would kill them both. With manly wrath,
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 Thorne.
The two brothers were then lodging together at a farm-house close
abutting on the town. This was not an eligible abode for a medical
practitioner; but the young doctor had not been able to settle
himself eligibly since his father's death; and wishing to put what
constraint he could upon his brother, had so located himself. To this
farm-house came Roger Scatcherd 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 Thorne. 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 Thorne.
They were the last words he ever spoke. He was answered by a blow
from the blackthorn. A contest ensued, which ended in Scatcherd
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 Scatcherd
himself persisted in declaring that he had taken in his hand no
weapon but the stick. Scatcherd, however, was drunk; and even though
he intended to tell the truth, may have been mistaken. There were,
however, the facts that Thorne was dead; that Scatcherd 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 Thorne and the farmer were on the spot soon after Henry Thorne
had fallen. The brother was at first furious for vengeance against
his brother's murderer; but, as the facts came out, as he learnt
what had been the provocation given, what had been the feelings of
Scatcherd 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 obloquy 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 merited 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 Thorne
of Ullathorne 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 Ullathorne. Miss Thorne, 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 Thorne 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 Scatcherd. She was saved from the
necessity of encountering her brother's wrath, 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 Thorne 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, Scatcherd 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 nowise sinned at all.
One man, at any rate, so thought. At twilight, one evening, Thorne
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 Scatcherd. 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 éclat 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
loves, a thousand thanks, profusest acknowledgements 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 Scatcherd
was liberated from jail. Some conditions the doctor made. The first
was, that Scatcherd should not know his sister's child was thus
disposed of. Dr Thorne, 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 Thorne; no man had
greater pride in his genealogical tree, and his hundred and thirty
clearly proved descents 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 Thorne, 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 ichor, 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 maturer 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 Scatcherds! 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 far-away 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 Scatcherd 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 Scatcherd, having completed his six months' confinement,
came out of prison.
Roger Scatcherd, though his hands were now red with blood, was to be
pitied. A short time before the days of Henry Thorne'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 at 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 Scatcherd 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 de Courcy, somewhere
about Barchester jail, or Barchester court-house, 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 Courcy
Castle to Greshamsbury--a supply being kept up on the lord's demesne
for the family use--was fond of brandy. She was at once sent back to
the castle, of course; and, as Lady de Courcy was too much in dudgeon
to send another, Dr Thorne was allowed to procure one. He thought of
the misery of Roger Scatcherd's wife, thought also of her health,
and strength, and active habits; and thus Mrs Scatcherd became the
foster-mother to young Frank Gresham.
One other episode we must tell of past times. Previous to his
father's death, Dr Thorne 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 prebendary; his cousins and his best friends were
the Thornes of Ullathorne, and the lady, who shall be nameless, was
not thought to be injudicious in listening to the young doctor. But
when Henry Thorne went so far astray, when the old doctor died, when
the young doctor quarrelled with Ullathorne, 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 Thorne that perhaps it would be wise that they should not see
each other any more.
Dr Thorne, so counselled, 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.