The Fall of Doctor Onslow (14 page)

Once it was certain beyond all doubt that they were to be driven into obscurity, the Onslows felt bound together as they never had before. They did not speak on the drive into Salisbury, or on the station platform, but as soon as the train pulled out and they were on their way to London, Onslow said:

‘I hope you are satisfied.’

‘In what way satisfied?’ said Louisa, taking out a book with unsteady hands. She had guessed that Onslow would attack her, though there was no precedent for such an attack.

‘By grovelling in that way you have disgraced me utterly. Do you realise that?’

‘I do not think so.’

‘Do you not realise that he believes I stooped so low as to send you to beg on my behalf?’

‘I told him you had not.’ I will not cry, thought Louisa.

‘He now holds me in indescribable contempt, and I cannot blame him.’

‘I am sure he does not,’ Louisa replied, her voice quavering a little. Full of a sense of her own humiliation, she thought Onslow ought to be comforting her, thanking her for her brave, foolish, failed attempt to do what she could for him. ‘At least, not more so than before.’

He gasped, then said:

‘How dared you mention my business with him at all? How dared you betray you knew anything about it? I
took you with me so that you might – it was no affair of yours.’

‘But it was an affair of mine,’ said Louisa, speaking more firmly than before. She stopped pretending to read. ‘It was very much my affair!’

‘You are mistaken, Mrs Onslow.’

His addressing her as that made her throw her book on the floor in a sudden rage which astonished her.

‘I am to be ruined with you, and you say it is no business of mine. How dare you?’

He was taken aback by her furious tone, but he did not betray it.

‘Your business is most certainly not to interfere.’

‘You seem to forget, Dr Onslow,’ she said deliberately, and she would have risen up and stood over him had it not been for the jerking of the train, ‘that it is your misdeeds which have brought us to this pass. Not mine. And you try to maintain that it is my effort to save us at the last which has led to our disgrace, not your behaviour. Well, I will not tolerate it.’

‘Oh! So now at last you reproach me! Now you show what you think of me!’

‘Yes, I reproach you! Do you understand that because of your inability to control your passions my life is to be spoilt for ever? Do you ever think of that?’ Her bosom rose and fell as though propelled by steam, and her face was scarlet. She had quite forgotten that Onslow had expressed keen and bitter regret for this on the day she told him that she knew.

Onslow was as white as she was flushed, but his anger was no longer cold, it was as hot as hers.

‘What a great mistake I made in marrying you,’ he said. ‘You are a woman without even self-control.’

‘Yes! And I in marrying you! I cannot begin to express my dislike of you.’

‘I might well say the same.’

Neither of them felt any sense of release after expressing their feelings: having said the worst they could, they felt poisoned. All they could do was settle down for the rest of
the journey, and wonder whether they could ever be reconciled after this, their first true quarrel.

*

During the next few days, Onslow could not bring himself to tell Louisa quite how bad their situation was, for fear of what she might say and he might say back to her. For his part, painful though it was to think of their financial position, he preferred it to dwelling on other matters, such as Bright, and sin, and God.

He supposed his wife did not know that ever since he became headmaster, he had speculated on the stock exchange, always hoping to make a fortune which would support him when he retired, a fortune which he would need if he did not draw some great plum such as the bishopric of Durham or Winchester. He had had a few successes, but far more reverses, for though he enjoyed the game of speculation, he had no talent for it. His predecessor as Headmaster of Charton was rumoured to have saved nearly forty thousand pounds, but out of his six thousand a year Onslow had saved less than nine all told, and he could only be thankful that he was not in debt. He remembered how he had nearly decided to resign last year, when Bright left, and when Anstey-Ward knew nothing, but had not done so because of the money: it had been his intention to remain another three or four years at Charton and during that period to invest as much as he could in Government funds. He had succeeded in saving some two thousand pounds, but had not carried out his intention to the full, for the temptation to speculate and make a fortune quickly was very great. And he had been sure that he would spend very little time, if any, as a dean with a thousand a year. He had been sure that he would soon be a bishop with five.

Louisa, thought Onslow, would have to curb her extravagance once they were limited to the eight or nine hundred a year which a good living might produce. One day she would have to be told so, but he could not bear to think of it. It was hard enough to face the reality himself.

He did not think that Louisa had already realised the necessity for saving money, nor did he stop to consider that she never had been truly extravagant, that she had never asked him for a penny more than he was willing to give her. In his mind she was, at least by the standards of the Primrose family, a very frivolous creature, and he had not censured her for being so till now. He had once liked to indulge her, and had not only made her a generous allowance but had bought expensive presents for her. He liked women to be elegant, and if only by refraining from comment, he had encouraged her to dress more fashionably than sober people thought proper for a clergyman’s wife. It now seemed to him, after his quarrel with her, that it was impossible he could ever have taken pleasure in having a well-dressed wife.

They did not talk to each other except when it was strictly necessary. Louisa never asked after his letter of resignation to the trustees (which pleaded ill-health because that was the obvious excuse) and he never asked her how she was explaining to those who came to call on her that they were leaving (she preferred to say that her impulsive husband thought fifteen years as Headmaster was long enough). Above all, neither talked about Primrose, though he was constantly in both their minds, and what to tell him would have been the first thing they discussed had it not been for their quarrel.

Onslow wrote to Primrose, telling him the whole truth including about the quarrel, before he even wrote to the trustees. It was the most difficult letter he had ever had to write. It was long, and very calm but for the last paragraph, in which Onslow acknowledged that Primrose must feel wholly deceived in his friend, and might well be unable to forgive him. Yet he begged his forgiveness, and begged him also to come to Charton as soon as he could.

On July 23rd, he had a reply. Primrose forgave him, Primrose was coming. Onslow made himself go straight to tell his wife, who burst into tears; and alone in his study, he wept too.

‘I have had Dr Anstey-Ward’s reply to my letter,’ said Primrose, entering Onslow’s study. He had been at Charton a week, and had agreed to correspond with Anstey-Ward on Onslow’s behalf: Onslow felt unable to do this himself, but the humiliating task had to be accomplished. ‘The gist of it is that in view of your financial difficulties, he has no objection to your accepting a preferment of up to twelve hundred a year, so long as it is not a deanery.’ Primrose did not add that Anstey-Ward had emphasised that this was for Louisa’s sake, for he had thought that insistence canting.

‘How very generous, in a world where as soon as a lesser preferment which happens to be generously endowed falls in, the Ecclesiastical Commissioners cut it down at once.’

‘Don’t be bitter, George. There are still many rectories worth oh, over a thousand, even after being cut down. And a canonry may be the same, though of course they are less easily to be had than formerly. If you could combine a living with a prebendal stall –.’

‘Yes, you are right, I am too bitter, and peevish.’

‘If it is the thought of Louisa that disturbs you, I have spoken to her, and she perfectly understands that she must make stringent economies, comparatively speaking.’ He added: ‘The fact is, she appears to have known more of your misfortunes on the stock exchange than you guessed, George, and was not unprepared.’

‘Louisa appears to have known more of everything than I guessed,’ said Onslow.

Almost as soon as he arrived, Primrose had been told about the quarrel by both the Onslows. Since then he had
acted as a go-between, and had brought them to the point where they no longer slept in separate bedrooms to the wonder of the servants, but still did not speak of anything other than trivialities except through him. This situation had lasted for five days now.

‘One other thing,’ said Primrose, sitting down. ‘Do you remember Mr Shotover, who used to be a Fellow when we were first up at Trinity? He has died, I had a letter today from his daughter, so his deanery is vacant – that of Launceston.’

‘And then the bishopric of Shrewsbury is also vacant,’ said Onslow heavily.

‘I think it more likely you will be offered a deanery than a bishopric with Lord Palmerston in office again, you know how anxious he is to appoint evangelicals, though when I consider the nature of his private life –.’ Quickly Primrose stopped himself, flushed and looked at the floor with pinched lips.

‘It is Lord Shaftesbury’s influence.’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘I have taken particular care never to seem too much the high churchman,’ said Onslow. ‘No one save you knows that I was a Tractarian in my youth, since I was so discreet for our old master’s sake – and after all, if anyone did know, why should it be held against me now that I have so modified my views?’ He spoke just as he would have done had he been able to accept the bishopric.

‘You have preached several sermons on apostolic succession, George, and when you condemned the riots at St George in the East you did not make it clear that you deplored the practices there. You may not be conspicuously high nowadays, but no one could describe you as either low or broad.’

‘My dear Martin, you know as well as I do that nowadays it is wholly acceptable for clergymen of all persuasions to accept the doctrine of apostolic succession, things have changed since our youth. And it is quite unnecessary to dwell on the papistical follies of St George’s when denouncing the rioters.’ He paused, and smiled slightly. ‘In short,
I do not despair of being obliged to decline Shrewsbury. Remember how I denounced confession when I last preached in Westminster Abbey!’

There was another consideration which made it likely that the bishopric of Shrewsbury would be offered to him: the fact that Lord Palmerston liked him personally. He and Onslow had met twice, and on both occasions Onslow had succeeded in making him laugh. Onslow sat now looking at the books on his desk, remembering the glittering dinner at which he had first been introduced to Palmerston, thinking: no self-pity.

‘Dear George,’ said Primrose, who saw the pain he was in.

In all his mild life, he had never guessed that men could do such things as Onslow had done, and he wondered at it very much. Like Louisa, he was secretly more puzzled than horrified by the lusts of Onslow, though he had been distressed to learn that Onslow had any weaknesses at all, apart from his tendency to deviate from Dr Arnold’s religious teachings. Primrose thought that he had never once sat in judgement on a sinner, but doing what he could to help the sinners who came his way was, for all his sorrow at their deeds, his greatest excitement and emotional interest. This did not trouble his conscience, even after his dearest friend had proved himself to be the most fascinatingly endangered of the fallen, in the worldly sphere if not in God’s eyes.

‘You have never told me what you think of Dr Anstey-Ward’s demands, Martin,’ said Onslow, pulling his chair a few inches nearer Primrose’s. ‘Do you think he is right? Or wrong? You have said nothing, either way, though you have done so much for me – so much I can never express my gratitude.’

There was what seemed to Onslow a long silence. Then Primrose said:

‘I have been cowardly. I ought to have told you. I believe he is in the right, George, though I could wish he were less –.’

‘So,’ said Onslow. He whitened, for he had not realised
till this moment how much he relied upon Primrose to tell him that he was the victim of Mrs Grundy, not justice. ‘So, sins of the flesh are unpardonable in a clergyman, as our upright atheist maintains? I am a hypocrite?’

‘No,’ said Primrose.

‘Then?’

‘It is not that you have, er, lusted, or been to an extent a hypocrite,’ said Primrose. ‘Good gracious no, for of whom could that not be said?’

Of you, thought Onslow, but he said nothing.

‘It is that you – you have misused your authority, the power given to you.’

Unlike Anstey-Ward, who had been chiefly disgusted by the hypocrisy of Onslow, Primrose had seen this point at once – as soon as he read Onslow’s letter, which showed penitence for everything but that. Onslow now stared at him with incomprehension.

‘Are you implying that I have been guilty of using force?’

‘No, no,’ said Primrose.

‘I can assure you it was far otherwise. Do not tell me either that they were too young to know what it was they did. Not one of them was a child. Not one of them was less than sixteen years old.’

‘But you were still their headmaster, George.’

‘I loved them,’ said Onslow, thinking only of Bright.

‘I do not doubt it,’ said Primrose, ‘but it was nonetheless wrong. There. I am honest with you. You asked me to judge, and I –’

‘Oh, God,’ said Onslow. ‘God help me.’

Primrose leant forward. ‘In your heart, don’t you know that? Don’t you know that you ought to have resigned your post if you could not resist temptation, instead of revelling in it? George, I would never say this to you if you were not my friend, and the man whom I shall always respect more than all others living. Don’t you know, underneath, that you ought not now to hold a position of authority in the church?’

‘No!’ said Onslow: yet before Anstey-Ward’s letter came, and even before Primrose had agreed to support him, he
had made himself miserable over this possibility. It was being discovered which had killed the conscience that tortured him.

Primrose was far more shocked by Onslow’s negative than he had been by the first revelation of his behaviour.

‘Your letter to me was penitent,’ he said, settling back in his chair. His voice was not cold, but wounded. ‘Though it is hardly before me that you ought to appear penitent.’

‘I do not deny that I have sinned. I say only that I have sinned no more greatly than some who now sit on the bench of bishops.’

He was thinking of a story which had made the rounds of the London clubs, and which had not come to Primrose’s ears. It was a funny story, and Onslow’s lips twitched as he thought of it.

A certain bishop was keeping his mistress in lodgings in the town where he had his palace. One day, she happened to mention that she had never been confirmed. Her lover, deeply shocked, persuaded her that she would be in danger of hell-fire if this ceremony continued to be neglected. He proceeded to prepare her for confirmation during his visits, before or perhaps after attending to other matters, and finally confirmed her with his own hands in the cathedral. After that, his conscience was said to have left him in peace.

Not everyone thought this story amusing, and some, thought Onslow, appeared to believe that the humour lay in the fact of a bishop’s having a mistress. Their laughs were those of children first learning that adults are not what they make themselves out to be, who would think foul details more amusing than all the delicate ridiculousness in the world. Onslow remembered how he had once repeated the story to a small circle of men whom he knew not to be like that, in a soft deadpan voice. He had told it extremely well, though he had made sure he did not tell it in such a way as would make his audience think he excused the bishop’s conduct.

His thoughts returned to his own deed, which included kissing boys after confirmation classes. He wondered why it was that punishment had not led him to sincere and
useful repentance as all punishment was supposed to do, and why, even if Anstey-Ward had been a Christian, he would have thought he was suffering unjustly. Not even Primrose’s remarks could make him believe that he had sinned too greatly to be a bishop, because his sins were in the past. He had not touched a boy since Bright left Charton – but before others thought fit to judge me, thought Onslow wearily, that consideration did not lessen my internal pain, did not banish my conscience’s picture of Dr Arnold and God behind him.

Intellectually, he did repent of his old sins, but he could no longer feel. It was not the kind of agonised repentance which his mother, waiting throughout his childhood for the Evangelical ‘conversion’ of his heart from that of a lost one into that of one saved, would have approved. And neither she nor Dr Arnold would have approved of the spurts of emotional repentance he had sometimes felt in the years before Anstey-Ward’s letter came, because so far from leading to action, they had been crushed by him as he strove to cling to his sin.

He turned his mind away from this question, and made an effort to understand what Primrose had said about the abuse of power and authority.

‘I know,’ he said, ‘that I have set the worst possible example to those boys who were the recipients of my affections. Is it for that you consider I am rightly forbidden to enjoy a bishopric?’

‘No – not precisely. My meaning is rather that they could not have been able to – to consent to do as you wished altogether freely, George, and therefore you – you must be partially guilty of their error as well as your own.’ He hurried on: ‘Master and pupil are too unequal in possession of wisdom and of – of powers of influence. So the case is that you – why will you force me to say what will hurt you? – you have not merely, er, lusted, you have seduced, and I do think, that in a clergyman with authority over others –.’ He finished: ‘George, I never knew before that you felt no real regret for what you have done!’

‘Good heavens!’ said Onslow, ignoring this. ‘And are not
all human beings unequal in wisdom and powers of influence? According to your logic, relations between men and women are monstrous corruption, for the difference between master and pupils is as nothing in comparison with that between man and woman!’