The Fall of Doctor Onslow

by Frances Vernon

  Hinterton was situated four miles north of Ashbourne, in the southern foothills of the Pennine Chain, and the surrounding countryside was in a bleak way very beautiful. The village was built round a crossroads. It consisted of some forty cottages, a public house, a small shop, a church, and three gentlemen’s houses including the rectory. It resembled Charton in that it was built on a slope, and from the rectory and church at the top of the gentle hill it was possible to look down and see the descending row of houses which formed the main street, just as it had been possible at Charton to look down from the railway station and see the builded fruits of Onslow’s activity.

  The Onslows moved into the rectory late in November, 1859. They furnished it almost exactly as they had furnished Charton, and then, settled at last, they looked out from it into the unchanging future. At Hinterton, they had the peace for which Onslow had asked God when he preached for the last time in the school chapel.

  *

  One afternoon in February 1860, Louisa was entertaining the wife of the rector of Tudbury, a parish which lay south of Ashbourne. She had not met the woman before. Mrs Lucas’s ninth pregnancy and the subsequent childbirth had kept her at home while the rest of the neighbouring clergy and gentry were making the acquaintance of the Onslows. Now Mrs Lucas was hastening to make up for lost time. She asked good-humoured questions as though she had known Louisa for years.

  ‘Do you not find us very dull, after Charton, Mrs Onslow?’

  ‘What can I possibly say to that?’ said Louisa, smiling a little. She was soberly dressed today, as she always was now, and she had aged a little since the summer. She was thinner, and her cheeks were hollow.

  ‘Very true!’ said Mrs Lucas. ‘What a foolish question to ask – pray forget it.’

  Louisa did not choose to forget it. She said seriously:

  ‘I do not think Dr Onslow finds it dull, or at all events a little comparative dullness has been what he was looking for. And as for me’ – she hesitated – ‘I assure you, I am enjoying my new surroundings very much.’

  ‘I am sure Dr Onslow must be quite worn out after fifteen years, was it, of caring for naughty boys.’

  ‘Oh, quite so.’

  There was a pause.

  ‘Do you plan to make many changes in the parish?’ said Mrs Lucas, who had already heard of certain changes from her husband, who was the rural dean.

  ‘Dr Onslow has instituted monthly communion. And he is planning to take up the box pews in the church. I hope no one will think ill of him for that,’ said Louisa.

  ‘Villagers are so conservative. But for my part I think it is an excellent scheme to remove those old pews. Horrid things, like great bathing-machines! Mr Lucas removed them at Tudbury when he first came.’

  ‘I am glad you approve. I hope all our neighbours will do so.’

  ‘Oh, they will! Mr Johnson was so very set in his ways, very old-fashioned. Not even a Sunday school! Of course he had no wife to help him.’

  ‘Something must be done about that,’ said Louisa. ‘But I have no experience of setting up schools. I daresay I shall contrive.’

  Mrs Lucas laughed.

  ‘Oh Mrs Onslow, you and Dr Onslow surely cannot say you have no experience of schools!’

  ‘But there is a difference,’ said Louisa, ‘between Charton and a Sunday school for labourers’ children.’

  ‘So there is!’ Mrs Lucas seemed to think Louisa had made a joke. She glanced at the clock on the drawing-room mantelpiece, and saw that she had already stayed a little longer than was proper on a first call. Getting to her feet, she said:

  ‘I must take my leave of you, Mrs Onslow. But first, do you and Dr Onslow care to dine with us on Wednesday of next week? Mr Lucas and I are giving a dinner-party, and my father is coming to it. He lives in Italy, you know, and rarely visits England, but I know he will be most interested to meet Dr Onslow.’

  Mrs Lucas’s father was Lord Burnam, the owner of Tudbury. Louisa already knew this, though she was not yet a person with whom her new neighbours would gossip about Lord Burnam’s loose manner of living.

  ‘I think we shall be delighted, Mrs Lucas.’

  Louisa thought of how everyone was most interested to meet Dr Onslow. She and her husband had enjoyed quite a little social life since coming to Hinterton, among those whose faces would soon grow as familiar as the view from the rectory drawing-room had already become. Few of them were disagreeable people, but no more could be said of them by the Onslows. None of the clergymen in the district was either a notable scholar or connected with the higher reaches of the church, and most of the lay people whom they had met were chiefly interested in hunting. But all these neighbours were curious to know why such a rising star as Onslow had chosen to fall to earth among them, just as a few months earlier, the Onslows’ old acquaintance had been astonished by their retirement.

  When Mrs Lucas was gone, Louisa took out her embroidery. She would work at it solidly till dinner-time. There was nothing else to do, and Louisa, as she worked at it, forgot that at Charton too she had had many empty hours. The emptiness felt quite different now, because her husband, who had had little free time in the old days, was now almost as leisured as she was, and this somehow emphasised her own boredom.

  *

  The parish of Hinterton had been run by a curate for the past five years, ever since the Onslows’ predecessor became too infirm for his duties. Onslow had not dispensed with this curate’s services, though he told himself he ought to, in order to give himself more to do and thus distract his mind. But he did not, for it was with difficulty that he forced himself to do anything at all, even on Sundays. Only pride made him act, as he had done in instituting monthly communion, and in deciding to remove the old box pews from the village church. These acts, he knew, were such as would be expected of him.

  There was one duty of a clergyman which Onslow longed to shirk, but felt he could not altogether even though he had a diligent curate: visiting his poorer parishioners in their homes.

  On the day Mrs Lucas called on Louisa, Onslow made himself go down to the other end of the village to visit a family called Roberts. Their cottage was one of the most unpleasant in the locality: a little, old building with two tiny rooms upstairs and one small room down, and in this lived a family of seven, including a grandfather who was gradually dying. When Onslow entered the cottage after knocking at the door he was assailed by the smell of humanity and of cabbage – Mrs Roberts had been stirring a black pot suspended by chains over an open fire. A baby was crawling near the hearth, a three year old and a five year old were sitting at a battered, stained deal table. The last two stared at Onslow as their mother ushered him in.

  ‘Mrs Roberts, is it not? I hope I have not come to call on you at an inconvenient time.’

  ‘Oh no, sir,’ she replied, taking off her apron as she spoke. Mrs Roberts, having been in service, did not speak with quite so thick a Derbyshire accent as some of the villagers.

  ‘It is my wish to make the acquaintance of all my parishioners,’ said Onslow. The curate had told him that the Roberts family did not attend church regularly; neither did they visit the dissenting chapel. They were merely indifferent. Onslow supposed that perhaps, as a priest, he ought to seek to remedy this, yet he felt he could not question the woman about her churchgoing, not yet. At one moment he felt that to do so would be almost a kind of impertinence, at the next that it was hard to believe that a woman in her circumstances was a human soul in need of priestly care. He wondered what to say, and remembered how he had never been at a loss for words in his old life, in which he had never spoken to a poor person.

  ‘I hope I find you in good health?’ he said, as Mrs Roberts dusted the seat of a chair and offered it to him.

  ‘A’m middling, thank you sir.’

  ‘Good!’ said Onslow. ‘And your children – what a fine little fellow this baby is.’ The baby had crawled to his feet. Its face was very dirty.

  ‘Aye, he’s well enough.’

&n
bsp; ‘Do you go on prosperously? Is your pig well?’ Onslow had learnt from the curate that the villagers’ pigs, kept in sties behind the cottages, were very important to them, being their only source of meat.

  ‘He’s not very clever just now, the pig.’

  ‘I am sorry to hear that,’ said Onslow. ‘Your husband is a shepherd, I believe, Mrs Roberts?’

  ‘Aye, he is.’

  ‘I hope he is well?’ Onslow had never felt so foolish in his life.

  ‘Aye, sir.’

  ‘Have you other children besides these I see?’

  ‘Oh aye, sir. A’ve seven all told.’

  ‘At work in the fields with their father, I presume? Are your older girls in service?’

  ‘Aye, our Polly went into service in the back-end.’

  ‘How old is she?’ said Onslow, who thought that the back-end meant not the autumn, but some unknown place.

  ‘Twelve, sir.’

  ‘Twelve. She is your eldest?’

  ‘Aye, sir.’

  ‘Is her place in service far from here?’ he said.

  ‘Oh no. In Wirksworth.’

  ‘It must be agreeable to have her so close.’

  ‘Oh, it is sir.’

  Wearily Onslow thought of the struggle it would be to write a sermon suitable for the ears of Mrs Roberts. It was a task he found impossible, he had not even attempted it. Since coming to Hinterton he had preached his old Charton sermons, with minor variations, to a congregation which contained hardly anyone capable of understanding them but the local squire and his family.

  ‘I believe Mrs Onslow brought some calves’-foot jelly for your father-in-law, Mrs Roberts.’

  ‘Aye, three days since. We’re grateful, sir.’

  ‘Is your father-in-law a little improved?’

  ‘Not to speak of, sir.’

  ‘Would he care to have me visit him?’

  ‘Oh yes, I’m sure.’

  ‘Good, good.’

  ‘Shall I take you upstairs, sir?’

  ‘If you will be so good.’

  Mrs Roberts led the way up the narrow, rickety staircase, and opened the door of a frowsty little room. Onslow stepped in, and looked at a bed heaped with clothes, inside which there was an old, slack-mouthed man. He supposed he would have to ask the old man whether anything was troubling his spirit, as was surely likely now he was close to death. The conscience, Onslow thought, must become active at such a time even in an unbeliever.

  He could only wish that he were close to death himself, and not likely to spend more than thirty years in making visits of this kind, pretending to be a better, humbler Christian than he was or ever would be.

  25

  The squire of Hinterton was a Mr Butterick, a pleasant, cultivated man of fifty. He was delighted to have so distinguished a man as Onslow for the rector of the parish, and soon became friendly with him. As for the Onslows, to them Mr Butterick’s presence in the neighbourhood seemed a species of blessing, for at Hinterton, the presence of any man familiar with the Iliad would have appeared so.

  One morning in May of 1860, when Onslow was spending his daily hour with the Bible, Mr Butterick came to call at the rectory. Onslow was glad enough to see him, glad to have the rigid routine to which he clung interrupted.

  ‘Dr Onslow,’ said the squire, after a few civilities had been exchanged, ‘I will no longer conceal from you that I have come here to ask a very great favour of you.’

  ‘Have you, sir? I am sure I shall be delighted to grant it,’ said Onslow politely.

  Mr Butterick took out his watch and wound it.

  ‘It is my son Tom, who has been rusticated from Cambridge for a stupid prank. Well, boys will be boys as they say, but what chiefly concerns me is the fact that he appears to have done almost no work.’

  ‘They never do, Mr Butterick.’

  ‘Yes, it is all very well, but Tom has to have a profession. He cannot afford to be plucked. I have brought him to see that this cannot continue, and he works with me every morning, but the fact is that while I remember my classics tolerably well, I never was able to understand mathematics. Fortunately at Oxford that did not prevent me from taking honours, but Tom was set on Cambridge – I have been wondering –’

  ‘Perhaps you would like me to offer him a little tuition?’ said Onslow.

  ‘Dare I ask it? It is very presumptuous of me to think you might wish to spend your time in such a way, but I do not know what I am to do.’

  ‘Certainly! I was once a Wrangler, but I am more than a trifle rusty, and shall be glad to take up my mathematics again.’

  Thus a small change was introduced into Onslow’s life.

  *

  Next day, as soon as he shook hands with him in his study, Onslow remembered having met Tom Butterick before. He wondered why the boy had made only a vague impression on him on that occasion (an evening party given by his parents at Christmas), for Tom was distinctly attractive. He had curling brown hair, bright eyes, a straight little nose, and a good figure. His appearance was spoilt only by his hands, which were like great ruddy spades.

  ‘I hope we shall become friends, you and I,’ he said.

  ‘I hope so, sir,’ replied Tom. He looked to be listless, the sort of boy whom in the old days Onslow had tried to punish into intelligence.

  ‘I take it you are not fond of mathematics, Mr Butterick?’ It seemed odd to be calling a pupil ‘Mr’, but Onslow remembered that he was now teaching an undergraduate, not a schoolboy. It was twenty years since as a young Fellow and tutor of Trinity, Onslow had taught undergraduates. He thought to himself that he must remember that period of his life rather than the other.

  ‘I’m not especially fond of it, no, sir,’ said Tom, and added in a voice of punctilious boredom: ‘It’s very good of you to offer to teach me.’

  ‘Not at all. I see you have brought your Euclid. Perhaps you had best show me which propositions trouble you, and I will see whether I can make you understand.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  They sat down together at the study table, and their legs brushed as they did so. Tom smelt of soap, but underlying the soap smell there was something more animal – yet it did not resemble the animal smell of the villagers’ cottages. Onslow, noticing this, wondered whether Tom had been forced into coming to him for lessons by threats of a reduced allowance. His somewhat sullen demeanour made this seem likely, but Onslow, though he wished it were not so, was determined not to be daunted.

  The lesson did not go well. Tom turned out to be stupid, stupid at any rate where mathematics were concerned. Onslow, instead of being repelled by this, found himself longing to make the boy understand. He never used to feel like that at Charton. There, if a boy proved to be slow, he either mocked him or ignored him. But then, he thought, he had had many bright pupils to delight him, some of whom were handsomer than Tom.

  As they worked together, Onslow was constantly aware of the warmth of the boy’s body, constantly distracted by his touchingly sparse whiskers and the way his hair merged into down at the nape of his neck. It was nearly a year since he had been close enough to any boy to observe such details.

  *

  Over the course of three weeks, Tom’s mathematics barely improved, and Onslow became increasingly frustrated as he sat by him day after day. It seemed to him that Tom was not altogether unintelligent, for his remarks on general subjects were sensible enough, and so he was forced to wonder whether he himself were not a bad teacher. Tom’s failure to make progress gradually made him wonder whether even at Charton, teaching classics, he had really been as good a schoolmaster as he would have liked to be and had once believed he was. Unwillingly, in Tom’s presence, he remembered how often he had failed to kindle interest in boys’ minds – he had forgotten that since leaving, had only remembered a golden age filled with docile and intelligent pupils. It was terrible to have such doubts about his past, the thought of which had in recent months been as much a comfort as a source of pain to him. It was as terribl
e as knowing that he could never make any move towards any boy now that he was outside the enclosed, distorted world of Charton.

  One morning, Onslow told Tom to copy out several of Euclid’s propositions from memory. He thought this task could not be beyond the boy. As Tom worked, Onslow stood by the open window and thought of what Primrose had said to him about his true sin being not carnal but a misuse of authority. He was beginning to understand what his friend had meant, now that he had no authority to misuse.

  ‘I have finished, sir,’ said Tom, and Onslow turned his head.

  ‘Have you, Mr Butterick?’ he said, coming over to the table. Tom handed him two sheets of paper, and Onslow put on his spectacles to inspect them.

  Tom had not remembered one of the propositions correctly. Onslow raised his head and looked at his fair, unconscious face. He thought he detected a trace of smugness in the boy’s expression, and quite suddenly, his feelings of frustration overcame him.