Dr Thorne

CHAPTER XIX

THE DUKE OF OM­NI­UM

The Duke of Om­ni­um was, as we have said, a bach­elor. Not the less on that ac­count did he on cer­tain rare gala days en­ter­tain the beau­ty of the coun­ty in his mag­nif­icent ru­ral seat, or the fe­male fash­ion of Lon­don in Bel­grave Square; but on this oc­ca­sion the din­ner at Gatherum Cas­tle–for such was the name of his man­sion–was to be con­fined to the lords of the cre­ation. It was to be one of those days on which he col­lect­ed round his board all the no­ta­bles of the coun­ty, in or­der that his pop­ular­ity might not wane, or the es­tab­lished glo­ry of his hos­pitable house be­come dim.

On such an oc­ca­sion it was not prob­able that Lord de Cour­cy would be one of the guests. The par­ty, in­deed, who went from Cour­cy Cas­tle was not large, and con­sist­ed of the Hon­ourable George, Mr Mof­fat, and Frank Gre­sham. They went in a tax-​cart, with a tan­dem horse, driv­en very know­ing­ly by George de Cour­cy; and the fourth seat on the back of the ve­hi­cle was oc­cu­pied by a ser­vant, who was to look af­ter the hors­es at Gatherum.

The Hon­ourable George drove ei­ther well or luck­ily, for he reached the duke’s house in safe­ty; but he drove very fast. Poor Miss Dun­sta­ble! what would have been her lot had any­thing but good hap­pened to that ve­hi­cle, so rich­ly freight­ed with her three lovers! They did not quar­rel as to the prize, and all reached Gatherum Cas­tle in good-​hu­mour with each oth­er.

The cas­tle was new build­ing of white stone, late­ly erect­ed at an enor­mous cost by one of the first ar­chi­tects of the day. It was an im­mense pile, and seemed to cov­er ground enough for a mod­er­ate-​sized town. But, nev­er­the­less, re­port said that when it was com­plet­ed, the no­ble own­er found that he had no rooms to live in; and that, on this ac­count, when dis­posed to study his own com­fort, he resid­ed in a house of per­haps one-​tenth of the size, built by his grand­fa­ther in an­oth­er coun­ty.

Gatherum Cas­tle would prob­ably be called Ital­ian in its style of ar­chi­tec­ture; though it may, I think, be doubt­ed whether any such ed­ifice, or any­thing like it, was ev­er seen in any part of Italy. It was a vast ed­ifice; ir­reg­ular in height–or it ap­peared to be–hav­ing long wings on each side too high to be passed over by the eye as mere ad­juncts to the man­sion, and a por­ti­co so large as to make the house be­hind it look like an­oth­er build­ing of a greater al­ti­tude. This por­ti­co was sup­port­ed by Ion­ic columns, and was in it­self doubt­less a beau­ti­ful struc­ture. It was ap­proached by a flight of steps, very broad and very grand; but, as an ap­proach, by a flight of steps hard­ly suits an En­glish­man’s house, to the im­me­di­ate en­trance of which it is nec­es­sary that his car­riage should drive, there was an­oth­er front door in one of the wings which was com­mon­ly used. A car­riage, how­ev­er, could on very stu­pen­dous­ly grand oc­ca­sions–the vis­its, for in­stance, of queens and kings, and roy­al dukes–be brought up un­der the por­ti­co; as the steps had been so con­struct­ed as to ad­mit of a road, with a rather stiff as­cent, be­ing made close in front of the wing up in­to the very porch.

0pen­ing from the porch was the grand hall, which ex­tend­ed up to the top of the house. It was mag­nif­icent, in­deed; be­ing dec­orat­ed with many-​coloured mar­bles, and hung round with var­ious tro­phies of the house of Om­ni­um; ban­ners were there, and ar­mour; the sculp­tured busts of many no­ble pro­gen­itors; full-​length fig­ures of mar­ble of those who had been es­pe­cial­ly promi­nent; and ev­ery mon­ument of glo­ry and wealth, long years, and great achieve­ments could bring to­geth­er. If on­ly a man could but live in his hall and be for ev­er hap­py there! But the Duke of Om­ni­um could not live hap­pi­ly in his hall; and the fact was, that the ar­chi­tect, in con­triv­ing this mag­nif­icent en­trance for his own hon­our and fame, had de­stroyed the duke’s house as re­gards most of the or­di­nary pur­pos­es of res­idence.

Nev­er­the­less, Gatherum Cas­tle is a very no­ble pile; and, stand­ing as it does an em­inence, has a very fine ef­fect when seen from many a dis­tant knoll and ver­dant-​wood­ed hill.

At sev­en o’clock, Mr de Cour­cy and his friends got down from their drag at the small­er door–for this was no day on which to mount up un­der the por­ti­co; nor was that any suit­able ve­hi­cle to have been en­ti­tled to such hon­our. Frank felt some ex­cite­ment a lit­tle stronger than that usu­al to him at such mo­ments, for he had nev­er yet been in com­pa­ny with the Duke of Om­ni­um; and he rather puz­zled him­self to think on what points he would talk to the man who was the largest landown­er in that coun­ty in which he him­self had so great an in­ter­est. He, how­ev­er, made up his mind that he would al­low the duke to choose his own sub­jects; mere­ly re­serv­ing to him­self the right of point­ing out how de­fi­cient in gorse cov­ers was West Barset­shire–that be­ing the duke’s di­vi­sion.

They were soon di­vest­ed of their coats and hats, and, with­out en­ter­ing on the mag­nif­icence of the great hall, were con­duct­ed through rather a nar­row pas­sage in­to rather a small draw­ing-​room–small, that is, in pro­por­tion to the num­ber of gen­tle­men there as­sem­bled. There might be about thir­ty, and Frank was in­clined to think that they were al­most crowd­ed. A man came for­ward to greet them when their names were an­nounced; but our hero at once knew that he was not the duke; for this man was fat and short, where­as the duke was thin and tall.

There was a great hub­bub go­ing on; for ev­ery­body seemed to be talk­ing to his neigh­bour; or, in de­fault of a neigh­bour, to him­self. It was clear that the ex­alt­ed rank of their host had put very lit­tle con­straint on his guests’ tongues, for they chat­ted away with as much free­dom as farm­ers at an or­di­nary.

‘Which is the duke?’ at last Frank con­trived to whis­per to his cousin.

‘Oh;–he’s not here,’ said George; ‘I sup­pose he’ll be in present­ly. I be­lieve he nev­er shows till just be­fore din­ner.’

Frank, of course, had noth­ing fur­ther to say; but he al­ready be­gan to feel him­self a lit­tle snubbed: he thought that the duke, duke though he was, when he asked peo­ple to din­ner should be there to tell them that he was glad to see them.

More peo­ple flashed in­to the room, and Frank found him­self rather close­ly wedged in with a stout cler­gy­man of his ac­quain­tance. He was not bad­ly off, for Mr Athill was a friend of his own, who had held a liv­ing near Gre­shams­bury. Late­ly, how­ev­er, at the lament­ed de­cease of Dr Stan­hope–who had died of apoplexy at his vil­la in Italy–Mr Athill had been pre­sent­ed with the bet­ter prefer­ment of Ei­der­down, and had, there­fore, re­moved to an­oth­er part of the coun­ty. He was some­what of a bon-​vi­vant, and a man who thor­ough­ly un­der­stood din­ner-​par­ties; and with much good na­ture he took Frank un­der his spe­cial pro­tec­tion.

‘You stick to me, Mr Gre­sham,’ he said, ‘when we go in­to the din­ing-​room. I’m an old hand at the duke’s din­ners, and know how to make a friend com­fort­able as well as my­self.’

‘But why doesn’t the duke come in?’ de­mand­ed Frank.

‘He’ll be here as soon as din­ner is ready,’ said Mr Athill. ‘Or, rather, the din­ner will be ready as soon as he is here. I don’t care, there­fore, how soon he comes.’

He was be­gin­ning to be im­pa­tient, for the room was now near­ly full, and it seemed ev­ident that no oth­er guests were com­ing; when sud­den­ly a bell rang, and a gong was sound­ed, and at the same in­stant a door that had not yet been used flew open, and a very plain­ly dressed, plain, tall man en­tered the room. Frank at once knew that he was at last in the pres­ence of the Duke of Om­ni­um.

But his grace, late as he was in com­menc­ing the du­ties as host, seemed in no hur­ry to make up for lost time. He qui­et­ly stood on the rug, with his back to the emp­ty grate, and spoke one or two words in a very low voice to one or two gen­tle­men who stood near­est to him. The crowd, in the mean­while, be­came sud­den­ly silent. Frank, when he found that the duke did not come and speak to him, felt that he ought to go and speak to the duke; but no one else did so, and when he whis­pered his sur­prise to Mr Athill, that gen­tle­man told him that this was the duke’s prac­tice on all such oc­ca­sions.

‘Fothergill,’ said the duke–and it was the on­ly word he had yet spo­ken out loud–’I be­lieve we are ready for din­ner.’ Now Mr Fothergill was the duke’s land-​agent, and he it was who had greet­ed Frank and his friends at their en­trance.

Im­me­di­ate­ly the gong was again sound­ed, and an­oth­er door lead­ing out of the draw­ing-​room in­to the din­ing-​room was opened. The duke led the way, and then the guests fol­lowed. ‘Stick close to me, Mr Gre­sham,’ said Athill, ‘we’ll get about the mid­dle of the ta­ble, where we shall be cosy–and on the oth­er side of the room, out of this dread­ful draught–I know the place well, Mr Gre­sham; stick to me.’

Mr Athill, who was a pleas­ant, chat­ty com­pan­ion, had hard­ly seat­ed him­self, and was talk­ing to Frank as quick­ly as he could, when Mr Fothergill, who sat at the bot­tom of the ta­ble, asked him to say grace. It seemed to be quite out of the ques­tion that the duke should take any trou­ble over his guests what­ev­er. Mr Athill con­se­quent­ly dropped the word he was speak­ing, and ut­tered a prayer–if it was a prayer–that they might all have grate­ful hearts for which God was about to give them.

If it was a prayer! As far as my own ex­pe­ri­ence goes, such ut­ter­ances are sel­dom prayers, sel­dom can be prayers. And if not prayers, what then? To me it is un­in­tel­li­gi­ble that the full tide of glibbest chat­ter can be stopped at a mo­ment in the midst of pro­fuse good liv­ing, and the Giv­en thanked be­com­ing­ly in words of heart­felt praise. Set­ting aside for the mo­ment what one dai­ly hears and sees, may not one de­clare that a change so sud­den is not with­in the com­pass of the hu­man mind? But then, to such rea­son­ing one can­not but add what one does hear and see; one can­not but judge of the cer­emo­ny by the man­ner in which one sees it per­formed–ut­tered, that is–and lis­tened to. Cler­gy­men there are–one meets them now and then–who en­deav­our to give to the din­ner-​ta­ble grace some of the solem­ni­ty of a church rit­ual, and what is the ef­fect? Much the same as though one were to be in­ter­rupt­ed for a minute in the midst of one of our church litur­gies to hear a drink­ing-​song.

And it will be ar­gued, that a man need be less thank­ful be­cause, at the mo­ment of re­ceiv­ing, he ut­ters not thanks­giv­ing? or will it be thought that a man is made thank­ful be­cause what is called a grace is ut­tered af­ter din­ner? It can hard­ly be imag­ined that any one will so ar­gue, or so think.

Din­ner-​graces are, prob­ably, the last re­main­ing rel­ic of cer­tain dai­ly ser­vices which the Church in old­en days en­joined: nones, com­plines, and ves­pers were oth­ers. Of the nones and com­plines we have hap­pi­ly got quit; and it might be well if we could get rid of the din­ner-​grace al­so. Let any man ask him­self whether, on his own part, they are acts of prayer and thanks­giv­ing–and if not that, what then? It is, I know, al­leged that graces are said be­fore din­ner, be­cause our Saviour ut­tered a bless­ing be­fore his last sup­per. I can­not say that the idea of such anal­ogy is pleas­ing to me.

When the large par­ty en­tered the din­ing-​room one or two gen­tle­men might be seen to come in from some oth­er door and set them­selves at the ta­ble near to the duke’s chair. These were guests of his own, who were stay­ing in the house, his par­tic­ular friends, the men with whom he lived: the oth­ers were strangers whom he fed, per­haps once a year, in or­der that his name might be known in the land as that of one who dis­tribut­ed food and wine hos­pitably through the coun­ty. The food and wine, the at­ten­dance al­so, and the view of the vast repos­ito­ry of plate he vouch­safed will­ing­ly to his coun­ty neigh­bours;–but it was be­yond his good na­ture to talk to them. To judge by the present ap­pear­ance of most of them, they were quite as well sat­is­fied to be left alone.

Frank was al­to­geth­er a stranger there, but Mr Athill knew ev­ery one at the ta­ble.

‘That’s Apjohn,’ said he: ‘don’t you know, Mr Apjohn, the at­tor­ney from Barch­ester? he’s al­ways here; he does some of Fothergill’s law busi­ness, and makes him­self use­ful. If any fel­low knows the val­ue of a good din­ner, he does. You’ll see that the duke’s hos­pi­tal­ity will not be thrown away on him.’

‘It’s very much thrown away on me, I know,’ said Frank, who could not at all put up with the idea of sit­ting down to din­ner with­out hav­ing been spo­ken to by his host.

‘Oh, non­sense!’ said his cler­ical friend; ‘you’ll en­joy your­self amaz­ing­ly by and by. There is not much cham­pagne in any oth­er house in Barset­shire; and then the claret–’ And Mr Athill pressed his lips to­geth­er, and gen­tly shook his head, mean­ing to sig­ni­fy by the mo­tion that the claret of Gatherum Cas­tle was suf­fi­cient atone­ment for any penance which a man might have to go through in his mode of ob­tain­ing it.

‘Who is that fun­ny lit­tle man sit­ting there, next but one to Mr de Cour­cy? I nev­er saw such a queer fel­low in my life.’

‘Don’t you know old Bo­lus? Well, I thought ev­ery one in Barset­shire knew Bo­lus; you es­pe­cial­ly should do so, as he is such a dear friend of Dr Thorne.’

‘A dear friend of Dr Thorne?’

‘Yes; he was apothe­cary at Scar­ing­ton in the old days, be­fore Dr Fill­grave came in­to vogue. I re­mem­ber when Bo­lus was thought to be a very good sort of doc­tor.’

‘Is he–is he–’ whis­pered Frank, ‘is he by way of a gen­tle­man?’

‘Ha! ha! ha! Well, I sup­pose we must be char­ita­ble, and say that he is quite as good, at any rate, as many oth­ers there are here–’ and Mr Athill, as he spoke, whis­pered in­to Frank’s ear, ‘You see there’s Finnie here, an­oth­er Barch­ester at­tor­ney. Now, I re­al­ly think where Finnie goes, Bo­lus may go too.’

‘The more the mer­ri­er, I sup­pose,’ said Frank.

‘Well, some­thing a lit­tle like that. I won­der why Thorne is not here? I’m sure he was asked.’

‘Per­haps he did not par­tic­ular­ly wish to meet Finnie and Bo­lus. Do you know, Mr Athill, I think he was quite right not to come. As for my­self, I wish I was any­where else.’

‘Ha! ha! ha! You don’t know the duke’s ways yet; and what’s more, you’re young, you hap­py fel­low! But Thorne should have more sense; he ought to show him­self here.’

The gor­man­diz­ing was now go­ing on at a tremen­dous rate. Though the vol­ubil­ity of their tongues had been for a while stopped by the first shock of the duke’s pres­ence, the guests seemed to feel no such con­straint up­on their teeth. They fed, one may al­most say, ra­bid­ly, and gave their or­ders to the ser­vants in an ea­ger man­ner; much more im­pres­sive than that usu­al at small­er par­ties. Mr Apjohn, who sat im­me­di­ate­ly op­po­site to Frank, had, by some well-​planned ma­noeu­vre, con­trived to get be­fore him the jowl of a salmon; but, un­for­tu­nate­ly, he was not for a while equal­ly suc­cess­ful in the ar­ti­cle of sauce. A very lim­it­ed por­tion–so at least thought Mr Apjohn–had been put on his plate; and a ser­vant, with a huge sauce tureen, ab­so­lute­ly passed be­hind his back inat­ten­tive to his au­di­ble re­quests. Poor Mr Apjohn in his de­spair turned round to ar­rest the man by his coat-​tails; but he was a mo­ment too late, and all but fell back­wards on the floor. As he right­ed him­self he mut­tered an anath­ema, and looked with a face of an­guish at his plate.

‘Any­thing the mat­ter, Apjohn?’ said Mr Fothergill, kind­ly, see­ing the ut­ter de­spair writ­ten on the poor man’s coun­te­nance; ‘can I get any­thing for you?’

‘The sauce!’ said Mr Apjohn, in a voice that would have melt­ed a her­mit; and as he looked at Mr Fothergill, he point at the now dis­tant sin­ner, who was dis­pens­ing his melt­ed am­brosia at least ten heads up­wards, away from the un­for­tu­nate sup­pli­cant.

Mr Fothergill, how­ev­er, knew where to look for balm for such wounds, and in a minute or two, Mr Apjohn was em­ployed quite to his heart’s con­tent.

‘Well,’ said Frank to his neigh­bour, ‘it may be very well once in a way; but I think that on the whole Dr Thorne is right.’

‘My dear Mr Gre­sham, see the world on all sides,’ said Mr Athill, who had al­so been some­what in­tent on the grat­ifi­ca­tion of his own ap­petite, though with an en­er­gy less ev­ident than that of the gen­tle­man op­po­site. ‘See the world on all sides if you have an op­por­tu­ni­ty; and, be­lieve me, a good din­ner now and then is a very good thing.’

‘Yes; but I don’t like eat­ing with hogs.’

‘Whish-​h! soft­ly, soft­ly, Mr Gre­sham, or you’ll dis­turb Mr Apjohn’s di­ges­tion. Up­on my word, he’ll want it all be­fore he has done. Now, I like this kind of thing once in a way.’

‘Do you?’ said Frank, in a tone that was al­most sav­age.

‘Yes; in­deed I do. One sees so much char­ac­ter. And af­ter all, what harm does it do?’

‘My idea is that peo­ple should live with those whose so­ci­ety is pleas­ant to them.’

‘Live–yes, Mr Gre­sham–I agree with you there. It wouldn’t do for me to live with the Duke of Om­ni­um; I shouldn’t un­der­stand, or prob­ably ap­prove, his ways. Nor should I, per­haps, much like the con­stant pres­ence of Mr Apjohn. But now and then–once in a year or so–I do own I like to see them both. Here’s the cup; now, what­ev­er you do, Mr Gre­sham, don’t pass the cup with­out tast­ing it.’

And so the din­ner passed on, slow­ly enough as Frank thought, but all too quick­ly for Mr Apjohn. It passed away, and the wine came cir­cu­lat­ing freely. The tongues again were loosed, the teeth be­ing re­leased from their labours, and un­der the in­flu­ence of the claret the duke’s pres­ence was for­got­ten.

But very speed­ily the cof­fee was brought. ‘This will soon be over now,’ said Frank, to him­self, thank­ful­ly; for, though he be no means de­spised good claret, he had lost his tem­per too com­plete­ly to en­joy it at the present mo­ment. But he was much mis­tak­en; the farce as yet was on­ly at its com­mence­ment. The duke took his cup of cof­fee, and so did the few friends who sat close to him; but the bev­er­age did not seem to be in great re­quest with the ma­jor­ity of the guests. When the duke had tak­en his mod­icum, he rose up and silent­ly re­tired, say­ing no word and mak­ing no sign. And then the farce com­menced.

‘Now, gen­tle­men,’ said Mr Fothergill, cheer­ily, ‘we are all right. Apjohn, is there claret there? Mr Bo­lus, I know you stick to the Madeira; you are quite right, for there isn’t too much of it left, and my be­lief is there’ll nev­er be more like it.’

And so the duke’s hos­pi­tal­ity went on, and the duke’s guests drank mer­ri­ly for the next two hours.

‘Shan’t we see any more of him?’ asked Frank.

‘Any more of whom?’ said Mr Athill.

‘Of the duke?’

‘Oh, no; you’ll see no more of him. He al­ways goes when the cof­fee comes. It’s brought in as an ex­cuse. We’ve had enough of the light of his coun­te­nance to last till next year. The duke and I are ex­cel­lent friends; and have been so these fif­teen years; but I nev­er see more of him than that.’

‘I shall go away,’ said Frank.

‘Non­sense. Mr de Cour­cy and your oth­er friend won’t stir for this hour yet.’

‘I don’t care. I shall walk on, and they may catch me. I may be wrong; but it seems to me that a man in­sults me when he asks me to dine with him and nev­er speaks to me. I don’t care if he be ten times Duke of Om­ni­um; he can’t be more than a gen­tle­man, and as such I am his equal.’ And then, hav­ing thus giv­en vent to his feel­ings in some­what high-​flown lan­guage, he walked forth and trudged away along the road to­wards Cour­cy.

Frank Gre­sham had been born and bred a Con­ser­va­tive, where­as the Duke of Om­ni­um was well known as a con­sis­tent Whig. There is no one so de­vout­ly re­solved to ad­mit of no su­pe­ri­or as your Con­ser­va­tive, born and bred, no one so in­clined to high do­mes­tic despo­tism as your thor­ough­go­ing con­sis­tent old Whig.

When he had pro­ceed­ed about six miles, Frank was picked up by his friends; but even then his anger had hard­ly cooled.

‘Was the duke as civ­il as ev­er when you took your leave of him?’ said he to his cousin George, as he took his seat on the drag.

‘The juke was jeuced jude wine–lem me tell you that, old fel­la,’ hic­cupped out the Hon­ourable George, as he touched up the lead­er un­der the flank.