“That my wife is not my wife?”
“Just so.”
“Of course I am prepared for it. I knew that it would be so; did not you?”
“I expected it.”
“I was sure of it. It may be taken for granted at once that there is no longer a secret to keep. I would wish you to act just as though all the facts were known to the entire diocese.” After this there was a pause, during which neither of them spoke for a few moments. The Doctor had not intended to declare any purpose of his own on that occasion, but it seemed to him now as though he were almost driven to do so. Then Mr. Peacocke seeing the difficulty at once relieved him from it. “I am quite prepared to leave Bowick,” he said, “at once. I know that it must be so. I have thought about it, and have perceived that there is no possible alternative. I should like to consult with you as to whither I had better go. Where shall I first take her?”
“Leave her here,” said the Doctor.
“Here! Where?”
“Where she is in the schoolhouse. No one will come to fill your place for a while.”
“I should have thought,” said Mr. Peacocke very slowly, “that her presence—would have been worse almost—than my own.”
“To me,”—said the Doctor—“to me she is as pure as the most unsullied matron in the country.” Upon this Mr. Peacocke, jumping from his chair, seized the Doctor’s hand, but could not speak for his tears; then he seated himself again, turning his face away towards the wall. “To no one could the presence of either of you be an evil. The evil is, if I may say so, that the two of you should be here together. You should be apart—till some better day has come upon you.”
“What better day can ever come?” said the poor man through his tears.
Then the Doctor declared his scheme. He told what he thought as to Ferdinand Lefroy, and his reason for believing that the man was dead. “I felt sure from his manner that his brother is now dead in truth. Go to him and ask him boldly,” he said.
“But his word would not suffice for another marriage ceremony.”
To this the Doctor agreed. It was not his intention, he said, that they should proceed on evidence as slight as that. No; a step must be taken much more serious in its importance, and occupying a considerable time. He, Peacocke, must go again to Missouri and find out all the truth. The Doctor was of opinion that if this were resolved upon, and that if the whole truth were at once proclaimed, then Mr. Peacocke need not hesitate to pay Robert Lefroy for any information which might assist him in his search. “While you are gone,” continued the Doctor almost wildly, “let bishops and Stantiloups and Puddicombes say what they may, she shall remain here. To say that she will be happy is of course vain. There can be no happiness for her till this has been put right. But she will be safe; and here, at my hand, she will, I think, be free from insult. What better is there to be done?”
“There can be nothing better,” said Peacocke drawing his breath—as though a gleam of light had shone in upon him.
“I had not meant to have spoken to you of this till tomorrow. I should not have done so, but that Pritchett had been with me. But the more I thought of it, the more sure I became that you could not both remain—till something had been done; till something had been done.”
“I was sure of it, Dr. Wortle.”
“Mr. Puddicombe saw that it was so. Mr. Puddicombe is not all the world to me by any means, but he is a man of common sense. I will be frank with you. My wife said that it could not be so.”
“She shall not stay. Mrs. Wortle shall not be annoyed.”
“You don’t see it yet,” said the Doctor. “But you do. I know you do. And she shall stay. The house shall be hers, as her residence, for the next six months. As for money—”
“I have got what will do for that, I think.”
“If she wants money she shall have what she wants. There is nothing I will not do for you in your trouble—except that you may not both be here together till I shall have shaken hands with her as Mrs. Peacocke in very truth.”
It was settled that Mr. Peacocke should not go again into the school, or Mrs. Peacocke among the boys, till he should have gone to America and have come back. It was explained in the school by the Doctor early—for the Doctor must now take the morning school himself—that circumstances of very grave import made it necessary that Mr. Peacocke should start at once for America. That the tidings which had been published at the Lamb would reach the boys, was more than probable. Nay; was it not certain? It would of course reach all the boys’ parents. There was no use, no service, in any secrecy. But in speaking to the school not a word was said of Mrs. Peacocke. The Doctor explained that he himself would take the morning school, and that Mr. Rose, the mathematical master, would take charge of the school meals. Mrs. Cane, the housekeeper, would look to
