Dr. Wortle's School Part 2

"Well; as far as the curacy is concerned, of course he can refuse his licence."

"I have not the slightest intention of applying to his lords.h.i.+p for a licence."

This the usher said with a tone of self-a.s.sertion which grated a little on the Doctor's ear, in spite of his good-humour towards the speaker. "I don't want to go into that," he said. "A man never can say what his intentions may be six months hence."

"But if I were to refuse to speak of my life in America," said Mr.

Peac.o.c.ke, "and thus to decline to comply with what I must confess would be no more than a rational requirement on your part, how then would it be with myself and my wife in regard to the school?"

"It would make no difference whatever," said the Doctor.

"There is a story to tell," said Mr. Peac.o.c.ke, very slowly.

"I am sure that it cannot be to your disgrace."

"I do not say that it is,--nor do I say that it is not. There may be circ.u.mstances in which a man may hardly know whether he has done right or wrong. But this I do know,--that, had I done otherwise, I should have despised myself. I could not have done otherwise and have lived."

"There is no man in the world," said the Doctor, earnestly, "less anxious to pry into the secrets of others than I am. I take things as I find them. If the cook sends me up a good dish I don't care to know how she made it. If I read a good book, I am not the less gratified because there may have been something amiss with the author."

"You would doubt his teaching," said Mr. Peac.o.c.ke, "who had gone astray himself."

"Then I must doubt all human teaching, for all men have gone astray. You had better hold your tongue about the past, and let me tell those who ask unnecessary questions to mind their own business."

"It is very odd, Doctor," said Mr. Peac.o.c.ke, "that all this should have come from you just now."

"Why odd just now?"

"Because I had been turning it in my mind for the last fortnight whether I ought not to ask you as a favour to listen to the story of my life. That I must do so before I could formally accept the curacy I had determined.

But that only brought me to the resolution of refusing the office. I think,--I think that, irrespective of the curacy, it ought to be told.

But I have not quite made up my mind."

"Do not suppose that I am pressing you."

"Oh no; nor would your pressing me influence me. Much as I owe to your undeserved kindness and forbearance, I am bound to say that. Nothing can influence me in the least in such a matter but the well-being of my wife, and my own sense of duty. And it is a matter in which I can unfortunately take counsel from no one. She, and she alone, besides myself, knows the circ.u.mstances, and she is so forgetful of herself that I can hardly ask her for an opinion."

The Doctor by this time had no doubt become curious. There was a something mysterious with which he would like to become acquainted. He was by no means a philosopher, superior to the ordinary curiosity of mankind. But he was manly, and even at this moment remembered his former a.s.surances. "Of course," said he, "I cannot in the least guess what all this is about. For myself I hate secrets. I haven't a secret in the world. I know nothing of myself which you mightn't know too for all that I cared. But that is my good fortune rather than my merit. It might well have been with me as it is with you; but, as a rule, I think that where there is a secret it had better be kept. No one, at any rate, should allow it to be wormed out of him by the impertinent a.s.siduity of others.

If there be anything affecting your wife which you do not wish all the world on this side of the water to know, do not tell it to any one on this side of the water."

"There is something affecting my wife that I do not wish all the world to know."

"Then tell it to no one," said Dr. Wortle, authoritatively.

"I will tell you what I will do," said Mr. Peac.o.c.ke; "I will take a week to think of it, and then I will let you know whether I will tell it or whether I will not; and if I tell it I will let you know also how far I shall expect you to keep my secret, and how far to reveal it. I think the Bishop will be ent.i.tled to know nothing about me unless I ask to be recognised as one of the clergy of his diocese."

"Certainly not; certainly not," said the Doctor. And then the interview was at an end.

Mr. Peac.o.c.ke, when he went away from the Rectory, did not at once return to his own house, but went off for a walk alone. It was now nearly midsummer, and there was broad daylight till ten o'clock. It was after nine when he left the Doctor's, but still there was time for a walk which he knew well through the fields, which would take him round by Bowick Wood, and home by a path across the squire's park and by the church. An hour would do it, and he wanted an hour to collect his thoughts before he should see his wife, and discuss with her, as he would be bound to do, all that had pa.s.sed between him and the Doctor. He had said that he could not ask her advice. In this there had been much of truth. But he knew also that he would do nothing as to which he had not received at any rate her a.s.sent. She, for his sake, would have annihilated herself, had that been possible. Again and again, since that horrible apparition had showed itself in her room at St. Louis, she had begged that she might leave him,--not on her own behalf, not from any dread of the crime that she was committing, not from shame in regard to herself should her secret be found out, but because she felt herself to be an impediment to his career in the world. As to herself, she had no p.r.i.c.ks of conscience. She had been true to the man,--brutal, abominable as he had been to her,--until she had in truth been made to believe that he was dead; and even when he had certainly been alive,--for she had seen him,--he had only again seen her, again to desert her. Duty to him she could owe never. There was no sting of conscience with her in that direction. But to the other man she owed, as she thought, everything that could be due from a woman to a man. He had come within her ken, and had loved her without speaking of his love.

He had seen her condition, and had sympathised with her fully. He had gone out, with his life in his hand,--he, a clergyman, a quiet man of letters,--to ascertain whether she was free; and finding her, as he believed, to be free, he had returned to take her to his heart, and to give her all that happiness which other women enjoy, but which she had hitherto only seen from a distance. Then the blow had come. It was necessary, it was natural, that she should be ruined by such a blow.

Circ.u.mstances had ruined her. That fate had betaken her which so often falls upon a woman who trusts herself and her life to a man. But why should he fall also with her fall? There was still a career before him.

He might be useful; he might be successful; he might be admired.

Everything might still be open to him,--except the love of another woman.

As to that, she did not doubt his truth. Why should he be doomed to drag her with him as a log tied to his foot, seeing that a woman with a misfortune is condemned by the general voice of the world, whereas for a man to have stumbled is considered hardly more than a matter of course?

She would consent to take from him the means of buying her bread; but it would be better,--she had said,--that she should eat it on her side of the water, while he might earn it on the other.

We know what had come of these arguments. He had hitherto never left her for a moment since that man had again appeared before their eyes. He had been strong in his resolution. If it were a crime, then he would be a criminal. If it were a falsehood, then would he be a liar. As to the sin, there had no doubt been some divergence of opinion between him and her. The teaching that he had undergone in his youth had been that with which we, here, are all more or less acquainted, and that had been strengthened in him by the fact of his having become a clergyman. She had felt herself more at liberty to proclaim to herself a gospel of her own for the guidance of her own soul. To herself she had never seemed to be vicious or impure, but she understood well that he was not equally free from the bonds which religion had imposed upon him. For his sake,--for his sake, it would be better that she should be away from him.

All this was known to him accurately, and all this had to be considered by him as he walked across the squire's park in the gloaming of the evening.

No doubt,--he now said to himself,--the Doctor should have been made acquainted with his condition before he or she had taken their place at the school. Reticence under such circ.u.mstances had been a lie. Against his conscience there had been many p.r.i.c.ks. Living in his present condition he certainly should not have gone up into that pulpit to preach the Word of G.o.d. Though he had been silent, he had known that the evil and the deceit would work round upon him. But now what should he do?

There was only one thing on which he was altogether decided;--nothing should separate them. As he had said so often before, he said again now,--"If there be sin, let it be sin." But this was clear to him,--were he to give Dr. Wortle a true history of what had happened to him in America, then must he certainly leave Bowick. And this was equally certain, that before telling his tale, he must make known his purpose to his wife.

But as he entered his own house he had determined that he would tell the Doctor everything.

CHAPTER V.

"THEN WE MUST GO."

"I THOUGHT you were never going to have done with that old Jupiter," said Mrs. Peac.o.c.ke, as she began at that late hour of the evening to make tea for herself and her husband.

"Why have you waited for me?"

"Because I like company. Did you ever know me go to tea without you when there was a chance of your coming? What has Jupiter been talking about all this time?"

"Jupiter has not been talking all this time. Jupiter talked only for half an hour. Jupiter is a very good fellow."

"I always thought so. Otherwise I should never have consented to have been one of his satellites, or have been contented to see you doing chief moon. But you have been with him an hour and a half."

"Since I left him I have walked all round by Bowick Lodge. I had something to think of before I could talk to you,--something to decide upon, indeed, before I could return to the house."

"What have you decided?" she asked. Her voice was altogether changed.

Though she was seated in her chair and had hardly moved, her appearance and her carriage of herself were changed. She still held the cup in her hand which she had been about to fill, but her face was turned towards his, and her large brown speaking eyes were fixed upon him.

"Let me have my tea," he said, "and then I will tell you." While he drank his tea she remained quite quiet, not touching her own, but waiting patiently till it should suit him to speak. "Ella," he said, "I must tell it all to Dr. Wortle."

"Why, dearest?" As he did not answer at once, she went on with her question. "Why now more than before?"

"Nay, it is not now more than before. As we have let the before go by, we can only do it now."

"But why at all, dear? Has the argument, which was strong when we came, lost any of its force?"

"It should have had no force. We should not have taken the man's good things, and have subjected him to the injury which may come to him by our bad name."

"Have we not given him good things in return?"

"Not the good things which he had a right to expect,--not that respectability which is all the world to such an establishment as this."

"Let me go," she said, rising from her chair and almost shrieking.