LORD BRACY'S LETTER.
THE school and the parish went on through August and September, and up to
the middle of October, very quietly. The quarrel between the Bishop and
the Doctor had altogether subsided. People in the diocese had ceased to
talk continually of Mr. and Mrs. Peacocke. There was still alive a
certain interest as to what might be the ultimate fate of the poor lady;
but other matters had come up, and she no longer formed the one topic of
conversation at all meetings. The twenty boys at the school felt that, as
their numbers had been diminished, so also had their reputation. They
were less loud, and, as other boys would have said of them, less "cocky"
than of yore. But they ate and drank and played, and, let us hope, learnt
their lessons as usual. Mrs. Peacocke had from time to time received
letters from her husband, the last up to the time of which we speak having
been written at the Ogden Junction, at which Mr. Peacocke had stopped for
four-and-twenty hours with the object of making inquiry as to the
statement made to him at St. Louis. Here he learned enough to convince
him that Robert Lefroy had told him the truth in regard to what had there
occurred. The people about the station still remembered the condition of
the man who had been taken out of the car when suffering from delirium
tremens; and remembered also that the man had not died there, but had been
carried on by the next train to San Francisco. One of the porters also
declared that he had heard a few days afterwards that the sufferer had
died almost immediately on his arrival at San Francisco. Information as
far as this Mr. Peacocke had sent home to his wife, and had added his firm
belief that he should find the man's grave in the cemetery, and be able to
bring home with him testimony to which no authority in England, whether
social, episcopal, or judicial, would refuse to give credit.
"Of course he will be married again," said Mrs. Wortle to her husband.
"They shall be married here, and I will perform the ceremony. I don't
think the Bishop himself would object to that; and I shouldn't care a
straw if he did."
"Will he go on with the school?" whispered Mrs. Wortle.
"Will the school go on? If the school goes on, he will go on, I suppose.
About that you had better ask Mrs. Stantiloup."
"I will ask nobody but you," said the wife, putting up her face to kiss
him. As this was going on, everything was said to comfort Mrs. Peacocke,
and to give her hopes of new life. Mrs. Wortle told her how the Doctor
had promised that he himself would marry them as soon as the forms of the
Church and the legal requisitions would allow. Mrs. Peacocke accepted all
that was said to her quietly and thankfully, but did not again allow
herself to be roused to such excitement as she had shown on the one
occasion recorded.
It was at this time that the Doctor received a letter which greatly
affected his mode of thought at the time. He had certainly become hipped
and low-spirited, if not despondent, and clearly showed to his wife, even
though he was silent, that his mind was still intent on the injury which
that wretched woman had done him by her virulence. But the letter of
which we speak for a time removed this feeling, and gave him, as it were,
a new life. The letter, which was from Lord Bracy, was as follows;--
"MY DEAR DOCTOR WORTLE.--Carstairs left us for Oxford yesterday, and
before he went, startled his mother and me considerably by a piece of
information. He tells us that he is over head and ears in love with your
daughter. The communication was indeed made three days ago, but I told
him that I should take a day or two to think of it before I wrote to you.
He was very anxious, when he told me, to go off at once to Bowick, and to
see you and your wife, and of course the young lady;--but this I stopped
by the exercise of somewhat peremptory parental authority. Then he
informed me that he had been to Bowick, and had found his lady-love at
home, you and Mrs. Wortle having by chance been absent at the time. It
seems that he declared himself to the young lady, who, in the exercise of
a wise discretion, ran away from him and left him planted on the terrace.
That is his account of what passed, and I do not in the least doubt its
absolute truth. It is at any rate quite clear, from his own showing, that
the young lady gave him no encouragement.
"Such having been the case, I do not think that I should have found it
necessary to write to you at all had not Carstairs persevered with me till
I promised to do so. He was willing, he said, not to go to Bowick on
condition that I would write to you on the subject. The meaning of this
is, that had he not been very much in earnest, I should have considered it
best to let the matter pass on as such matters do, and be forgotten. But
he is very much in earnest. However foolish it is,--or perhaps I had
better say unusual,--that a lad should be in love before he is twenty, it
is, I suppose, possible. At any rate it seems to be the case with him,
and he has convinced his mother that it would be cruel to ignore the fact.
"I may at once say that, as far as you and your girl are concerned, I
should be quite satisfied that he should choose for himself such a
marriage. I value rank, at any rate, as much as it is worth; but that he
will have of his own, and does not need to strengthen it by intermarriage
with another house of peculiarly old lineage. As far as that is
concerned, I should be contented. As for money, I should not wish him to
think of it in marrying. If it comes, _tant mieux_. If not, he will have
enough of his own. I write to you, therefore, exactly as I should do if
you had happened to be a brother peer instead of a clergyman.
"But I think that long engagements are very dangerous; and you probably
will agree with me that they are likely to be more prejudicial to the girl
than to the man. It may be that, as difficulties arise in the course of
years, he can forget the affair, and that she cannot. He has many things
of which to think; whereas she, perhaps, has only that one. She may have
made that thing so vital to her that it cannot be got under and conquered;
whereas, without any fault or heartlessness on his part, occupation has
conquered it for him. In this case I fear that the engagement, if made,
could not but be long. I should be sorry that he should not take his
degree. And I do not think it wise to send a lad up to the University
hampered with the serious feeling that he has already betrothed himself.
"I tell you all just as it is, and I leave it to your wisdom to suggest
what had better be done. He wished me to promise that I would undertake
to induce you to tell Miss Wortle of his conversation with me. He said
that he had a right to demand so much as that, and that, though he would
not for the present go to Bowick, he should write to you. The young
gentleman seems to have a will of his own,--which I cannot say that I
regret. What you will do as to the young lady,--whether you will or will
not tell her what I have written,--I must leave to yourself. If you do, I
am to send word to her from Lady Bracy to say that she shall be delighted
to see her here. She had better, however, come when that inflammatory
young gentleman shall be at Oxford. Yours very faithfully,
"BRACY."
This letter certainly did a great deal to invigorate the Doctor, and to
console him in his troubles. Even though the debated marriage might prove
to be impossible, as it had been declared by the voices of all the Wortles
one after another, still there was something in the tone in which it was
discussed by the young man's father which was in itself a relief. There
was, at any rate, no contempt in the letter. "I may at once say that, as
far as you and your girl are concerned, I shall be very well pleased."
That, at any rate, was satisfactory. And the more he looked at it the
less he thought that it need be altogether impossible. If Lord Bracy
liked it, and Lady Bracy liked it,--and young Carstairs, as to whose
liking there seemed to be no reason for any doubt,--he did not see why it
should be impossible. As to Mary,--he could not conceive that she should
make objection if all the others were agreed. How could she possibly fail
to love the young man if encouraged to do so? Suitors who are
good-looking, rich, of high rank, sweet-tempered, and at the same time
thoroughly devoted, are not wont to be discarded. All the difficulty lay
in the lad's youth. After all, how many noblemen have done well in the
world without taking a degree? Degrees, too, have been taken by married
men. And, again, young men have been persistent before now, even to the
extent of waiting three years. Long engagements are bad,--no doubt.
Everybody has always said so. But a long engagement may be better than
none at all.
He at last made up his mind that he would speak to Mary; but he determined
that he would consult his wife first. Consulting Mrs. Wortle, on his
part, generally amounted to no more than instructing her. He found it
sometimes necessary to talk her over, as he had done in that matter of
visiting Mrs. Peacocke; but when he set himself to work he rarely failed.
She had nowhere else to go for a certain foundation and support.
Therefore he hardly doubted much when he began his operation about this
suggested engagement.
"I have got that letter this morning from Lord Bracy," he said, handing
her the document.
"Oh dear! Has he heard about Carstairs?"
"You had better read it."
"He has told it all," she exclaimed, when she had finished the first
sentence.
"He has told it all, certainly. But you had better read the letter
through."
Then she seated herself and read it, almost trembling, however, as she
went on with it. "Oh dear;--that is very nice what he says about you and
Mary."
"It is all very nice as far as that goes. There is no reason why it
should not be nice."
"It might have made him so angry!"
"Then he would have been very unreasonable."
"He acknowledges that Mary did not encourage him."
"Of course she did not encourage him. He would have been very unlike a
gentleman had he thought so. But in truth, my dear, it is a very good
letter. Of course there are difficulties."
"Oh;--it is impossible!"
"I do not see that at all. It must rest very much with him, no
doubt;--with Carstairs; and I do not like to think that our girl's
happiness should depend on any young man's constancy. But such dangers
have to be encountered. You and I were engaged for three years before we
were married, and we did not find it so very bad."
"It was very good. Oh, I was so happy at the time."
"Happier than you've been since?"
"Well; I don't know. It was very nice to know that you were my lover."
"Why shouldn't Mary think it very nice to have a lover?"
"But I knew that you would be true."
"Why shouldn't Carstairs be true?"
"Remember he is so young. You were in orders."
"I don't know that I was at all more likely to be true on that account. A
clergyman can jilt a girl just as well as another. It depends on the
nature of the man."
"And you were so good."
"I never came across a better youth than Carstairs. You see what his
father says about his having a will of his own. When a young man shows a
purpose of that kind he generally sticks to it."
The upshot of it all was, that Mary was to be told, and that her father
was to tell her.
"Yes, papa, he did come," she said. "I told mamma all about me."
"And she told me, of course. You did what was quite right, and I should
not have thought it necessary to speak to you had not Lord Bracy written
to me."
"Lord Bracy has written!" said Mary. It seemed to her, as it had done to
her mother, that Lord Bracy must have written angrily; but though she
thought so, she plucked up her spirit gallantly, telling herself that
though Lord Bracy might be angry with his own son, he could have no cause
to be displeased with her.
"Yes; I have a letter, which you shall read. The young man seems to have
been very much in earnest."
"I don't know," said Mary, with some little exultation at her heart.
"It seems but the other day that he was a boy, and now he has become
suddenly a man." To this Mary said nothing; but she also had come to the
conclusion that, in this respect, Lord Carstairs had lately changed,--very
much for the better. "Do you like him, Mary?"
"Like him, papa?"
"Well, my darling; how am I to put it? He is so much in earnest that he
has got his father to write to me. He was coming over himself again
before he went to Oxford; but he told his father what he was going to do,
and the Earl stopped him. There's the letter, and you may read it."
Mary read the letter, taking herself apart to a corner of the room, and
seemed to her father to take a long time in reading it. But there was
very much on which she was called upon to make up her mind during those
few minutes. Up to the present time,--up to the moment in which her
father had now summoned her into his study, she had resolved that it was
"impossible." She had become so clear on the subject that she would not
ask herself the question whether she could love the young man. Would it
not be wrong to love the young man? Would it not be a longing for the top
brick of the chimney, which she ought to know was out of her reach? So
she had decided it, and had therefore already taught herself to regard the
declaration made to her as the ebullition of a young man's folly. But not
the less had she known how great had been the thing suggested to her,--how
excellent was this top brick of the chimney; and as to the young man
himself, she could not but feel that, had matters been different, she
might have loved him. Now there had come a sudden change; but she did not
at all know how far she might go to meet the change, nor what the change
altogether meant. She had been made sure by her father's question that he
had taught himself to hope. He would not have asked her whether she liked
him,--would not, at any rate, have asked that question in that voice,--had
he not been prepared to be good to her had she answered in the
affirmative. But then this matter did not depend upon her father's
wishes,--or even on her father's judgment. It was necessary that, before
she said another word, she should find out what Lord Bracy said about it.
There she had Lord Bracy's letter in her hand, but her mind was so
disturbed that she hardly knew how to read it aright at the spur of the
moment.
"You understand what he says, Mary?"
"I think so, papa."
"It is a very kind letter."
"Very kind indeed. I should have thought that he would not have liked it
at all."
"He makes no objection of that kind. To tell the truth, Mary, I should
have thought it unreasonable had he done so. A gentleman can do no better
than marry a lady. And though it is much to be a nobleman, it is more to
be a gentleman."
"Some people think so much of it. And then his having been here as a
pupil! I was very sorry when he spoke to me."
"All that is past and gone. The danger is that such an engagement would
be long."
"Very long."
"You would be afraid of that, Mary?" Mary felt that this was hard upon
her, and unfair. Were she to say that the danger of a long engagement did
not seem to her to be very terrible, she would at once be giving up
everything. She would have declared then that she did love the young man;
or, at any rate, that she intended to do so. She would have succumbed at
the first hint that such succumbing was possible to her. And yet she had
not known that she was very much afraid of a long engagement. She would,
she thought, have been much more afraid had a speedy marriage been
proposed to her. Upon the whole, she did not know whether it would not be
nice to go on knowing that the young man loved her, and to rest secure on
her faith in him. She was sure of this,--that the reading of Lord Bracy's
letter had in some way made her happy, though she was unwilling at once to
express her happiness to her father. She was quite sure that she could
make no immediate reply to that question, whether she was afraid of a long
engagement. "I must answer Lord Bracy's letter, you know," said the
Doctor.
"Yes, papa."
"And what shall I say to him?"
"I don't know, papa."
"And yet you must tell me what to say, my darling."
"Must I, papa?"
"Certainly! Who else can tell me? But I will not answer it to-day. I
will put it off till Monday." It was Saturday morning on which the letter
was being discussed,--a day of which a considerable portion was generally
appropriated to the preparation of a sermon. "In the mean time you had
better talk to mamma; and on Monday we will settle what is to be said to
Lord Bracy."