Pages from a Journal with Other Papers

by William Hale White

She stood gazing in silence at the dull red cinder of the dying fire.

“You put the advertisement in the Stamford Mercury?” he said.

“Yes.”

“I did not see it until a day or two ago.”

“I had better tell you at once. My husband, whom you knew, was convicted of forgery, and died at Botany Bay.” Her eyes still watched the red cinders.

The Doctor’s countenance showed no surprise, for no news could have had any power over the emotion which mastered him. The long, slow years were fulfilled. Long and slow and the fulfilment late, but the joy it brought was the greater. Youthful passion is sweet, but it is not sweeter than the discovery when we begin to count the years which are left to us, and to fear there will be nothing in them better than in those which preceded them that for us also love is reserved.

Mrs. Leighton was obliged to go back to her work in the afternoon, but she gave notice that night to leave in a week.

In a couple of months Langborough was astounded at the news of the Rector’s marriage with a Mrs. Leighton whom nobody in Langborough knew. The advertisement in the Stamford Mercury said that the lady was the widow of Richard Leighton, Esq., and eldest daughter of the late Marmaduke Sutton, Esq. Langborough spared no pains to discover who she was. Mrs. Bingham found out that the Suttons were a Devonshire family, and she ascertained from an Exeter friend that Mr. Marmaduke Sutton was the son of an Honourable, and that Mrs. Leighton was consequently a high-born lady. She had married as her first husband a man who had done well at Cambridge, but who took to gambling and drink, and treated her with such brutality that they separated. At last he forged a signature and was transported. What became of his wife afterwards was not known. Langborough was not only greatly moved by this intelligence, but was much perplexed. Miss Tarrant’s estimate of the Doctor was once more reversed. She was decidedly of opinion that the marriage was a scandal. A woman who had consented to link herself with such a reprobate as the convict must have been from the beginning could not herself have possessed any reputation. Living apart, too, was next door to divorce, and who could associate with a creature who had been divorced? No doubt she was physically seductive, and the doctor had fallen a victim to her snares. Miss Tarrant, if she had not known so well what men are, would never have dreamed that Dr. Midleton, a scholar and a divine, could surrender to corporeal attractions. She declared that she could no longer expect any profit from his ministrations, and that she should leave the parish. Miss Tarrant’s friends, however, did not go quite so far, and Mrs. Harrop confessed to Mrs. Cobb that “she for one wouldn’t lay it down like Medes and Persians, that we should have nothing to do with a woman because her husband had made a fool of himself. I’m not a Mede nor a Persian, Mrs. Cobb. I say let us wait and see what she is like.”

Mrs. Bingham was of the same mind. She dwelt much to herself on the fact that Mrs. Midleton’s great-grandfather must have been a lord. She secretly hoped that as a wine merchant’s wife she might obtain admission into a “sphere,” as she called it, from which the other ladies in the town might be excluded. Mrs. Bingham already foretasted the bliss of an invitation to the rectory to meet Lady Caroline from Thaxton Manor; she already foretasted the greater bliss of not meeting her intimate friends there, and that most exquisite conceivable bliss of telling them afterwards all about the party.

Mrs. Midleton and her husband returned on a Saturday afternoon. The road from Thaxton cross-roads did not lie through the town: the carriage was closed and nobody saw her. When they came to the rectory the Doctor pointed to the verse in white paint on the wall, “It shall be taken out,” he said, “before to-morrow morning: to-morrow is Sunday.” He was expected to preach on that day and the church was crammed a quarter of an hour before the service began. At five minutes to eleven a lady and child entered and walked to the rector’s pew. The congregation was stupefied with amazement. Mouths were agape, a hum of exclamations arose, and people on the further side of the church stood up.