Dr Thorne

CHAPTER XLV

LAW BUSI­NESS IN LON­DON

On the Mon­day morn­ing at six o’clock, Mr Oriel and Frank start­ed to­geth­er; but ear­ly as it was, Beat­rice was up to give them a cup of cof­fee, Mr Oriel hav­ing slept that night in the house. Whether Frank would have re­ceived the cof­fee from his sis­ter’s fair hands had not Mr Oriel been there, may be doubt­ed. He, how­ev­er, loud­ly as­sert­ed that he should not have done so, when she laid claim to great mer­it for ris­ing on his be­half.

Mr Oriel had been spe­cial­ly in­sti­gat­ed by La­dy Ara­bel­la to use the op­por­tu­ni­ty of their joint jour­ney, for point­ing out to Frank the in­iq­ui­ty as well as mad­ness of the course he was pur­su­ing; and he had promised to obey her la­dy­ship’s re­quest. But Mr Oriel was per­haps not an en­ter­pris­ing man, and was cer­tain­ly not a pre­sump­tu­ous one. He did in­tend to do as he was bid; but when he be­gan, with the ob­ject of lead­ing up to the sub­ject of Frank’s en­gage­ment, he al­ways soft­ened down in­to some much eas­ier en­thu­si­asm in the mat­ter of his own en­gage­ment with Beat­rice. He had not that per­spic­uous, but not over-​sen­si­tive strength of mind which had en­abled Har­ry Bak­er to ex­press his opin­ion out at once; and bold­ly as he did it, yet to do so with­out of­fence.

Four times be­fore the train ar­rived in Lon­don, he made some lit­tle at­tempt; but four times he failed. As the sub­ject was mat­ri­mo­ny, it was his eas­iest course to be­gin about him­self; but nev­er could he get any fur­ther.

‘No man was ev­er more for­tu­nate in a wife than I shall be,’ he said, with a soft, eu­phuis­tic self-​com­pla­cen­cy, which would have been sil­ly had it been adopt­ed to any oth­er per­son than the bride’s broth­er. His in­ten­tion, how­ev­er, was very good, for he meant to show, that in his case mar­riage was pru­dent and wise, be­cause his case dif­fered so wide­ly from that of Frank.

‘Yes,’ said Frank. ‘She is an ex­cel­lent good girl:’ he had said it three times be­fore, and was not very en­er­get­ic.

‘Yes, and so ex­act­ly suit­ed to me; in­deed, all that I could have dreamed of. How very well she looked this morn­ing! Some girls on­ly look well at night. I should not like that at all.’

‘You mustn’t ex­pect her to look like that al­ways at six o’clock a.m.,’ said Frank, laugh­ing. ‘Young ladies on­ly take that trou­ble on very par­tic­ular oc­ca­sions. She wouldn’t have come down like that if my fa­ther or I had been go­ing alone. No, and she won’t do that for you in a cou­ple of years’ time.’

‘Oh, but she’s al­ways nice. I have seen her at home as much al­most as you could do; and then she’s so sin­cere­ly re­li­gious.’

‘Oh, yes, of course; that is, I am sure she is,’ said Frank, look­ing solemn as be­came him.

‘She’s made to be a cler­gy­man’s wife.’

‘Well, so it seems,’said Frank.

‘A mar­ried life, I’m sure, the hap­pi­est in the world–if peo­ple are on­ly in a po­si­tion to mar­ry,’ said Mr Oriel, grad­ual­ly draw­ing near to the ac­com­plish­ment of his de­sign.

‘Yes; quite so. Do you know, Oriel, I nev­er was so sleepy in my life. What with all that fuss of Gaze­bee’s, and one thing and an­oth­er, I could not get to bed till one o’clock; and then I couldn’t sleep. I’ll take a snooze now, if you won’t think it un­civ­il.’ And then, putting his feet on the op­po­site seat, he set­tled him­self com­fort­ably to his rest. And so Mr Oriel’s last at­tempt for lec­tur­ing Frank in the rail­way-​car­riage fad­ed away and was an­ni­hi­lat­ed.

By twelve o’clock Frank was with Messrs Slow & Bideawhile. Mr Bideawhile was en­gaged at the mo­ment, but he found the man­ag­ing Chancery clerk to be a very chat­ty gen­tle­man. Judg­ing from what he saw, he would have said that the work to be done at Messrs Slow & Bideawhile’s was not very heavy.

‘A sin­gu­lar man that Sir Louis,’ said the Chancery clerk.

‘Yes; very sin­gu­lar,’ said Frank.

‘Ex­cel­lent se­cu­ri­ty; no bet­ter; and yet he will fore­close; but you see he has no pow­er him­self. But the ques­tion is, can the trustee refuse? Then, again, trustees are so cir­cum­scribed nowa­days that they are afraid to do any­thing. There has been so much said late­ly, Mr Gre­sham, that a man doesn’t know where he is, or what he is do­ing. No­body trusts any­body. There have been such ter­ri­ble things that we can’t won­der at it. On­ly think of the case of those Hills! How can any one ex­pect that any one else will ev­er trust a lawyer again af­ter that? But that’s Mr Bideawhile’s bell. How can one ex­pect it? He will see you now, I dare say, Mr Gre­sham.’

So it turned out, and Frank was ush­ered in­to the pres­ence of Mr Bideawhile. He had got his les­son by heart, and was go­ing to rush in­to the mid­dle of his sub­ject; such a course, how­ev­er, was not in ac­cor­dance with Mr Bideawhile’s usu­al prac­tice. Mr Bideawhile got up from his large wood­en-​seat­ed Wind­sor chair, and, with a soft smile, in which, how­ev­er, was min­gled some slight dash of the at­tor­ney’s acute­ness, put out his hand to his young client; not, in­deed, as though he were go­ing to shake hands with him, but as though the hand were some ripe fruit all but falling, which his vis­itor might take and pluck if he thought prop­er. Frank took hold of the hand, which re­turned no pres­sure, and then let it go again, not mak­ing any at­tempt to gath­er the fruit.

‘I have come up to town, Mr Bideawhile, about this mort­gage.’

‘Mort­gage–ah, sit down, Mr Gre­sham; sit down. I hope your fa­ther is quite well?’

‘Quite well, thank you.’

‘I have a great re­gard for your fa­ther. So I had for your grand­fa­ther; a very good man in­deed. You, per­haps, don’t re­mem­ber him, Mr Gre­sham?’

‘He died when I was on­ly a year old.’

‘Oh, yes; no, you of course, can’t re­mem­ber him; but I do well: he used to be very fond of some port wine I had. I think it was “11″; and if I don’t mis­take, I have a bot­tle or two of it yet; but it is not worth drink­ing now. Port wine, you know, won’t keep be­yond a cer­tain time. That was very good wine. I don’t ex­act­ly re­mem­ber what it stood me a dozen then; but such wine can’t be had now. As for the Madeira, you know there’s an end of that. Do you drink Madeira, Mr Gre­sham?’

‘No,’ said Frank, ‘not very of­ten.’

‘I’m sor­ry for that, for it’s a fine wine; but then there’s none of it left, you know. I have a few dozen, I’m told they’re grow­ing pump­kins where the vine­yards were. I won­der what they do with all the pump­kins they grow in Switzer­land! You’ve been to Switzer­land, Mr Gre­sham?’

Frank said he had ben in Switzer­land.

‘It’s a beau­ti­ful coun­try; my girls made me go there last year. They said it would do me good; but then you know, they want­ed to see it them­selves; ha! ha! ha! How­ev­er, I be­lieve I shall go again this au­tumn. That is to Aix, or some of those places; just for three weeks. I can’t spare any more time, Mr Gre­sham. Do you like that din­ing at the ta­bles d’hote?’

‘Pret­ty well, some­times.’

‘One would get tired of it–eh! But they gave us cap­ital din­ners at Zurich. I don’t think much of their soup. But they had fish, and about sev­en kinds of meats and poul­try, and three or four pud­dings, and things of that sort. Up­on my word, I thought we did very well, and so did my girls, too. You see a great many ladies trav­el­ling now.’

‘Yes,’ said Frank; ‘a great many.’

‘Up­on my word, I think they are right; that is, if they can af­ford time. I can’t af­ford time. I’m here ev­ery day till five, Mr Gre­sham; then I go out and dine in Fleet Street, and then back to work till nine.’

‘Dear me! that’s very hard.’

‘Well, yes it is hard work. My boys don’t like it; but I man­age some­how. I get down to my lit­tle place in the coun­try on Sat­ur­day. I shall be most hap­py to see you there next Sat­ur­day.’

Frank, think­ing it would be out­ra­geous on his part to take up much of the time of the gen­tle­man who was con­strained to work so un­rea­son­ably hard, be­gan again to talk about his mort­gages, and, in so do­ing, had to men­tion the name of Mr Yates Um­blel­by.

‘Ah, poor Um­blel­by!’ said Mr Bideawhile; ‘what is he do­ing now? I am quite sure your fa­ther was right, or he wouldn’t have done it; but I used to think that Um­ble­by was a de­cent sort of man enough. Not so grand, you know, as your Gaze­bees and Gump­tions–eh, Mr Gre­sham? They do say young Gaze­bee is think­ing of get­ting in­to Par­lia­ment. Let me see: Um­ble­by mar­ried–who was it he mar­ried? That was the way your fa­ther got hold of him; not your fa­ther, but your grand­fa­ther. I used to know all about it. Well, I was sor­ry for Um­ble­by. He has got some­thing, I sup­pose–eh?’

Frank said that he be­lieved Mr Yates Um­ble­by had some­thing where­with to keep the wolf from the door.

‘So you have got Gaze­bee down there now? Gump­tion, Gaze­bee & Gaze­bee: very good peo­ple, I’m sure; on­ly, per­haps, they have a lit­tle too much on hand to do your fa­ther jus­tice.’

‘But about Sir Louis Scatcherd, Mr Bideawhile.’

‘Well, about Sir Louis; a very bad sort of fel­low, isn’t he? Drinks–eh? I knew his fa­ther a lit­tle. He was a rough di­amond, too. I was once down in Northamp­ton­shire, about some rail­way busi­ness; let me see; I al­most for­get whether I was with him, or against him. But I know he made six­ty thou­sand pounds by one hour’s work; six­ty thou­sand pounds! And then he got so mad with drink­ing that we all thought–’

And so Mr Bideawhile went on for two hours, and Frank found no op­por­tu­ni­ty of say­ing one word about the busi­ness which had brought him up to town. What won­der that such a man as this should be obliged to stay at his of­fice ev­ery night till nine o’clock?

Dur­ing these two hours, a clerk had come in three or four times, whis­per­ing some­thing to the lawyer, who, on the last of such oc­ca­sions, turned to Frank, say­ing, ‘Well, per­haps that will do for to-​day. If you’ll man­age to call to-​mor­row, say about two, I will have the whole thing looked up; or, per­haps Wednes­day or Thurs­day would suit you bet­ter.’ Frank, declar­ing that the mor­row would suit him very well, took his de­par­ture, won­der­ing much at the man­ner in which busi­ness was done at the house of Messrs Slow and Bideawhile.

When he called the next day, the of­fice seemed to be rather dis­turbed, and he was shown quick­ly in­to Mr Bideawhile’s room. ‘Have you heard this?’ said that gen­tle­man, putting a tele­gram in­to his hands. It con­tained tid­ings of the death of Sir Louis Scatcherd. Frank im­me­di­ate­ly knew that these tid­ings must be of im­por­tance to his fa­ther; but he had no idea how vi­tal­ly they con­cerned his own more im­me­di­ate in­ter­ests.

‘Dr Thorne will be up in town on Thurs­day evening af­ter the fu­ner­al,’ said the talkative clerk. ‘And noth­ing of course can be done till he comes,’ said Mr Bideawhile. And so Frank, pon­der­ing on the mu­ta­bil­ity of hu­man af­fairs, again took his de­par­ture.

He could do noth­ing now but wait for Dr Thorne’s ar­rival, and so he amused him­self in the in­ter­val by run­ning down to Malvern, and treat­ing with Miss Dun­sta­ble in per­son for the oil of Lebanon. He went down on the Wednes­day, and thus, failed to re­ceive, on the Thurs­day morn­ing, Mary’s let­ter, which reached Lon­don on that day. He re­turned, how­ev­er, on the Fri­day, and then got it; and per­haps it was well for Mary’s hap­pi­ness that he had seen Miss Dun­sta­ble in the in­ter­val. ‘I don’t care what your moth­er says,’ said she, with em­pha­sis. ‘I don’t care for any Har­ry, whether it be Har­ry Bak­er or old Har­ry him­self. You made her a promise, and you are bound to keep it; if not on one day, then on an­oth­er. What! be­cause you can­not draw back your­self, get out of it by in­duc­ing her to do so! Aunt de Cour­cy her­self could not im­prove up­on that.’ For­ti­fied in this man­ner, he re­turned to town on the Fri­day morn­ing, and then got Mary’s let­ter. Frank al­so got a note from Dr Thorne, stat­ing that he had tak­en up his tem­po­rary domi­cile at the Gray’s Inn Cof­fee-​house, so as to be near the lawyers.

It has been sug­gest­ed that the mod­ern En­glish writ­ers of fic­tion should among them keep a bar­ris­ter, in or­der that they may be set right on such le­gal points as will arise in their lit­tle nar­ra­tives, and thus avoid the ex­po­sure of their own ig­no­rance of the laws, which, now, alas! they too of­ten make. The idea is wor­thy of con­sid­er­ation, and I can on­ly say, that if such an ar­range­ment can be made, and if a coun­sel­lor ad­equate­ly skil­ful can be found to ac­cept the of­fice, I shall be hap­py to sub­scribe my quo­ta; it would be but a mod­est trib­ute to­wards the cost.

But as the sug­ges­tion has not yet been car­ried out, and as there is at present no learned gen­tle­man whose du­ty would in­duce him to set me right, I can on­ly plead for mer­cy if I be wrong al­lot­ting all Sir Roger’s vast pos­ses­sions in per­pe­tu­ity to Miss Thorne, al­leg­ing al­so, in ex­cuse, that the course of my nar­ra­tive ab­so­lute­ly de­mands that she shall be ul­ti­mate­ly rec­og­nized as Sir Roger’s un­doubt­ed heiress.

Such, af­ter a not im­mod­er­ate de­lay, was the opin­ion ex­pressed to Dr Thorne by his law ad­vis­ers; and such, in fact, turned out to be the case. I will leave the mat­ter so, hop­ing that my very ab­sence of de­fence may serve to pro­tect me from se­vere at­tack. If un­der such a will as that de­scribed as hav­ing been made by Sir Roger, Mary would not have been the heiress, that will must have been de­scribed wrong­ly.

But it was not quite at once that those tid­ings made them­selves ab­so­lute­ly cer­tain to Dr Thorne’s mind; nor was he able to ex­press any such opin­ion when he first met Frank in Lon­don. At that time Mary’s let­ter was in Frank’s pock­et; and Frank, though his re­al busi­ness ap­per­tained much more to the fact of Sir Louis’s death, and the ef­fect that would im­me­di­ate­ly have on his fa­ther’s af­fairs, was much more full of what so much more near­ly con­cerned him­self. ‘I will show it Dr Thorne him­self,’ said he, ‘and ask him what he thinks.’

Dr Thorne was stretched fast asleep on the com­fort­less horse-​hair so­fa in the dingy sit­ting-​room at the Gray’s Inn Cof­fee-​house when Frank found him. The fu­ner­al, and his jour­ney to Lon­don, and the lawyers had to­geth­er con­quered his en­er­gies, and he lay and snored, with nose up­right, while heavy Lon­don sum­mer flies set­tled on his head and face, and robbed his slum­bers of half their charms.

‘I beg your par­don,’ said he, jump­ing up as though he had been de­tect­ed in some dis­grace­ful act. ‘Up­on my word, Frank, I beg your par­don; but–well, my dear fel­low, all well at Gre­shams­bury–eh?’ and as he shook him­self, he made a lunge at one un­com­mon­ly dis­agree­able fly that had been at him for the last ten min­utes. It is hard­ly nec­es­sary to say that he missed his en­emy.

‘I should have been with you be­fore, doc­tor, but I was down at Malvern.’

‘At Malvern, eh? Ah! so Oriel told me. The death of poor Sir Louis was very sud­den–was it not?’

‘Very.’

‘Poor fel­low–poor fel­low! His fate has for some time been past hope. It is a mad­ness, Frank; the worst of mad­ness. On­ly think of it–fa­ther and son! And such a ca­reer as the fa­ther had–such a ca­reer as the son might have had!’

‘It has been very quick­ly run,’ said Frank.

‘May it be all for­giv­en him! I some­times can­not but be­lieve in a spe­cial Prov­idence. That poor fel­low was not able, nev­er would have been able, to make prop­er use of the means which for­tune had giv­en him. I hope they may fall in­to bet­ter hands. There is no use in deny­ing it, his death will be an im­mense re­lief to me, and a re­lief al­so to your fa­ther. All this law busi­ness will now, of course, be stopped. As for me, I hope I may nev­er be trustee again.’

Frank had put his hand four or five times in­to his breast-​pock­et, and had as of­ten tak­en out and put back again Mary’s let­ter be­fore he could find him­self able to bring Dr Thorne to the sub­ject. At last there was a lull in the pure­ly le­gal dis­cus­sion, caused by the doc­tor in­ti­mat­ing that he sup­posed Frank would now soon re­turn to Gre­shams­bury.

‘Yes; I shall go to-​mor­row morn­ing.’

‘What! so soon as that? I count­ed on hav­ing you one day in Lon­don with me.’

‘No, I shall go to-​mor­row. I’m not fit for com­pa­ny for any one. Nor am I fit for any­thing. Read that, doc­tor. It’s no use putting it off any longer. I must get you to talk this over with me. Just read that, and tell me what you think about it. It was writ­ten a week ago, but some­how I have on­ly got it to-​day.’ And putting the let­ter in­to the doc­tor’s hands, he turned away to the win­dow, and looked out among the Hol­born om­nibus­es. Dr Thorne took the let­ter and read it. Mary, af­ter she had writ­ten it, had be­wailed to her­self that the let­ter was cold; but it had not seemed cold to her lover, nor did it ap­pear so to her un­cle. When Frank turned round from the win­dow, the doc­tor’s hand­ker­chief was up to his eyes; who, in or­der to hide the tears that were there, was obliged to go through a rather vi­olent pro­cess of blow­ing his nose.

‘Well,’ he said, as he gave back the let­ter to Frank.

Well! what did well mean? Was it well? or would it be well were he, Frank, to com­ply with the sug­ges­tion made to him by Mary?

‘It is im­pos­si­ble,’ he said, ‘that mat­ters should go on like that. Think what her suf­fer­ings must have been be­fore she wrote that. I am sure she loves me.’

‘I think she does,’ said the doc­tor.

‘And it is out of the ques­tion that she should be sac­ri­ficed; nor will I con­sent to sac­ri­fice my own hap­pi­ness. I am quite will­ing to work for my bread, and I am sure that I am able. I will not sub­mit to–Doc­tor, what an­swer do you think I ought to give to that let­ter? There can be no per­son so anx­ious for her hap­pi­ness as you are–ex­cept my­self.’ And as he asked the ques­tion, he again put in­to the doc­tor’s hands, al­most un­con­scious­ly, the let­ter which he had still been hold­ing in his own.

The doc­tor turned it over and over, and then opened it again.

‘What an­swer ought I to make to it?’ de­mand­ed Frank, with en­er­gy.

‘You see, Frank, I have nev­er in­ter­fered in this mat­ter, oth­er­wise than to tell you the whole truth about Mary’s birth.’

‘Oh, but you must in­ter­fere: you should say what you think.’

‘Cir­cum­stanced as you are now–that is, just at the present mo­ment–you could hard­ly mar­ry im­me­di­ate­ly.’

‘Why not let me take a farm? My fa­ther could, at any rate, man­age a cou­ple of thou­sand pounds or so for me to stock it. That would not be ask­ing much. If he could not give it me, I would not scru­ple to bor­row so much else­where.’ And Frank bethought him of all Miss Dun­sta­ble’s of­fers.

‘Oh, yes; that could be man­aged.’

‘Then why not mar­ry im­me­di­ate­ly; say in six months or so? I am not un­rea­son­able; though, Heav­en knows, I have been kept in sus­pense long enough. As for her, I am sure she must be suf­fer­ing fright­ful­ly. You know her best, and, there­fore, I ask you what an­swer I ought to make: as for my­self, I have made up my own mind; I am not a child, nor will I let them treat me as such.’

Frank, as he spoke, was walk­ing rapid­ly about the room; and h brought out his dif­fer­ent po­si­tions, one af­ter the oth­er, with a lit­tle pause, while wait­ing for the doc­tor’s an­swer. The doc­tor was sit­ting, with the let­ter still in his hands, on the head of the so­fa, turn­ing over in his mind the ap­par­ent ab­sur­di­ty of Frank’s de­sire to bor­row two thou­sand pounds for a farm, when, in all hu­man prob­abil­ity, he might in a few months be in pos­ses­sion of al­most any sum he should choose to name. And yet he would not tell him of Sir Roger’s will. ‘If it should turn out to be all wrong?’ said he to him­self.

‘Do you wish me to give her up?’ said Frank, at last.

‘No. How can I wish it? How can I ex­pect a bet­ter match for her? Be­sides, Frank, I love no man in the world so well as I do you.’

‘Then will you help me?’

‘What! against your fa­ther?’

‘Against! no, not against any­body. But will you tell Mary she has your con­sent?’

‘I think she knows that.’

‘But you have nev­er said any­thing to her?’

‘Look here, Frank; you ask me for my ad­vice, and I will give it you: go home, though, in­deed, I would rather you went any­where else.’

‘No, I must go home; and I must see her.’

‘Very well, go home: as for see­ing Mary, I think you had bet­ter put it off for a fort­night.’

‘Quite im­pos­si­ble.’

‘Well, that’s my ad­vice. But, at any rate, make up your mind to noth­ing for a fort­night. Wait for one fort­night, and I then will tell you plain­ly–you and her too–what I think you ought to do. At the end of a fort­night come to me, and tell the squire that I will take it as a great kind­ness if he will come with you. She has suf­fered ter­ri­bly, ter­ri­bly; and it is nec­es­sary that some­thing should be set­tled. But a fort­night can make no great dif­fer­ence.’

‘And the let­ter?’

‘Oh! there’s the let­ter.’

‘But what shall I say? Of course I shall write to her to-​night.’

‘Tell her to wait a fort­night. And, Frank, mind you bring your fa­ther with you.’

Frank could draw noth­ing fur­ther from his friend save con­stant rep­eti­tions of this charge to him to wait a fort­night,–just one oth­er fort­night.

‘Well, I will come to you at any rate,’ said Frank; ‘and, if pos­si­ble, I will bring my fa­ther. But I shall write to Mary to-​night.’

On the Sat­ur­day morn­ing, Mary, who was then near­ly bro­ken-​heart­ed at her lover’s si­lence, re­ceived a short note:–

‘MY OWN MARY

‘I shall be home to-​mor­row. I will by no means re­lease you from your promise. Of course you will per­ceive that I on­ly got your let­ter to-​day.’

Your own dear­est, FRANK.’

Short as it was, this suf­ficed Mary. It is one thing for a young la­dy to make pru­dent, heart-​break­ing sug­ges­tions, but quite an­oth­er to have them ac­cept­ed. She did call him dear­est Frank, even on that one day, al­most as of­ten as he had de­sired her.