When the letter had been two days sent, so that he might have had a reply had a reply come to him by return of post, he put a copy of it into his pocket and rode off to call on Mr. Puddicombe. He had thought of showing it to Mr. Puddicombe before he sent it, but his mind had revolted from such submission to the judgment of another. Mr. Puddicombe would no doubt have advised him not to send it, and then he would have been almost compelled to submit to such advice. But the letter was gone now. The Bishop had read it, and no doubt reread it two or three times. But he was anxious that some other clergyman should see it—that some other clergyman should tell him that, even if inexpedient, it had still been justified. Mr. Puddicombe had been made acquainted with the former circumstances of the affair; and now, with his mind full of his own injuries, he went again to Mr. Puddicombe.
“It is just the sort of letter that you would write, as a matter of course,” said Mr. Puddicombe.
“Then I hope that you think it is a good letter?”
“Good as being expressive, and good also as being true, I do think it.”
“But not good as being wise?”
“Had I been in your case I should have thought it unnecessary. But you are self-demonstrative, and cannot control your feelings.”
“I do not quite understand you.”
“What did it all matter? The Bishop did a foolish thing in talking of the metropolitan press. But he had only meant to put you on your guard.”
“I do not choose to be put on my guard in that way,” said the Doctor.
“No; exactly. And he should have known you better than to suppose you would bear it. Then you pressed him, and he found himself compelled to send you that stupid newspaper. Of course he had made a mistake. But don’t you think that the world goes easier when mistakes are forgiven?”
“I did forgive it, as far as foregoing the action.”
“That, I think, was a matter of course. If you had succeeded in putting the poor Bishop into a witness-box you would have had every sensible clergyman in England against you. You felt that yourself.”
“Not quite that,” said the Doctor.
“Something very near it; and therefore you withdrew. But you cannot get the sense of the injury out of your mind, and, therefore, you have persecuted the Bishop with that letter.”
“Persecuted?”
“He will think so. And so should I, had it been addressed to me. As I said before, all your arguments are true—only I think you have made so much more of the matter than was necessary! He ought not to have sent you that newspaper, nor ought he to have talked about the metropolitan press. But he did you no harm; nor had he wished to do you harm;—and perhaps it might have been as well to pass it over.”
“Could you have done so?”
“I cannot imagine myself in such a position. I could not, at any rate, have written such a letter as that, even if I would; and should have been afraid to write it if I could. I value peace and quiet too greatly to quarrel with my bishop—unless, indeed, he should attempt to impose upon my conscience. There was nothing of that kind here. I think I should have seen that he had made a mistake, and have passed it over.”
The Doctor, as he rode home, was, on the whole, better pleased with his visit than he had expected to be. He had been told that his letter was argumentative and true, and that in itself had been much.
At the end of the week he received a reply from the Bishop, and found that it was not, at any rate, written by the chaplain.
“My dear Dr. Wortle,” said the reply; “your letter has pained me exceedingly, because I find that I have caused you a degree of annoyance which I am certainly very sorry I have inflicted. When I wrote to you in my letter—which I certainly did not intend as an admonition—about the metropolitan press, I only meant to tell you, for your own information, that the newspapers were making reference to your affair with Mr. Peacocke. I doubt whether I knew anything of the nature of Everybody’s Business. I am not sure even whether I had ever actually read the words to which you object so strongly. At any rate, they had had no weight with me. If I had read them—which I probably did very cursorily—they did not rest on my mind at all when I wrote to you. My object was to caution you, not at all as to your own conduct, but as to others who were speaking evil of you.
“As to the action of which you spoke so strongly when I had the pleasure of seeing you here, I am very glad that you abandoned it, for your own sake and for mine, and the sake of all us generally to whom the peace of the Church is dear.
“As to the nature of the language in which you have found yourself compelled to write to me, I must remind you that it is unusual as coming from a clergyman to a bishop. I am, however, ready to admit that the circumstances of the case were unusual, and I can understand that
