"They will come again. I do not believe that that letter would bring a boy. I am almost inclined to say, Dr. Wortle, that a man should never defend himself."
"He should never have to defend himself."
"It is much the same thing. But I'll tell you what I'll do, Dr. Wortle,—if it will suit your plans. I will go up with you and will assist at the marriage. I do not for a moment think that you will require any countenance, or that if you did, that I could give it you."
"No man that I know so efficiently."
"But it may be that Mr. Peacocke will like to find that the clergymen from his neighbourhood are standing with him." And so it was settled, that when the day should come on which the Doctor would take Mrs. Peacocke up with him to London, Mr. Puddicombe was to accompany them.
The Doctor when he left Mr. Puddicombe's parsonage had by no means pledged himself not to send the letters. When a man has written a letter, and has taken some trouble with it, and more specially when he has copied it several times himself so as to have made many letters of it,—when he has argued his point successfully to himself, and has triumphed in his own mind, as was likely to be the case with Dr. Wortle in all that he did, he does not like to make waste paper of his letters. As he rode home he tried to persuade himself that he might yet use them. He could not quite admit his friend's point. Mr. Peacocke, no doubt, had known his own condition, and him a strict moralist might condemn. But he,—he,—Dr. Wortle,—had known nothing. All that he had done was not to condemn the other man when he did know!
Nevertheless as he rode into his own yard, he made up his mind that he would burn the letters. He had shown them to no one else. He had not even mentioned them to his wife. He could burn them without condemning himself in the opinion of any one. And he burned them. When Mr. Puddicombe found him at the station at Broughton as they were about to proceed to London with Mrs. Peacocke, he simply whispered the fate of the letters. "After what you said I destroyed what I had written."
"Perhaps it was as well," said Mr. Puddicombe.
When the telegram came to say that Mr. Peacocke was at Liverpool, Mrs. Peacocke was anxious immediately to rush up to London. But she was restrained by the Doctor,—or rather by Mrs. Wortle under the Doctor's orders. "No, my dear; no. You must not go till all will be ready for you to meet him in the church. The Doctor says so."
"Am I not to see him till he comes up to the altar?"