Dr. Wortle's School Part 26

"It would have been so very hard to go away, when he told her not."

"It would have been very hard to go away," said the Doctor, "if he had told her to do so. Where was she to go? What was she to do? They had been brought together by circ.u.mstances, in such a manner that it was, so to say, impossible that they should part. It is not often that one comes across events like these, so altogether out of the ordinary course that the common rules of life seem to be insufficient for guidance. To most of us it never happens; and it is better for us that it should not happen.

But when it does, one is forced to go beyond the common rules. It is that feeling which has made me give them my protection. It has been a great misfortune; but, placed as I was, I could not help myself. I could not turn them out. It was clearly his duty to go, and almost as clearly mine to give her shelter till he should come back."

"A great misfortune, Jeffrey?"

"I am afraid so. Look at this." Then he handed to her a letter from a n.o.bleman living at a great distance,--at a distance so great that Mrs.

Stantiloup would hardly have reached him there,--expressing his intention to withdraw his two boys from the school at Christmas.

"He doesn't give this as a reason."

"No; we are not acquainted with each other personally, and he could hardly have alluded to my conduct in this matter. It was easier for him to give a mere notice such as this. But not the less do I understand it. The intention was that the elder Mowbray should remain for another year, and the younger for two years. Of course he is at liberty to change his mind; nor do I feel myself ent.i.tled to complain. A school such as mine must depend on the credit of the establishment. He has heard, no doubt, something of the story which has injured our credit, and it is natural that he should take the boys away."

"Do you think that the school will be put an end to?"

"It looks very like it."

"Altogether?"

"I shall not care to drag it on as a failure. I am too old now to begin again with a new attempt if this collapses. I have no offers to fill up the vacancies. The parents of those who remain, of course, will know how it is going with the school. I shall not be disposed to let it die of itself. My idea at present is to carry it on without saying anything till the Christmas holidays, and then to give notice to the parents that the establishment will be closed at Midsummer."

"Will it make you very unhappy?"

"No doubt it will. A man does not like to fail. I am not sure but what I am less able to bear such failure than most men."

"But you have sometimes thought of giving it up."

"Have I? I have not known it. Why should I give it up? Why should any man give up a profession while he has health and strength to carry it on?"

"You have another."

"Yes; but it is not the one to which my energies have been chiefly applied. The work of a parish such as this can be done by one person. I have always had a curate. It is, moreover, nonsense to say that a man does not care most for that by which he makes his money. I am to give up over 2000 a-year, which I have had not a trouble but a delight in making!

It is like coming to the end of one's life."

"Oh, Jeffrey!"

"It has to be looked in the face, you know."

"I wish,--I wish they had never come."

"What is the good of wishing? They came, and according to my way of thinking I did my duty by them. Much as I am grieved by this, I protest that I would do the same again were it again to be done. Do you think that I would be deterred from what I thought to be right by the machinations of a she-dragon such as that?"

"Has she done it?"

"Well, I think so," said the Doctor, after some little hesitation. "I think it has been, in truth, her doing. There has been a grand opportunity for slander, and she has used it with uncommon skill. It was a wonderful chance in her favour. She has been enabled without actual lies,--lies which could be proved to be lies,--to spread abroad reports which have been absolutely d.a.m.ning. And she has succeeded in getting hold of the very people through whom she could injure me. Of course all this correspondence with the Bishop has helped. The Bishop hasn't kept it as a secret. Why should he?"

"The Bishop has had nothing to do with the school," said Mrs. Wortle.

"No; but the things have been mixed up together. Do you think it would have no effect with such a woman as Lady Anne Clifford, to be told that the Bishop had censured my conduct severely? If it had not been for Mrs.

Stantiloup, the Bishop would have heard nothing about it. It is her doing. And it pains me to feel that I have to give her credit for her skill and her energy."

"Her wickedness, you mean."

"What does it signify whether she has been wicked or not in this matter?"

"Oh, Jeffrey!"

"Her wickedness is a matter of course. We all knew that beforehand. If a person has to be wicked, it is a great thing for him to be successful in his wickedness. He would have to pay the final penalty even if he failed.

To be wicked and to do nothing is to be mean all round. I am afraid that Mrs. Stantiloup will have succeeded in her wickedness."

CHAPTER VIII.

LORD BRACY'S LETTER.

THE school and the parish went on through August and September, and up to the middle of October, very quietly. The quarrel between the Bishop and the Doctor had altogether subsided. People in the diocese had ceased to talk continually of Mr. and Mrs. Peac.o.c.ke. There was still alive a certain interest as to what might be the ultimate fate of the poor lady; but other matters had come up, and she no longer formed the one topic of conversation at all meetings. The twenty boys at the school felt that, as their numbers had been diminished, so also had their reputation. They were less loud, and, as other boys would have said of them, less "c.o.c.ky"

than of yore. But they ate and drank and played, and, let us hope, learnt their lessons as usual. Mrs. Peac.o.c.ke had from time to time received letters from her husband, the last up to the time of which we speak having been written at the Ogden Junction, at which Mr. Peac.o.c.ke had stopped for four-and-twenty hours with the object of making inquiry as to the statement made to him at St. Louis. Here he learned enough to convince him that Robert Lefroy had told him the truth in regard to what had there occurred. The people about the station still remembered the condition of the man who had been taken out of the car when suffering from delirium tremens; and remembered also that the man had not died there, but had been carried on by the next train to San Francisco. One of the porters also declared that he had heard a few days afterwards that the sufferer had died almost immediately on his arrival at San Francisco. Information as far as this Mr. Peac.o.c.ke had sent home to his wife, and had added his firm belief that he should find the man's grave in the cemetery, and be able to bring home with him testimony to which no authority in England, whether social, episcopal, or judicial, would refuse to give credit.

"Of course he will be married again," said Mrs. Wortle to her husband.

"They shall be married here, and I will perform the ceremony. I don't think the Bishop himself would object to that; and I shouldn't care a straw if he did."

"Will he go on with the school?" whispered Mrs. Wortle.

"Will the school go on? If the school goes on, he will go on, I suppose.

About that you had better ask Mrs. Stantiloup."

"I will ask n.o.body but you," said the wife, putting up her face to kiss him. As this was going on, everything was said to comfort Mrs. Peac.o.c.ke, and to give her hopes of new life. Mrs. Wortle told her how the Doctor had promised that he himself would marry them as soon as the forms of the Church and the legal requisitions would allow. Mrs. Peac.o.c.ke accepted all that was said to her quietly and thankfully, but did not again allow herself to be roused to such excitement as she had shown on the one occasion recorded.

It was at this time that the Doctor received a letter which greatly affected his mode of thought at the time. He had certainly become hipped and low-spirited, if not despondent, and clearly showed to his wife, even though he was silent, that his mind was still intent on the injury which that wretched woman had done him by her virulence. But the letter of which we speak for a time removed this feeling, and gave him, as it were, a new life. The letter, which was from Lord Bracy, was as follows;--

"MY DEAR DOCTOR WORTLE.--Carstairs left us for Oxford yesterday, and before he went, startled his mother and me considerably by a piece of information. He tells us that he is over head and ears in love with your daughter. The communication was indeed made three days ago, but I told him that I should take a day or two to think of it before I wrote to you.

He was very anxious, when he told me, to go off at once to Bowick, and to see you and your wife, and of course the young lady;--but this I stopped by the exercise of somewhat peremptory parental authority. Then he informed me that he had been to Bowick, and had found his lady-love at home, you and Mrs. Wortle having by chance been absent at the time. It seems that he declared himself to the young lady, who, in the exercise of a wise discretion, ran away from him and left him planted on the terrace.

That is his account of what pa.s.sed, and I do not in the least doubt its absolute truth. It is at any rate quite clear, from his own showing, that the young lady gave him no encouragement.

"Such having been the case, I do not think that I should have found it necessary to write to you at all had not Carstairs persevered with me till I promised to do so. He was willing, he said, not to go to Bowick on condition that I would write to you on the subject. The meaning of this is, that had he not been very much in earnest, I should have considered it best to let the matter pa.s.s on as such matters do, and be forgotten. But he is very much in earnest. However foolish it is,--or perhaps I had better say unusual,--that a lad should be in love before he is twenty, it is, I suppose, possible. At any rate it seems to be the case with him, and he has convinced his mother that it would be cruel to ignore the fact.

"I may at once say that, as far as you and your girl are concerned, I should be quite satisfied that he should choose for himself such a marriage. I value rank, at any rate, as much as it is worth; but that he will have of his own, and does not need to strengthen it by intermarriage with another house of peculiarly old lineage. As far as that is concerned, I should be contented. As for money, I should not wish him to think of it in marrying. If it comes, _tant mieux_. If not, he will have enough of his own. I write to you, therefore, exactly as I should do if you had happened to be a brother peer instead of a clergyman.

"But I think that long engagements are very dangerous; and you probably will agree with me that they are likely to be more prejudicial to the girl than to the man. It may be that, as difficulties arise in the course of years, he can forget the affair, and that she cannot. He has many things of which to think; whereas she, perhaps, has only that one. She may have made that thing so vital to her that it cannot be got under and conquered; whereas, without any fault or heartlessness on his part, occupation has conquered it for him. In this case I fear that the engagement, if made, could not but be long. I should be sorry that he should not take his degree. And I do not think it wise to send a lad up to the University hampered with the serious feeling that he has already betrothed himself.

"I tell you all just as it is, and I leave it to your wisdom to suggest what had better be done. He wished me to promise that I would undertake to induce you to tell Miss Wortle of his conversation with me. He said that he had a right to demand so much as that, and that, though he would not for the present go to Bowick, he should write to you. The young gentleman seems to have a will of his own,--which I cannot say that I regret. What you will do as to the young lady,--whether you will or will not tell her what I have written,--I must leave to yourself. If you do, I am to send word to her from Lady Bracy to say that she shall be delighted to see her here. She had better, however, come when that inflammatory young gentleman shall be at Oxford. Yours very faithfully,

"BRACY."

This letter certainly did a great deal to invigorate the Doctor, and to console him in his troubles. Even though the debated marriage might prove to be impossible, as it had been declared by the voices of all the Wortles one after another, still there was something in the tone in which it was discussed by the young man's father which was in itself a relief. There was, at any rate, no contempt in the letter. "I may at once say that, as far as you and your girl are concerned, I shall be very well pleased."