Whatever Happened to Mary Bold Page 4

  "Mr. Jones was devoted to his Mama, you know," said the Archdeacon, "and he became a parson for her sake, but he was still a first-class horseman and addicted to hunting and there is little which can be done about it. But there was a time, you know, and not so long ago, when many parsons hunted and no one thought much about it. It is only recently that people have been taught to disapprove such a thing and while I wouldn't hunt myself, I am careful to make sure there are foxes at Plumstead, am I not, Henry?"

  His son nodded acknowledgement and flickered a look at Grace, his wife, who was well acquainted with her father-in-law’s regard for the Plumstead foxes.

  "In fact, Jones is very much liked in the parish," said the Dean. "His duties are not neglected and if on one or two occasions he has arrived at a deathbed with muddied boots and breeches under his cassock he has arrived there in time and was a comfort. He has never missed a service and is most conscientious in his visiting. If he were not, doubtless the Bishop would have..."

  "Pooh, pooh, pooh," said the Archdeacon. "Proudie would never move in the matter. His wife might have done so, to be sure, but not his present Grace."

  "So, you see," Johnny said to Mary, "no one can say when the living may be vacant."

  "And in the meantime," said the Archdeacon, "Godliman makes himself useful..."

  "Indeed he does," said Arabin. "Without him we would be ill-placed indeed as our present Precentor has ill-health and..."

  “... plays the Cathedral organ so badly it is an embarrassment," said Johnny.

  "I fear so, I fear so..." said the Archdeacon. "Music is not one of my passions, I admit but even I can detect a lack of skill. I cannot grudge the time that young Godliman spends in Barchester, indeed I cannot. You are fortunate to have him so ready to step in, Dean, you are indeed."

  "I know it, Archdeacon. I only wish that Curran would admit that he is too much of an invalid to carry out his duties and resign but I fear he will not. He has no other preferment..."

  "He is vicar of St. Cuthbert's and preaches in Hiram's Hospital," said the Archdeacon, "but these are tied in with the precentorship."

  "In his present state of health I see no prospect of his ever finding another preferment," said the Dean. "Should he do so, I expect that the Chapter would appoint young Godliman both as Precentor and organist without a second thought. And St Cuthbert's makes part of that preferment."

  "Which might solve the problem posed by Mr. Jones," suggested Johnny.

  "What problem?" asked his mother.

  "Whether Simon will get the Castle living tomorrow or twenty years hence."

  "As to that," observed Mrs. Grantly wiping pear-juice from her fingers with her napkin, "Grizelda has hinted to me that there might be a further complication."

  "And what is that?" asked the Archdeacon.

  "His cousin Eliza." said his wife.

  "Who is she?" asked Mary.

  Mrs. Grantly wiped her mouth and laid down the napkin.

  "She is the daughter of the earl's youngest brother, Lord Hammond. He married early when he was barely out of school, the daughter of a crony in the hunting-field, and he had two children, George, who is in the Lifeguards, a great empty-headed booby, so Grizelda tells me, and a daughter, Eliza."

  "Was she not at James de Courcy's wedding?" asked Eleanor.

  "She was," said her sister.

  "A great beanpole of a creature with a very loud voice, the de Courcy nose and a perfect quiz of a hat?" recalled Eleanor.

  "Without doubt that was she."

  "What has she to say to anything?" asked Mary.

  "Hammond de Courcy wishes to see her married," said Mrs Grantly.

  "So he might. Has she a decent dower?" asked Eleanor.

  "A fair sum from the mother, I understand and her father might add to that," said Mrs. Grantly. "Hammond de Courcy is fairly well to pass. He married money and, so they tell me, is all set to marry some more."

  "Which is more than can be said for the Earl," remarked the Archdeacon. "Henry tells me that he is neck-deep in debt."

  "I understand, "said Mrs. Grantly, "Hammond's betrothed will not marry him as long as Eliza is in residence."

  "Good gracious!" exclaimed Mary. "How very unkind."

  "You have not met with Miss Eliza," said the Archdeacon and chuckled.

  "Grizelda tells me," went on his wife, "that Hammond has agreed to help de Courcy out of his present difficulties but only if he agrees to make the preferment dependent on Simon's marrying Eliza."

  "Oh no!" exclaimed Posy and then blushed and hung her head.

  "I fear it is true," Mrs. Grantly said.

  "In which case," said Johnny, "let us hope that Cassius Jones doesn't break his neck before Curran either retires or resigns his living. Perhaps we should persuade the Bishop to call on Cassius and persuade him that the hunting parson should be a thing of the past."

  "Psschaw!" exclaimed the Archdeacon, "he could not persuade a starving man to eat and if he even is aware of Mr. Jones's proclivity for the chase I will eat my hat. My dear, are you sure this is true?"

  "Perfectly true," said Mrs. Grantly. "I had it from Grizelda and she had it from Lady Leadbitter. She was a Bertram, you know, a Bertram of Mansfield Park."

  "Well, my dear," said the Archdeacon, "if it is true it is a disgrace. I would not serve any relation of mine such a trick and so I tell you. Young Godliman deserves better than to be tied up to a harridan like that just to serve his grandfather’s ends. I dare say she must be seven years older too. Outrageous, outrageous and so I would maintain at de Courcy's own table!"

  Mrs. Arabin rose and the ladies rose with her and followed her out of the room. Once in the Deanery drawing room, Posy was dispatched to the piano where she sang very prettily to her own accompaniment and afterwards she played them a little piece by Haydn on her violin.

  "Eleanor, you must be so pleased that you have two children who take after your dear father who was such a musician," Mary remarked. "Do you recall how he would play the big fiddle to us in the evenings when Johnny was still a baby?"

  "Posy and Johnny are not the only ones," said Eleanor. "Are they, Susan? Father's talent has come out most strongly in the younger children. Jeremy, Posy's young brother..."

  "He who had the spotted fever?" asked Mary.

  "No, no," said Eleanor. "That is Susan's youngest, Septimus. Jeremy is mine and he plays the clarinet... he wanted to learn to play the 'cello, he always wants to do what big brother Johnny does, but Simon persuaded him to try the clarinet and he is coming along very well indeed. Jeremy thinks the sun shines out of Johnny."

  "...and my three youngest are all musical," said her sister. "For years Florinda learned the piano and made little progress but young Mr. Godliman said it was not the instrument for her and he has started her upon the mandolin to accompany herself singing, for she has a sweet voice, though it is low for a female and I will say that now she is much more willing to perform. And," she added, "I have to confess we are much happier to hear her."

  Eleanor laughed.

  "I may as well admit that now in this select company," said Susan Grantly. "And Nell plays the violin and young Septimus is making real headway on the 'cello..."

  "And looks so like father while he plays it makes me wish to cry," said Eleanor. "But Mary, we have heard so little of your own adventures. Every time we touch on those you turn the subject to our children which is a subject, as you well know, we are all too ready to talk on at length."

  "True! True!" exclaimed Susan. "Mary, you are such a wonderful aunt...it is a shame you have no children of your own. Tell me, in all your wanderings did you never meet anyone whom you thought you might marry?"

  Mary went a little pink but lost not a whit of her self-command.

  "I think I can say truthfully that I was never tempted to change my name. Mary Bold I am and Mary Bold I will remain."

  "Such a pity," said Susan, "for I am convinced you would have been a splendid mother."

  "Sometimes," said Mary very quietly, "I have regrets. However, with such a family of honorary nephews and nieces I cannot but be content. It is such a joy to me that they are so musical because my own father, you know, was very musical and so was my mother. They were used to sing together...my mother played the piano..."

  Eleanor broke in, seeing that Mary seemed a little less self-possessed than was her wont. "Nell and Septimus are Simon's pride and joy for he says they both have a very good ear and considerable aptitude," she said, "And they play with Posy and Johnny whenever they can and really we are so proud of them. And as you have just heard, Posy plays the violin as well as the piano, in fact Simon says she should concentrate her efforts upon the violin and she can sing very prettily though her voice is small."

  "Dear Father would have been so pleased," said Eleanor; her voice quavered a little and a tear stood in her eye. "If only he could have lived to hear them."

  "Well, my dear, don't take on. He may hear them all the same and take pride in them," said her sister briskly.

  "Is Septimus not at school?" Mary asked, "I thought you said in your letter, Eleanor, that he was to follow in his brother's footsteps."

  "He took the spotted fever a year ago and we all feared for his life and he took a long time to recover and Doctor Thorne said he had better not go for a year or more," Mrs. Grantly told her. "Miss Atkins teaches him with the girls and Simon tutors him in Latin and Greek for a couple of hours a week and I will say he works harder at his books than ever his brothers did."

  "This young Godliman seems a man of many parts," Mary said.

  "He is indeed," said Eleanor. "I do not know what we would do without him."

  And, Mary thought, your little Posy is deep in love with him or I am as purblind as you are, my dear sister-in-law.
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  "You were fortunate to have Doctor Thorne to attend Septimus. I understand he has few patients now," said Eleanor. "And that he is rougher than ever with the few he has."

  "If they are unhappy with that they may go elsewhere," Mary said. "Thorne has never been jealous of other practitioners. A mite contentious, perhaps. Do you not recall the time when he and Filgrave were at loggerheads? I was only a child at the time but I recall that my father was very much on Thorne's side, though he declared he was too obstinate and opinionated for his own good."

  The sisters looked at one another and shook their heads.

  "We are in deep trouble in Barchester, Mary," said Eleanor. "We have no medical man at all. Not one. "

  At this point the gentlemen came into the room and heard this comment.

  "True! True!" exclaimed the Archdeacon. "Only old Thorne and he will grumble about being dragged away from Caldicotes in all weathers, though to do him justice, come he does."

  "And just as well," said his wife, "for I have little faith in Rerechild and he is reluctant to stir outside Silverbridge."

  "How comes that about?" asked Mary, clearly shocked by this information.

  "Well, your brother died and no one came to take his practice."

  "It was advertised five times," Mary said. "But it was not a large practice and no one cared to take it on. And as time passed his patients went elsewhere."

  "As you say. So we were left with Rerechild and Filgrave and the young apothecary Philpotts who was quite as good as either of them," Eleanor said. "Then two years ago we had the cholera here. Filgrave was ill at the time and residing with his son who has a practice in Bath."

  "Not that he could have been of the least use," said the Dean. "Latterly he attended his patients in a bath-chair. In any event, he died in Bath and his practice here had dwindled to nothing. And when the cholera came to the city Rerechild fled to Silverbridge with his family."

  "No!" exclaimed Mary.

  Eleanor nodded.

  "That is what he did. And there he has remained and has built up a practice there while the one here has been allowed to lapse."

  "And the apothecary?"

  "He was everywhere and behaved with great bravery and devotion. But there was so little he could do," Eleanor said. "He wore himself out and caught the disease himself from visiting where it was at its worst and he died. We have a man in his place but he is no healer, he wishes to sell medicines and that is all. He will prescribe but for myself I think him ignorant and some of his remedies dangerous and so does Johnny who knows more than I about these things."

  "So you are altogether without a medical man?" observed Mary.

  Eleanor nodded.

  "Doctor Thorne will come in great need," she said, "but he lives a great distance away and he is getting no younger. Of course we can summon help from London, but you are right, we have no medical man in the town, and the want is felt very much, Mary. It is not everyone who can afford to send to London."

  "No indeed. Has Dean Arabin not tried to find someone?"

  "Three times," said Eleanor. "And not just dear Francis. Anyone who has some connection with the medical world has been enquiring. No one will come. The trouble, he says, is that we are too large for a single practice and too small for two profitable practices and there are now too many poor living in bad conditions and too few of the sort to make a practice pay. And, of course, we have no hospital. Few doctors these days wish to have a practice where there is no hospital."

  "Even the egregious Mr. Purser has tried," remarked the Dean. "Our so-called Mayor… Johnny says that when he first arrived at St. Thomas's all the senior staff there asked him who was this Mr. Purser who was badgering them to leave the Hospital and go to Barchester."

  "And he made it sound like a doctor's paradise," said Johnny and chuckled. "You might have thought the streets were paved with rich patients all clamouring for attention. I told them all it was no such thing but that we did truly need a medical man and the Dean shook his head at me and said that nowadays no properly qualified medical man would care to set up in a place where there was no hospital. It is the way doctors are trained now, you see. They learn in hospitals and become accustomed to using them. To be without is a handicap."

  "Pooh, pooh, pooh," said the Archdeacon. "How should that be? In the old days a doctor was apprenticed like any other tradesman and he learned from his master while he was doing the duties. When he was pounding the jalap and making the pills and boluses he learned what they were for and how they were used. It was a perfectly sound system. Why is it no longer good enough for you youngsters, pray?"

  "Because," said Johnny earnestly, "things are moving very fast in medicine. Your old doctor cannot teach his apprentice things he desperately needs to know because he has never learned them himself. Medicine isn't like carpentry or smithing. It is changing and becoming more efficient almost day by day."

  And he went on to tell them of some of the most recent advances.

  The company fell silent and listened to him, partly amused and partly impressed by Johnny's enthusiasm and eagerness.

  "I have to admit," said Mary, "that Johnny is in the right of the matter. Hospitals have become very different places within the past twenty years... very different. They are no longer merely refuges for the sick poor to die in a clean bed instead of in the gutter. And I think you are about to discover that if you are to have the medical men you require you must have a hospital for the city."

  The company looked at her and the Archdeacon's lips shaped the syllables, 'Pooh, pooh, pooh...' However, he did not utter them. Somehow, Miss Mary's statement carried conviction.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  'Why do you not come here to your old home? '

  The following morning Mary came down to breakfast to find Dean Arabin enjoying devilled eggs and coffee by himself. The Archdeacon and Mrs. Grantly were not yet down. Johnny and Posy had breakfasted early and gone to practise Haydn in the Palace with the daughter-in- law of the new Rural Dean, Diana Oakrhynd and one of the numerous Oakrhynd daughters, Holly.

  "For Doctor Tempest, as you may have heard, died at the end of the summer," the Dean reminded her. "The new Dean, Dr. Oakrhynd, has his son's widow and her little daughter living with them. The son was a soldier killed in India, very soon after they married. She plays the viola and they have formed a quartet with the Oakrhynd’s young daughter, Holly, playing second violin. They are to play at a concert for charity tomorrow which is why Johnny has postponed his journey to London till the last moment."

  "Where is it to be?" Mary asked, "I would be very happy to attend."

  "Bishop Proudie has given permission for it to be held in his big salon."

  Mary opened her eyes widely. The Deanery and the Palace remained on civil, but distant, terms.

  "And the offer was accepted?"

  "The Bishop," said the Dean, "may be ineffectual and negligent, but he is a charitable man and this is for a good cause, securing a living for those crippled in the service of the crown. He was perfectly willing and indeed there is nowhere else in Barchester where such a function might be held. The Old Town Hall has no room large enough to house an audience and the New Town Hall, you know, is quite out of the question because..."

  He was interrupted when Eleanor came hurriedly into the room and kissed her sister-in-law.

  "Mary, my dear, have you all you want? I am sorry I was not here but Nurse was called away suddenly to her mother who has had a bad fall and I had to give the twins their breakfast. Little Jenny the nursery maid is very willing but she is no match for those two...two..."

  "Imps?" suggested their father.

  "I do not know how it may be," said Eleanor, sinking into a chair beside her husband and accepting a cup of tea, "but twins give more than twice the trouble that singletons do."

  "Twins so often are like that," Mary said. "They seem to heed each other more than they do others and this can result in much more than twice the mischief."

  "Indeed you are right," said the Dean with a smile. "We never know what they will be at next."

  "Your Katie heard the din and came along and she had them settled in no time," said Eleanor. "I am very much obliged to her. I understood her to say she had been the eldest of nine and to be accustomed to children."