The Chronicles of Barsetshire

by Anthony Trollope

  Mr. Fothergill was, in one respect, like to his friend Sowerby. He enacted two altogether different persons on occasions which were altogether different. Generally speaking, with the world at large, he was a jolly, rollicking, popular man, fond of eating and drinking, known to be devoted to the duke’s interests, and supposed to be somewhat unscrupulous, or at any rate hard, when they were concerned; but in other respects a good-natured fellow: and there was a report about that he had once lent somebody money, without charging him interest or taking security. On the present occasion Sowerby saw at a glance that he had come thither with all the aptitudes and appurtenances of his business about him. He walked into the room with a short, quick step; there was no smile on his face as he shook hands with his old friend; he brought with him a box laden with papers and parchments, and he had not been a minute in the room before he was seated in one of the old dingy chairs.

  “How long have you been in town, Fothergill?” said Sowerby, still standing with his back against the chimney. He had resolved on only one thing—that nothing should induce him to touch, look at, or listen to any of those papers. He knew well enough that no good would come of that. He also had his own lawyer, to see that he was pilfered according to rule.

  “How long? Since the day before yesterday. I never was so busy in my life. The duke, as usual, wants to have everything done at once.”

  “If he wants to have all that I owe him paid at once, he is like to be out in his reckoning.”

  “Ah, well; I’m glad you are ready to come quickly to business, because it’s always best. Won’t you come and sit down here?”

  “No, thank you; I’ll stand.”

  “But we shall have to go through these figures, you know.”

  “Not a figure, Fothergill. What good would it do? None to me, and none to you either, as I take it. If there is anything wrong, Potter’s fellows will find it out. What is it the duke wants?”

  “Well; to tell the truth, he wants his money.”

  “In one sense, and that the main sense, he has got it. He gets his interest regularly, does not he?”

  “Pretty well for that, seeing how times are. But, Sowerby, that’s nonsense. You understand the duke as well as I do, and you know very well what he wants. He has given you time, and if you had taken any steps towards getting the money, you might have saved the property.”

  “A hundred and eighty thousand pounds! What steps could I take to get that? Fly a bill, and let Tozer have it to get cash on it in the City!”

  “We hoped you were going to marry.”

  “That’s all off.”

  “Then I don’t think you can blame the duke for looking for his own. It does not suit him to have so large a sum standing out any longer. You see, he wants land, and will have it. Had you paid off what you owed him, he would have purchased the Crown property; and now, it seems young Gresham has bid against him, and is to have it. This has riled him, and I may as well tell you fairly, that he is determined to have either money or marbles.”

  “You mean that I am to be dispossessed.”

  “Well, yes; if you choose to call it so. My instructions are to foreclose at once.”

  “Then I must say the duke is treating me most uncommonly ill.”

  “Well, Sowerby, I can’t see it.”

  “I can, though. He has his money like clock-work; and he has bought up these debts from persons who would have never disturbed me as long as they got their interest.”

  “Haven’t you had the seat?”

  “The seat! and is it expected that I am to pay for that?”

  “I don’t see that any one is asking you to pay for it. You are like a great many other people that I know. You want to eat your cake and have it. You have been eating it for the last twenty years, and now you think yourself very ill-used because the duke wants to have his turn.”

  “I shall think myself very ill-used if he sells me out—worse than ill-used. I do not want to use strong language, but it will be more than ill-usage. I can hardly believe that he really means to treat me in that way.”

  “It is very hard that he should want his own money!”

  “It is not his money that he wants. It is my property.”

  “And has he not paid for it? Have you not had the price of your property? Now, Sowerby, it is of no use for you to be angry; you have known for the last three years what was coming on you as well as I did. Why should the duke lend you money without an object? Of course he has his own views. But I do say this; he has not hurried you; and had you been able to do anything to save the place you might have done it. You have had time enough to look about you.”

  Sowerby still stood in the place in which he had first fixed himself, and now for a while he remained silent. His face was very stern, and there was in his countenance none of those winning looks which often told so powerfully with his young friends—which had caught Lord Lufton and had charmed Mark Robarts. The world was going against him, and things around him were coming to an end. He was beginning to perceive that he had in truth eaten his cake, and that there was now little left for him to do—unless he chose to blow out his brains. He had said to Lord Lufton that a man’s back should be broad enough for any burden with which he himself might load it. Could he now boast that his back was broad enough and strong enough for this burden? But he had even then, at that bitter moment, a strong remembrance that it behoved him still to be a man. His final ruin was coming on him, and he would soon be swept away out of the knowledge and memory of those with whom he had lived. But, nevertheless, he would bear himself well to the last. It was true that he had made his own bed, and he understood the justice which required him to lie upon it.

  During all this time Fothergill occupied himself with the papers. He continued to turn over one sheet after another, as though he were deeply engaged in money considerations and calculations. But, in truth, during all that time he did not read a word, There was nothing there for him to read. The reading and the writing, and the arithmetic in such matters, are done by underlings—not by such big men as Mr. Fothergill. His business was to tell Sowerby that he was to go. All those records there were of very little use. The duke had the power; Sowerby knew that the duke had the power; and Fothergill’s business was to explain that the duke meant to exercise his power. He was used to the work, and went on turning over the papers and pretending to read them, as though his doing so were of the greatest moment.

  “I shall see the duke myself,” Mr. Sowerby said at last, and there was something almost dreadful in the sound of his voice.

  “You know that the duke won’t see you on a matter of this kind. He never speaks to any one about money; you know that as well as I do.”

  “By ——, but he shall speak to me. Never speak to any one about money! Why is he ashamed to speak of it when he loves it so dearly? He shall see me.”

  “I have nothing further to say, Sowerby. Of course I shan’t ask his grace to see you; and if you force your way in on him you know what will happen. It won’t be my doing if he is set against you. Nothing that you say to me in that way—nothing that anybody ever says—goes beyond myself.”

  “I shall manage the matter through my own lawyer,” said Sowerby; and then he took his hat, and, without uttering another word, left the room.

  We know not what may be the nature of that eternal punishment to which those will be doomed who shall be judged to have been evil at the last; but methinks that no more terrible torment can be devised than the memory of self-imposed ruin. What wretchedness can exceed that of remembering from day to day that the race has been all run, and has been altogether lost; that the last chance has gone, and has gone in vain; that the end has come, and with it disgrace, contempt, and self-scorn—disgrace that never can be redeemed, contempt that never can be removed, and self-scorn that will eat into one’s vitals for ever?

  Mr. Sowerby was now fifty; he had enjoyed his chances in life; and as he walked back, up South Audley Street, he could not but think of the uses he ha
d made of them. He had fallen into the possession of a fine property on the attainment of his manhood; he had been endowed with more than average gifts of intellect; never-failing health had been given to him, and a vision fairly clear in discerning good from evil; and now to what a pass had he brought himself!

  And that man Fothergill had put all this before him in so terribly clear a light! Now that the day for his final demolishment had arrived, the necessity that he should be demolished—finished away at once, out of sight and out of mind—had not been softened, or, as it were, half-hidden, by any ambiguous phrase. “You have had your cake, and eaten it—eaten it greedily. Is not that sufficient for you? Would you eat your cake twice? Would you have a succession of cakes? No, my friend; there is no succession of these cakes for those who eat them greedily. Your proposition is not a fair one, and we who have the whip-hand of you will not listen to it. Be good enough to vanish. Permit yourself to be swept quietly into the dunghill. All that there was about you of value has departed from you; and allow me to say that you are now—rubbish.” And then the ruthless besom comes with irresistible rush, and the rubbish is swept into the pit, there to be hidden for ever from the sight.

  And the pity of it is this—that a man, if he will only restrain his greed, may eat his cake and yet have it; ay, and in so doing will have twice more the flavour of the cake than he who with gormandizing maw will devour his dainty all at once. Cakes in this world will grow by being fed on, if only the feeder be not too insatiate. On all which wisdom Mr. Sowerby pondered with sad heart and very melancholy mind as he walked away from the premises of Messrs. Gumption & Gazebee.

  His intention had been to go down to the House after leaving Mr. Fothergill, but the prospect of immediate ruin had been too much for him, and he knew that he was not fit to be seen at once among the haunts of men. And he had intended also to go down to Barchester early on the following morning—only for a few hours, that he might make further arrangements respecting that bill which Robarts had accepted for him. That bill—the second one—had now become due, and Mr. Tozer had been with him.

  “Now it ain’t no use in life, Mr. Sowerby,” Tozer had said. “I ain’t got the paper myself, nor didn’t ‘old it, not two hours. It went away through Tom Tozer; you knows that, Mr. Sowerby, as well as I do.”

  Now, whenever Tozer, Mr. Sowerby’s Tozer, spoke of Tom Tozer, Mr. Sowerby knew that seven devils were being evoked, each worse than the first devil. Mr. Sowerby did feel something like sincere regard, or rather love, for that poor parson whom he had inveigled into mischief, and would fain save him, if it were possible, from the Tozer fang. Mr. Forrest, of the Barchester bank, would probably take up that last five hundred pound bill, on behalf of Mr. Robarts—only it would be needful that he, Sowerby, should run down and see that this was properly done. As to the other bill—the former and lesser one—as to that, Mr. Tozer would probably be quiet for a while.

  Such had been Sowerby’s programme for these two days; but now—what further possibility was there now that he should care for Robarts, or any other human being; he that was to be swept at once into the dung-heap?

  In this frame of mind he walked up South Audley Street, and crossed one side of Grosvenor Square, and went almost mechanically into Green Street. At the farther end of Green Street, near to Park Lane, lived Mr. and Mrs. Harold Smith.

  CHAPTER XXVIII

  Dr. Thorne

  When Miss Dunstable met her friends, the Greshams—young Frank Gresham and his wife—at Gatherum Castle, she immediately asked after one Dr. Thorne, who was Mrs. Gresham’s uncle. Dr. Thorne was an old bachelor, in whom both as a man and a doctor Miss Dunstable was inclined to place much confidence. Not that she had ever entrusted the cure of her bodily ailments to Dr. Thorne—for she kept a doctor of her own, Dr. Easyman, for this purpose—and it may moreover be said that she rarely had bodily ailments requiring the care of any doctor. But she always spoke of Dr. Thorne among her friends as a man of wonderful erudition and judgement; and had once or twice asked and acted on his advice in matters of much moment. Dr. Thorne was not a man accustomed to the London world; he kept no house there, and seldom even visited the metropolis; but Miss Dunstable had known him at Greshamsbury, where he lived, and there had for some months past grown up a considerable intimacy between them. He was now staying at the house of his niece, Mrs. Gresham; but the chief reason of his coming up had been a desire expressed by Miss Dunstable, that he should do so. She had wished for his advice; and at the instigation of his niece he had visited London and given it.

  The special piece of business as to which Dr. Thorne had thus been summoned from the bedsides of his country patients, and especially from the bedside of Lady Arabella Gresham, to whose son his niece was married, related to certain large money interests, as to which one might have imagined that Dr. Thorne’s advice would not be peculiarly valuable. He had never been much versed in such matters on his own account, and was knowing neither in the ways of the share market, nor in the prices of land. But Miss Dunstable was a lady accustomed to have her own way, and to be indulged in her own wishes without being called on to give adequate reasons for them.

  “My dear,” she had said to young Mrs. Gresham, “if your uncle don’t come up to London now, when I make such a point of it, I shall think that he is a bear and a savage; and I certainly will never speak to him again—or to Frank—or to you; so you had better see to it.” Mrs. Gresham had not probably taken her friend’s threat as meaning quite all that it threatened. Miss Dunstable habitually used strong language; and those who knew her well, generally understood when she was to be taken as expressing her thoughts by figures of speech. In this instance she had not meant it all; but, nevertheless, Mrs. Gresham had used violent influence in bringing the poor doctor up to London.

  “Besides,” said Miss Dunstable, “I have resolved on having the doctor at my conversazione, and if he won’t come of himself, I shall go down and fetch him. I have set my heart on trumping my dear friend Mrs. Proudie’s best card; so I mean to get everybody!”

  The upshot of all this was, that the doctor did come up to town, and remained the best part of a week at his niece’s house in Portman Square—to the great disgust of the Lady Arabella, who conceived that she must die if neglected for three days. As to the matter of business, I have no doubt but that he was of great use. He was possessed of common sense and an honest purpose; and I am inclined to think that they are often a sufficient counterpoise to a considerable amount of worldly experience. If one could have the worldly experience also—! True! but then it is so difficult to get everything. But with that special matter of business we need not have any further concern. We will presume it to have been discussed and completed, and will now dress ourselves for Miss Dunstable’s conversazione.

  But it must not be supposed that she was so poor in genius as to call her party openly by a name borrowed for the nonce from Mrs. Proudie. It was only among her specially intimate friends, Mrs. Harold Smith and some few dozen others, that she indulged in this little joke. There had been nothing in the least pretentious about the card with which she summoned her friends to her house on this occasion. She had merely signified in some ordinary way, that she would be glad to see them as soon after nine o’clock on Thursday evening, the —— instant, as might be convenient. But all the world understood that all the world was to be gathered together at Miss Dunstable’s house on the night in question—that an effort was to be made to bring together people of all classes, gods and giants, saints and sinners, those rabid through the strength of their morality, such as our dear friend Lady Lufton, and those who were rabid in the opposite direction, such as Lady Hartletop, the Duke of Omnium, and Mr. Sowerby. An orthodox martyr had been caught from the East, and an oily latter-day St. Paul, from the other side of the water—to the horror and amazement of Archdeacon Grantly, who had come up all the way from Plumstead to be present on the occasion. Mrs. Grantly also had hankered to be there; but when she heard of the presence of the latter-day
St. Paul, she triumphed loudly over her husband, who had made no offer to take her. That Lords Brock and De Terrier were to be at the gathering was nothing. The pleasant king of the gods and the courtly chief of the giants could shake hands with each other in any house with the greatest pleasure; but men were to meet who, in reference to each other, could shake nothing but their heads or their fists. Supplehouse was to be there, and Harold Smith, who now hated his enemy with a hatred surpassing that of women—or even of politicians. The minor gods, it was thought, would congregate together in one room, very bitter in their present state of banishment; and the minor giants in another, terribly loud in their triumph. That is the fault of the giants, who, otherwise, are not bad fellows; they are unable to endure the weight of any temporary success. When attempting Olympus—and this work of attempting is doubtless their natural condition—they scratch and scramble, diligently using both toes and fingers, with a mixture of good-humoured virulence and self-satisfied industry that is gratifying to all parties. But whenever their efforts are unexpectedly, and for themselves unfortunately successful, they are so taken aback that they lose the power of behaving themselves with even gigantesque propriety.

  Such, so great and so various, was to be the intended gathering at Miss Dunstable’s house. She herself laughed, and quizzed herself—speaking of the affair to Mrs. Harold Smith as though it were an excellent joke, and to Mrs. Proudie as though she were simply emulous of rivalling those world-famous assemblies in Gloucester Place; but the town at large knew that an effort was being made, and it was supposed that even Miss Dunstable was somewhat nervous. In spite of her excellent joking it was presumed that she would be unhappy if she failed.

  To Mrs. Frank Gresham she did speak with some little seriousness. “But why on earth should you give yourself all this trouble?” that lady had said, when Miss Dunstable owned that she was doubtful, and unhappy in her doubts, as to the coming of one of the great colleagues of Mr. Supplehouse. “When such hundreds are coming, big wigs and little wigs of all shades, what can it matter whether Mr. Towers be there or not?”