The Vicar Of Bullhampton Part 31

"It is useless, I think, to treat special cases in an exceptional manner. When such is done, it is done from enthusiasm, and enthusiasm is never useful."

"What ought a man to do, then, for the a.s.sistance of such fellow-creatures as this poor girl?" asked the Vicar.

"There are penitentiaries and reformatories, and it is well, no doubt, to subscribe to them," said the Prebendary. "The subject is so full of difficulty that one should not touch it rashly. Henry, where is the last Quarterly?"

"I never take it, sir."

"I ought to have remembered," said Mr. Chamberlaine, smiling blandly.

Then he took up the Sat.u.r.day Review, and endeavoured to content himself with that.

Gilmore and Fenwick walked down to the mill together, it being understood that the Squire was not to show himself there. Fenwick's difficult task, if it were to be done at all, must be done by himself alone. He must beard the lion in his den, and make the attack without any a.s.sistant. Gilmore had upon the whole been disposed to think that no such attack should be made. "He'll only turn upon you with violence, and no good will be done," said he. "He can't eat me,"

Fenwick had replied, acknowledging, however, that he approached the undertaking with fear and trembling. Before they were far from the house Gilmore had changed the conversation and fallen back upon his own sorrows. He had not answered Mary's letter, and now declared that he did not intend to do so. What could he say to her? He could not write and profess friends.h.i.+p; he could not offer her his congratulations; he could not belie his heart by affecting indifference. She had thrown him over, and now he knew it. Of what use would it be to write to her and tell her that she had made him miserable for ever? "I shall break up the house and get away," said he.

"Don't do that rashly, Harry. There can be no spot in the world in which you can be so useful as you are here."

"All my usefulness has been dragged out of me. I don't care about the place or about the people. I am ill already, and shall become worse.

I think I will go abroad for four or five years. I've an idea I shall go to the States."

"You'll become tired of that, I should think."

"Of course I shall. Everything is tiresome to me. I don't think anything else can be so tiresome as my uncle, and yet I dread his leaving me,--when I shall be alone. I suppose if one was out among the Rocky Mountains, one wouldn't think so much about it."

"Atra Cura sits behind the horseman," said the Vicar. "I don't know that travelling will do it. One thing certainly will do it."

"And what is that?"

"Hard work. Some doctor told his patient that if he'd live on half-a-crown a day and earn it, he'd soon be well. I'm sure that the same prescription holds good for all maladies of the mind. You can't earn the half-crown a day, but you may work as hard as though you did."

"What shall I do?"

"Read, dig, shoot, look after the farm, and say your prayers. Don't allow yourself time for thinking."

"It's a fine philosophy," said Gilmore, "but I don't think any man ever made himself happy by it. I'll leave you now."

"I'd go and dig, if I were you," said the Vicar.

"Perhaps I will. Do you know, I've half an idea that I'll go to Loring."

"What good will that do?"

"I'll find out whether this man is a blackguard. I believe he is. My uncle knows something about his father, and says that a bigger scamp never lived."

"I don't see what good you can do, Harry," said the Vicar. And so they parted.

Fenwick was about half a mile from the mill when Gilmore left him, and he wished that it were a mile and a half. He knew well that an edict had gone forth at the mill that no one should speak to the old man about his daughter. With the mother the Vicar had often spoken of her lost child, and had learned from her how sad it was to her that she could never dare to mention Carry's name to her husband. He had cursed his child, and had sworn that she should never more have part in him or his. She had brought sorrow and shame upon him, and he had cut her off with a steady resolve that there should be no weak backsliding on his part. Those who knew him best declared that the miller would certainly keep his word, and hitherto no one had dared to speak of the lost one in her father's hearing. All this Mr.

Fenwick knew, and he knew also that the man was one who could be very fierce in his anger. He had told his wife that old Brattle was the only man in the world before whom he would be afraid to speak his mind openly, and in so saying he had expressed a feeling that was very general throughout all Bullhampton. Mr. Puddleham was a very meddlesome man, and he had once ventured out to the mill to say a word, not indeed about Carry, but touching some youthful iniquity of which Sam was supposed to have been guilty. He never went near the mill again, but would shudder and lift up his hands and his eyes when the miller's name was mentioned. It was not that Brattle used rough language, or became violently angry when accosted; but there was a sullen sternness about the man, and a capability of a.s.serting his own mastery and personal authority, which reduced those who attacked him to the condition of vanquished combatants, and repulsed them, so that they would retreat as beaten dogs. Mr. Fenwick, indeed, had always been well received at the mill. The women of the family loved him dearly, and took great comfort in his visits. From his first arrival in the parish he had been on intimate terms with them, though the old man had never once entered his church. Brattle himself would bear with him more kindly than he would with his own landlord, who might at any day have turned him out of his holding. But even Fenwick had been so answered more than once as to have been forced to retreat with that feeling of having his tail, like a cur, between his legs.

"He can't eat me," he said to himself, as the low willows round the mill came in sight. When a man is reduced to that consolation, as many a man often is, he may be nearly sure that he will be eaten.

When he got over the stile into the lane close to the mill-door, he found that the mill was going. Gilmore had told him that it might probably be so, as he had heard that the repairs were nearly finished. Fenwick was sure that after so long a period of enforced idleness Brattle would be in the mill, but he went at first into the house and there found Mrs. Brattle and f.a.n.n.y. Even with them he hardly felt himself to be at home, but after a while managed to ask a few questions about Sam. Sam had come back, and was now at work, but he had had some terribly hard words with his father. The old man had desired to know where his son had been. Sam had declined to tell, and had declared that if he was to be cross-questioned about his comings and goings he would leave the mill altogether. His father had told him that he had better go. Sam had not gone, but the two had been working on together since without interchanging a word. "I want to see him especially," said Mr. Fenwick.

"You mean Sam, sir?" asked the mother.

"No; his father. I will go out into the lane, and perhaps f.a.n.n.y will ask him to come to me." Mrs. Brattle immediately became dismayed by a troop of fears, and looked up into his face with soft, supplicating, tearful eyes. So much of sorrow had come to her of late! "There is nothing wrong, Mrs. Brattle," he said.

"I thought perhaps you had heard something of Sam."

"Nothing but what has made me surer than ever that he had no part in what was done at Mr. Trumbull's farm."

"Thank G.o.d for that!" said the mother, taking him by the hand. Then f.a.n.n.y went into the mill, and the Vicar followed her out of the house, on to the lane. He stood leaning against a tree till the old man came to him. He then shook the miller's hand, and made some remark about the mill. They had begun again that morning, the miller said. Sam had been off again, or they might have been at work on yesterday forenoon.

"Do not be angry with him; he has been on a good work," said the Vicar.

"Good or bad, I know nowt of it," said the miller.

"I know, and if you wish I will tell you; but there is another thing I must say first. Come a little way down the lane with me, Mr.

Brattle."

The Vicar had a.s.sumed a tone which was almost one of rebuke,--not intending it, but falling into it from want of histrionic power in his attempt to be bold and solemn at the same time. The miller at once resented it. "Why should I come down the lane?" said he. "You're axing me to come out at a very busy moment, Muster Fenwick."

"Nothing can be so important as that which I have to say. For the love of G.o.d, Mr. Brattle,--for the love you bear your wife and children, endure with me for ten minutes." Then he paused, and walked on, and Mr. Brattle was still at his elbow. "My friend, I have seen your daughter."

"Which daughter?" said the miller, arresting his step.

"Your daughter Carry, Mr. Brattle." Then the old man turned round and would have hurried back to the mill without a word; but the Vicar held him by his coat. "If I have ever been a friend to you or yours listen to me now one minute."

"Do I come to your house and tell you of your sorrows and your shame?

Let me go!"

"Mr. Brattle, if you will stretch forth your hand, you may save her.

She is your own child--your flesh and blood. Think how easy it is for a poor girl to fall,--how great is the temptation and how quick, and how it comes without knowledge of the evil that is to follow! How small is the sin, and how terrible the punishment! Your friends, Mr.

Brattle, have forgiven you worse sins than ever she has committed."

"I never shamed none of them," said he, struggling on his way back to the mill.

"It is that, then;--your own misfortune and not the girl's sin that would harden your heart against your own child? You will let her perish in the streets, not because she has fallen, but because she has hurt you in her fall! Is that to be a father? Is that to be a man? Mr. Brattle, think better of yourself, and dare to obey the instincts of your heart."

But by this time the miller had escaped, and was striding off in furious silence to the mill. The Vicar, oppressed by a sense of utter failure, feeling that his interference had been absolutely valueless, that the man's wrath and constancy were things altogether beyond his reach, stood where he had been left, hardly daring to return to the mill and say a word or two to the women there. But at last he did go back. He knew well that Brattle himself would not be seen in the house till his present mood was over. After any encounter of words he would go and work in silence for half a day, and would seldom or never refer again to what had taken place; he would never, so thought the Vicar, refer to the encounter which had just taken place; but he would remember it always, and it might be that he would never again speak in friends.h.i.+p to a man who had offended him so deeply.

After a moment's thought he determined to tell the wife, and informed her and f.a.n.n.y that he had seen Carry over at Pycroft Common. The mother's questions as to what her child was doing, how she was living, whether she were ill or well, and, alas! whether she were happy or miserable, who cannot imagine?

"She is anything but happy, I fear," said Mr. Fenwick.

"My poor Carry!"

"I should not wish that she should be happy till she be brought back to the decencies of life. What shall we do to bring her back?"

"Would she come if she were let to come?" asked f.a.n.n.y.

"I believe she would. I feel sure that she would."