The Fall of Doctor Onslow

by Frances Vernon

  At the time of her marriage, Louisa had not seen in Onslow a younger substitute for her ageing father, for the two men did not look at all alike. She had simply thought Onslow as dashing as it was possible for a thirty-year-old clergyman to be, and had greatly enjoyed the sensation of being sufficiently grown-up to be married. Yet in spite of the excitement she had felt at eighteen, it had taken her many years to think of herself as truly grown-up. Considering the matter now, she wondered whether she had not thought of herself almost as a child masquerading in adult clothes until the day before yesterday, when her time of trial came, and to her own surprise she had almost welcomed it.

  In spite of Onslow’s odd tastes and occasional bad temper, she had felt safe with him till that moment when she saw him read Anstey-Ward’s letter and guessed what it was. And she was even now unable to believe that Anstey-Ward would carry out his threat to deprive Onslow of all high preferment. Such things, she thought, did not happen.

  Suddenly she thought of how she wanted a baby, and had been denied one: it was the only true dissatisfaction of her life till now. She would certainly feel entirely adult if she became a mother, and Onslow would acknowledge her as such – but it was perhaps odd that performing certain duties of a wife had not had that effect. She and Onslow embraced, as she called it to herself, perhaps once in three weeks, and she had no idea whether that was much more or much less than other couples. In spite of all her present anxiety, sensuous feelings began to creep round Louisa’s loins as she thought of embraces, and she blushed, for she and Onslow never spoke of these things. They pretended that nothing happened between them that might not happen between brother and sister, and that, she thought, was perhaps why what they sometimes did together had no effect on their lives outside the bedroom, and did not make her feel like a full-blown woman.

  At that moment, Onslow opened the door, and Louisa jumped.

  ‘I thought to find you asleep,’ he said, looking at her as he set his candle down. His tone of voice was forbidding, but Louisa took no notice.

  ‘What happened? What did he say?’

  There was a pause, then Onslow said:

  ‘We spent out time discussing Mr Mansel’s Bampton Lectures.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘We made a tacit agreement to leave other matters till the morning. Please, Louisa, do not question me. You will know all in due course, and I am very tired.’

  Onslow removed his coat, took his nightshirt, and retired behind a screen to undress. Louisa, bewildered, said at last:

  ‘But please, Dr Onslow, tell me a little. That is – were you in agreement about the Bampton Lectures? Was it a friendly discussion?’

  Louisa did not share her husband’s view of Mr Mansel. Like her brother, she thought that to say God might act in a way contrary to ordinary ideas of morality was to deprive the concept of goodness of all meaning. She therefore simply refused to believe that God had ordered Joshua to massacre the Canaanites, or Abraham to kill his son.

  ‘No, we were not in agreement, nor was it a very friendly discussion.’

  ‘Oh, dear. What did you say? Does Dr Anstey-Ward agree with Martin?’ She did not like to say ‘and me’.

  ‘Louisa my dear, please go to sleep. I cannot discuss it any further.’

  ‘How can I possibly simply go to sleep? George, I insist on your telling me.’

  ‘And I insist on holding my tongue for the meanwhile.’

  After a moment, Louisa said:

  ‘Very well.’ Lying down slowly in the bed, she decided it would not be wise to press him further, for it seemed matters were at a very delicate stage. If they had spent their time discussing indifferent and intellectual matters, she thought, there must be hope, even though they had disagreed. It was likely that all would be well without her having to lift a finger: she felt a little twinge of disappointment.

  As soon as his wife submitted, Onslow felt a great longing to tell her every detail of his unfortunate conversation with Anstey-Ward. He passionately desired Louisa’s sympathy, but he forced himself to be silent for the time being, because he must preserve his energies for what was to come tomorrow.

  *

  Next morning, Anstey-Ward woke very early, after a night of surprisingly untroubled sleep. He rose and dressed himself, and then went out into the grey cold garden, hoping to prepare himself mentally for the coming encounter – but as he wandered slowly round, he thought not so much of what was to happen between himself and Onslow as of Christian and why he had sent him to Charton, and so brought all this down upon his head.

  It was worldliness, he supposed, the simple snobbish desire for his son to have the education of a gentleman. But he wondered whether he would have obeyed the dictates of snobbery had Christian shown any interest in science; and tugging at his whiskers, he pictured the son he would have had in the event of his being kept away from public school.

  Had he stayed at home, Christian would have had no clerical tutor to introduce him to Homer and Horace and the other bores. He would have had a scientific and useful education, as Rose had had, and as a result would have been curious and practical instead of dreamy. He might not even have learnt classics enough to take him to Oxford, thought Anstey-Ward in a sudden new loathing of the established system of education. He remembered Christian’s remarks about the quite incredible ignorance of Charton boys thought good scholars: ignorance of the whereabouts of Moscow, and of who wrote King Lear, to say nothing of their ignorance of the earth’s history. Anstey-Ward thought he would not be surprised to learn that Dr Onslow thought Moscow was in Persia, and taught his boys the same with a neat sneering half-smile on his face.

  The entire system, thought Anstey-Ward, was corrupt; and as he thought this, he paused by a yew hedge and saw strung across it a dew-laden net of spider’s web, in which there was a gnat entangled. His thoughts took a different direction. He supposed that some might compare Onslow with the gnat, yet he felt rather that he himself could be so compared, that it was he who had flown into a sticky and elastic net of a world where people of importance would tolerate any fault committed by one of their number so long as there was no scandal. Onslow’s sins, he thought suddenly, would be considered very venial by most of those classically educated men who sat in the Cabinet, or even on the bench of bishops. They would not hound Onslow out of the country simply because they knew, not if their knowledge were private.

  Anstey-Ward had once thought of himself as the representative of acknowledged decency, with cohorts of good opinion ranged behind him, but now, when he was about to confront Onslow, he could not think of himself like that. He felt, if not entangled and at hopeless odds with the world, at least very much alone. For he would not have the power to make scandal unless certain of the great chose to let him, and he imagined that in the case of so enormous a potential scandal the editors of influential newspapers might not so choose. The thought of this was enough to make him long to create such a scandal, make him hope that Onslow would issue a challenge by refusing his terms. Yet at the same time that was what he most dreaded, a contemptuous ‘Publish and be damned’ – for if he succeeded in exposing Onslow, he would also be exposing Christian’s part in the affair. It was that consideration which had held him back at the start from deciding to ruin Onslow publicly.

  He turned away from the yew hedge, and walked back towards the house. Approaching it, he looked up towards the window of the bedroom where Onslow and his wife had passed the night – and there he saw Onslow, in his nightshirt, looking down at him. Their eyes remained fixed on each other for some seconds, then Onslow quickly turned away. Anstey-Ward guessed that he would dress himself and come down immediately: the confrontation would take place before breakfast. He went into his library to wait.

  Onslow dressed and shaved himself in haste, thankful that Louisa was still asleep. It was best, he thought, to discuss the matter before everyone else was up – he wondered whether Anstey-Ward had passed as disturbed a night as he had, unable to stop examining the eve
ning’s conversation and thinking of all the things he might have said. Now he planned what he was going to say upon entering the library. His stomach churned painfully at the thought that he was at last about to set eyes on the ‘documents’, and he found his old hope growing inside him, the hope that they would turn out not to be irrefutable evidence, not to be words in his own hand.

  As soon as he was dressed he went downstairs. He found the library door wide open, and Anstey-Ward sitting in full view. Entering, and closing the door behind him, he spoke the words he had rehearsed to himself before the other had a chance to say anything.

  ‘Dr Anstey-Ward, I wish to see the documents to which you referred in your letter. I think you will not deny it is my right to do so.’

  Anstey-Ward lowered Gosse’s History of the British Sea-Anemones and Corals, which he picked out of the bookcase at random, and of which he had not read a word.

  ‘No, I won’t deny it. Pray sit down, sir.’

  Onslow took a chair. Anstey-Ward went over to his desk and took out his watch-chain, to which there was a bunch of keys attached. He unlocked one of the drawers. Out of it Onslow saw him take a piece of paper which even at a distance looked as though it had spent months in a trouser-pocket, a neat piece of cheap-looking paper, and a folded square of cream-laid. He came over, and handed them to him in silence.

  Onslow opened out the first piece of paper, the very shabby one, which was the note Arthur Bright had written to Christian in chapel. As he read it, and gradually took in its meaning, his hands shook: it had never crossed his mind that Arthur might deliberately have told another boy, and told him in such a fashion, only to enliven a sermon he thought dull. Yet while he was coping with this new knowledge, another part of his mind was busily thinking that this was a mere allegation, not proof – but then he came to Bright’s mention of an extract from one of his own letters. He forced himself to open the folded square of good paper.

  There were the words in his own hand, referring to his darling’s beauty and the sofa, and it was worse than he had imagined.

  ‘Would you like a glass of water, Dr Onslow?’ said Anstey-Ward, honestly concerned, for Onslow looked white enough to faint like a woman.

  ‘No,’ said Onslow, slowly re-folding the pieces of paper, and slipping them into his inside pocket.

  ‘I am sorry,’ said Anstey-Ward. He thought it was ridiculous for him to be saying so, yet he meant it, for he felt much as Onslow did when called upon to flog a boy who could not be stoical.

  There was silence for some time. Then Onslow said:

  ‘Your terms remain the same?’ He could think of nothing better to say, not now that he knew what Bright had done.

  ‘They do, sir.’

  ‘I accept them.’

  They had both imagined vaguely that they would have a long conversation, its length proportionate to its importance, yet now it was over.

  Onslow got up to go. His legs felt only just strong enough to bear him. As he reached the door, Anstey-Ward said:

  ‘Oh, Dr Onslow, you still have those letters in your pocket.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Pray give them back to me.’

  Their eyes met. Then Onslow took them out and laid them on the table.

  20

  ‘I am afraid it will be just such another miserable day as yesterday,’ said Chatty, pouring out tea.

  ‘Yes, I am afraid you are right,’ said Louisa, who because she had not seen him till they sat down to breakfast, guessed that Onslow had already had his interview with Anstey-Ward. She supposed that her husband had spent a long time in conversation with him – she did not know that unable to face her, he had spent half an hour on the chilly verandah, having nowhere else to go but the bedroom he shared with her.

  ‘Miss Anstey-Ward,’ said Onslow, who had worried his wife by saying almost nothing till now, ‘Mrs Onslow and I must leave you very soon after breakfast. Would it be possible for us to hire a conveyance to take us to the station from somewhere round about?’

  ‘Oh! But hiring a conveyance is not at all necessary. We have just set up our own carriage, which can very easily take you – it is such a convenience to have one’s own carriage.’ Chatty had been pressing her brother to set one up for years.

  ‘I should hate to be without one, I own,’ said Louisa, and refrained from glancing at Anstey-Ward, who had the power to deprive her of the means of keeping a carriage.

  ‘We are much obliged to you, Miss Anstey-Ward,’ said Onslow. He was thinking of how he would tell Louisa everything as soon as they were on their way, now that he had to some extent mastered his sense of shame.

  Anstey-Ward, like Onslow, thought that all these civilities were even more painful than those uttered yesterday. Yet now all was over, he hated Onslow less than he had done, and so he wondered why this should be so. With an effort he said:

  ‘We shall be very glad indeed to convey you to the station, Dr Onslow,’ and all his listeners were faintly embarrassed by a polite remark made too late.

  The meal finally came to an end. Chatty stayed in the breakfast-parlour, Anstey-Ward went once more to the library, and the Onslows, making excuses, went upstairs. Once they were in their room, Onslow said:

  ‘I have spoken to him.’ Having avoided Louisa before breakfast, he now felt he could not wait even till they were on their way to Salisbury. He also suspected that she guessed what had happened, and would in any case demand to be told. He could not put her off a second time.

  ‘Oh Dr Onslow, tell me.’

  ‘He is implacable. There is nothing else to say.’

  ‘Oh no,’ said Louisa, putting a hand to her cheek. ‘No, I can’t believe it.’

  ‘It is what we expected, after all. Is it not?’

  ‘No.’ She meant it: she had been entirely convinced that a compromise would be settled on, such as a not too immediate resignation followed by the acceptance of a bishopric, or at least a deanery. At last she said, not looking at Onslow: ‘The documents he spoke of – what were they?’

  He blushed at the mention of them.

  ‘Evidence I could not dispute.’ Then there was a pause, and Onslow took out his watch and examined it. He said at length: ‘It is less than it might be. I must be thankful there is to be no scandal.’ He thought what excellent control he was keeping, and pictured himself abandoning it.

  ‘I suppose so,’ muttered Louisa, in whose mind a plan was quickly forming.

  Raising her head, ignoring the hand he stretched out to her, she told him that he must excuse her and then went out of the room. Onslow supposed she was going to answer a call of nature, and was angry with her for having one at such a moment.

  Louisa sped downstairs and went straight to the library, into which she had seen Anstey-Ward disappear. She knocked on the door and heard his surprised-sounding voice calling ‘Come in.’

  ‘Why, Mrs Onslow!’ he said when she entered, though the knock had given him an idea of who it was. Chatty would not have knocked, and he could not think that Onslow would have done so. ‘What can I do for you, ma’am? Pray sit down!’ he said, as he had said to her husband earlier. He got up and placed a chair for her, which she accepted. Then she said:

  ‘You can do a great deal for me, Dr Anstey-Ward. I have come to ask you to be a little less harsh towards my husband.’

  He started. She folded her hands neatly in her lap, and there was silence.

  ‘Dr Onslow does not know I have come down to talk to you,’ Louisa offered as Anstey-Ward said nothing. ‘I am hoping you will listen to a wife’s plea.’ She knew her words were melodramatic, but her tone was light. Anstey-Ward, shocked though he was, rather liked the touch of melodrama. It was something outside the whole range of his experience.

  ‘I don’t know what you mean by a little less harsh, ma’am,’ he said, wishing he could think of something better to say. He wondered just how much she knew, whether Onslow had fobbed her off with some story.

  ‘Will you not let him remain at Charton
till Christmas?’ she said, leaning forward. Louisa was keeping her voice under strict control, just as Onslow had kept his. ‘Then, you see, if he informs the trustees of his coming resignation now, it will not look in any way odd. I am sure you are as desirous of preventing disagreeable gossip as we are, Dr Anstey-Ward.’

  Anstey-Ward looked at her face and realised that Louisa knew everything, that she was no such sheltered innocent as he, far more than Onslow, thought all women should be. All her light conversation of last night, and at breakfast, had been a mere act – he felt a fool for having supposed there was a need to deceive her as much as Chatty. Distressed though he was by her duplicity, Anstey-Ward was also relieved: for to have her understand like a man was better than to have her ask him awkward questions, as had been his fear when she first came into the room. And he would not feel like a merciless brute, denying the requests of a woman who knew. Yet on the other hand, he thought, it was dreadful not to do whatever he could to comfort a guiltless creature who for all her boldness, must have suffered terribly when her husband confessed.

  In his conflict, Anstey-Ward said nothing, but only watched her, waiting to learn more.

  ‘I do not think I could bear it if there were such gossip,’ she said. ‘You will understand that, I am very sure, Dr Anstey-Ward.’

  He decided there was nothing for it but to talk to her as though this were a perfectly ordinary situation. He said:

  ‘Yes indeed, but Mrs Onslow, I do not see that Dr Onslow’s leaving Charton at the end of this half-year need give rise to gossip of the kind you mean. He has only to plead ill-health.’

  Louisa thought this excuse would be extremely likely to lead to gossip, for Onslow was so healthy that he had not contracted an infectious complaint, not even influenza, since he was a child. His stomach was absolutely sound, and occasional migraines were the only illness to which he was subject.