Dr. Wortle's School. Anthony Trollope

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      "The Bishop has been bothering me about you, Peacocke," he said, standing up with his back to the fireplace, as soon as the other man had shut the door behind him. The Doctor's face was always expressive of his inward feelings, and at this moment showed very plainly that his sympathies were not with the Bishop.

      "I'm sorry that his lordship should have troubled himself," said the other, "as I certainly do not intend to take any part in his diocese."

      "We'll sink that for the present," said the Doctor. "I won't let that be mixed up with what I have got to say just now. You have taken a certain part in the diocese already, very much to my satisfaction. I hope it may be continued; but I won't bother about that now. As far as I can see, you are just the man that would suit me as a colleague in the parish." Mr. Peacocke bowed, but remained silent. "The fact is," continued the Doctor, "that certain old women have got hold of the Bishop, and made him feel that he ought to answer their objections. That Mrs. Stantiloup has a tongue as loud as the town-crier's bell."

      "But what has Mrs. Stantiloup to say about me?"

      "Nothing, except in so far as she can hit me through you."

      "And what does the Bishop say?"

      "He thinks that I ought to know something of your life during those five years you were in America."

      "I think so also," said Mr. Peacocke.

      "I don't want to know anything for myself. As far as I am concerned, I am quite satisfied. I know where you were educated, how you were ordained, and I can feel sure, from your present efficiency, that you cannot have wasted your time. If you tell me that you do not wish to say anything, I shall be contented, and I shall tell the Bishop that, as far as I am concerned, there must be an end of it."

      "And what will he do?" asked Mr. Peacocke.

      "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 lordship for a licence."

      This the usher said with a tone of self-assertion 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. Peacocke, "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. Peacocke, 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 circumstances 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. Peacocke, "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. Peacocke, "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 circumstances, 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 assurances. "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 assiduity 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. Peacocke; "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 entitled 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. Peacocke, 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 passed 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 assent. 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 pricks 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 СКАЧАТЬ