Theodora, I wished many times that you were free; that I had never bound you to my hard lot, but kept silence and left you to forget me, to love some one else better than me—pardon, pardon!
For I was once actually on the point of writing to you, saying this, when I remembered something you had said long ago,—that whether or no we were ever married you were glad we had been betrothed—that so far we might always be a help and comfort to one another. For, you added, when I was blaming myself, and talking as men do of “honour,” and “pride”—to have left you free when you were not free, would have given you all the cares of love, with neither its rights, nor duties, nor sweetnesses; and this might—you did not say it would—but it might have broken your heart.
So in my bitter strait I trusted that pure heart, whose instinct, I felt, was truer than all my wisdom. I did not write the letter, but at the same time, as I have told you, it was impossible to write any other, even a single line.
Your last letter came. Happily, it reached me the very morning when the crisis which I had been for weeks expecting, occurred. I had it in my pocket all the time I stood in that room before those men,—but I had best relate from the beginning.
You are aware that any complaints respecting the officers of this gaol, or questions concerning its internal management, are laid before the visiting justices. Thus, after the governor's hint, on every board day, I prepared myself for a summons. At length it came; ostensibly for a very trivial matter—some relaxation of discipline which I had ordered and been counteracted in. But my conduct had never been called into question before, and I knew what it implied. The very form of it—“The governor's compliments, and he requests Doctor Urquhart's attendance in the board-room;”—instead of “Doctor, come up to my room and talk the matter over,” was sufficient indication of what was impending.
I found present, besides the governor and chaplain, an unusual number of magistrates. These, who are not always or necessarily gentlemen, stared at me as if I had been some strange beast, all the time I was giving my brief evidence about the breach of regulations complained of. It was soon settled, for I had been careful to keep within the letter of the law, and I made a motion to take leave, when one of the justices requested me to “wait a bit, they hadn't done with me yet.”
These sort of men, low-born—not that that is any disgrace, but a glory, unless accompanied with a low nature—and “dressed in a little brief authority,” one often meets with here; I was well used to deal with, them, and to their dealings with the like of me—a poor professional, whose annual income was little more than they would expend, carelessly, upon one of their splendid “feeds.” But, until lately, among my co-mates in office, I had been both friendly and popular. Now, they took their tone from the rest, and even the governor and-the chaplain preserved towards me a rigid silence. You do not know our old mess phrase of being “sent to Coventry.” If you did, you would understand how those ten minutes that, according to my orders, I sat aloof from the board, while other business was proceeding, were not the pleasantest possible.
Men amongst men grow hard, are liable to evil passions, fits of pride, hatred, and revenge, that are probably unfamiliar to you sweet women. It was well I had your letter in my pocket. Besides, there is something in coming to the crisis of a great misfortune which braces up a man's nerves to meet it. So, when the governor, turning round in his always courteous tone, said the board requested a few minutes' conversation with me, I could rise and stand steady, to meet whatever shape of hard fortune lay before me.
The governor, like most men of non-intrusive but iron will, who have both temper and feelings perfectly under control, has a very strong influence wherever he goes. It was he who opened and carried on with me, what he politely termed, a “little conversation.”
“These difficulties,” continued he, after referring to the dismissed complaint of my straining the rules of the gaol to their utmost limit, from my “sympathy with criminals,” “these unpleasantnesses, Doctor Urquhart, will, I fear, be always occurring. Have you reconsidered the hint I gave to you, some little time ago?”