“Since I left him I have walked all round by Bowick Lodge. I had something to think of before I could talk to you—something to decide upon, indeed, before I could return to the house.”
“What have you decided?” she asked. Her voice was altogether changed. Though she was seated in her chair and had hardly moved, her appearance and her carriage of herself were changed. She still held the cup in her hand which she had been about to fill, but her face was turned towards his, and her large brown speaking eyes were fixed upon him.
“Let me have my tea,” he said, “and then I will tell you.” While he drank his tea she remained quite quiet, not touching her own, but waiting patiently till it should suit him to speak. “Ella,” he said, “I must tell it all to Dr. Wortle.”
“Why, dearest?” As he did not answer at once, she went on with her question. “Why now more than before?”
“Nay, it is not now more than before. As we have let the before go by, we can only do it now.”
“But why at all, dear? Has the argument, which was strong when we came, lost any of its force?”
“It should have had no force. We should not have taken the man’s good things, and have subjected him to the injury which may come to him by our bad name.”
“Have we not given him good things in return?”
“Not the good things which he had a right to expect—not that respectability which is all the world to such an establishment as this.”
“Let me go,” she said, rising from her chair and almost shrieking.
“Nay, Ella, nay; if you and I cannot talk as though we were one flesh, almost with one soul between us, as though that which is done by one is done by both, whether for weal or woe—if you and I cannot feel ourselves to be in a boat together either for swimming or for sinking, then I think that no two persons on this earth ever can be bound together after that fashion. ‘Whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge. The Lord do so to me, and more also, if aught but death part thee and me.’ ” Then she rose from her chair, and flinging herself on her knees at his feet, buried her face in his lap. “Ella,” he said, “the only injury you can do me is to speak of leaving me. And it is an injury which is surely unnecessary because you cannot carry it beyond words. Now, if you will sit up and listen to me, I will tell you what passed between me and the Doctor.” Then she raised herself from the ground and took her seat at the tea-table, and listened patiently as he began his tale. “They have been talking about us here in the county.”
“Who has found it necessary to talk about one so obscure as I?”
“What does it matter who they might be? The Doctor in his kindly wrath—for he is very wroth—mentions this name and the other. What does it matter? Obscurity itself becomes mystery, and mystery of course produces curiosity. It was bound to be so. It is not they who are in fault, but we. If you are different from others, of course you will be inquired into.”
“Am I so different?”
“Yes;—different in not eating the Doctor’s dinners when they are offered to you; different in not accepting Lady De Lawle’s hospitality; different in contenting yourself simply with your duties and your husband. Of course we are different. How could we not be different? And as we are different, so of course there will be questions and wonderings, and that sifting and searching which always at last finds out the facts. The Bishop says that he knows nothing of my American life.”
“Why should he want to know anything?”
“Because I have been preaching in one of his churches. It is natural;—natural that the mothers of the boys should want to know something. The Doctor says that he hates secrets. So do I.”
“Oh, my dearest!”
“A secret is always accompanied by more or less of fear, and produces more or less of cowardice. But it can no more be avoided than a sore on the flesh or a broken bone. Who would not go about, with all his affairs such as the world might know, if it were possible? But there come gangrenes in the heart, or perhaps in the pocket. Wounds come, undeserved wounds, as those did to you, my darling; but wounds which may not be laid bare to all eyes. Who has a secret because he chooses it?”
“But the Bishop?”
“Well—yes, the Bishop. The Bishop has told the Doctor to examine me, and the Doctor has done it. I give him the credit of saying that the task has been most distasteful to him. I do him the justice of acknowledging that he has backed out of the work he had undertaken. He has asked the question, but has said in the same breath that I need not answer it unless I like.”
“And you? You have not answered it yet?”
“No; I have answered nothing as yet. But I have, I think, made up my mind that the question must be answered.”
“That everything should be told?”
“Everything—to him. My idea is to tell everything to him, and to leave it to him to decide what should be done. Should he refuse to repeat the story any further, and then bid us go away from Bowick, I should think that his conduct had been altogether straightforward and not uncharitable.”
“And you—what would you do then?”
“I should go. What else?”
“But whither?”
“Ah! on that we must decide. He would be friendly with me. Though he might think it necessary that I should leave Bowick, he would not turn against me violently.”
“He could do nothing.”
“I think he would assist me rather. He would help me,
