At least he had the satisfaction of knowing that Arthur and Dig were all right after their adventure; and that, thought he, is the main thing.
Poor Railsford had plenty else to occupy his thoughts that evening. The interview with the doctor in the morning had seemed to bring him up short in his career at Grandcourt.
If his enemies had tried to corner him, they could not have done it better. It was true that he knew the culprits, and by not denouncing them was, to that extent, shielding them.
But he had come to that knowledge, as the reader knows, by an accident, of which, as an honourable man, he felt he had no right to take advantage, even to set right so grievous a wrong as the Bickers mystery.
He might explain, without mentioning names, how he had learned the facts; but that would be as good as naming the culprit, for Branscombe had been the only case of serious illness accompanied by delirium at Grandcourt during the last two terms.
He might write to Branscombe, and tell him his dilemma, and beseech him to make a confession. And yet what right had he to take advantage of the boy’s unconscious confession to put pressure on him to make it public?
Other persons less fastidious might do it, but Railsford could not.
The alternative, of course, was that he would in all probability have to leave Grandcourt. If the matter had rested only between him and the doctor, he might have made a private communication under pledge of secrecy, and so induced his principal to let the matter drop. But the matter did not rest solely between him and the doctor. Mr Bickers and Felgate, by some means which he was unable to fathom, appeared to have learned the secret, and were not likely to let it drop. Indeed, it was evident that, so far from that, they would like if possible to fix a charge of actual complicity in the outrage on himself.
Railsford laughed contemptuously at the notion, as the wild malice of a revengeful enemy. But he knew that no explanation would be likely to put them off the pursuit short of the actual naming of the culprits, which he was resolved at all risks to refuse.
Was this to be the end of his brilliant school career? After two terms of hard work and honest battle, was he to be turned away, cashiered and mined, just because he had stayed to nurse a sick boy and overheard his delirious confession?