The Fall of Doctor Onslow

by Frances Vernon

  ‘I am afraid everyone would know that was untrue, sir.’

  ‘No, no,’ he assured her. ‘There are any number of diseases from which men who appear perfectly healthy may suffer. I suggest severe and persistent migraine.’ It was unfortunate that he picked on this condition. ‘That would account also for his refusal to accept high preferment – he would be thinking the work would be too much for him.’ He added, clearing his throat: ‘I take it you know what I have required of Dr Onslow.’

  ‘I know,’ said Louisa. ‘Yes, I do know. But as for ill-health being a sufficient excuse for his refusing high preferment, it might serve with regard to a bishopric, but a dean has no work to speak of. A deanery would be the very thing for him in those circumstances. Dr Anstey-Ward, will you not compromise even so far as to allow him to accept a deanery? Only to prevent disagreeable talk? You insist on his resigning immediately, will you not even grant me this?’

  ‘I’m sorry, but I cannot go back on what I have said, Mrs Onslow.’

  ‘Then you are condemning us both to a life of wretchedness,’ she said, quite gently.

  ‘Forgive me, but I’ve yet to learn that the life of a parish clergyman is one of wretchedness.’

  Changing tack, Louisa said, still softly and reasonably:

  ‘What have I done to deserve this? Is it right that I should be punished too? You see I am quite frank with you.’

  Anstey-Ward did not like to point out that she had accepted Onslow for better for worse, and so he simply looked at her, and fiddled with his watch-chain. In spite of his stern view of the marriage vow, he did feel it was dreadful to ruin Louisa as well as her husband – it was only that he saw no alternative.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Onslow,’ he said at last. ‘But I ought to tell you that it is largely for your sake I do not wish to make a scandal out of this. Were it not for you I might think otherwise.’

  ‘I suppose I must thank you for that. I do thank you.’

  There was a pause. Then Louisa said:

  ‘You know, Dr Anstey-Ward, my husband has sincerely repented of his error.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear that, Mrs Onslow.’

  ‘In the circumstances, is it right for you to insist on having your way? He is in such agony of mind.’ She added: ‘I daresay he did not tell you so, but then he is very proud. He would never tell you that he had repented.’

  ‘I know, ma’am.’

  ‘Dr Anstey-Ward, precisely what right have you to condemn him in this way? I ask you that in all seriousness, not to be insulting. Do you indeed have the right to judge him? Like God?’

  Anstey-Ward took out his watch and wound it.

  ‘I’m not sure, Mrs Onslow. But however that may be, I –’

  ‘You acknowledge that you have not. Oh, Dr Anstey-Ward, you know it is not Christian to behave in this way.’

  ‘I don’t know about that,’ he said. ‘Christians have behaved in all manner of ways.’

  Louisa leant forward in her chair, and made a concession. ‘Perhaps, perhaps you do have the right to ask him to resign from Charton, where he is open to temptation, but do you have the right as a fellow Christian to punish him in other ways? Can you not leave vengeance to God? When Dr Onslow is so bitterly repentant, so determined never to err again? Oh, Dr Anstey-Ward, please listen to me!’

  He was now looking at her eager, anxious, pretty face, and the expression on his own face was miserable. She could see that her persistence was softening him at last.

  ‘You know in your heart that you do not have the right to cause so much unhappiness,’ she said.

  ‘Perhaps not,’ he said, ‘yet I still cannot think it right for Dr Onslow to hold a high position in the church. And I don’t think it right that a clergyman should be quite so ambitious.’

  Louisa ignored this last remark, and said:

  ‘But think of the great good he has done since he came to Charton. In many ways he is the best of headmasters. Is he not as much entitled to a reward for the good he has done as he is entitled to be punished for his fault?’

  Anstey-Ward said nothing: he knew that Onslow had done much good.

  ‘Dr Anstey-Ward, I suspect you of being a kind man at heart. Can I not appeal to your kindness as well as to your sense of what is right?’

  Anstey-Ward got up from his chair and walked rapidly towards the window, for it was terrible to hear Louisa voice his conscientious doubts – and he did like to think of himself as a kindly, tolerant and generous man. Seeing him rise, Louisa rose too, sure that she was on the point of victory, or at least of achieving a compromise. She said, quite lightly:

  ‘Is it right for you to punish him so severely for such a little weakness, so small a fault?’

  Then he turned round and faced her again.

  ‘It is not so small a fault, Mrs Onslow. You are mistaken.’

  She could see that she had said the wrong thing: Anstey-Ward’s tone of voice was very firm.

  ‘But you will own…’ she began.

  ‘Mrs Onslow, your husband’s fault is a very grave one, and whether I have the right or not, what I am doing is just. I do not wish to hurt you, that’s the last thing I want, but it is a question of justice.’

  She could not bear the thought that triumph had eluded her so narrowly, and as Anstey-Ward went back towards his chair, she threw herself down on her knees in one last desperate move. It was as though she had never before truly wanted Onslow to be a bishop.

  ‘Dr Anstey-Ward, I promise you on my honour as a Christian woman that Dr Onslow’s peculiarities have never interfered with his running of the school. Can you not have a little pity?’

  ‘Mrs Onslow, I beg you! Pray get up now!’

  ‘He has been the best of headmasters, the boys love him, is it indeed right to wreck the rest of his life?’

  ‘Please, please! This is useless, ma’am, I cannot think your husband fit to be a schoolmaster, nor a clergyman either!’

  At that moment, Onslow opened the library door, and stepped in, and saw his wife kneeling there. On her tear-streaked face there was an expression of guilty surprise. For a moment they all looked at one another in silence, then Onslow took two paces forward and said icily:

  ‘Get up, Mrs Onslow.’

  Anstey-Ward thought Onslow was being harsh: in spite of his intransigence, he was moved by the sight of this delicate bishop’s daughter on her knees.

  ‘Get up.’

  Louisa attempted to obey him, but her skirts and the stays that made her breathless made it difficult for her to rise without help when she was exhausted by emotion.

  ‘Help me,’ she muttered.

  Anstey-Ward took a step forward, but retreated at a look from Onslow, who assisted his wife with the air of one touching dirt. When Louisa was on her feet again, Anstey-Ward said awkwardly:

  ‘I would like to say a few words to Mrs Onslow. They may be painful for you to hear, Dr Onslow.’

  Onslow said: ‘Are you asking me to go out of the room and leave you to continue the tête-à-tête you are enjoying?’

  ‘You might say that.’

  Onslow turned away from him, not condescending to make any reply, and Anstey-Ward coloured angrily. He wanted very much to explain to Louisa why her husband’s was not so small a fault, explain that she had been misled and that he was not so unjustly vengeful as she supposed.

  ‘I shall be glad,’ said Onslow, ‘if you will be good enough to have your carriage brought round. It is time we were gone.’

  Anstey-Ward pulled the bell in silence in response to this arrogant request, and as he did so, he assured himself that he had found the perfect solution, whatever Louisa might think.

  21

  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 satis
fied.’

  ‘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.

  22

  ‘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.’r />
  ‘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!’