The Fall of Doctor Onslow (11 page)

The Salisbury Hotel was not able to supply the Onslows with a bed for the night as well as with dinner, but it furnished them with a chaise, and they set out for Poplar House at a quarter to nine. When they arrived, it was almost dark, and they could see only the yellow gleam of lighted windows, and the square black outline of the house against a sapphire-coloured sky.

In the drawing-room, Anstey-Ward heard the crunch of carriage wheels on the gravel outside. He got up and looked out of the window, and saw Onslow helping his wife out of the carriage. Louisa’s skirt was dragged up at the back in the process, and he had a glimpse of her legs.

‘It’s they,’ he said to his sister.

‘Arriving at this hour! I wonder they could not leave it till morning, it surely cannot be so urgent as all that.’

On the doorstep, Onslow said to Louisa:

‘Can you not remember what he is like to look at? I suppose I must have met him at some point, but I cannot recall him.’

‘No, I cannot precisely, but I have some idea that he is a cadaverous-looking man – very tall and thin, and ascetic looking.’

‘How very appropriate.’

They rang the bell, and it was answered. After taking their cards through, the parlour-maid showed them into the big, ugly drawing-room, where they at last set eyes on Anstey-Ward. His far from cadaverous appearance was initially a surprise to them both, but on seeing him, they remembered having met him once before. Onslow thought
that he looked for all the world like a rotund paterfamilias in a
Punch
cartoon as he bore down upon them smiling, with an outstretched hand.

‘Dr Onslow, how very glad I am to see you – and you too, of course, Mrs Onslow. How good of you to come all this way so late!’

‘I am sorry,’ said Onslow, taken aback, ‘but owing to the press of traffic in London we missed the train we intended to catch.’

‘A great nuisance, but it does not signify. Now, you must allow me to make you known to my sister, Miss Anstey-Ward.’

Anstey-Ward beamed down at them as he indicated his sister. Onslow, responding, was displeased to see that the woman was a good deal taller than he was, like Anstey-Ward himself. He could only be glad that there was no sign of the seven young ladies whom Louisa had warned him to expect – he saw his wife looking discreetly round her as though she thought they would come out from behind the curtains.

Chatty smiled as she shook hands with the Onslows. Though she had complained about their coming so late, she was well pleased to be entertaining such a distinguished clergyman. She said:

‘I have been meaning to buy your latest volume of sermons, Dr Onslow – I wish I had it with me, and then you might have signed it for me.’

‘I should have been delighted to do so.’

‘Yes, it’s a thousand pities you haven’t yet bought it, Chatty,’ said Anstey-Ward.

Onslow supposed Anstey-Ward was being so friendly for the sake of his sister’s innocence. It was a surprisingly great relief to him to think she was ignorant.

‘My brother and I are hoping you will stay to supper, and discuss your business afterwards,’ said Chatty, and her brother said:

‘We are indeed! We shall be quite offended if you do not.’

Chatty wondered why Anstey-Ward was being quite so
affable: it was not his way to be so even with his close friends. Perhaps, she thought, he owed Onslow money.

‘We shall be sitting down to supper very soon now,’ she said.

‘Oh, how badly we have timed our visit!’ said Louisa, who, like Onslow, guessed that Chatty knew nothing of what was toward.

‘Not at all, ma’am,’ said Anstey-Ward, acting as much for her benefit as for Chatty’s. ‘Nothing can be easier, if you will but agree to sup with us. And then Dr Onslow and I can go to my library. Eh, Dr Onslow?’

‘Exactly so, Dr Anstey-Ward!’ said Onslow, and without too much difficulty, he smiled. It was beginning to seem as though this really were a social visit.

‘And we are also hoping,’ Chatty went on, ‘that you will agree to stop the night with us, unless perhaps you are going on to stay with friends. Do not think me inquisitive!’

‘Oh, what a kind invitation!’ said Louisa. ‘But –’

‘My dear Miss Anstey-Ward, we could not possibly put you to so much trouble,’ said Onslow.

‘It will be no trouble at all to either of us,’ said Anstey-Ward, even though he wished his sister were not quite so hospitable.

‘But I am sure we will find an hotel in Salisbury.’ Onslow spoke in the voice of one willing to be persuaded, as Miss Anstey-Ward would like him to be.

‘Oh, you cannot like to set out again so late, and hotel beds are never to be relied upon. Why, when I last stayed in an hotel, it was one of the very best in Brighton, yet for all that the sheets were not aired properly. I caught a nasty chill.’

‘How very unpleasant!’ said Louisa.

‘If you do stop, you and I will have tomorrow morning, as well as tonight, Dr Onslow,’ said Anstey-Ward. For a moment, the atmosphere was spoilt. ‘Now, do pray stop with us! We shall be honoured,’ he hastened to add.

‘Very well, since you are so good, I think we shall be delighted to accept your invitation,’ said Onslow. ‘As Miss Anstey-Ward has said, an hotel bed is not something to be joyfully anticipated. My dear, are you agreeable?’

‘Certainly I am, Dr Onslow.’

Louisa had been looking at the drawing-room table, and Onslow, following her gaze, saw that on it there rested a pile of tracts referring in large letters to Christ as the Lamb and the Redeemer. He concluded that Miss Anstey-Ward was a narrow Evangelical, as his mother had been, and that Anstey-Ward was so too – he wished he had not been swept into accepting the invitation to stay.

Anstey-Ward thought that unless Onslow insisted on talking about what had brought him down to Wiltshire tonight, he would avoid mentioning it until the morning, just before Onslow was about to leave the house. He felt that having been so welcoming, he could not turn round and talk about what was vile the moment the women left them alone, and then show Onslow to bed as though all were as it should be. The comedy must continue.

Thinking this, he smiled at Louisa, whose smallness moved him. With her great eyes, slender figure and broad cheekbones, she reminded him very much of his late wife, Renée, so much so that he wondered whether they could be related. He doubted it, for Renée had been the child of a ne’er-do-well writer, while as he knew, Mrs Onslow came from one of the foremost clerical families in England, and was a bishop’s daughter. But despite the unlikelihood of their being kinswomen, he found himself thinking of Louisa as a kind of connection, someone for whom he was to some extent responsible.

‘Now, you’ll be wanting to take off your hats and coats,’ he said, and Onslow noticed that both his voice and his choice of words were slightly vulgar.

The Onslows were shown upstairs to a cold bedroom, and then, having tidied themselves, they came down again. On entering the drawing-room for the second time, Louisa noticed a series of photographs on one wall, and indicating one of them she said:

‘Is that not your son, Dr Anstey-Ward?’

‘Yes, that’s Christian – taken by his sister, who is staying with our cousins in London just at present. She’s a fine photographer.’

‘I am sorry we shall not meet her,’ said Onslow. ‘How well I remember your son, sir!’ In fact, he could only just remember the boy when his photograph was pointed out to him. It showed Christian staring into space, trying to look inspired and soulful. Onslow supposed he was no doubt wishing to live up to his clothes: he was wearing the turned-down collar and loose necktie favoured by those with bohemian pretensions, and banned at Charton. Looking in the photograph’s direction, he said:

‘And is he now enjoying Cambridge?’

‘He’s at Oxford,’ said Anstey-Ward, ‘and liking it very well.’

‘I am sure he must do well, he was an excellent pupil.’ Onslow could remember nothing about Christian’s schoolwork, but he did remember that the boy had spent two years under him in the Sixth, having risen into his form at a fairly early age. He remembered his tense, anxious face at the front of the class.

‘Was he?’ said Chatty. ‘I’ve always found him sadly shatterbrained. Bookish, of course, but shatterbrained.’

‘Oh, no. A naturally bookish boy, as you say, and a very fair scholar,’ said Onslow. ‘I wonder why I was so sure he had gone to Cambridge, not Oxford? My memory is not what it was!’

There was a slight pause, and Louisa was on the point of making a remark, but Chatty spoke first.

‘What admirable changes you have wrought at Charton, Dr Onslow! I am sure my brother has often said that the school now is not at all what it was in his day.’

‘I wouldn’t have sent Christian had I not thought it very different,’ said Anstey-Ward calmly.

‘You were at Charton yourself, sir?’ said Onslow, a little surprised.

‘For a year only, when I was sixteen. Under Dr Thorneycroft.’

‘Dr Thorneycroft was a wicked old tyrant, was he not, Henry?’ said Chatty. ‘Has he not that reputation, Dr Onslow?’

Onslow smiled. ‘Madam, it would scarcely become me to
agree with you about my distinguished predecessor. Shall I say he was not a very effective tyrant?’

‘I think that if I had been born a man I would have liked to become a schoolmaster. You, for instance, have done so much, and for so many!’ she said.

‘Indeed he has,’ said Anstey-Ward. ‘Mrs Onslow, won’t you come a little nearer the fire? And you too, sir. Very cold for the time of year, ain’t it?’

‘It certainly is,’ said Chatty. ‘But I shall have a fire kindled in your bedroom, Mrs Onslow, so you need not fear to freeze tonight.’

‘Oh, how kind of you. What an agreeable luxury, a bedroom fire in July!’

‘Tell me more of how your son goes on at Oxford, Dr Anstey-Ward,’ said Onslow, then added: ‘Were you yourself there, is that perhaps why you chose it for him rather than Cambridge?’ He doubted very much that Anstey-Ward had been educated at Oxford.

‘No indeed. I studied medicine in Edinburgh, not being a classical scholar by any manner of means. Christian takes after his mother’s family, being literary.’

‘Am I right in remembering that it was his ambition to be a poet, Dr Anstey-Ward?’ said Louisa.

‘Quite right, ma’am. I can see you take a great interest in all your husband’s pupils!’

Louisa gave him a pretty smile, and he felt a desire to pat her little hand as it rested on the arm of her chair.

‘I try, Dr Anstey-Ward – but nothing exceeds Dr Onslow’s own interest in his pupils,’ she said.

At that moment the parlourmaid came in, and announced that supper was served.

Anstey-Ward softly shut the heavy door of the library, and then he and Onslow were alone together at last. Onslow, breathing rapidly, felt two profound longings. The first was for a stiff brandy, and the second was for Anstey-Ward not to raise the subject of the ‘documents’. All through supper, as he chatted politely, he had been impatient to have done with the charade – but now the moment had come, he felt quite differently. Like Anstey-Ward, he wanted to put important business off till the morning, till the daylight. He did not want to feel the lash of his power till then. And it seemed somehow impossible, or at least unsuitable, to abandon the friendly manner they had both maintained for so long. Onslow now felt he could not bear to acknowledge its falsity.

He was much surprised when brandy was offered him, for he had been certain that Anstey-Ward, as a rigid Evangelical, would not offer spirits to a clergyman.

‘Or, if you prefer it, a little hot gin?’ said Anstey-Ward. ‘A very wholesome liquor in my opinion, when it is of good quality – none of your Old Tom three parts vitriol!’

‘Thank you, no, brandy is just what I like.’

Anstey-Ward poured two brandies, while Onslow read the spines of the books in front of him in a tall glass-fronted case. Anstey-Ward’s amiable remark about gin cheered him, for he was sure the man would not, having made it, propose to show him the ‘documents’. He did not notice that Anstey-Ward’s voice was very nervous; he could only think of the man as confident, secure.

When he was handed his glass, Onslow drank as much as
he could without giving Anstey-Ward the impression that he was firstly, unclerical, and secondly, afraid. As he drank, he continued to look at the books, not at his host. Their authors’ names were for the most part wholly unfamiliar to him: Buffon, Cuvier, Agassiz, Lamarck, St Hilaire. He recognised only those of the English scientists Lyell, Sedgwick and Buckland, and was surprised, for it was unusual for an Evangelical to have intellectual interests of any kind. Evangelicals tended to hold that too much speculation about either religion or the world could only subvert the stern but emotional faith in which salvation lay. It was a creed which Onslow profoundly despised, for to him, intellect was the buttress of faith except when it was second-rate.

‘I see you are looking at my books, Dr Onslow,’ said Anstey-Ward, so accustomed to his part of affable host that even had he planned to abandon it he would have felt pompous and cruel in doing so. ‘Are you yourself interested in the natural sciences?’

‘Not so much as I dare say I ought to be. I believe the last scientific work I read was Dr Whewell’s
On
the
Plurality
of
Worlds
.’ It was almost the only scientific book he had ever read, and he had chosen to read it because it had been recommended to him as a work which demolished various materialistic speculations about the universe, and reasserted old ideas of the unity of the truth and the supernatural origins of the human mind and spirit.

‘“A book meant to show that throughout all infinity, There’s nothing so grand as the Master of Trinity”,’ quoted Anstey-Ward, placing the stopper on the brandy decanter. ‘Did you admire it, Dr Onslow?’

‘Indeed I did.’

‘Now there I differ from you. I don’t believe natural theology has any place in the modern world, and it seemed to me Dr Whewell’s book was almost more a work of natural theology than of science.’

‘You believe,’ said Onslow, ‘that the study of nature can and ought to be divorced from the study of its creator, its designer?’

‘But I don’t believe in its creator,’ said Anstey-Ward, and his voice was suddenly very low and serious. It was extremely rarely he had a chance to talk about his views and beliefs, and he was delighted to have found a topic of conversation which would keep them away from the subject of the letters in his desk drawer, but which was not merely polite. ‘I am a materialist, effectively an atheist, if that word does not shock you too much. Come, let us sit down!’

Onslow felt as though he had received a blow in the stomach. To him, the word ‘atheist’ meant a ragged, radical and violent working man, a revolutionary bent on destroying all the order and security and beauty in the world. It was a word with far more dreadful connotations than ‘unbeliever’, or even than ‘infidel’, and there was no one in his whole acquaintance who applied those words to himself. He had thought it was Low Church rectitude which made Anstey-Ward decide to bring him down, but now his conduct was far better explained. Anstey-Ward, bent on striking a blow against the Church, would be impervious to all considerations of mercy towards one who had repented. It was only astonishing that he had not decided to make a public spectacle of his Christian opponent.

‘Pray sit down, Dr Onslow,’ said Anstey-Ward, indicating a great wing-chair in which Onslow would be like a horse in blinkers, unable to see what was on either side of him, and forced to look ahead. Onslow, seating himself in it, managed to say:

‘Am I to suppose it was your scientific researches turned you into an atheist? I have heard of such things happening.’

‘Oh, no, I could not say that. It started when I was a child – I remember being punished for asking repeatedly who was Cain’s wife.’

Onslow blinked. He too could remember being punished by his mother for asking exactly that – not repeatedly, but only once. ‘Please tell me more,’ he said.

‘Well,’ said Anstey-Ward, swinging the brandy in his glass, ‘I was never much of a hand at my lessons, but as I grew up I went on asking questions of the like kind. And in the end I came to question the First Cause. I did not see
that it was necessary to postulate a First Cause outside the universe, for why should the universe not be its own First Cause? God is not a necessary hypothesis. Do you know, it was a parson taught me that. He mentioned some old divine who said something, how was it – it is vain to do with more things what can be done with fewer.’

Onslow began to realise that Anstey-Ward was enjoying himself. For the first time, he felt active hatred of him, and wished he could think of some crushing but highly civilised remark. But Anstey-Ward, watching him all the time, went on uninterrupted.

‘Still, though I say it was not my scientific studies caused my loss of faith, I am perfectly certain that one day science will disprove the existence of God,’ he continued cheerfully. ‘Two hundred years ago the Church was forced to accept that the earth moves. Now it is being gradually forced to accept that it was not created six thousand years ago.’ He spoke with confident optimism, for he considered that given time and the advance of knowledge, all things could be proved or disproved. He looked forward not to an open and fluid intellectual universe, but to a dogmatic world in which the dogmas were true, instead of false. ‘I take pleasure in being ahead of my time. I don’t believe there will be such a thing as a Christian scientist to be found a hundred years from now.’

‘The existence of God,’ said Onslow, ‘is not something which can be proved or disproved according to scientific notions of proof. It can only be known by faith.’

‘Ay, in other words not known at all – but as for proof and disproof, we shall see,’ said Anstey-Ward.

‘In consequence,’ said Onslow, pleased that Anstey-Ward had not followed his argument, ‘there may well continue to be Christian scientists.’

‘But it is already impossible for a man to be a good speculative scientist and a wholly orthodox believer so far at least as the Old Testament is concerned. Consider the fool poor Mr Gosse made of himself when he published his
Omphalos
– even some churchmen I could mention were embarrassed – I knew not whether to laugh or cry when I
read it, and considered all the excellent work he has done in the past. Allow me to give you a little more brandy, Dr Onslow.’

Onslow did not like to accept a gift at the hands of an atheist, but he needed another drink, and so he handed over his glass and thanked him. When Anstey-Ward came back, Onslow said:

‘I have not read the book to which you refer, but I have heard it described.

‘Have you?’

‘I can only say that it did not sound half so ridiculous as
Vestiges
of
Creation.’

This very popular book had argued in favour of an immeasurably ancient earth and the transmutation of species. Louisa, influenced by Primrose, had been greatly taken with it just before she married Onslow, who had gently persuaded her that it was nonsense. To Onslow now, the mention of
Vestiges
brought back sharp memories of the days of his courtship, the early days of his headmastership. He looked at Anstey-Ward and went on:

‘You, I suppose, have respect for that work? You believe that clover springs up spontaneously where lime is spread? Oh, and that oats can grow where rye has been spread, or was it the other way about?’

Anstey-Ward’s eyebrows drew together over his nose.

‘No, I don’t, and neither do I believe in dogs playing dominoes. Your sarcasm is misplaced, sir. I thought that book as foolish as you did, and so did every man with the least scientific knowledge.’

‘Nonetheless I was informed by an acquaintance of mine, a clergyman but a scientist, sir, that it was written not by Lord Byron’s daughter or the Prince Consort but by a Mr Darwin, an eminent naturalist so I am told.’

‘Mr Darwin is indeed an eminent naturalist, and he is not the author of any such piece of trash,’ said Anstey-Ward. He had heard from a fellow member of the British Association that Mr Darwin was at work on a serious theory of transmutation, but he did not consider Onslow the scoffer to be worthy of being told this.

‘I am not a man of science,’ said Onslow, ‘and I know only that the greater number of scientists are persuaded that their investigations present no lasting threat to revealed truth. Why, the greater number of them believe that our world had a catastrophic origin – the idea that it had not is merely a passing scientific fad, like, like the theory of phlogiston. For my part I am persuaded that the day will come when the earth is proved to be little older than was thought by Archbishop Ussher.’

By this he meant two or three million years – infinitely more than the Church had once insisted and infinitely less than most geologists supposed. Looking at Anstey-Ward’s face, which seemed to him smugly contemptuous, he went on:

‘It is my belief that one day all the incompatibilities between doctrine and the seeming results of scientific investigations will be smoothed out. Even the difference between what we are now said to know of the earth’s origin, and what we are told in Genesis, will be as nothing once we know more. A little learning is a dangerous thing, Dr Anstey-Ward, and it is a little, a very little learning that our geologists and naturalists possess.’ He finished: ‘I shall wait until it is at last discovered that revelation was never wrong.’

‘You’ll wait a long time, Dr Onslow. Are you indeed telling me that you hold by every belief I had thought all intelligent Christians jettisoned more than twenty years ago – the universal flood, the creation of 4004 BC? Surely not!’

‘Not precisely,’ said Onslow, ‘I will own that I do not believe the flood was universal, but as to the age of the earth, yes, I cannot believe it is anything like so old as you geologists maintain. It is inconceivable that our Lord created the world hundreds of millions of years before he created man, for whose sake it was made. In short, while I reject Archbishop Ussher’s calculation in detail, I accept its spirit.’ Onslow was expressing himself so firmly because in Anstey-Ward’s company, his need to hold on to the old Christian certainties was intense. He almost wished he had said that he did simply accept that the world had been
created in 4004 BC. It seemed almost like toadying to meet Anstey-Ward half way, and he would rather anything, in the circumstances, than be thought a toady.

‘You shock me,’ said Anstey-Ward, very gravely. ‘I had not thought it possible.’ He believed that Onslow was probably modifying his real views because he did not want a quarrel, and thus he thought that Onslow was as much an intellectual monster as a sensual monster: doubly unfit to be either a headmaster or a bishop.

‘Yes, for you see, I am not one to reject the traditional teaching of the church lightly, no matter what havoc the hammers of the geologists may wreak. I will not replace the wisdom of two thousand years with the wisdom, if one can call it that, of less than a hundred.’ In asserting this, Onslow was asserting his moral worth, which existed in spite of everything.

‘And do you reverence the Bible as you reverence the traditions of the Church?’ said Anstey-Ward. ‘I’m aware that not all clergymen do so.’

‘Most certainly I do.’

‘Then I’ll quote the Bible to you – “all the rivers run into the sea, yet the sea is not full. Unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again. The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done, is that which shall be done, and there is no new thing under the sun”. As neat a statement of the uniformitarian and gradualist position as you could find.’

Onslow was horrified to hear an infidel quote his favourite Ecclesiastes, which in secret he loved because it was not specifically Christian. He could only think to say:

‘You forget that other parts of the Bible are equally true.’

Anstey-Ward’s moment of frivolity was past. He said:

‘Well Dr Onslow, all I can say is that so far from living to see reconciliation between Genesis and geology, you will very likely live to see all manner of scientific revelations which to your mind will be blasphemous. Science and religion are growing further apart day by day. I know the kind of scientists you mean, who pooh-pooh any little difficulty, but they are wrong.’

‘Are they indeed?’

Anstey-Ward got up and fetched himself a third brandy, forgetting to offer one to Onslow. ‘I tell you sir,’ he said while he was pouring it out, and Onslow could not see him, ‘the day is not far off when you will be forced to acknowledge not only what men less – sure of themselves have acknowledged for years, but that your first ancestor was very likely an orang-outan.’