For we see whither it has brought us ... the insisting on perfection in one part of our nature and not in all; the singling out of the moral side, the side of obedi-ence and action, for such intent regard; making strict-ness of the moral conscience so far the principal thing, and putting off for hereafter and for another world the care of being complete at all points, the full and harmonious development of our humanity.
—Matthew Arnold, Culture and Anarchy (1869)
“She is ... recovered?”
“I have put her to sleep.”
The doctor walked across the room and stood with his hands behind his back, staring down Broad Street to the sea.
“She ... she said nothing?”
The doctor shook his head without turning; was silent a moment; then he burst round on Charles.
“I await your explanation, sir!”
And Charles gave it, baldly, without self-extenuation. Of Sarah he said very little. His sole attempt at an excuse was over his deception of Grogan himself; and that he blamed on his conviction that to have committed Sarah to any asylum would have been a gross injustice. The doctor listened with a fierce, intent silence. When Charles had finished he turned again to the window.
“I wish I could remember what particular punishments Dante prescribed for the Antinomians. Then I could prescribe them for you.”
“I think I shall have punishment enough.”
“That is not possible. Not by my tally.”
Charles left a pause.
“I did not reject your advice without much heart-searching.”
“Smithson, a gentleman remains a gentleman when he rejects advice. He does not do so when he tells lies.”
“I believed them necessary.”
“As you believed the satisfaction of your lust necessary.”
“I cannot accept that word.”
“You had better learn to. It is the one the world will attach to your conduct.”
Charles moved to the central table, and stood with one hand resting on it. “Grogan, would you have had me live a lifetime of pretense? Is our age not full enough as it is of a mealy-mouthed hypocrisy, an adulation of all that is false in our natures? Would you have had me add to that?”
“I would have had you think twice before you embroiled that innocent girl in your pursuit of self-knowledge.”
“But once that knowledge is granted us, can we escape its dictates? However repugnant their consequences?”
The doctor looked away with a steely little grimace. Charles saw that he was huffed and nervous; and really at a loss, after the first commination, how to deal with this mon-strous affront to provincial convention. There was indeed a struggle in progress between the Grogan who had lived now for a quarter of a century in Lyme and the Grogan who had seen the world. There were other things: his liking for Charles, his private opinion—not very far removed from Sir Robert’s—that Ernestina was a pretty little thing, but a shallow little thing; there was even an event long buried in his own past whose exact nature need not be revealed beyond that it made his reference to lust a good deal less impersonal than he had made it seem. His tone remained reproving; but he sidestepped the moral question he had been asked.
“I am a doctor, Smithson. I know only one overriding law. All suffering is evil. It may also be necessary. That does not alter its fundamental nature.”
“I don’t see where good is to spring from, if it is not out of that evil. How can one build a better self unless on the ruins of the old?”
“And the ruins of that poor young creature across the way?”
“It is better she suffers once, to be free of me, than ...” he fell silent.
“Ah. You are sure of that, are you?” Charles said nothing. The doctor stared down at the street. “You have committed a crime. Your punishment will be to remember it all your life. So don’t give yourself absolution yet. Only death will give you that.” He took off his glasses, and polished them on a green silk handkerchief. There was a long pause, a very long pause; and at the end of it his voice, though still reproving, was milder.
“You will marry the other?”
Charles breathed a metaphorical sigh of relief. As soon as Grogan had come into the room he had known that ............