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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Vicar of Bullhampton, by Anthony
+Trollope, Illustrated by H. Woods
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Vicar of Bullhampton
+
+
+Author: Anthony Trollope
+
+
+
+Release Date: September 5, 2008  [eBook #26541]
+Most recently updated October 5, 2017
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE VICAR OF BULLHAMPTON***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Delphine Lettau and Joseph E. Loewenstein, M.D.
+
+
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+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
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+
+
+
+
+
+THE VICAR OF BULLHAMPTON.
+
+by
+
+ANTHONY TROLLOPE.
+
+With Thirty Illustrations by H. Woods.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: Waiting-Room at the Assize Court. (frontispiece)]
+
+
+[Illustration for title page]
+
+
+
+London:
+Bradbury, Evans, and Co., 11, Bouverie Street.
+1870.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+The writing of prefaces is, for the most part, work thrown away; and
+the writing of a preface to a novel is almost always a vain thing.
+Nevertheless, I am tempted to prefix a few words to this novel on
+its completion, not expecting that many people will read them, but
+desirous, in doing so, of defending myself against a charge which may
+possibly be made against me by the critics,--as to which I shall be
+unwilling to revert after it shall have been preferred.
+
+I have introduced in the Vicar of Bullhampton the character of a girl
+whom I will call,--for want of a truer word that shall not in its
+truth be offensive,--a castaway. I have endeavoured to endow her with
+qualities that may create sympathy, and I have brought her back at
+last from degradation at least to decency. I have not married her to
+a wealthy lover, and I have endeavoured to explain that though there
+was possible to her a way out of perdition, still things could not be
+with her as they would have been had she not fallen.
+
+There arises, of course, the question whether a novelist, who
+professes to write for the amusement of the young of both sexes,
+should allow himself to bring upon his stage such a character as that
+of Carry Brattle? It is not long since,--it is well within the memory
+of the author,--that the very existence of such a condition of life,
+as was hers, was supposed to be unknown to our sisters and daughters,
+and was, in truth, unknown to many of them. Whether that ignorance
+was good may be questioned; but that it exists no longer is beyond
+question. Then arises that further question,--how far the condition
+of such unfortunates should be made a matter of concern to the sweet
+young hearts of those whose delicacy and cleanliness of thought is a
+matter of pride to so many of us. Cannot women, who are good, pity
+the sufferings of the vicious, and do something perhaps to mitigate
+and shorten them, without contamination from the vice? It will be
+admitted probably by most men who have thought upon the subject that
+no fault among us is punished so heavily as that fault, often so
+light in itself but so terrible in its consequences to the less
+faulty of the two offenders, by which a woman falls. All her own sex
+is against her,--and all those of the other sex in whose veins runs
+the blood which she is thought to have contaminated, and who, of
+nature, would befriend her were her trouble any other than it is.
+
+She is what she is, and remains in her abject, pitiless, unutterable
+misery, because this sentence of the world has placed her beyond
+the helping hand of Love and Friendship. It may be said, no doubt,
+that the severity of this judgment acts as a protection to female
+virtue,--deterring, as all known punishments do deter, from vice. But
+this punishment, which is horrible beyond the conception of those who
+have not regarded it closely, is not known beforehand. Instead of the
+punishment there is seen a false glitter of gaudy life,--a glitter
+which is damnably false,--and which, alas, has been more often
+portrayed in glowing colours, for the injury of young girls, than
+have those horrors, which ought to deter, with the dark shadowings
+which belong to them.
+
+To write in fiction of one so fallen as the noblest of her sex, as
+one to be rewarded because of her weakness, as one whose life is
+happy, bright, and glorious, is certainly to allure to vice and
+misery. But it may perhaps be possible that if the matter be handled
+with truth to life, some girl, who would have been thoughtless, may
+be made thoughtful, or some parent's heart may be softened. It may
+also at last be felt that this misery is worthy of alleviation, as is
+every misery to which humanity is subject.
+
+A. T.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+      I. BULLHAMPTON
+     II. FLO'S RED BALL
+    III. SAM BRATTLE
+     IV. THERE IS NO ONE ELSE
+      V. THE MILLER
+     VI. BRATTLE'S MILL
+    VII. THE MILLER'S WIFE
+   VIII. THE LAST DAY
+     IX. MISS MARRABLE
+      X. CRUNCH'EM CAN'T BE HAD
+     XI. DON'T YOU BE AFEARD ABOUT ME
+    XII. BONE'M AND HIS MASTER
+   XIII. CAPTAIN MARRABLE AND HIS FATHER
+    XIV. COUSINHOOD
+     XV. THE POLICE AT FAULT
+    XVI. MISS LOWTHER ASKS FOR ADVICE
+   XVII. THE MARQUIS OF TROWBRIDGE
+  XVIII. BLANK PAPER
+    XIX. SAM BRATTLE RETURNS HOME
+     XX. I HAVE A JUPITER OF MY OWN NOW
+    XXI. WHAT PARSON JOHN THINKS ABOUT IT
+   XXII. WHAT THE FENWICKS THOUGHT ABOUT IT
+  XXIII. WHAT MR. GILMORE THOUGHT ABOUT IT
+   XXIV. THE REV. HENRY FITZACKERLEY CHAMBERLAINE
+    XXV. CARRY BRATTLE
+   XXVI. THE TURNOVER CORRESPONDENCE
+  XXVII. "I NEVER SHAMED NONE OF THEM"
+ XXVIII. MRS. BRATTLE'S JOURNEY
+   XXIX. THE BULL AT LORING
+    XXX. THE AUNT AND THE UNCLE
+   XXXI. MARY LOWTHER FEELS HER WAY
+  XXXII. MR. GILMORE'S SUCCESS
+ XXXIII. FAREWELL
+  XXXIV. BULLHAMPTON NEWS
+   XXXV. MR. PUDDLEHAM'S NEW CHAPEL
+  XXXVI. SAM BRATTLE GOES OFF AGAIN
+ XXXVII. FEMALE MARTYRDOM
+XXXVIII. A LOVER'S MADNESS
+  XXXIX. THE THREE HONEST MEN
+     XL. TROTTER'S BUILDINGS
+    XLI. STARTUP FARM
+   XLII. MR. QUICKENHAM, Q.C.
+  XLIII. EASTER AT TURNOVER CASTLE
+   XLIV. THE MARRABLES OF DUNRIPPLE
+    XLV. WHAT SHALL I DO WITH MYSELF?
+   XLVI. MR. JAY OF WARMINSTER
+  XLVII. SAM BRATTLE IS WANTED
+ XLVIII. MARY LOWTHER RETURNS TO BULLHAMPTON
+   XLIX. MARY LOWTHER'S DOOM
+      L. MARY LOWTHER INSPECTS HER FUTURE HOME
+     LI. THE GRINDER AND HIS COMRADE
+    LII. CARRY BRATTLE'S JOURNEY
+   LIII. THE FATTED CALF
+    LIV. MR. GILMORE'S RUBIES
+     LV. GLEBE LAND
+    LVI. THE VICAR'S VENGEANCE
+   LVII. OIL IS TO BE THROWN UPON THE WATERS
+  LVIII. EDITH BROWNLOW'S DREAM
+    LIX. NEWS FROM DUNRIPPLE
+     LX. LORD ST. GEORGE IS VERY CUNNING
+    LXI. MARY LOWTHER'S TREACHERY
+   LXII. UP AT THE PRIVETS
+  LXIII. THE MILLER TELLS HIS TROUBLES
+   LXIV. IF I WERE YOUR SISTER!
+    LXV. MARY LOWTHER LEAVES BULLHAMPTON
+   LXVI. AT THE MILL
+  LXVII. SIR GREGORY MARRABLE HAS A HEADACHE
+ LXVIII. THE SQUIRE IS VERY OBSTINATE
+   LXIX. THE TRIAL
+    LXX. THE FATE OF THE PUDDLEHAMITES
+   LXXI. THE END OF MARY LOWTHER'S STORY
+  LXXII. AT TURNOVER CASTLE
+ LXXIII. CONCLUSION
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
+
+   WAITING-ROOM AT THE ASSIZE COURT.               (_frontispiece_)
+
+   "YOU SHOULD GIVE HIM AN ANSWER, DEAR, ONE WAY
+   OR THE OTHER."                                      (Chapter II)
+
+   "I THOUGHT I SHOULD CATCH YOU IDLE JUST AT THIS
+   MOMENT," SAID THE CLERGYMAN.                        (Chapter VI)
+
+   MR. FENWICK CAME ROUND FROM FARMER TRUMBULL'S
+   SIDE OF THE CHURCH, AND GOT OVER THE STILE
+   INTO THE CHURCHYARD.                              (Chapter VIII)
+
+   "I HOPE IT WILL BE ALL RIGHT NOW,
+   MR. FENWICK," THE GIRL SAID.                        (Chapter XI)
+
+   "HOW DARE YOU MENTION MY DAUGHTERS?"              (Chapter XVII)
+
+   "IT IS ALL BLANK PAPER WITH YOU?"                (Chapter XVIII)
+
+   "I HAVE COME TO SAY A WORD, IF I CAN,
+   TO COMFORT YOU."                                 (Chapter XXIII)
+
+   "CARRY," HE SAID, COMING BACK TO HER, "IT
+   WASN'T ALL FOR HIM THAT I CAME."                   (Chapter XXV)
+
+   PARSON JOHN AND WALTER MARRABLE.                  (Chapter XXIX)
+
+   MARY LOWTHER WRITES TO WALTER MARRABLE.         (Chapter XXXIII)
+
+   SITE OF MR. PUDDLEHAM'S NEW CHAPEL.            (Chapter XXXVIII)
+
+   "DO COME IN, HARRY."                           (Chapter XXXVIII)
+
+   "I DARE SAY NOT," SAID MR. QUICKENHAM.            (Chapter XLII)
+
+   SUNDAY MORNING AT DUNRIPPLE.                      (Chapter XLIV)
+
+   "WHO ARE YOU, SIR, THAT YOU SHOULD
+   INTERPRET MY WORDS?"                             (Chapter XLVII)
+
+   CARRY BRATTLE.                                     (Chapter LII)
+
+   "IF I MAY BIDE WITH YOU,--IF I MAY
+   BIDE WITH YOU--."                                 (Chapter LIII)
+
+   MR. QUICKENHAM'S LETTER DISCUSSED.                  (Chapter LV)
+
+   SHE HAD BROUGHT HIM OUT A CUP OF COFFEE.         (Chapter LVIII)
+
+   "IT'S IN HERE, MUSTER FENWICK,--IN HERE."        (Chapter LXIII)
+
+   "OH, FATHER," SHE SAID, "I WILL BE GOOD."         (Chapter LXVI)
+
+   THE DRAWING-ROOM AT TURNOVER CASTLE.             (Chapter LXXII)
+
+
+
+
+THE VICAR OF BULLHAMPTON.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+BULLHAMPTON.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+I am disposed to believe that no novel reader in England has seen the
+little town of Bullhampton, in Wiltshire, except such novel readers
+as live there, and those others, very few in number, who visit it
+perhaps four times a year for the purposes of trade, and who are
+known as commercial gentlemen. Bullhampton is seventeen miles from
+Salisbury, eleven from Marlborough, nine from Westbury, seven from
+Haylesbury, and five from the nearest railroad station, which is
+called Bullhampton Road, and lies on the line from Salisbury to
+Yeovil. It is not quite on Salisbury Plain, but probably was so once,
+when Salisbury Plain was wider than it is now. Whether it should be
+called a small town or a large village I cannot say. It has no mayor,
+and no market, but it has a fair. There rages a feud in Bullhampton
+touching this want of a market, as there are certain Bullhamptonites
+who aver that the charter giving all rights of a market to
+Bullhampton does exist; and that at one period in its history the
+market existed also,--for a year or two; but the three bakers and
+two butchers are opposed to change; and the patriots of the place,
+though they declaim on the matter over their evening pipes and
+gin-and-water, have not enough of matutinal zeal to carry out their
+purpose. Bullhampton is situated on a little river, which meanders
+through the chalky ground, and has a quiet, slow, dreamy prettiness
+of its own. A mile above the town,--for we will call it a town,--the
+stream divides itself into many streamlets, and there is a district
+called the Water Meads, in which bridges are more frequent than
+trustworthy, in which there are hundreds of little sluice-gates for
+regulating the irrigation, and a growth of grass which is a source
+of much anxiety and considerable trouble to the farmers. There is a
+water-mill here, too, very low, with ever a floury, mealy look, with
+a pasty look often, as the flour becomes damp with the spray of the
+water as it is thrown by the mill-wheel. It seems to be a tattered,
+shattered, ramshackle concern, but it has been in the same family
+for many years; and as the family has not hitherto been in distress,
+it may be supposed that the mill still affords a fair means of
+livelihood. The Brattles,--for Jacob Brattle is the miller's
+name,--have ever been known as men who paid their way, and were able
+to hold up their heads. But nevertheless Jacob Brattle is ever at
+war with his landlord in regard to repairs wanted for his mill,
+and Mr. Gilmore, the landlord in question, declares that he wishes
+that the Avon would some night run so high as to carry off the mill
+altogether. Bullhampton is very quiet. There is no special trade
+in the place. Its interests are altogether agricultural. It has
+no newspaper. Its tendencies are altogether conservative. It is
+a good deal given to religion; and the Primitive Methodists have
+a very strong holding there, although in all Wiltshire there is
+not a clergyman more popular in his own parish than the Rev. Frank
+Fenwick. He himself, in his inner heart, rather likes his rival,
+Mr. Puddleham, the dissenting minister; because Mr. Puddleham is an
+earnest man, who, in spite of the intensity of his ignorance, is
+efficacious among the poor. But Mr. Fenwick is bound to keep up the
+fight; and Mr. Puddleham considers it to be his duty to put down Mr.
+Fenwick and the Church Establishment altogether.
+
+The men of Bullhampton, and the women also, are aware that the glory
+has departed from them, in that Bullhampton was once a borough, and
+returned two members to Parliament. No borough more close, or shall
+we say more rotten, ever existed. It was not that the Marquis of
+Trowbridge had, what has often delicately been called, an interest in
+it; but he held it absolutely in his breeches pocket, to do with it
+as he liked; and it had been the liking of the late Marquis to sell
+one of the seats at every election to the highest bidder on his side
+in politics. Nevertheless, the people of Bullhampton had gloried
+in being a borough, and the shame, or at least the regret of their
+downfall, had not yet altogether passed away when the tidings of
+a new Reform Bill came upon them. The people of Bullhampton are
+notoriously slow to learn, and slow to forget. It was told of a
+farmer of Bullhampton, in old days, that he asked what had become of
+Charles I., when told that Charles II. had been restored. Cromwell
+had come and gone, and had not disturbed him at Bullhampton.
+
+At Bullhampton there is no public building, except the church, which
+indeed is a very handsome edifice with a magnificent tower, a thing
+to go to see, and almost as worthy of a visit as its neighbour the
+cathedral at Salisbury. The body of the church is somewhat low, but
+its yellow-gray colour is perfect, and there is, moreover, a Norman
+door, and there are Early English windows in the aisle, and a
+perfection of perpendicular architecture in the chancel, all of which
+should bring many visitors to Bullhampton; and there are brasses in
+the nave, very curious, and one or two tombs of the Gilmore family,
+very rare in their construction, and the churchyard is large and
+green, and bowery, with the Avon flowing close under it, and nooks in
+it which would make a man wish to die that he might be buried there.
+The church and churchyard of Bullhampton are indeed perfect, and yet
+but few people go to see it. It has not as yet had its own bard to
+sing its praises. Properly it is called Bullhampton Monachorum, the
+living having belonged to the friars of Chiltern. The great tithes
+now go to the Earl of Todmorden, who has no other interest in the
+place whatever, and who never saw it. The benefice belongs to St.
+John's, Oxford, and as the vicarage is not worth more than £400 a
+year, it happens that a clergyman generally accepts it before he has
+lived for twenty or thirty years in the common room of his college.
+Mr. Fenwick took it on his marriage, when he was about twenty-seven,
+and Bullhampton has been lucky.
+
+The bulk of the parish belongs to the Marquis of Trowbridge, who,
+however, has no residence within ten miles of it. The squire of the
+parish is Squire Gilmore,--Harry Gilmore,--and he possesses every
+acre in it that is not owned by the Marquis. With the village, or
+town as it may be, Mr. Gilmore has no concern; but he owns a large
+tract of the water meads, and again has a farm or two up on the
+downs as you go towards Chiltern. But they lie out of the parish of
+Bullhampton. Altogether he is a man of about fifteen hundred a year,
+and as he is not as yet married, many a Wiltshire mother's eye is
+turned towards Hampton Privets, as Mr. Gilmore's house is, somewhat
+fantastically, named.
+
+Mr. Gilmore's character must be made to develope itself in these
+pages,--if such developing may be accomplished. He is to be our
+hero,--or at least one of two. The author will not, in these early
+words, declare that the squire will be his favourite hero, as he
+will wish that his readers should form their own opinions on that
+matter. At this period he was a man somewhat over thirty,--perhaps
+thirty-three years of age, who had done fairly well at Harrow and at
+Oxford, but had never done enough to make his friends regard him as a
+swan. He still read a good deal; but he shot and fished more than he
+read, and had become, since his residence at the Privets, very fond
+of the outside of his books. Nevertheless, he went on buying books,
+and was rather proud of his library. He had travelled a good deal,
+and was a politician,--somewhat scandalising his own tenants and
+other Bullhamptonites by voting for the liberal candidates for his
+division of the county. The Marquis of Trowbridge did not know him,
+but regarded him as an objectionable person, who did not understand
+the nature of the duties which devolved upon him as a country
+gentleman; and the Marquis himself was always spoken of by Mr.
+Gilmore as--an idiot. On these various grounds the squire has
+hitherto regarded himself as being a little in advance of other
+squires, and has, perhaps, given himself more credit than he has
+deserved for intellectuality. But he is a man with a good heart, and
+a pure mind, generous, desirous of being just, somewhat sparing of
+that which is his own, never desirous of that which is another's. He
+is good-looking, though, perhaps, somewhat ordinary in appearance;
+tall, strong, with dark-brown hair, and dark-brown whiskers, with
+small, quick grey eyes, and teeth which are almost too white and too
+perfect for a man. Perhaps it is his greatest fault that he thinks
+that as a liberal politician and as an English country gentleman he
+has combined in his own position all that is most desirable upon
+earth. To have the acres without the acre-laden brains, is, he
+thinks, everything.
+
+And now it may be as well told at once that Mr. Gilmore is over head
+and ears in love with a young lady to whom he has offered his hand
+and all that can be made to appertain to the future mistress of
+Hampton Privets. And the lady is one who has nothing to give in
+return but her hand, and her heart, and herself. The neighbours all
+round the country have been saying for the last five years that Harry
+Gilmore was looking out for an heiress; for it has always been told
+of Harry, especially among those who have opposed him in politics,
+that he had a keen eye for the main chance. But Mary Lowther has not,
+and never can have, a penny with which to make up for any deficiency
+in her own personal attributes. But Mary is a lady, and Harry Gilmore
+thinks her the sweetest woman on whom his eye ever rested. Whatever
+resolutions as to fortune-hunting he may have made,--though probably
+none were ever made,--they have all now gone to the winds. He is so
+absolutely in love that nothing in the world is, to him, at present
+worth thinking about except Mary Lowther. I do not doubt that he
+would vote for a conservative candidate if Mary Lowther so ordered
+him; or consent to go and live in New York if Mary Lowther would
+accept him on no other condition. All Bullhampton parish is nothing
+to him at the present moment, except as far as it is connected with
+Mary Lowther. Hampton Privets is dear to him only as far as it can be
+made to look attractive in the eyes of Mary Lowther. The mill is to
+be repaired, though he knows he will never get any interest on the
+outlay, because Mary Lowther has said that Bullhampton water-meads
+would be destroyed if the mill were to tumble down. He has drawn for
+himself mental pictures of Mary Lowther till he has invested her with
+every charm and grace and virtue that can adorn a woman. In very
+truth he believes her to be perfect. He is actually and absolutely in
+love. Mary Lowther has hitherto neither accepted nor rejected him.
+In a very few lines further on we will tell how the matter stands
+between them.
+
+It has already been told that the Rev. Frank Fenwick is Vicar of
+Bullhampton. Perhaps he was somewhat guided in his taking of the
+living by the fact that Harry Gilmore, the squire of the parish,
+had been his very intimate friend at Oxford. Fenwick, at the period
+with which we are about to begin our story, had been six years at
+Bullhampton, and had been married about five and a half. Of him
+something has already been said, and perhaps it may be only necessary
+further to state that he is a tall, fair-haired man, already becoming
+somewhat bald on the top of his head, with bright eyes, and the
+slightest possible amount of whiskers, and a look about his nose and
+mouth which seems to imply that he could be severe if he were not so
+thoroughly good-humoured. He has more of breeding in his appearance
+than his friend,--a show of higher blood; though whence comes such
+show, and how one discerns that appearance, few of us can tell. He
+was a man who read more and thought more than Harry Gilmore, though
+given much to athletics and very fond of field sports. It shall
+only further be said of Frank Fenwick that he esteemed both his
+churchwardens and his bishop, and was afraid of neither.
+
+His wife had been a Miss Balfour, from Loring, in Gloucestershire,
+and had had some considerable fortune. She was now the mother of
+four children, and, as Fenwick used to say, might have fourteen for
+anything he knew. But as he also had possessed some small means
+of his own, there was no poverty, or prospect of poverty at the
+vicarage, and the babies were made welcome as they came. Mrs. Fenwick
+is as good a specimen of an English country parson's wife as you
+shall meet in a county,--gay, good-looking, fond of the society
+around her, with a little dash of fun, knowing in blankets and
+corduroys and coals and tea; knowing also as to beer and gin and
+tobacco; acquainted with every man and woman in the parish; thinking
+her husband to be quite as good as the squire in regard to position,
+and to be infinitely superior to the squire, or any other man in
+the world, in regard to his personal self;--a handsome, pleasant,
+well-dressed lady, who has no nonsense about her. Such a one was, and
+is, Mrs. Fenwick.
+
+Now the Balfours were considerable people at Loring, though their
+property was not county property; and it was always considered that
+Janet Balfour might have done better than she did, in a worldly point
+of view. Of that, however, little had been said at Loring, because it
+soon became known there that she and her husband stood rather well in
+the country round about Bullhampton; and when she asked Mary Lowther
+to come and stay with her for six months, Mary Lowther's aunt, Miss
+Marrable, had nothing to say against the arrangement, although she
+herself was a most particular old lady, and always remembered that
+Mary Lowther was third or fourth cousin to some earl in Scotland.
+Nothing more shall be said of Miss Marrable at present, as it is
+expedient, for the sake of the story, that the reader should fix his
+attention on Bullhampton till he find himself quite at home there.
+I would wish him to know his way among the water meads, to be quite
+alive to the fact that the lodge of Hampton Privets is a mile and a
+quarter to the north of Bullhampton church, and half a mile across
+the fields west from Brattle's mill; that Mr. Fenwick's parsonage
+adjoins the churchyard, being thus a little farther from Hampton
+Privets than the church; and that there commences Bullhampton street,
+with its inn,--the Trowbridge Arms, its four public-houses, its three
+bakers, and its two butchers. The bounds of the parsonage run down
+to the river, so that the Vicar can catch his trout from his own
+bank,--though he much prefers to catch them at distances which admit
+of the appurtenances of sport.
+
+Now there must be one word of Mary Lowther, and then the story shall
+be commenced. She had come to the vicarage in May, intending to stay
+a month, and it was now August, and she had been already three months
+with her friend. Everybody said that she was staying because she
+intended to become the mistress of Hampton Privets. It was a month
+since Harry Gilmore had formally made his offer, and as she had not
+refused him, and as she still stayed on, the folk of Bullhampton were
+justified in their conclusions. She was a tall girl, with dark brown
+hair, which she wore fastened in a knot at the back of her head,
+after the simplest fashion. Her eyes were large and grey, and full
+of lustre; but they were not eyes which would make you say that Mary
+Lowther was especially a bright-eyed girl. They were eyes, however,
+which could make you think, when they looked at you, that if Mary
+Lowther would only like you, how happy your lot would be,--that if
+she would love you, the world would have nothing higher or better to
+offer. If you judged her face by any rules of beauty, you would say
+that it was too thin; but feeling its influence with sympathy, you
+could never wish it to be changed. Her nose and mouth were perfect.
+How many little noses there are on young women's faces which of
+themselves cannot be said to be things of beauty, or joys for ever,
+although they do very well in their places! There is the softness
+and colour of youth, and perhaps a dash of fun, and the eyes above
+are bright, and the lips below alluring. In the midst of such sweet
+charms, what does it matter that the nose be puggish,--or even a
+nose of putty, such as you think you might improve in the original
+material by a squeeze of your thumb and forefinger? But with Mary
+Lowther her nose itself was a feature of exquisite beauty, a feature
+that could be eloquent with pity, reverence, or scorn. The curves of
+the nostrils, with their almost transparent membranes, told of the
+working of the mind within, as every portion of human face should
+tell--in some degree. And the mouth was equally expressive, though
+the lips were thin. It was a mouth to watch, and listen to, and read
+with curious interest, rather than a mouth to kiss. Not but that
+the desire to kiss would come, when there might be a hope to kiss
+with favour;--but they were lips which no man would think to ravage
+in boisterous play. It might have been said that there was a want
+of capability for passion in her face, had it not been for the
+well-marked dimple in her little chin,--that soft couch in which one
+may be always sure, when one sees it, that some little imp of Love
+lies hidden.
+
+It has already been said that Mary Lowther was tall,--taller than
+common. Her back was as lovely a form of womanhood as man's eye ever
+measured and appreciated. Her movements, which were never naturally
+quick, had a grace about them which touched men and women alike. It
+was the very poetry of motion; but its chief beauty consisted in
+this, that it was what it was by no effort of her own. We have all
+seen those efforts, and it may be that many of us have liked them
+when they have been made on our own behalf. But no man as yet could
+ever have felt himself to be so far flattered by Miss Lowther. Her
+dress was very plain; as it became her that it should be, for she was
+living on the kindness of an aunt who was herself not a rich woman.
+But it may be doubted whether dress could have added much to her
+charms.
+
+She was now turned one-and-twenty, and though, doubtless, there were
+young men at Loring who had sighed for her smiles, no young man had
+sighed with any efficacy. It must be acknowledged, indeed, that she
+was not a girl for whom the most susceptible of young men would sigh.
+Young men given to sigh are generally attracted by some outward and
+visible sign of softness which may be taken as an indication that
+sighing will produce some result, however small. At Loring it was
+said that Mary Lowther was cold and repellent, and, on that account,
+one who might very probably descend to the shades as an old maid in
+spite of the beauty of which she was the acknowledged possessor. No
+enemy, no friend, had ever accused her of being a flirt.
+
+Such as she was, Harry Gilmore's passion for her much astonished his
+friends. Those who knew him best had thought that, as regarded his
+fate matrimonial,--or non-matrimonial,--there were three chances
+before him: he might carry out their presumed intention of marrying
+money; or he might become the sudden spoil of the bow and spear of
+some red-cheeked lass; or he might walk on as an old bachelor, too
+cautious to be caught at all. But none believed that he would become
+the victim of a grand passion for a poor, reticent, high-bred,
+high-minded specimen of womanhood. Such, however, was now his
+condition.
+
+He had an uncle, a clergyman, living at Salisbury, a prebendary
+there, who was a man of the world, and in whom Harry trusted more
+than in any other member of his own family. His mother had been
+the sister of the Rev. Henry Fitzackerly Chamberlaine; and as Mr.
+Chamberlaine had never married, much of his solicitude was bestowed
+upon his nephew.
+
+"Don't, my dear fellow," had been the prebendary's advice when he was
+taken over to see Miss Lowther. "She is a lady, no doubt; but you
+would never be your own master, and you would be a poor man till you
+died. An easy temper and a little money are almost as common in our
+rank of life as destitution and obstinacy." On the day after this
+advice was given, Harry Gilmore made his formal offer.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+FLO'S RED BALL.
+
+
+"You should give him an answer, dear, one way or the other." These
+wise words were spoken by Mrs. Fenwick to her friend as they sat
+together, with their work in their hands, on a garden seat under a
+cedar tree. It was an August evening after dinner, and the Vicar was
+out about his parish. The two elder children were playing in the
+garden, and the two young women were alone together.
+
+
+[Illustration: "You should give him an answer, dear, one way
+or the other."]
+
+
+"Of course I shall give him an answer. What answer does he wish?"
+
+"You know what answer he wishes. If any man was ever in earnest he
+is."
+
+"Am I not doing the best I can for him then in waiting--to see
+whether I can say yes?"
+
+"It cannot be well for him to be in suspense on such a matter; and,
+dear Mary, it cannot be well for you either. One always feels that
+when a girl bids a man to wait, she will take him after a while. It
+always comes to that. If you had been at home at Loring, the time
+would not have been much; but, being so near to him, and seeing him
+every day, must be bad. You must both be in a state of fever."
+
+"Then I will go back to Loring."
+
+"No; not now, till you have positively made up your mind, and given
+him an answer one way or the other. You could not go now and leave
+him in doubt. Take him at once, and have done with it. He is as good
+as gold."
+
+In answer to this, Mary for a while said nothing, but went sedulously
+on with her work.
+
+"Mamma," said a little girl, running up, followed by a nursery-maid,
+"the ball's in the water!"
+
+The child was a beautiful fair-haired little darling about
+four-and-a-half years old, and a boy, a year younger, and a little
+shorter, and a little stouter, was toddling after her.
+
+"The ball in the water, Flo! Can't Jim get it out?"
+
+"Jim's gone, mamma."
+
+Then Jane, the nursery-maid, proceeded to explain that the ball had
+rolled in and had been carried down the stream to some bushes, and
+that it was caught there just out of reach of all that she, Jane,
+could do with a long stick for its recovery. Jim, the gardener, was
+not to be found; and they were in despair lest the ball should become
+wet through and should perish.
+
+Mary at once saw her opportunity of escape,--her opportunity for that
+five minutes of thought by herself which she needed. "I'll come, Flo,
+and see what can be done," said Mary.
+
+"Do; 'cause you is so big," said the little girl.
+
+"We'll see if my long arms won't do as well as Jim's," said Mary;
+"only Jim would go in, perhaps, which I certainly shall not do." Then
+she took Flo by the hand, and together they ran down to the margin of
+the river.
+
+There lay the treasure, a huge red inflated ball, just stopped in its
+downward current by a short projecting stick. Jim could have got it
+certainly, because he could have suspended himself over the stream
+from a bough, and could have dislodged the ball, and have floated it
+on to the bank.
+
+"Lean over, Mary,--a great deal, and we'll hold you," said Flo, to
+whom her ball was at this moment worth any effort. Mary did lean
+over, and poked at it, and at last thought that she would trust
+herself to the bough, as Jim would have done, and became more
+and more venturous, and at last touched the ball, and then, at
+last,--fell into the river! Immediately there was a scream and a
+roar, and a splashing about of skirts and petticoats, and by the
+time that Mrs. Fenwick was on the bank, Mary Lowther had extricated
+herself, and had triumphantly brought out Flo's treasure with her.
+
+"Mary, are you hurt?" said her friend.
+
+"What should hurt me? Oh dear, oh dear! I never fell into a river
+before. My darling Flo, don't be unhappy. It's such good fun. Only
+you mustn't fall in yourself, till you're as big as I am." Flo was in
+an agony of tears, not deigning to look at the rescued ball.
+
+"You do not mean that your head has been under?" said Mrs. Fenwick.
+
+"My face was, and I felt so odd. For about half a moment I had a
+sound of Ophelia in my ears. Then I was laughing at myself for being
+such a goose."
+
+"You'd better come up and go to bed, dear; and I'll get you something
+warm."
+
+"I won't go to bed, and I won't have anything warm; but I will change
+my clothes. What an adventure! What will Mr. Fenwick say?"
+
+"What will Mr. Gilmore say?" To this Mary Lowther made no answer, but
+went straight up to the house, and into her room, and changed her
+clothes.
+
+While she was there Fenwick and Gilmore both appeared at the open
+window of the drawing-room in which Mrs. Fenwick was sitting. She had
+known well enough that Harry Gilmore would not let the evening pass
+without coming to the vicarage, and at one time had hoped to persuade
+Mary Lowther to give her verdict on this very day. Both she and her
+husband were painfully anxious that Harry might succeed. Fenwick had
+loved the man dearly for many years, and Janet Fenwick had loved him
+since she had known him as her husband's friend. They both felt that
+he was showing more of manhood than they had expected from him in the
+persistency of his love, and that he deserved his reward. And they
+both believed also that for Mary herself it would be a prosperous and
+a happy marriage. And then, where is the married woman who does not
+wish that the maiden friend who comes to stay with her should find a
+husband in her house? The parson and his wife were altogether of one
+mind in this matter, and thought that Mary Lowther ought to be made
+to give herself to Harry Gilmore.
+
+"What do you think has happened?" said Mrs. Fenwick, coming to the
+window, which opened down to the ground. "Mary Lowther has fallen
+into the river."
+
+"Fallen where?" shouted Gilmore, putting up both his hands, and
+seeming to prepare himself to rush away among the river gods in
+search of his love.
+
+"Don't be alarmed, Mr. Gilmore, she's upstairs, quite safe,--only she
+has had a ducking." Then the circumstances were explained, and the
+papa declared magisterially that Flo must not play any more with her
+ball near the river,--an order to which it was not probable that much
+close attention would ever be paid.
+
+"I suppose Miss Lowther will have gone to bed?" said Gilmore.
+
+"On the contrary, I expect her every moment. I suggested bed, and
+warm drinks, and cossetting; but she would have none of it. She
+scrambled out all by herself, and seemed to think it very good fun."
+
+"Come in at any rate and have some tea," said the Vicar. "If you
+start before eleven, I'll walk half the way back with you."
+
+In the mean time, in spite of her accident, Mary had gained the
+opportunity that she had required. The point for self-meditation was
+not so much whether she would or would not accept Mr. Gilmore now,
+as that other point;--was she or was she not wrong to keep him in
+suspense. She knew very well that she would not accept him now. It
+seemed to her that a girl should know a man very thoroughly before
+she would be justified in trusting herself altogether to his hands,
+and she thought that her knowledge of Mr. Gilmore was insufficient.
+It might however be the case that in such circumstances duty required
+her to give him at once an unhesitating answer. She did not find
+herself to be a bit nearer to knowing him and to loving him than she
+was a month since. Her friend Janet had complained again and again of
+the suspense to which she was subjecting the man;--but she knew on
+the other hand that her friend Janet did this in her intense anxiety
+to promote the match. Was it wrong to say to the man--"I will wait
+and try?" Her friend told her that to say that she would wait and
+try, was in truth to say that she would take him at some future
+time;--that any girl who said so had almost committed herself to
+such a decision;--that the very fact that she was waiting and trying
+to love a man ought to bind her to the man at last. Such certainly
+had not been her own idea. As far as she could at present look into
+her own future feelings, she did not think that she could ever
+bring herself to say that she would be this man's wife. There was a
+solemnity about the position which had never come fully home to her
+before she had been thus placed. Everybody around her told her that
+the man's happiness was really bound up in her reply. If this were
+so,--and she in truth believed that it was so,--was she not bound
+to give him every chance in her power? And yet because she still
+doubted, she was told by her friend that she was behaving badly! She
+would believe her friend, would confess her fault, and would tell her
+lover in what most respectful words of denial she could mould, that
+she would not be his wife. For herself personally, there would be no
+sorrow in this, and no regret.
+
+Her ducking had given her time for all this thought; and then, having
+so decided, she went downstairs. She was met, of course, with various
+inquiries about her bath. Mr. Gilmore was all pity, as though the
+accident were the most serious thing in the world. Mr. Fenwick
+was all mirth, as though there had never been a better joke. Mrs.
+Fenwick, who was perhaps unwise in her impatience, was specially
+anxious that her two guests might be left together. She did not
+believe that Mary Lowther would ever say the final No; and yet she
+thought also that, if it were so, the time had quite come in which
+Mary Lowther ought to say the final Yes.
+
+"Let us go down and look at the spot," she said, after tea.
+
+So they went down. It was a beautiful August night. There was no
+moon, and the twilight was over; but still it was not absolutely
+dark; and the air was as soft as a mother's kiss to her sleeping
+child. They walked down together, four abreast, across the lawn, and
+thence they reached a certain green orchard path that led down to the
+river. Mrs. Fenwick purposely went on with the lover, leaving Mary
+with her husband, in order that there might be no appearance of a
+scheme. She would return with her husband, and then there might be a
+ramble among the paths, and the question would be pressed, and the
+thing might be settled.
+
+They saw through the gloom the spot where Mary had scrambled, and
+the water which had then been bright and smiling, was now black and
+awful.
+
+"To think that you should have been in there!" said Harry Gilmore,
+shuddering.
+
+"To think that she should ever have got out again!" said the parson.
+
+"It looks frightful in the dark," said Mrs. Fenwick. "Come away,
+Frank. It makes me sick." And the charming schemer took her husband's
+arm, and continued the round of the garden. "I have been talking to
+her, and I think she would take him if he would ask her now."
+
+The other pair of course followed them. Mary's mind was so fully made
+up, at this moment, that she almost wished that her companion might
+ask the question. She had been told that she was misusing him; and
+she would misuse him no longer. She had a firm No, as it were, within
+her grasp, and a resolution that she would not be driven from it. But
+he walked on beside her talking of the water, and of the danger, and
+of the chance of a cold, and got no nearer to the subject than to
+bid her think what suffering she would have caused had she failed
+to extricate herself from the pool. He also had made up his mind.
+Something had been said by himself of a certain day when last he had
+pleaded his cause; and that day would not come round till the morrow.
+He considered himself pledged to restrain himself till then; but on
+the morrow he would come to her.
+
+There was a little gate which led from the parsonage garden through
+the churchyard to a field path, by which was the nearest way to
+Hampton Privets.
+
+"I'll leave you here," he said, "because I don't want to make Fenwick
+come out again to-night. You won't mind going up through the garden
+alone?"
+
+"Oh dear, no."
+
+"And, Miss Lowther,--pray, pray take care of yourself. I hardly think
+you ought to have been out again to-night."
+
+"It was nothing, Mr. Gilmore. You make infinitely too much of it."
+
+"How can I make too much of anything that regards you? You will be at
+home to-morrow?"
+
+"Yes, I fancy so."
+
+"Do remain at home. I intend to come down after lunch. Do remain at
+home." He held her by the hand as he spoke to her, and she promised
+him that she would obey him. He clearly was entitled to her obedience
+on such a point. Then she slowly made her way round the garden, and
+entered the house at the front door, some quarter of an hour after
+the others.
+
+Why should she refuse him? What was it that she wanted in the world?
+She liked him, his manners, his character, his ways, his mode of
+life, and after a fashion she liked his person. If there was more of
+love in the world than this, she did not think that it would ever
+come in her way. Up to this time of her life she had never felt any
+such feeling. If not for her own sake, why should she not do it for
+him? Why should he not be made happy? She had risked a plunge in the
+water to get Flo her ball, and she liked him better than she liked
+Flo. It seemed that her mind had been altogether changed by that
+stroll through the dark alleys.
+
+"Well," said Janet, "how is it to be?"
+
+"He is to come to-morrow, and I do not know how it will be," she
+said, turning away to her own room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+SAM BRATTLE.
+
+
+It was about eleven o'clock when Gilmore passed through the wicket
+leading from the vicarage garden to the churchyard. The path he was
+about to take crossed simply a corner of the church precincts, as it
+came at once upon a public footway leading from the fields through
+the churchyard to the town. There was, of course, no stopping the
+public path, but Fenwick had been often advised to keep a lock on his
+own gate, as otherwise it almost seemed that the vicarage gardens
+were open to all Bullhampton. But the lock had never been put on. The
+gate was the way by which he and his family went to the church, and
+the parson was accustomed to say that however many keys there might
+be provided, he knew that there would never be one in his pocket
+when he wanted it. And he was wont to add, when his wife would tease
+him on the subject, that they who desired to come in decently were
+welcome, and that they who were minded to make an entrance indecently
+would not be debarred by such rails and fences as hemmed in the
+vicarage grounds. Gilmore, as he passed through the corner of the
+churchyard, clearly saw a man standing near to the stile leading from
+the fields. Indeed, this man was quite close to him, although, from
+the want of light and the posture of the man, the face was invisible
+to him. But he knew the fellow to be a stranger to Bullhampton. The
+dress was strange, the manner was strange, and the mode of standing
+was strange. Gilmore had lived at Bullhampton all his life, and,
+without much thought on the subject, knew Bullhampton ways. The
+jacket which the man wore was a town-made jacket, a jacket that had
+come farther a-field even than Salisbury; and the man's gaiters had a
+savour which was decidedly not of Wiltshire. Dark as it was, he could
+see so much as this. "Good night, my friend," said Gilmore, in a
+sharp cheery voice. The man muttered something, and passed on as
+though to the village. There had, however, been something in his
+position which made Gilmore think that the stranger had intended
+to trespass on his friend's garden. He crossed the stile into the
+fields, however, without waiting,--without having waited for half a
+moment, and immediately saw the figure of a second man standing down,
+hidden as it were in the ditch; and though he could discover no more
+than the cap and shoulders of the man through the gloom, he was sure
+he knew who it was that owned the cap and shoulders. He did not speak
+again, but passed on quickly, thinking what he might best do. The
+man whom he had seen and recognised had latterly been talked of as a
+discredit to his family, and anything but an honour to the usually
+respectable inhabitants of Bullhampton.
+
+On the further side of the church from the town was a farmyard, in
+the occupation of one of Lord Trowbridge's tenants,--a man who had
+ever been very keen at preventing the inroads of trespassers, to
+which he had, perhaps, been driven by the fact that his land was
+traversed by various public pathways. Now a public pathway through
+pasture is a nuisance, as it is impossible to induce those who use
+it to keep themselves to one beaten track; but a pathway through
+cornfields is worse, for, let what pains may be taken, wheat,
+beans, and barley will be torn down and trampled under foot. And
+yet in apportioning his rents, no landlord takes all this into
+consideration. Farmer Trumbull considered it a good deal, and was
+often a wrathful man. There was at any rate no right of way across
+his farmyard, and here he might keep as big a dog as he chose,
+chained or unchained. Harry Gilmore knew the dog well, and stood for
+a moment leaning on the gate.
+
+"Who be there?" said the voice of the farmer.
+
+"Is that you, Mr. Trumbull? It is I,--Mr. Gilmore. I want to get
+round to the front of the parson's house."
+
+"Zurely, zurely," said the farmer, coming forward and opening the
+gate. "Be there anything wrong about, Squire?"
+
+"I don't know. I think there is. Speak softly. I fancy there are men
+lying in the churchyard."
+
+"I be a-thinking so, too, Squire. Bone'm was a growling just now like
+the old 'un." Bone'm was the name of the bull-dog as to which Gilmore
+had been solicitous as he looked over the gate. "What is't t'ey're up
+to? Not bugglary?"
+
+"Our friend's apricots, perhaps. But I'll just move round to the
+front. Do you and Bone'm keep a look-out here."
+
+"Never fear, Squire; never fear. Me and Bone'm together is a'most too
+much for 'em, bugglars and all." Then he led Mr. Gilmore through the
+farmyard, and out on to the road, Bone'm growling a low growl as he
+passed away.
+
+The Squire hurried along the high road, past the church, and in at
+the Vicarage front gate. Knowing the place well, he could have made
+his way round into the garden; but he thought it better to go to
+the front door. There was no light to be seen from the windows; but
+almost all the rooms of the house looked out into the garden at the
+back. He knocked sharply, and in a minute or two the door was opened
+by the parson in person.
+
+"Frank," said the Squire.
+
+"Halloo! is that you? What's up now?"
+
+"Men who ought to be in bed. I came across two men hanging about your
+gate in the churchyard, and I'm not sure there wasn't a third."
+
+"They're up to nothing. They often sit and smoke there."
+
+"These fellows were up to something. The man I saw plainest was a
+stranger, and just the sort of man who won't do your parishioners any
+good to be among them. The other was Sam Brattle."
+
+"Whew--w--w," said the parson.
+
+"He has gone utterly to the dogs," said the Squire.
+
+"He's on the road, Harry; but nobody has gone while he's still going.
+I had some words with him in his father's presence last week, and
+he followed me afterwards, and told me he'd see it out with me. I
+wouldn't tell you, because I didn't want to set you more against
+them."
+
+"I wish they were out of the place,--the whole lot of them."
+
+"I don't know that they'd do better elsewhere than here. I suppose
+Mr. Sam is going to keep his word with me."
+
+"Only for the look of that other fellow, I shouldn't think they meant
+anything serious," said Gilmore.
+
+"I don't suppose they do, but I'll be on the look-out."
+
+"Shall I stay with you, Frank?"
+
+"Oh, no; I've a life-preserver, and I'll take a round of the gardens.
+You come with me, and you can pass home that way. The chances
+are they'll mizzle away to bed, as they've seen you, and heard
+Bone'm,--and probably heard too every word you said to Trumbull."
+
+He then got his hat and the short, thick stick of which he had
+spoken, and turning the key of the door, put it in his pocket. Then
+the two friends went round by the kitchen garden, and so through to
+the orchard, and down to the churchyard gate. Hitherto they had seen
+nothing, and heard nothing, and Fenwick was sure that the men had
+made their way through the churchyard to the village.
+
+"But they may come back," said Gilmore.
+
+"I'll be about if they do," said the parson.
+
+"What is one against three? You had better let me stay."
+
+Fenwick laughed at this, saying that it would be quite as rational to
+propose that they should keep watch every night.
+
+"But, hark!" said the Squire, with a mind evidently perturbed.
+
+"Don't you be alarmed about us," said the parson.
+
+"If anything should happen to Mary Lowther!"
+
+"That, no doubt, is matter of anxiety, to which may, perhaps, be
+added some trifle of additional feeling on the score of Janet and the
+children. But I'll do my best. If the women knew that you and I were
+patrolling the place, they'd be frightened out of their wits."
+
+Then Gilmore, who never liked that there should be a laugh against
+himself, took his leave and walked home across the fields. Fenwick
+passed up through the garden, and, when he was near the terrace which
+ran along the garden front of the house, he thought that he heard
+a voice. He stood under the shade of a wall dark with ivy, and
+distinctly heard whispering on the other side of it. As far as he
+could tell there were the voices of more than two men. He wished now
+that he had kept Gilmore with him,--not that he was personally afraid
+of the trespassers, for his courage was of that steady settled kind
+which enables the possessor to remember that men who are doing deeds
+of darkness are ever afraid of those whom they are injuring; but had
+there been an ally with him his prospect of catching one or more of
+the ruffians would have been greatly increased. Standing where he was
+he would probably be able to interrupt them, should they attempt to
+enter the house; but in the mean time they might be stripping his
+fruit from the wall. They were certainly, at present, in the kitchen
+garden, and he was not minded to leave them there at such work as
+they might have in hand. Having paused to think of this, he crept
+along under the wall, close to the house, towards the passage by
+which he could reach them. But they had not heard him, nor had they
+waited among the fruit. When he was near the corner of the wall, one
+leading man came round within a foot or two of the spot on which he
+stood; and, before he could decide on what he would do, the second
+had appeared. He rushed forward with the loaded stick in his hand,
+but, knowing its weight, and remembering the possibility of the
+comparative innocence of the intruders, he hesitated to strike. A
+blow on the head would have brained a man, and a knock on the arm
+with such an instrument would break the bone. In a moment he found
+his left hand on the leading man's throat, and the man's foot behind
+his heel. He fell, but as he fell he did strike heavily, cutting
+upwards with his weapon, and bringing the heavy weight of lead at the
+end of it on to the man's shoulder. He stumbled rather than fell, but
+when he regained his footing, the man was gone. That man was gone,
+and two others were following him down towards the gate at the bottom
+of the orchard. Of these two, in a few strides, he was able to catch
+the hindermost, and then he found himself wrestling with Sam Brattle.
+
+"Sam," said he, speaking as well as he could with his short breath,
+"if you don't stand, I'll strike you with the life-preserver."
+
+Sam made another struggle, trying to seize the weapon, and the parson
+hit him with it on the right arm.
+
+"You've smashed that anyway, Mr. Fenwick," said the man.
+
+"I hope not; but do you come along with me quietly, or I'll smash
+something else. I'll hit you on the head if you attempt to move away.
+What were you doing here?"
+
+Brattle made no answer, but walked along towards the house at the
+parson's left hand, the parson holding him the while by the neck of
+his jacket, and swinging the life-preserver in his right hand. In
+this way he took him round to the front of the house, and then began
+to think what he would do with him.
+
+"That, after all, you should be at this work, Sam!"
+
+"What work is it, then?"
+
+"Prowling about my place, after midnight, with a couple of strange
+blackguards."
+
+"There ain't so much harm in that, as I knows of."
+
+"Who were the men, Sam?"
+
+"Who was the men?"
+
+"Yes;--who were they?"
+
+"Just friends of mine, Mr. Fenwick. I shan't say no more about 'em.
+You've got me, and you've smashed my arm, and now what is it you're
+a-going to do with me? I ain't done no harm,--only just walked about,
+like."
+
+To tell the truth, our friend the parson did not quite know what he
+meant to do with the Tartar he had caught. There were reasons which
+made him very unwilling to hand over Sam Brattle to the village
+constable. Sam had a mother and sister who were among the Vicar's
+first favourites in the parish; and though old Jacob Brattle, the
+father, was not so great a favourite, and was a man whom the Squire,
+his landlord, held in great disfavour, Mr. Fenwick would desire, if
+possible, to spare the family. And of Sam, himself, he had had high
+hopes, though those hopes, for the last eighteen months had been
+becoming fainter and fainter. Upon the whole, he was much averse to
+knocking up the groom, the only man who lived on the parsonage except
+himself, and dragging Sam into the village. "I wish I knew," he said,
+"what you and your friends were going to do. I hardly think it has
+come to that with you, that you'd try to break into the house and cut
+our throats."
+
+"We warn't after no breaking in, nor no cutting of throats, Mr.
+Fenwick. We warn't indeed!"
+
+"What shall you do with yourself, to-night, if I let you off?"
+
+"Just go home to father's, sir; not a foot else, s'help me."
+
+"One of your friends, as you call them, will have to go to the
+doctor, if I am not very much mistaken; for the rap I gave you was
+nothing to what he got. You're all right?"
+
+"It hurt, sir, I can tell ye;--but that won't matter."
+
+"Well, Sam,--there; you may go. I shall be after you to-morrow, and
+the last word I say to you, to-night, is this;--as far as I can see,
+you're on the road to the gallows. It isn't pleasant to be hung, and
+I would advise you to change your road." So saying, he let go his
+hold, and stood waiting till Sam should have taken his departure.
+
+"Don't be a-coming after me, to-morrow, parson, please," said the
+man.
+
+"I shall see your mother, certainly."
+
+"Dont'ee tell her of my being here, Mr. Fenwick, and nobody shan't
+ever come anigh this place again,--not in the way of prigging
+anything."
+
+"You fool, you!" said the parson. "Do you think that it is to save
+anything that I might lose, that I let you go now? Don't you know
+that the thing I want to save is you,--you,--you; you helpless, idle,
+good-for-nothing reprobate? Go home, and be sure that I shall do the
+best I can according to my lights. I fear that my lights are bad
+lights, in that they have allowed me to let you go."
+
+When he had seen Sam take his departure through the front gate, he
+returned to the house, and found that his wife, who had gone to bed,
+had come down-stairs in search of him.
+
+"Frank, you have frightened me so terribly! Where have you been?"
+
+"Thief-catching. And I'm afraid I've about split one fellow's back. I
+caught another, but I let him go."
+
+"What on earth do you mean, Frank?"
+
+Then he told her the whole story,--how Gilmore had seen the men, and
+had come up to him; how he had gone out and had a tussle with one
+man, whom he had, as he thought, hurt; and how he had then caught
+another, while the third escaped.
+
+"We ain't safe in our beds, then," said the wife.
+
+"You ain't safe in yours, my dear, because you chose to leave it; but
+I hope you're safe out of it. I doubt whether the melons and peaches
+are safe. The truth is, there ought to be a gardener's cottage on
+the place, and I must build one. I wonder whether I hurt that fellow
+much. I seemed to hear the bone crunch."
+
+"Oh, Frank!"
+
+"But what could I do? I got that thing because I thought it safer
+than a pistol, but I really think it's worse. I might have murdered
+them all, if I'd lost my temper,--and just for half-a-dozen
+apricots!"
+
+"And what became of the man you took?"
+
+"I let him go."
+
+"Without doing anything to him?"
+
+"Well; he got a tap too."
+
+"Did you know him?"
+
+"Yes, I knew him,--well."
+
+"Who was he, Frank?"
+
+The parson was silent for a moment, and then he answered her. "It was
+Sam Brattle."
+
+"Sam Brattle, coming to rob?"
+
+"He's been at it, I fear, for months, in some shape."
+
+"And what shall you do?"
+
+"I hardly know as yet. It would about kill her and Fanny, if they
+were told all that I suspect. They are stiff-necked, obstinate,
+ill-conditioned people--that is, the men. But I think Gilmore has
+been a little hard on them. The father and brother are honest men.
+Come;--we'll go to bed."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+THERE IS NO ONE ELSE.
+
+
+On the following morning there was of course a considerable amount
+of conversation at the Vicarage as to the affairs of the previous
+evening. There was first of all an examination of the fruit; but as
+this was made without taking Jem the gardener into confidence, no
+certain conclusion could be reached. It was clear, however, that no
+robbery for the purpose of sale had been made. An apricot or two
+might have been taken, and perhaps an assault made on an unripe
+peach. Mr. Fenwick was himself nearly sure that garden spoliation was
+not the purpose of the assailants, though it suited him to let his
+wife entertain that idea. The men would hardly have come from the
+kitchen garden up to the house and round the corner at which he had
+met them, if they were seeking fruit. Presuming it to have been their
+intention to attempt the drawing-room windows, he would have expected
+to meet them as he did meet them. From the garden the Vicar and the
+two ladies went down to the gate, and from thence over the stile to
+Farmer Trumbull's farmyard. The farmer had not again seen the men,
+after the Squire had left him, nor had he heard them. To him the
+parson said nothing of his encounter, and nothing of that blow on
+the man's back. From thence Mr. Fenwick went on to the town, and the
+ladies returned to the Vicarage.
+
+The only person whom the parson at once consulted was the
+surgeon,--Dr. Cuttenden, as he was called. No man with an injured
+shoulder-blade had come to him last night or that morning. A man, he
+said, might receive a very violent blow on his back, in the manner
+in which the fellow had been struck, and might be disabled for days
+from any great personal exertion, without having a bone broken.
+If the blade of his shoulder were broken, the man--so thought the
+doctor--could not travel far on foot, would hardly be able to get
+away to any of the neighbouring towns unless he were carried. Of
+Sam Brattle the parson said nothing to the doctor; but when he had
+finished his morning's work about the town, he walked on to the mill.
+
+In the mean time the two ladies remained at home at the Parsonage.
+The excitement occasioned by the events of the previous night was
+probably a little damaged by the knowledge that Mr. Gilmore was
+coming. The coming of Mr. Gilmore on this occasion was so important
+that even the terrible idea of burglars, and the sensation arising
+from the use of that deadly weapon which had been produced at the
+breakfast table during the morning, were robbed of some of their
+interest. They did not keep possession of the minds of the two ladies
+as they would have done had there been no violent interrupting cause.
+But here was the violent interrupting cause, and by the time that
+lunch was on the table, Sam Brattle and his comrades were forgotten.
+
+Very little was said between the two women on that morning respecting
+Mr. Gilmore. Mrs. Fenwick, who had allowed herself to be convinced
+that Mary would act with great impropriety if she did not accept
+the man, thought that further speech might only render her friend
+obstinate. Mary, who knew the inside of her friend's mind very
+clearly, and who loved and respected her friend, could hardly fix her
+own mind. During the past night it had been fixed, or nearly fixed,
+two different ways. She had first determined that she would refuse
+her lover,--as to which resolve, for some hours or so, she had been
+very firm; then that she would accept him,--as to which she had
+ever, when most that way inclined, entertained some doubt as to the
+possibility of her uttering that word "Yes."
+
+"If it be that other women don't love better than I love him, I
+wonder that they ever get married at all," she said to herself.
+
+She was told that she was wrong to keep the man in suspense, and she
+believed it. Had she not been so told, she would have thought that
+some further waiting would have been of the three alternatives the
+best.
+
+"I shall be upstairs with the bairns," said Mrs. Fenwick, as she left
+the dining-room after lunch, "so that if you prefer the garden to the
+drawing-room, it will be free."
+
+"Oh dear, how solemn and ceremonious you make it."
+
+"It is solemn, Mary; I don't know how anything can be more solemn,
+short of going to heaven or the other place. But I really don't see
+why there should be any doubt or difficulty."
+
+There was something in the tone in which these words were said which
+almost made Mary Lowther again decide against the man. The man had a
+home and an income, and was Squire of the parish; and therefore there
+need be no difficulty! When she compared Mr. Fenwick and Mr. Gilmore
+together, she found that she liked Mr. Fenwick the best. She thought
+him to be the more clever, the higher spirited, the most of a man of
+the two. She certainly was not the least in love with her friend's
+husband; but then she was just as little in love with Mr. Gilmore.
+
+At about half-past two Mr. Gilmore made his appearance, standing at
+the open window.
+
+"May I come in?" he said.
+
+"Of course you may come in."
+
+"Mrs. Fenwick is not here?"
+
+"She is in the house, I think, if you want her."
+
+"Oh no. I hope you were not frightened last night. I have not seen
+Frank this morning; but I hear from Mr. Trumbull that there was
+something of a row."
+
+"There was a row, certainly. Mr. Fenwick struck some of the men, and
+he is afraid that he hurt one of them."
+
+"I wish he had broken their heads. I take it there was a son of one
+of my tenants there, who is about as bad as he can be. Frank will
+believe me now. I hope you were not frightened here."
+
+"I heard nothing of it till this morning."
+
+After that there was a pause. He had told himself as he came along
+that the task before him could not be easy and pleasant. To declare a
+passion to the girl he loves may be very pleasant work to the man who
+feels almost sure that his answer will not be against him. It may be
+an easy task enough even when there is a doubt. The very possession
+of the passion,--or even its pretence,--gives the man a liberty which
+he has a pleasure and a pride in using. But this is the case when the
+man dashes boldly at his purpose without preconcerted arrangements.
+Such pleasure, if it ever was a pleasure to him,--such excitement at
+least, was come and gone with Harry Gilmore. He had told his tale,
+and had been desired to wait. Now he had come again at a fixed hour
+to be informed--like a servant waiting for a place--whether it was
+thought that he would suit. The servant out of place, however, would
+have had this advantage, that he would receive his answer without the
+necessity of further eloquence on his own part. With the lover it was
+different. It was evident that Mary Lowther would not say to him, "I
+have considered the matter, and I think that, upon the whole, you
+will do." It was necessary that he should ask the question again, and
+ask it as a suppliant.
+
+"Mary," he said, beginning with words that he had fixed for himself
+as he came up the garden, "it is six weeks, I think, since I asked
+you to be my wife; and now I have come to ask you again."
+
+She made him no immediate answer, but sat as though waiting for some
+further effort of his eloquence.
+
+"I do not think you doubt my truth, or the warmth of my affection. If
+you trust in them--"
+
+"I do; I do."
+
+"Then I don't know that I can say anything further. Nothing that
+I can say now will make you love me. I have not that sort of power
+which would compel a girl to come into my arms."
+
+"I don't understand that kind of power,--how any man can have it with
+any girl."
+
+"They say that it is so; but I do not flatter myself that it is so
+with me; and I do not think that it would be so with any man over
+you. Perhaps I may assure you that, as far as I know myself at
+present, all my future happiness must depend on your answer. It will
+not kill me--to be refused; at least, I suppose not. But it will make
+me wish that it would." Having so spoken he waited for her reply.
+
+She believed every word that he said. And she liked him so well that,
+for his own sake, she desired that he might be gratified. As far as
+she knew herself, she had no desire to be Harry Gilmore's wife. The
+position was not even one in which she could allow herself to look
+for consolation on one side, for disappointments on the other. She
+had read about love, and talked about love; and she desired to be
+in love. Certainly she was not in love with this man. She had begun
+to doubt whether it would ever be given to her to love,--to love as
+her friend Janet loved Frank Fenwick. Janet loved her husband's very
+footsteps, and seemed to eat with his palate, hear with his ears, and
+see with his eyes. She was, as it were, absolutely a bone from her
+husband's rib. Mary thought that she was sure that she could never
+have that same feeling towards Henry Gilmore. And yet it might come;
+or something might come which would do almost as well. It was likely
+that Janet's nature was softer and sweeter than her own,--more prone
+to adapt itself, like ivy to a strong tree. For herself, it might be,
+that she could never become as the ivy; but that, nevertheless, she
+might be the true wife of a true husband. But if ever she was to be
+the true wife of Harry Gilmore, she could not to-day say that it
+should be so.
+
+"I suppose I must answer you," she said, very gently.
+
+"If you tell me that you are not ready to do so I will wait, and come
+again. I shall never change my mind. You may be sure of that."
+
+"But that is just what I may not do, Mr. Gilmore."
+
+"Who says so?"
+
+"My own feelings tell me so. I have no right to keep you in suspense,
+and I will not do it. I respect and esteem you most honestly. I have
+so much liking for you that I do not mind owning that I wish that it
+were more. Mr. Gilmore, I like you so much that I would make a great
+sacrifice for you; but I cannot sacrifice my own honesty or your
+happiness by making believe that I love you."
+
+For a few moments he sat silent, and then there came over his face a
+look of inexpressible anguish,--a look as though the pain were almost
+more than he could bear. She could not keep her eyes from his face;
+and, in her woman's pity, she almost wished that her words had been
+different.
+
+"And must that be all?" he asked.
+
+"What else can I say, Mr. Gilmore?"
+
+"If that must be all, it will be to me a doom that I shall not know
+how to bear. I cannot live here without you. I have thought about you
+till you have become mixed with every tree and every cottage about
+the place. I did not know of myself that I could become such a slave
+to a passion. Mary, say that you will wait again. Try it once more.
+I would not ask for this, but that you have told me that there was no
+one else."
+
+"Certainly, there is no one else."
+
+"Then let me wait again. It can do you no harm. If there should come
+any man more fortunate than I am, you can tell me, and I shall know
+that it is over. I ask no sacrifice from you, and no pledge; but I
+give you mine. I shall not change."
+
+"There must be no such promise, Mr. Gilmore."
+
+"But there is the promise. I certainly shall not change. When three
+months are over I will come to you again."
+
+She tried to think whether she was bound to tell him that her answer
+must be taken as final, or whether she might allow the matter to
+stand as he proposed, with some chance of a result that might be good
+for him. On one point she was quite sure,--that if she left him now,
+with an understanding that he should again renew his offer after a
+period of three months, she must go away from Bullhampton. If there
+was any possibility that she should learn to love him, such feeling
+would arise within her more quickly in his absence than in his
+presence. She would go home to Loring, and try to bring herself to
+accept him.
+
+"I think," she said, "that what we now say had better be the last of
+it."
+
+"It shall not be the last of it. I will try again. What is there that
+I can do, so that I may make myself worthy of you?"
+
+"It is no question of worthiness, Mr. Gilmore. Who can say how his
+heart is moved,--and why? I shall go home to Loring; and you may be
+sure of this, that if there be anything that you should hear of me, I
+will let you know."
+
+Then he took her hand in his own, held it for a while, pressed it to
+his lips, and left her. She was by no means contented with herself,
+and, to tell the truth, was ashamed to let her friend know what she
+had done. And yet how could she have answered him in other words? It
+might be that she could teach herself to be contented with the amount
+of regard which she entertained for him. It might be that she could
+persuade herself to be his wife; and if so, why should he not have
+the chance,--the chance which he professed that he was so anxious to
+retain? He had paid her the greatest compliment which a man can pay a
+woman, and she owed him everything,--except herself. She was hardly
+sure even now that if the proposition had come to her by letter the
+answer might not have been of a different nature.
+
+As soon as he was gone she went upstairs to the nursery, and thence
+to Mrs. Fenwick's bedroom. Flo was there, but Flo was soon dismissed.
+Mary began her story instantly, before a question could be asked.
+
+"Janet," she said, "I am going home--at once."
+
+"Why so?"
+
+"Because it is best. Nothing more is settled than was settled before.
+When he asks me whether he may come again, how can I say that he may
+not? What can I say, except that as far I can see now, I cannot be
+his wife?"
+
+"You have not accepted him, then?"
+
+"No."
+
+"I believe that you would, if he had asked you last night."
+
+"Most certainly I should not. I may doubt when I am talking behind
+his back; but when I meet him face to face I cannot do it."
+
+"I think you have been wrong,--very wrong and very foolish."
+
+"In not taking a man I do not love?" said Mary.
+
+"You do love him; but you are longing for you do not know what; some
+romance,--some grand passion,--something that will never come."
+
+"Shall I tell you what I want?"
+
+"If you please."
+
+"A feeling such as you have for Frank. You are my model; I want
+nothing beyond that."
+
+"That comes after marriage. Frank was very little to me till we were
+man and wife. He'll tell you the same. I don't know whether I didn't
+almost dislike him when I married him."
+
+"Oh, Janet!"
+
+"Certainly the sort of love you are thinking of comes
+afterwards;--when the interests of two people are the same. Frank was
+very well as a lover."
+
+"Don't I remember it?"
+
+"You were a child."
+
+"I was fifteen; and don't I remember how all the world used to change
+for you when he was coming? There wasn't a ribbon you wore but you
+wore it for him; you dressed yourself in his eyes; you lived by his
+thoughts."
+
+"That was all after I was engaged. If you would accept Harry Gilmore,
+you would do just the same."
+
+"I must be sure that it would be so. I am now almost sure that it
+would not."
+
+"And why do you want to go home?"
+
+"That he may not be pestered by having me near him. I think it will
+be better for him that I should go."
+
+"And he is to ask you again?"
+
+"He says that he will--in three months. But you should tell him
+that it will be better that he should not. I would advise him to
+travel,--if I were his friend, like you."
+
+"And leave all his duties, and his pleasures, and his house, and his
+property, because of your face and figure, my dear! I don't think any
+woman is worth so much to a man."
+
+Mary bit her lips in sorrow for what she had said. "I was thinking
+of his own speech about himself, Janet, not of my worth. It does not
+astonish you more than it does me that such a man as Mr. Gilmore
+should be perplexed in spirit for such a cause. But he says that he
+is perplexed."
+
+"Of course he is perplexed, and of course I was in joke. Only it does
+seem so hard upon him! I should like to shake you till you fell into
+his arms. I know it would be best for you. You will go on examining
+your own feelings and doubting about your heart, and waiting for
+something that will never come till you will have lost your time.
+That is the way old maids are made. If you married Harry, by the time
+your first child was born you would think that he was Jupiter,--just
+as I think that Frank is."
+
+Mrs. Fenwick owned, however, that as matters stood at present, it
+would be best that Mary should return home; and letters were written
+that afternoon to say that she would be at Loring by the middle of
+next week.
+
+The Vicar was not seen till dinner-time, and then he came home in
+considerable perplexity of spirit. It was agreed between the two
+women that the fate of Harry Gilmore, as far as it had been decided,
+should be told to Mr. Fenwick by his wife; and she, though she was
+vexed, and almost angry with Mary, promised to make the best of it.
+
+"She'll lose him at last; that'll be the end of it," said the parson,
+as he scoured his face with a towel after washing it.
+
+"I never saw a man so much in love in my life," said Mrs. Fenwick.
+
+"But iron won't remain long at red heat," said he. "What she says
+herself would be the best for him. He'll break up and go away for a
+time, and then, when he comes back, there'll be somebody else. She'll
+live to repent it."
+
+"When she's away from him there may be a change."
+
+"Fiddlestick!" said the parson.
+
+Mary, when she met him before dinner, could see that he was angry
+with her, but she bore it with the utmost meekness. She believed of
+herself that she was much to blame in that she could not fall in love
+with Harry Gilmore. Mrs. Fenwick had also asked a question or two
+about Sam Brattle during the dressing of her husband; but he had
+declined to say anything on that subject till they two should be
+secluded together for the night.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+THE MILLER.
+
+
+Mr. Fenwick reached Brattle's mill about two o'clock in the day.
+During the whole morning, while saying comfortable words to old
+women, and gently rebuking young maidens, he had been thinking of Sam
+Brattle and his offences. He had not been in the parish very long,
+not over five or six years, but he had been there long enough to see
+Sam grow out of boyhood into manhood; and at his first coming to
+the parish, for the first two or three years, the lad had been a
+favourite with him. Young Brattle could run well, leap well, fish
+well, and do a good turn of work about his father's mill. And he
+could also read and write, and cast accounts, and was a clever
+fellow. The parson, though he had tried his hand with energy at
+making the man, had, perhaps, done something towards marring him; and
+it may be that some feeling of this was on Mr. Fenwick's conscience.
+A gentleman's favourite in a country village, when of Sam Brattle's
+age, is very apt to be spoiled by the kindness that is shown to him.
+Sam had spent many a long afternoon fishing with the parson, but
+those fishing days were now more than two years gone by. It had been
+understood that Sam was to assist his father at the mill; and much
+good advice as to his trade the lad had received from Mr. Fenwick.
+There ought to be no more fishing for the young miller, except
+on special holiday occasions,--no more fishing, at least, during
+the hours required for milling purposes. So Mr. Fenwick had said
+frequently. Nevertheless the old miller attributed his son's idleness
+in great part to the parson's conduct, and he had so told the
+parson more than once. Of late Sam Brattle had certainly not been
+a good son, had neglected his work, disobeyed his father, and
+brought trouble on a household which had much suffering to endure
+independently of that which he might bring upon it.
+
+Jacob Brattle was a man at this time over sixty-five years of age,
+and every year of the time had been spent in that mill. He had never
+known another occupation or another home, and had very rarely slept
+under another roof. He had married the daughter of a neighbouring
+farmer, and had had some twelve or fourteen children. There were at
+this time six still living. He himself had ever been a hardworking,
+sober, honest man. But he was cross-grained, litigious, moody, and
+tyrannical. He held his mill and about a hundred acres of adjoining
+meadow land at a rent in which no account was taken either of the
+building or of the mill privileges attached to it. He paid simply for
+the land at a rate per acre, which, as both he and his landlord well
+knew, would make it acceptable on the same terms to any farmer in the
+parish; and neither for his mill, nor for his land, had he any lease,
+nor had his father or his grandfather had leases before him. Though
+he was a clever man in his way, he hardly knew what a lease was.
+He doubted whether his landlord could dispossess him as long as he
+paid his rent, but he was not sure. But of this he thought he was
+sure,--that were Mr. Gilmore to attempt to do such a thing, all
+Wiltshire would cry out against the deed, and probably the heavens
+would fall and crush the doer. He was a man with an unlimited love
+of justice; but the justice which he loved best was justice to
+himself. He brooded over injuries done to him,--injuries real or
+fancied,--till he taught himself to wish that all who hurt him might
+be crucified for the hurt they did to him. He never forgot, and never
+wished to forgive. If any prayer came from him, it was a prayer that
+his own heart might be so hardened that when vengeance came in his
+way he might take it without stint against the trespasser of the
+moment. And yet he was not a cruel man. He would almost despise
+himself, because when the moment for vengeance did come, he would
+abstain from vengeance. He would dismiss a disobedient servant with
+curses which would make one's hair stand on end, and would hope
+within his heart of hearts that before the end of the next week the
+man with his wife and children might be in the poorhouse. When the
+end of the next week came, he would send the wife meat, and would
+give the children bread, and would despise himself for doing so.
+In matters of religion he was an old Pagan, going to no place of
+worship, saying no prayer, believing in no creed,--with some vague
+idea that a supreme power would bring him right at last, if he worked
+hard, robbed no one, fed his wife and children, and paid his way. To
+pay his way was the pride of his heart; to be paid on his way was its
+joy.
+
+In that matter of his quarrel with his landlord he was very bitter.
+The Squire's father some fifteen years since had given to the miller
+a verbal promise that the house and mill should be repaired. The old
+Squire had not been a good man of business, and had gone on with his
+tenants very much as he had found them, without looking much into the
+position of each. But he had, no doubt, said something that amounted
+to a promise on his own account as to these repairs. He had died soon
+after, and the repairs had not been effected. A year after his death
+an application,--almost a demand,--was made upon our Squire by the
+miller, and the miller had been wrathful even when the Squire said
+that he would look into it. The Squire did look into it, and came to
+the conclusion that as he received no rent at all for the house and
+mill, and as his own property would be improved if the house and
+mill were made to vanish, and as he had no evidence whatever of any
+undertaking on his father's part, as any such promise on his father's
+part must simply have been a promise of a gift of money out of his
+own pocket, and further as the miller was impudent, he would not
+repair the mill. Ultimately he offered £20 towards the repairs, which
+the miller indignantly refused. Readers will be able to imagine how
+pretty a quarrel there would thus be between the landlord and his
+tenant. When all this was commencing,--at the time, that is, of the
+old Squire's death,--Brattle had the name of being a substantial
+person; but misfortune had come upon him; doctors' bills had been
+very heavy, his children had drained his resources from him, and it
+was now known that it set him very hard to pay his way. In regard to
+the house and the mill, some absolutely essential repairs had been
+done at his own costs; but the £20 had never been taken.
+
+In some respects the man's fortune in life had been good. His wife
+was one of those loving, patient, self-denying, almost heavenly human
+beings, one or two of whom may come across one's path, and who, when
+found, are generally found in that sphere of life to which this woman
+belonged. Among the rich there is that difficulty of the needle's
+eye; among the poor there is the difficulty of the hardness of their
+lives. And the miller loved this woman with a perfect love. He hardly
+knew that he loved her as he did. He could be harsh to her and
+tyrannical. He could say cutting words to her. But at any time in his
+life he would have struck over the head, with his staff, another man
+who should have said a word to hurt her. They had lost many children;
+but of the six who remained, there were four of whom they might be
+proud. The eldest was a farmer, married and away, doing well in a far
+part of the county, beyond Salisbury, on the borders of Hampshire.
+The father in his emergencies had almost been tempted to ask his son
+for money; but hitherto he had refrained. A daughter was married to
+a tradesman at Warminster, and was also doing well. A second son who
+had once been sickly and weak, was a scholar in his way, and was now
+a schoolmaster, also at Warminster, and in great repute with the
+parson of the parish there. There was a second daughter, Fanny, at
+home, a girl as good as gold, the glory and joy and mainstay of her
+mother, whom even the miller could not scold,--whom all Bullhampton
+loved. But she was a plain girl, brown, and somewhat hard-visaged;--a
+morsel of fruit as sweet as any in the garden, but one that the eye
+would not select for its outside grace, colour, and roundness. Then
+there were the two younger. Of Sam, the youngest of all, who was now
+twenty-one, something has already been said. Between him and Fanny
+there was,--perhaps it will be better to say there had been,--another
+daughter. Of all the flock Carry had been her father's darling. She
+had not been brown or hard-visaged. She was such a morsel of fruit
+as men do choose, when allowed to range and pick through the whole
+length of the garden wall. Fair she had been, with laughing eyes,
+and floating curls; strong in health, generous in temper, though now
+and again with something of her father's humour. To her mother's eye
+she had never been as sweet as Fanny; but to her father she had been
+as bright and beautiful as the harvest moon. Now she was a thing,
+somewhere, never to be mentioned! Any man who would have named her
+to her father's ears, would have encountered instantly the force of
+his wrath. This was so well known in Bullhampton that there was not
+one who would dare to suggest to him even that she might be saved.
+But her mother prayed for her daily, and her father thought of her
+always. It was a great lump upon him, which he must bear to his
+grave; and for which there could be no release. He did not know
+whether it was his mind, his heart, or his body that suffered. He
+only knew that it was there,--a load that could never be lightened.
+What comfort was it to him now, that he had beaten a miscreant to
+death's door--that he, with his old hands, had nearly torn the wretch
+limb from limb--that he had left him all but lifeless, and had walked
+off scatheless, nobody daring to put a finger on him? The man had
+been pieced up by some doctor, and was away in Asia, in Africa, in
+America--soldiering somewhere. He had been a lieutenant in those
+days, and was probably a lieutenant still. It was nothing to old
+Brattle where he was. Had he been able to drink the fellow's blood to
+the last drop, it would not have lightened his load an ounce. He knew
+that it was so now. Nothing could lighten it;--not though an angel
+could come and tell him that his girl was a second Magdalen. The
+Brattles had ever held up their heads. The women, at least, had
+always been decent.
+
+Jacob Brattle, himself, was a low, thickset man, with an appearance
+of great strength, which was now submitting itself, very slowly, to
+the hand of time. He had sharp green eyes, and shaggy eyebrows, with
+thin lips, and a square chin, a nose which, though its shape was
+aquiline, protruded but little from his face. His forehead was low
+and broad, and he was seldom seen without a flat hat upon his head.
+His hair and very scanty whiskers were gray; but, then too, he was
+gray from head to foot. The colour of his trade had so clung to him,
+that no one could say whether that grayish whiteness of his face came
+chiefly from meal or from sorrow. He was a silent, sad, meditative
+man, thinking always of the evil things that had been done to him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+BRATTLE'S MILL.
+
+
+When Mr. Fenwick reached the mill, he found old Brattle sitting alone
+on a fixed bench in front of the house door with a pipe in his mouth.
+Mary Lowther was quite right in saying that the mill, in spite of its
+dilapidations,--perhaps by reason of them,--was as pretty as anything
+in Bullhampton. In the first place it was permeated and surrounded by
+cool, bright, limpid little streams. One of them ran right through
+it, as it were, passing between the dwelling-house and the mill, and
+turning the wheel, which was there placed. This course was, no doubt,
+artificial, and the water ran more rapidly in it than it did in the
+neighbouring streamlets. There were sluice-gates, too, by which it
+could be altogether expelled, or kept up to this or that height; and
+it was a river absolutely under man's control, in which no water-god
+could take delight. But there were other natural streams on each
+side of the building, the one being the main course of the Avon,
+and the other some offspring of a brooklet, which joined its parent
+two hundred yards below, and fifty yards from the spot at which
+the ill-used working water was received back into its mother's
+idle bosom. Mill and house were thatched, and were very low. There
+were garrets in the roof, but they were so shaped that they could
+hardly be said to have walls to them at all, so nearly were they
+contained by the sloping roof. In front of the building there ran a
+road,--which after all was no more than a private lane. It crossed
+the smaller stream and the mill-run by two wooden bridges; but the
+river itself had been too large for the bridge-maker's efforts, and
+here there was a ford, with stepping-stones for foot passengers. The
+banks on every side were lined with leaning willows, which had been
+pollarded over and over again, and which with their light-green wavy
+heads gave the place, from a distance, the appearance of a grove.
+There was a little porch in front of the house, and outside of that a
+fixed seat, with a high back, on which old Brattle was sitting when
+the parson accosted him. He did not rise when Mr. Fenwick addressed
+him; but he intended no want of courtesy by not doing so. He was on
+his legs at business during nearly the whole of the day, and why
+should he not rest his old limbs during the few mid-day minutes which
+he allowed himself for recreation?
+
+"I thought I should catch you idle just at this moment," said the
+clergyman.
+
+
+[Illustration: "I thought I should catch you idle just at
+this moment," said the clergyman.]
+
+
+"Like enough, Muster Fenwick," said the miller; "I be idle at times,
+no doubt."
+
+"It would be a bad life if you did not,--and a very short one too.
+It's hot walking, I can tell you, Mr. Brattle. If it goes on like
+this, I shall want a little idle time myself, I fear. Is Sam here?"
+
+"No, Muster Fenwick, Sam is not here."
+
+"Nor has been this morning, I suppose?"
+
+"He's not here now, if you're wanting him."
+
+This the old man said in a tone that seemed to signify some offence,
+or at least a readiness to take offence if more were said to him
+about his son. The clergyman did not sit down, but stood close over
+the father, looking down upon him; and the miller went on with his
+pipe gazing into the clear blue sky.
+
+"I do want him, Mr. Brattle." Then he stopped, and there was a pause.
+The miller puffed his pipe, but said not a word. "I do want him. I
+fear, Mr. Brattle, he's not coming to much good."
+
+"Who said as he was? I never said so. The lad'd have been well enough
+if other folks would have let him be."
+
+"I know what you mean, Mr. Brattle."
+
+"I usually intend folks to know what I mean, Muster Fenwick. What's
+the good o' speaking else? If nobody hadn't a meddled with the lad,
+he'd been a good lad. But they did, and he ain't. That's all about
+it."
+
+"You do me a great injustice, but I'm not going to argue that with
+you now. There would be no use in it. I've come to tell you I fear
+that Sam was at no good last night."
+
+"That's like enough."
+
+"I had better tell you the truth at once. He was about my place with
+two ruffians."
+
+"And you wants to take him afore the magistrate?"
+
+"I want nothing of the kind. I would make almost any sacrifice
+rather. I had him yesterday night by the collar of the coat, and I
+let him go free."
+
+"If he couldn't shake himself free o' you, Muster Fenwick, without
+any letting in the matter, he ain't no son of mine."
+
+"I was armed, and he couldn't. But what does that matter? What does
+matter is this;--that they who were with him were thoroughly bad
+fellows. Was he at home last night?"
+
+"You'd better ax his mother, Muster Fenwick. The truth is, I don't
+care much to be talking of him at all. It's time I was in the mill, I
+believe. There's no one much to help me now, barring the hired man."
+So saying, he got up and passed into the mill without making the
+slightest form of salutation.
+
+Mr. Fenwick paused for a minute, looking after the old man, and then
+went into the house. He knew very well that his treatment from the
+women would be very different to that which the miller had vouchsafed
+to him; but on that very account it would be difficult for him to
+make his communication. He had, however, known all this before he
+came. Old Brattle would, quite of course, be silent, suspicious, and
+uncivil. It had become the nature of the man to be so, and there was
+no help for it. But the two women would be glad to see him,--would
+accept his visit as a pleasure and a privilege; and on this account
+he found it to be very hard to say unpleasant words to them. But the
+unpleasant words must be spoken. Neither in duty nor in kindness
+could he know what he had learned last night, and be silent on this
+matter to the young man's family. He entered the house, and turned
+into the large kitchen or keeping-room on the left, in which the
+two women were almost always to be found. This was a spacious,
+square, low apartment, in which there was a long grate with
+various appurtenances for boiling, roasting, and baking. It was an
+old-fashioned apparatus, but Mrs. Brattle thought it to be infinitely
+more commodious than any of the newer-fangled ranges which from time
+to time she had been taken to see. Opposite to the fire-place there
+was a small piece of carpet, without which the stone floor would
+hardly have looked warm and comfortable. On the outer corner of this,
+half facing the fire, and half on one side of it, was an old oak
+arm-chair, made of oak throughout, but with a well-worn cushion on
+the seat of it, in which it was the miller's custom to sit when the
+work of the day was done. In this chair no one else would ever sit,
+unless Sam would do so occasionally, in bravado, and as a protest
+against his father's authority. When he did so his mother would be
+wretched, and his sister lately had begged him to desist from the
+sacrilege. Close to this was a little round deal table, on which
+would be set the miller's single glass of gin and water, which would
+be made to last out the process of his evening smoking, and the
+candle, by the light of which, and with the aid of a huge pair of
+tortoise-shell spectacles, his wife would sit and darn her husband's
+stockings. She also had her own peculiar chair in this corner, but
+she had never accustomed herself to the luxury of arms to lean on,
+and had no cushion for her own comfort. There were various dressers,
+tables, and sideboards round the room, and a multiplicity of dishes,
+plates, and bowls, all standing in their proper places. But though
+the apartment was called a kitchen,--and, in truth, the cookery for
+the family was done here,--there was behind it, opening out to the
+rear, another kitchen in which there was a great boiler, and a huge
+oven never now used. The necessary but unsightly doings of kitchen
+life were here carried on, out of view. He, indeed, would have been
+fastidious who would have hesitated, on any score of cleanliness or
+niceness, to sit and eat at the long board on which the miller's
+dinner was daily served, or would have found it amiss to sit at that
+fire and listen to the ticking of the great mahogany-cased clock,
+which stood in the corner of the room. On the other side of the broad
+opening passage Mrs. Brattle had her parlour. Doubtless this parlour
+added something to the few joys of her life; though how it did so,
+or why she should have rejoiced in it, it would be very difficult
+to say. She never entered it except for the purpose of cleaning and
+dusting. But it may be presumed that it was a glory to her to have a
+room carpeted, with six horsehair chairs, and a round table, and a
+horsehair sofa, and an old mirror over the fireplace, and a piece of
+worsted-work done by her daughter and framed like a picture, hanging
+up on one of the walls. But there must have come from it, we should
+say, more of regret than of pleasure; for when that room was first
+furnished, under her own auspices, and when those horsehair chairs
+were bought with a portion of her own modest dowry, doubtless she had
+intended that these luxuries should be used by her and hers. But they
+never had been so used. The day for using them had never come. Her
+husband never, by any chance, entered the apartment. To him probably,
+even in his youth, it had been a woman's gewgaw, useless, but
+allowable as tending to her happiness. Now the door was never even
+opened before his eye. His last interview with Carry had been in
+that room,--when he had laid his curse upon her, and bade her begone
+before his return, so that his decent threshold should be no longer
+polluted by her vileness.
+
+On this side of the house there was a cross passage, dividing the
+front rooms from the back. At the end of this, looking to the front
+so as to have the parlour between it and the house-door, was the
+chamber in which slept Brattle and his wife. Here all those children
+had been born who had brought upon the household so many joys and so
+much sorrow. And behind, looking to the back on to the little plot of
+vegetables which was called the garden,--a plot in which it seemed
+that cabbages and gooseberry bushes were made to alternate,--there
+was a large store-room, and the chamber in which Fanny slept,--now
+alone, but which she had once shared with four sisters. Carry was the
+last one that had left her; and now Fanny hardly dared to name the
+word sister above her breath. She could speak, indeed, of Sister Jay,
+the wife of the prosperous ironmonger at Warminster; but of sisters
+by their Christian names no mention was ever made.
+
+Upstairs there were garrets, one of which was inhabited by Sam, when
+he chose to reside at home; and another by the red-armed country
+lass, who was maid-of-all-work at Brattle Mill. When it has also been
+told that below the cabbage-plot there was an orchard, stretching
+down to the junction of the waters, the description of Brattle Mill
+will have been made.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+THE MILLER'S WIFE.
+
+
+When Mr. Fenwick entered the kitchen, Mrs. Brattle was sitting there
+alone. Her daughter was away, disposing of the remnants and utensils
+of the dinner-table. The old lady, with her spectacles on her nose,
+was sitting as usual with a stocking over her left arm. On the round
+table was a great open Bible, and, lying on the Bible, were sundry
+large worsted hose, which always seemed to Mr. Fenwick as though
+they must have undarned themselves as quickly as they were darned.
+Her Bible and her stockings furnished the whole of Mrs. Brattle's
+occupation from her dinner to her bed. In the morning, she would
+still occupy herself in matters of cookery, would peel potatoes, and
+prepare apples for puddings, and would look into the pot in which
+the cabbage was being boiled. But her stockings and her Bible shared
+together the afternoons of her week-days. On the Sundays there would
+only be the Bible, and then she would pass many hours of the day
+asleep. On every other Sunday morning she still walked to church and
+back,--going there always alone. There was no one now to accompany
+her. Her husband never went,--never had gone,--to church, and her son
+now had broken away from his good practices. On alternate mornings
+Fanny went, and also on every Sunday afternoon. Wet or dry, storm
+or sunshine, she always went; and her father, who was an old Pagan,
+loved her for her zeal. Mrs. Brattle was a slight-made old woman,
+with hair almost white peering out modestly from under her clean cap,
+dressed always in a brown stuff gown that never came down below her
+ankle. Her features were still pretty, small, and débonnaire, and
+there was a sweetness in her eyes that no observer could overlook.
+She was a modest, pure, high-minded woman,--whom we will not call
+a lady, because of her position in life, and because she darned
+stockings in a kitchen. In all other respects she deserved the name.
+
+"I heard your voice outside with the master," she said, rising from
+her chair to answer the parson's salutation, and putting down her
+stockings first, and then her spectacles upon the book, so that the
+Bible was completely hidden; "and I knew you would not go without
+saying a word to the old woman."
+
+"I believe I came mostly to see you to-day, Mrs. Brattle."
+
+"Did you then? It's kind of you, I'm sure, Mr. Fenwick, this hot
+weather,--and you with so many folk to mind too. Will you take an
+apple, Mr. Fenwick? I don't know that we've anything else to offer,
+but the quarantines are rare this year, they say;--though, no doubt,
+you have them better at the Vicarage?"
+
+Fenwick took a large, red apple from the dresser, and began to munch,
+it, declaring that they had none such in their orchard. And then,
+when the apple was finished, he had to begin his story.
+
+"Mrs. Brattle, I'm sorry that I have something to say that will vex
+you."
+
+"Eh, Mr. Fenwick! Bad news? 'Deed and I think there's but little good
+news left to us now,--little that comes from the tongues of men. It's
+bad news that is always coming here. Mr. Fenwick,--what is it, sir?"
+
+Then he repeated the question he had before put to the miller about
+Sam. Where was Sam last night?--She only shook her head. Did he sleep
+at home?--She shook her head again. Had he breakfasted at home?
+
+"'Deed no, sir. I haven't set eyes on him since before yesterday."
+
+"But how does he live? His father does not give him money, I
+suppose?"
+
+"There's little enough to give him, Mr. Fenwick. When he is at the
+mill his father do pay him a some'at over and above his keep. It
+isn't much, sir. Young men must have a some'at in their pockets at
+times."
+
+"He has too much in his pockets, I fear. I wish he had nothing, so
+that he needs must come home for his meals. He works at the mill,
+doesn't he?"
+
+"At times, sir; and there isn't a lad in all Bullumpton,"--for so the
+name was ordinarily pronounced,--"who can do a turn of work to beat
+him."
+
+"Do he and his father agree pretty well?"
+
+"At times, sir. Times again his father don't say much to him. The
+master ain't given to much talking in the mill, and Sam, when he's
+there, works with a will. There's times when his father softens down
+to him, and then to see 'em, you'd think they was all in all to each
+other. There's a stroke of the master about Sam hisself, at times,
+Mr. Fenwick, and the old man's eyes gladden to see it. There's none
+so near his heart now as poor Sam."
+
+"If he were as honest a man as his father, I could forgive all the
+rest," said Mr. Fenwick slowly, meaning to imply that he was not
+there now to complain of church observances neglected, or of small
+irregularities of life. The paganism of the old miller had often been
+the subject of converse between the parson and Mrs. Brattle, it being
+a matter on which she had many an unhappy thought. He, groping darkly
+among subjects which he hardly dared to touch in her presence lest
+he should seem to unteach that in private which he taught in public,
+had subtlely striven to make her believe that though she, through her
+faith, would be saved, he, the husband, might yet escape that doom
+of everlasting fire, which to her was so stern a reality that she
+thought of its fury with a shudder whenever she heard of the world's
+wickedness. When Parson Fenwick had first made himself intimate
+at the mill Mrs. Brattle had thought that her husband's habits of
+life would have been to him as wormwood and gall,--that he would be
+unable not to chide, and well she knew that her husband would bear no
+chiding. By degrees she had come to understand that this new parson
+was one who talked more of life with its sorrows, and vices, and
+chances of happiness, and possibilities of goodness, than he did
+of the requirements of his religion. For herself inwardly she had
+grieved at this, and, possibly, also for him; but, doubtless, there
+had come to her some comfort, which she did not care to analyse, from
+the manner in which "the master," as she called him, Pagan as he was,
+had been treated by her clergyman. She wondered that it should be so,
+but yet it was a relief to her to know that God's messenger should
+come to her, and yet say never a word of his message to that hard
+lord, whom she so feared and so loved, and who was, as she well knew,
+too stubborn to receive it. And Fenwick had spoken,--still spoke
+to her, so tenderly of her erring, fallen child, never calling her
+a castaway, talking of her as Carry, who might yet be worthy of
+happiness here and of all joy hereafter; that when she thought
+of him as a minister of God, whose duty it was to pronounce God's
+threats to erring human beings, she was almost alarmed. She could
+hardly understand his leniency,--his abstinence from reproof; but
+entertained a vague, wandering, unformed wish that, as he never
+opened the vials of his wrath on them, he would pour it out upon
+her,--on her who would bear it for their sake so meekly. If there was
+such a wish it was certainly doomed to disappointment. At this moment
+Fanny came in and curtseyed as she gave her hand to the parson.
+
+"Was Sam at home last night, Fan?" asked the mother, in a sad, low
+voice.
+
+"Yes, mother. He slept in his bed."
+
+"You are sure?" said the parson.
+
+"Quite sure. I heard him this morning as he went out. It was about
+five. He spoke to me, and I answered him."
+
+"What did he say?"
+
+"That he must go over to Lavington, and wouldn't be home till
+nightfall. I told him where he would find bread and cheese, and he
+took it."
+
+"But you didn't see him last night?"
+
+"No, sir. He comes in at all hours, when he pleases. He was at dinner
+before yesterday, but I haven't seen him since. He didn't go nigh the
+mill after dinner that day."
+
+Then Mr. Fenwick considered how much he would tell to the mother and
+sister, and how much he would keep back. He did not in his heart
+believe that Sam Brattle had intended to enter his house and rob
+it; but he did believe that the men with whom Sam was associated
+were thieves and housebreakers. If these men were prowling about
+Bullhampton it was certainly his duty to have them arrested if
+possible, and to prevent probable depredations, for his neighbours'
+sake as well as for his own. Nor would he be justified in neglecting
+this duty with the object of saving Sam Brattle. If only he could
+entice Sam away from them, into his own hands, under the power of his
+tongue,--there might probably be a chance.
+
+"You think he'll be home to-night?" he asked.
+
+"He said he would," replied Fanny, who knew that she could not answer
+for her brother's word.
+
+"If he does, bid him come to me. Make him come to me! Tell him that
+I will do him no harm. God knows how truly it is my object to do him
+good."
+
+"We are sure of that, sir," said the mother.
+
+"He need not be afraid that I will preach to him. I will only talk to
+him, as I would to a younger brother."
+
+"But what is it that he has done, sir?"
+
+"He has done nothing that I know. There;--I will tell you the whole.
+I found him prowling about my garden at near midnight, yesterday. Had
+he been alone I should have thought nothing of it. He thinks he owes
+me a grudge for speaking to his father; and had I found him paying it
+by filling his pockets with fruit, I should only have told him that
+it would be better that he should come and take it in the morning."
+
+"But he wasn't--stealing?" asked the mother.
+
+"He was doing nothing; neither were the men. But they were
+blackguards, and he was in bad hands. He could not have been in
+worse. I had a tussle with one of them, and I am sure the man was
+hurt. That, however, has nothing to do with it. What I desire is to
+get a hold of Sam, so that he may be rescued from the hands of such
+companions. If you can make him come to me, do so."
+
+Fanny promised, and so did the mother; but the promise was given in
+that tone which seemed to imply that nothing should be expected from
+its performance. Sam had long been deaf to the voices of the women
+of his family, and, when his father's anger would be hot against him,
+he would simply go, and live where and how none of them knew. Among
+such men and women as the Brattles, parental authority must needs lie
+much lighter than it does with those who are wont to give much and to
+receive much. What obedience does the lad owe who at eighteen goes
+forth and earns his own bread? What is it to him that he has not yet
+reached man's estate? He has to do a man's work, and the price of it
+is his own, in his hands, when he has earned it. There is no curse
+upon the poor heavier than that which comes from the early breach
+of all ties of duty between fathers and their sons, and mothers and
+their daughters.
+
+Mr. Fenwick, as he passed out of the miller's house, saw Jacob
+Brattle at the door of the mill. He was tugging along some load,
+pulling it in at the door, and prevailing against the weakness of his
+age by the force of his energy. The parson knew that the miller saw
+him, but the miller took no notice,--looked rather as though he did
+not wish to be observed,--and so the parson went on. When at home he
+postponed his account of what had taken place till he should be alone
+with his wife; but at night he told her the whole story.
+
+"The long and the short of it is, Master Sam will turn to
+housebreaking, if somebody doesn't get hold of him."
+
+"To housebreaking, Frank?"
+
+"I believe that he is about it."
+
+"And were they going to break in here?"
+
+"I don't think he was. I don't believe he was so minded then. But he
+had shown them the way in, and they were looking about on their own
+scores. Don't you frighten yourself. What with the constable and
+the life-preserver, we'll be safe. I've a big dog coming, a second
+Bone'm. Sam Brattle is in more danger, I fear, than the silver
+forks."
+
+But, in spite of the cheeriness of his speech, the Vicar was anxious,
+and almost unhappy. After all that occurred in reference to himself
+and to Sam Brattle,--their former intimacies, the fish they had
+caught together, the rats they had killed together, the favour which
+he, the parson of the parish, had shown to this lad, and especially
+after the evil things which had been said of himself because of this
+friendship on his part for one so much younger than himself, and
+so much his inferior in rank,--it would be to him a most grievous
+misfortune should he be called upon to acknowledge publicly Sam
+Brattle's iniquity, and more grievous still, if the necessity should
+be forced upon him of bringing Sam to open punishment. Fenwick knew
+well that diverse accusations had been made against him in the
+parish regarding Sam. The Marquis of Trowbridge had said a word. Mr.
+Puddleham had said many words. The old miller himself had growled.
+Even Gilmore had expressed disapprobation. The Vicar, in his pride,
+had turned a deaf ear to them all. He began to fear now that possibly
+he had been wrong in the favours shown to Sam Brattle.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+THE LAST DAY.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+The parson's visit to the mill was on a Saturday. The next Sunday
+passed by very quietly, and nothing was seen of Mr. Gilmore at the
+Vicarage. He was at church, and walked with the two ladies from the
+porch to their garden gate, but he declined Mrs. Fenwick's invitation
+to lunch, and was not seen again on that day. The parson had sent
+word to Fanny Brattle during the service to stop a few minutes for
+him, and had learned from her that Sam had not been at home last
+night. He had also learned, before the service that morning, that
+very early on the Saturday, probably about four o'clock, two men
+had passed through Paul's Hinton with a huxter's cart and a pony.
+Now Paul's Hinton, or Hinton Saint Paul's as it should be properly
+called, was a long straggling village, six miles from Bullhampton,
+and half-way on the road to Market Lavington, to which latter place
+Sam had told his sister that he was going. Putting these things
+together, Mr. Fenwick did not in the least doubt but the two men in
+the cart were they who had been introduced to his garden by young
+Brattle.
+
+"I only hope," said the parson, "that there's a good surgeon at
+Market Lavington. One of the gentlemen in that cart must have wanted
+him, I take it." Then he thought that it might, perhaps, be worth his
+while to trot over to Lavington in the course of the week, and make
+inquiries.
+
+On the Wednesday Mary Lowther was to go back to Loring. This seemed
+like a partial break-up of their establishment, both to the parson
+and his wife. Fenwick had made up his mind that Mary was to be his
+nearest neighbour for life, and had fallen into the way of treating
+her accordingly, telling her of things in the parish as he might have
+done to the Squire's wife, presuming the Squire's wife to have been
+on the best possible terms with him. He now regarded Mary as being
+almost an impostor. She had taken him in and obtained his confidence
+under false pretences. It was true that she might still come and
+fill the place that he had appointed for her. He rather thought
+that at last she would do so. But he was angry with her because she
+hesitated. She was creating an unnecessary disturbance among them.
+She had, he thought, been now wooed long enough, and, as he told his
+wife more than once, was making an ass of herself. Mrs. Fenwick was
+not quite so hard in her judgment, but she also was tempted to be a
+little angry. She loved her friend Mary a great deal better than she
+loved Mr. Gilmore, but she was thoroughly convinced that Mary could
+not do better than accept a man whom she owned that she liked,--whom
+she, at any rate, liked so well that she had not as yet rejected him.
+Therefore, although Mary was going, they were, both of them, rather
+savage with her.
+
+The Monday passed by, also very quietly, and Mr. Gilmore did not come
+to them, but he had sent a note to tell them that he would walk down
+on the Tuesday evening to say good-bye to Miss Lowther. Early on
+the Wednesday Mr. Fenwick was to drive her to Westbury, whence the
+railway would take her round by Chippenham and Swindon to Loring. On
+the Tuesday morning she was very melancholy. Though she knew that it
+was right to go away, she greatly regretted that it was necessary.
+She was angry with herself for not having better known her own mind,
+and though she was quite sure that were Mr. Gilmore to repeat his
+offer to her that moment, she would not accept it, nevertheless she
+thought ill of herself because she would not do so. "I do believe,"
+she said to herself, "that I shall never like any man better." She
+knew well enough that if she was never brought to love any man, she
+never ought to marry any man; but she was not quite sure whether
+Janet was not right in telling her that she had formed erroneous
+notions of the sort of love she ought to feel for the man whom she
+should resolve to accept. Perhaps it was true that that kind of
+adoration which Janet entertained for her husband was a feeling which
+came after marriage--a feeling which would spring up in her own heart
+as soon as she was the man's own wife, the mistress of his house, the
+mother of his children, the one human being for whose welfare he was
+solicitous beyond that of all others. And this man did love her. She
+had no doubt about that. And she was unhappy, too, because she felt
+that she had offended his friends, and that they thought that she was
+not treating their friend well.
+
+"Janet," she said, as they were again sitting out on the lawn, on
+that Tuesday afternoon, "I am almost sorry that I came here at all."
+
+"Don't say that, dear."
+
+"I have spent some of the happiest days of my life here, but the
+visit, on the whole, has been unfortunate. I am going away in
+disgrace. I feel that so acutely."
+
+"What nonsense! How are you in disgrace?"
+
+"Mr. Fenwick and you think that I have behaved badly. I know you do,
+and I feel it so strongly! I think so much of him, and believe him to
+be so good, and so wise, and so understanding,--he knows what people
+should do, and should be, so well,--that I cannot doubt that I have
+been wrong if he thinks so."
+
+"He only wishes that you could have made up your mind to marry a most
+worthy man, who is his friend, and who, by marrying you, would have
+fixed you close to us. He wishes it still, and so do I."
+
+"But he thinks that I have been--have been mopish, and
+lack-a-daisical, and--and--almost untrue. I can hear it in the tone
+of his voice, and see it in his eye. I can tell it from the way he
+shakes hands with me in the morning. He is such a true man that I
+know in a moment what he means at all times. I am going away under
+his displeasure, and I wish I had never come."
+
+"Return as Mrs. Gilmore, and all his displeasure will disappear."
+
+"Yes, because he would forgive me. He would say to himself that, as
+I had repented, I might be taken back to his grace; but as things are
+at present he condemns me. And so do you."
+
+"If you ask me, Mary, I must tell the truth. I don't think you know
+your own mind."
+
+"Suppose I don't, is that disgraceful?"
+
+"But there comes a time when a girl should know her own mind. You are
+giving this poor fellow an enormous deal of unnecessary trouble."
+
+"I have known my own mind so far as to tell him that I could not
+marry him."
+
+"As far as I understand, Mary, you have always told him to wait a
+little longer."
+
+"I have never asked him to wait, Janet;--never. It is he who says
+that he will wait; and what can I answer when he says so? All the
+same I don't mean to defend myself. I do believe that I have been
+wrong, and I wish that I had never come here. It sounds ungrateful,
+but I do. It is so dreadful to feel that I have incurred the
+displeasure of people that I love so dearly."
+
+"There is no displeasure, Mary; the word is a good deal too strong.
+I wonder what you'll think of all this when the parson and his wife
+come up on future Sundays to dine with the Squire and his lady. I
+have long since made up my mind that when afternoon service is over,
+we ought to go up and be made much of at the Privets; and you're
+putting all this off till I'm an old woman--for a chimera. It's about
+our Sunday dinners that I'm angry. Flo, my darling, what a face you
+have got. Do come and sit still for a few minutes, or you'll be in a
+fever." While Mrs. Fenwick was wiping her girl's brow, and smoothing
+her ringlets, Mary walked off to the orchard by herself. There was a
+broad green path which made the circuit of it, and she took the round
+twice, pausing at the bottom to look at the spot from which she had
+tumbled into the river. What a trouble she had been to them all! She
+was thoroughly dissatisfied with herself; especially so because she
+had fallen into those very difficulties which from early years she
+had resolved that she would avoid. She had made up her mind that she
+would not flirt, that she would never give a right to any man--or to
+any woman--to call her a coquette; that if love and a husband came
+in her way she would take them thankfully, and that if they did not,
+she would go on her path quietly, if possible, feeling no uneasiness,
+and certainly showing none, because the joys of a married life did
+not belong to her. But now she had gotten herself into a mess, and
+she could not tell herself that it was not her own fault. Then she
+resolved again that in future she would go right. It could not but
+be that a woman could keep herself from floundering in these messes
+of half-courtship,--of courtship on one side, and doubt on the
+other,--if she would persistently adhere to some safe rule. Her
+rejection of Mr. Gilmore ought to have been unhesitating and certain
+from the first. She was sure of that now. She had been guilty of
+an absurdity in supposing that because the man had been in earnest,
+therefore she had been justified in keeping him in suspense, for his
+own sake. She had been guilty of an absurdity, and also of great
+self-conceit. She could do nothing now but wait till she should hear
+from him,--and then answer him steadily. After what had passed she
+could not go to him and declare that it was all over. He was coming
+to-night, and she was nearly sure that he would not say a word to her
+on the subject. If he did,--if he renewed his offer,--then she would
+speak out. It was hardly possible that he should do so, and therefore
+the trouble which she had created must remain.
+
+As she thus resolved, she was leaning over the gate looking into the
+churchyard, not much observing the graves or the monuments or the
+beautiful old ivy-covered tower, or thinking of the dead that were
+lying there, or of the living who prayed there; but swearing to
+herself that for the rest of her life she would keep clear of, what
+she called, girlish messes. Like other young ladies she had read much
+poetry and many novels; but her sympathies had never been with young
+ladies who could not go straight through with their love affairs,
+from the beginning to the end, without flirtation of either an inward
+or an outward nature. Of all her heroines, Rosalind was the one she
+liked the best, because from the first moment of her passion she knew
+herself and what she was about, and loved her lover right heartily.
+Of all girls in prose or poetry she declared that Rosalind was
+the least of a flirt. She meant to have the man, and never had a
+doubt about it. But with such a one as Flora MacIvor she had no
+patience;--a girl who did and who didn't, who would and who wouldn't,
+who could and who couldn't, and who of all flirts was to her the most
+nauseous! As she was taking herself to task, accusing herself of
+being a Flora without the poetry and romance to excuse her, Mr.
+Fenwick came round from Farmer Trumbull's side of the church, and got
+over the stile into the churchyard.
+
+
+[Illustration: Mr. Fenwick came round from Farmer Trumbull's
+side of the church, and got over the stile into the churchyard.]
+
+
+"What, Mary, is that you gazing in so intently among your brethren
+that were?"
+
+"I was not thinking of them," she said, with a smile. "My mind was
+intent on some of my brethren that are." Then there came a thought
+across her, and she made a sudden decision. "Mr. Fenwick," she said,
+"would you mind walking up and down the churchyard with me once or
+twice? I have something to say to you, and I can say it now so well."
+He opened the gate for her, and she joined him. "I want to beg your
+pardon, and to get you to forgive me. I know you have been angry with
+me."
+
+"Hardly angry,--but vexed. As you ask me so frankly and prettily, I
+will forgive you. There is my hand upon it. All evil thoughts against
+you shall go out of my head. I shall still have my wishes, but I will
+not be cross with you."
+
+"You are so good, and so clearly honest. I declare I think Janet the
+happiest woman that I ever heard of."
+
+"Come, come; I didn't bargain for this kind of thing when I allowed
+myself to be brought in here."
+
+"But it is so. I did not stop you for that, however, but to
+acknowledge that I have been wrong, and to ask you to pardon me."
+
+"I will. I do. If there has been anything amiss, it shall not be
+looked on again as amiss. But there has been only one thing amiss."
+
+"And, Mr. Fenwick, will you do this for me? Will you tell him that I
+was foolish to say that he might wait? Why should he wait? Of course
+he should not wait. When I am gone, tell him so, and beg him to make
+an end of it. I had not thought of it properly, or I would not have
+allowed him to be tormented."
+
+There was a pause after this, during which they walked half the
+length of the path in silence. "No, Mary," he said, after a while; "I
+will not tell him that."
+
+"Why not, Mr. Fenwick?"
+
+"Because it will not be for his good, or for mine, or for Janet's,
+or, as I believe, for yours."
+
+"Indeed, it will, for the good of us all."
+
+"I think, Mary, you do not quite understand. There is not one among
+us who does not wish that you should come here and be one of us;
+a real, right down Bullompton 'ooman, as they say in the village.
+I want you to be my wife's dearest friend, and my own nearest
+neighbour. There is no man in the world whom I love as I do Harry
+Gilmore, and I want you to be his wife. I have said to myself and
+to Janet a score of times that you certainly would be so sooner or
+later. My wrath has not come from your bidding him to wait, but from
+your coldness in not taking him without waiting. You should remember
+that we grow gray very quickly, Mary."
+
+Here was the old story again,--the old story as she had heard it from
+Harry Gilmore, but told as she had never expected to hear it from
+the lips of Frank Fenwick. It amounted to this; that even he, Frank
+Fenwick, bade her wait and try. But she had formed her resolution,
+and she was not going to be turned aside, even by Frank Fenwick; "I
+had thought that you would help me," she said, very slowly.
+
+"So I will, with all my heart, towards the keys of the store closets
+of the Privets, but not a step the other way. It has to be, Mary. He
+is too much in earnest, and too good, and too fit for the place to
+which he aspires, to miss his object. Come, we'll go in. Mind, you
+and I are one again, let it go how it may. I will own that I have
+been vexed for the last two days,--have been in a humour unbecoming
+your departure to-morrow. I throw all that behind me. You and I are
+dear friends,--are we not?"
+
+"I do hope so, Mr. Fenwick?"
+
+"There shall be no feather moulted between us. But as to operating
+between you and Harry, with the view of keeping you apart, I decline
+the commission. It is my assured belief that sooner or later he will
+be your husband. Now we will go up to Janet, who will begin to think
+herself a Penelope, if we desert her much longer."
+
+Immediately after this Mary went up to dress for dinner. Should she
+make up her mind to give way, and put on the blue ribbons which he
+loved so well? She thought that she could tell him at once, if she
+made up her mind in that direction. It would not, perhaps, be very
+maidenly, but anything would be better than suspense,--than torment
+to him. Then she took out her blue ribbons, and tried to go through
+that ceremony of telling him. It was quite impossible. Were she to do
+so, she would know no happiness again in this world, or probably in
+the other. To do the thing, it would be necessary that she should lie
+to him.
+
+She came down in a simple white dress, without any ribbons, in
+just the dress which she would have worn had Mr. Gilmore not been
+coming. At dinner they were very merry. The word of command had gone
+forth from Frank that Mary was to be forgiven, and Janet of course
+obeyed. The usual courtesies of society demand that there shall be
+civility--almost flattering civility--from host to guest, and from
+guest to host; and yet how often does it occur that in the midst
+of these courtesies there is something that tells of hatred, of
+ridicule, or of scorn! How often does it happen that the guest knows
+that he is disliked, or the host knows that he is a bore! In the last
+two days Mary had felt that she was not cordially a welcome guest.
+She had felt also that the reason was one against which she could not
+contend. Now all that, at least, was over. Frank Fenwick's manner had
+never been pleasanter to her than it was on this occasion, and Janet
+followed the suit which her lord led.
+
+They were again on the lawn between eight and nine o'clock when Harry
+Gilmore came up to them. He was gracious enough in his salutation to
+Mary Lowther, but no indifferent person would have thought that he
+was her lover. He talked chiefly to Fenwick, and when they went in to
+tea did not take a place on the sofa beside Mary. But after a while
+he said something which told them all of his love.
+
+"What do you think I've been doing to-day, Frank?"
+
+"Getting your wheat down, I should hope."
+
+"We begin that to-morrow. I never like to be quite the earliest at
+that work, or yet the latest."
+
+"Better be a day too early than a day too late, Harry."
+
+"Never mind about that. I've been down with old Brattle."
+
+"And what have you been doing with him?"
+
+"I'm half ashamed, and yet I fancy I'm right."
+
+As he said this he looked across to Mary Lowther, who no doubt was
+watching every turn of his face from the corner of her eye. "I've
+just been and knocked under, and told him that the old place shall be
+put to rights."
+
+"That's your doing, Mary," said Mrs. Fenwick, injudiciously.
+
+"Oh, no; I'm sure it is not. Mr. Gilmore would only do such a thing
+as that because it is proper."
+
+"I don't know about it's being proper," said he. "I'm not quite sure
+whether it is or not. I shall never get any interest for my money."
+
+"Interest for one's money is not everything," said Mrs. Fenwick.
+
+"Nevertheless, when one builds houses for other people to live in,
+one has to look to it," said the parson.
+
+"People say it's the prettiest spot in the parish," continued Mr.
+Gilmore, "and as such it shouldn't be let go to ruin." Janet remarked
+afterwards to her husband that Mary Lowther had certainly declared
+that it was the prettiest spot in the parish, but that, as far as
+her knowledge went, nobody else had ever said so. "And then, you see,
+when I refused to spend money upon it, old Brattle had money of his
+own, and it was his business to do it."
+
+"He hasn't much now, I fear," said Mr. Fenwick.
+
+"I fear not. His family has been very heavy on him. He paid money
+to put two of his boys into trade who died afterwards, and then for
+years he had either doctors or undertakers about the place. So I just
+went down to him and told him I would do it."
+
+"And how did he take it?"
+
+"Like a bear, as he is. He would hardly speak to me, but went away
+into the mill, telling me that I might settle it all with his wife.
+It's going to be done, however. I shall have the estimate next week,
+and I suppose it will cost me two or three hundred pounds. The mill
+is worse than the house, I take it."
+
+"I am so glad it is to be done," said Mary. After that Mr. Gilmore
+did not in the least begrudge his two or three hundred pounds. But he
+said not a word to Mary, just pressed her hand at parting, and left
+her subject to a possibility of a reversal of her sentence at the end
+of the stated period.
+
+On the next morning Mr. Fenwick drove her in his little open phaeton
+to the station at Westbury. "You are to come back to us, you know,"
+said Mrs. Fenwick, "and remember how anxiously I am waiting for my
+Sunday dinners." Mary said not a word, but as she was driven round
+in front of the church she looked up at the dear old tower, telling
+herself that, in all probability, she would never see it again.
+
+"I have just one thing to say, Mary," said the parson, as he walked
+up and down the platform with her at Westbury; "you are to remember
+that, whatever happens, there is always a home for you at Bullhampton
+when you choose to come to it. I am not speaking of the Privets now,
+but of the Vicarage."
+
+"How very good you are to me!"
+
+"And so are you to us. Dear friends should be good to each other.
+God bless you, dear." From thence she made her way home to Loring by
+herself.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+MISS MARRABLE.
+
+
+Whatever may be the fact as to the rank and proper calling of
+Bullhampton, there can be no doubt that Loring is a town. There is a
+market-place, and a High Street, and a Board of Health, and a Paragon
+Crescent, and a Town Hall, and two different parish churches, one
+called St. Peter Lowtown, and the other St. Botolph's Uphill, and
+there are Uphill Street, and Lowtown Street, and various other
+streets. I never heard of a mayor of Loring, but, nevertheless, there
+is no doubt as to its being a town. Nor did it ever return members
+to Parliament; but there was once, in one of the numerous bills that
+have been proposed, an idea of grouping it with Cirencester and
+Lechlade. All the world of course knows that this was never done; but
+the transient rumour of it gave the Loringites an improved position,
+and justified that little joke about a live dog being better than a
+dead lion, with which the parson at Bullhampton regaled Miss Lowther
+at the time.
+
+All the fashion of Loring dwelt, as a matter of course, at Uphill.
+Lowtown was vulgar, dirty, devoted to commercial and manufacturing
+purposes, and hardly owned a single genteel private house. There was
+the parsonage, indeed, which stood apart from its neighbours, inside
+great tall slate-coloured gates, and which had a garden of its own.
+But except the clergyman, who had no choice in the matter, nobody
+who was anybody lived at Lowtown. There were three or four factories
+there,--in and out of which troops of girls would be seen passing
+twice a day, in their ragged, soiled, dirty mill dresses, all of
+whom would come out on Sunday dressed with a magnificence that
+would lead one to suppose that trade at Loring was doing very well.
+Whether trade did well or ill, whether wages were high or low,
+whether provisions were cheap in price, whether there were peace
+or war between capital and labour, still there was the Sunday
+magnificence. What a blessed thing it is for women,--and for men too
+certainly,--that there should be a positive happiness to the female
+sex in the possession, and in exhibiting the possession, of bright
+clothing! It is almost as good for the softening of manners, and the
+not permitting of them to be ferocious, as is the faithful study of
+the polite arts. At Loring the manners of the mill hands, as they
+were called, were upon the whole good,--which I believe was in a
+great degree to be attributed to their Sunday magnificence.
+
+The real West-end of Loring was understood by all men to lie in
+Paragon Crescent, at the back of St. Botolph's Church. The whole of
+this Crescent was built, now some twenty years ago, by Mrs. Fenwick's
+father, who had been clever enough to see that as mills were made to
+grow in the low town, houses for wealthy people to live in ought to
+be made to grow in the high town. He therefore built the Paragon,
+and a certain small row of very pretty houses near the end of the
+Paragon, called Balfour Place,--and had done very well, and had made
+money; and now lay asleep in the vaults below St. Botolph's Church.
+No inconsiderable proportion of the comfort of Bullhampton parsonage
+is due to Mr. Balfour's success in that achievement of Paragon
+Crescent. There were none of the family left at Loring. The widow had
+gone away to live at Torquay with a sister, and the only other child,
+another daughter, was married to that distinguished barrister on the
+Oxford circuit, Mr. Quickenham. Mr. Quickenham and our friend the
+parson were very good friends; but they did not see a great deal of
+each other, Mr. Fenwick not going up very often to London, and Mr.
+Quickenham being unable to use the Vicarage of Bullhampton when on
+his own circuit. As for the two sisters, they had very strong ideas
+about their husbands' professions; Sophia Quickenham never hesitating
+to declare that one was life, and the other stagnation; and Janet
+Fenwick protesting that the difference to her seemed to be almost
+that between good and evil. They wrote to each other perhaps once a
+quarter. But the Balfour family was in truth broken up.
+
+Miss Marrable, Mary Lowther's aunt, lived, of course, at Uphill; but
+not in the Crescent, nor yet in Balfour Place. She was an old lady
+with very modest means, whose brother had been rector down at St.
+Peter's, and she had passed the greatest part of her life within
+those slate-coloured gates. When he died, and when she, almost
+exactly at the same time, found that it would be expedient that she
+should take charge of her niece, Mary, she removed herself up to a
+small house in Botolph Lane, in which she could live decently on her
+£300 a year. It must not be surmised that Botolph Lane was a squalid
+place, vile, or dirty, or even unfashionable. It was narrow and old,
+having been inhabited by decent people long before the Crescent, or
+even Mr. Balfour himself, had been in existence; but it was narrow
+and old, and the rents were cheap, and here Miss Marrable was able
+to live, and occasionally to give tea-parties, and to provide a
+comfortable home for her niece, within the limits of her income. Miss
+Marrable was herself a lady of very good family, the late Sir Gregory
+Marrable having been her uncle; but her only sister had married a
+Captain Lowther, whose mother had been first cousin to the Earl of
+Periwinkle; and therefore on her own account, as well as on that of
+her niece, Miss Marrable thought a good deal about blood. She was
+one of those ladies,--now few in number,--who within their heart
+of hearts conceive that money gives no title to social distinction,
+let the amount of money be ever so great, and its source ever so
+stainless. Rank to her was a thing quite assured and ascertained,
+and she had no more doubt as to her own right to pass out of a
+room before the wife of a millionaire than she had of the right of
+a millionaire to spend his own guineas. She always addressed an
+attorney by letter as Mister, raising up her eyebrows when appealed
+to on the matter, and explaining that an attorney is not an esquire.
+She had an idea that the son of a gentleman, if he intended to
+maintain his rank as a gentleman, should earn his income as a
+clergyman, or as a barrister, or as a soldier, or as a sailor. Those
+were the professions intended for gentlemen. She would not absolutely
+say that a physician was not a gentleman, or even a surgeon; but she
+would never allow to physic the same absolute privileges which, in
+her eyes, belonged to law and the church. There might also possibly
+be a doubt about the Civil Service and Civil Engineering; but she had
+no doubt whatever that when a man touched trade or commerce in any
+way he was doing that which was not the work of a gentleman. He might
+be very respectable, and it might be very necessary that he should do
+it; but brewers, bankers, and merchants, were not gentlemen, and the
+world, according to Miss Marrable's theory, was going astray, because
+people were forgetting their landmarks.
+
+As to Miss Marrable herself nobody could doubt that she was a lady;
+she looked it in every inch. There were not, indeed, many inches of
+her, for she was one of the smallest, daintiest, little old women
+that ever were seen. But now, at seventy, she was very pretty, quite
+a woman to look at with pleasure. Her feet and hands were exquisitely
+made, and she was very proud of them. She wore her own grey hair of
+which she showed very little, but that little was always exquisitely
+nice. Her caps were the perfection of caps. Her green eyes were
+bright and sharp, and seemed to say that she knew very well how
+to take care of herself. Her mouth, and nose, and chin, were all
+well-formed, small, shapely, and concise, not straggling about her
+face as do the mouths, noses, and chins of some old ladies--ay, and
+of some young ladies also. Had it not been that she had lost her
+teeth, she would hardly have looked to be an old woman. Her health
+was perfect. She herself would say that she had never yet known a
+day's illness. She dressed with the greatest care, always wearing
+silk at and after luncheon. She dressed three times a day, and in the
+morning would come down in what she called a merino gown. But then,
+with her, clothes never seemed to wear out. Her motions were so
+slight and delicate, that the gloss of her dresses would remain on
+them when the gowns of other women would almost have been worn to
+rags. She was never seen of an afternoon or evening without gloves,
+and her gloves were always clean and apparently new. She went to
+church once on Sundays in winter, and twice in summer, and she had a
+certain very short period of each day devoted to Bible reading; but
+at Loring she was not reckoned to be among the religious people.
+Indeed, there were those who said that she was very worldly-minded,
+and that at her time of life she ought to devote herself to other
+books than those which were daily in her hands. Pope, Dryden, Swift,
+Cowley, Fielding, Richardson, and Goldsmith, were her authors. She
+read the new novels as they came out, but always with critical
+comparisons that were hostile to them. Fielding, she said, described
+life as it was; whereas Dickens had manufactured a kind of life that
+never had existed, and never could exist. The pathos of Esmond was
+very well, but Lady Castlemaine was nothing to Clarissa Harlowe. As
+for poetry, Tennyson, she said, was all sugar-candy; he had neither
+the common sense, nor the wit, nor, as she declared, to her ear the
+melody of Pope. All the poets of the present century, she declared,
+if put together, could not have written the Rape of the Lock. Pretty
+as she was, and small, and nice, and lady-like, I think she liked
+her literature rather strong. It is certain that she had Smollett's
+novels in a cupboard up-stairs, and it was said that she had been
+found reading one of Wycherley's plays.
+
+The strongest point in her character was her contempt of money. Not
+that she had any objection to it, or would at all have turned up
+her nose at another hundred a year had anybody left to her such
+an accession of income; but that in real truth she never measured
+herself by what she possessed, or others by what they possessed. She
+was as grand a lady to herself, eating her little bit of cold mutton,
+or dining off a tiny sole, as though she sat at the finest banquet
+that could be spread. She had no fear of economies, either before her
+two handmaids or anybody else in the world. She was fond of her tea,
+and in summer could have cream for twopence; but when cream became
+dear, she saved money and had a pen'north of milk. She drank two
+glasses of Marsala every day, and let it be clearly understood that
+she couldn't afford sherry. But when she gave a tea-party, as she
+did, perhaps, six or seven times a year, sherry was always handed
+round with cake before the people went away. There were matters in
+which she was extravagant. When she went out herself she never took
+one of the common street flies, but paid eighteen pence extra to get
+a brougham from the Dragon. And when Mary Lowther,--who had only
+fifty pounds a year of her own, with which she clothed herself and
+provided herself with pocket-money,--was going to Bullhampton, Miss
+Marrable actually proposed to her to take one of the maids with her.
+Mary, of course, would not hear of it, and said that she should just
+as soon think of taking the house; but Miss Marrable had thought
+that it would, perhaps, not be well for a girl so well-born as Miss
+Lowther to go out visiting without a maid. She herself very rarely
+left Loring, because she could not afford it; but when, two summers
+back, she did go to Weston-super-Mare for a fortnight, she took one
+of the girls with her.
+
+Miss Marrable had heard a great deal about Mr. Gilmore. Mary, indeed,
+was not inclined to keep secrets from her aunt, and her very long
+absence,--so much longer than had at first been intended,--could
+hardly have been sanctioned unless some reason had been given. There
+had been many letters on the subject, not only between Mary and her
+aunt, but between Mrs. Fenwick and her very old friend Miss Marrable.
+Of course these latter letters had spoken loudly the praises of
+Mr. Gilmore, and Miss Marrable had become quite one of the Gilmore
+faction. She desired that her niece should marry; but that she should
+marry a gentleman. She would have infinitely preferred to see Mary
+an old maid, than to hear that she was going to give herself to any
+suitor contaminated by trade. Now Mr. Gilmore's position was exactly
+that which Miss Marrable regarded as being the best in England.
+He was a country gentleman, living on his own acres, a justice of
+the peace, whose father and grandfather and great-grandfather had
+occupied exactly the same position. Such a marriage for Mary would be
+quite safe; and in those days one did hear so often of girls making,
+she would not say improper marriages, but marriages which in her
+eyes were not fitting! Mr. Gilmore, she thought, exactly filled that
+position which entitled a gentleman to propose marriage to such a
+lady as Mary Lowther.
+
+"Yes, my dear, I am glad to have you back again. Of course I have
+been a little lonely, but I bear that kind of thing better than most
+people. Thank God, my eyes are good."
+
+"You are looking so well, Aunt Sarah!"
+
+"I am well. I don't know how other women get so much amiss; but God
+has been very good to me."
+
+"And so pretty," said Mary, kissing her.
+
+"My dear, it's a pity you're not a young gentleman."
+
+"You are so fresh and nice, aunt. I wish I could always look as you
+do."
+
+"What would Mr. Gilmore say?"
+
+"Oh, Mr. Gilmore, Mr. Gilmore, Mr. Gilmore! I am so weary of Mr.
+Gilmore."
+
+"Weary of him, Mary?"
+
+"Weary of myself because of him--that is what I mean. He has behaved
+always well, and I am not at all sure that I have. And he is a
+perfect gentleman. But I shall never be Mrs. Gilmore, Aunt Sarah."
+
+"Janet says that she thinks you will."
+
+"Janet is mistaken. But, dear aunt, don't let us talk about it at
+once. Of course you shall hear everything in time, but I have had so
+much of it. Let us see what new books there are. Cast Iron! You don't
+mean to say you have come to that?"
+
+"I shan't read it."
+
+"But I will, aunt. So it must not go back for a day or two. I do love
+the Fenwicks, dearly, dearly, both of them. They are almost, if not
+quite, perfect. And yet I am glad to be at home."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+CRUNCH'EM CAN'T BE HAD.
+
+
+Mr. Fenwick had intended to have come home round by Market Lavington,
+after having deposited Miss Lowther at the Westbury Station, with
+the view of making some inquiry respecting the gentleman with the
+hurt shoulder; but he had found the distance to be too great, and
+had abandoned the idea. After that there was not a day to spare till
+the middle of the next week; so that it was nearly a fortnight after
+the little scene at the corner of the Vicarage garden wall before he
+called upon the Lavington constable and the Lavington doctor. From
+the latter he could learn nothing. No such patient had been to him.
+But the constable, though he had not seen the two men, had heard
+of them. One was a man who in former days had frequented Lavington,
+Burrows by name, generally known as Jack the Grinder, who had been
+in every prison in Wiltshire and Somersetshire, but who had not,--so
+said the constable,--honoured Lavington for the last two years, till
+this his last appearance. He had, however, been seen there in company
+with another man, and had evidently been in a condition very unfit
+for work. He had slept one night at a low public-house, and had then
+moved on. The man had complained of a fall from the cart, and had
+declared that he was black and blue all over; but it seemed to be
+clear that he had no broken bones. Mr. Fenwick therefore was all but
+convinced that Jack the Grinder was the gentleman with whom he had
+had the encounter, and that the grinder's back had withstood that
+swinging blow from the life-preserver. Of the Grinder's companions
+nothing could be learned. The two men had taken the Devizes road
+out of Lavington, and beyond that nothing was known of them. When
+the parson mentioned Sam Brattle's name in a whisper, the Lavington
+constable shook his head. He knew all about old Jacob Brattle. A very
+respectable party was old Mr. Brattle in the constable's opinion.
+Nevertheless the constable shook his head when Sam Brattle's name was
+mentioned. Having learned so much, the parson rode home.
+
+Two days after this, on a Friday, Fenwick was sitting after breakfast
+in his study, at work on his sermon for next Sunday, when he was told
+that old Mrs. Brattle was waiting to see him. He immediately got up,
+and found his own wife and the miller's seated in the hall. It was
+not often that Mrs. Brattle made her way to the Vicarage, but when
+she did so she was treated with great consideration. It was still
+August, and the weather was very hot, and she had walked up across
+the water mead, and was tired. A glass of wine and a biscuit were
+pressed upon her, and she was encouraged to sit and say a few
+indifferent words, before she was taken into the study and told to
+commence the story which had brought her so far. And there was a
+most inviting topic for conversation. The mill and the mill premises
+were to be put in order by the landlord. Mrs. Brattle affected to
+be rather dismayed than otherwise by the coming operations. The
+mill would have lasted their time, she thought, "and as for them as
+were to come after them,--well! she didn't know. As things was now,
+perhaps, it might be that after all Sam would have the mill." But the
+trouble occasioned by the workmen would be infinite. How were they to
+live in the mean time, and where were they to go? It soon appeared,
+however, that all this had been already arranged. Milling must of
+course be stopped for a month or six weeks. "Indeed, sir, feyther
+says that there won't be no more grinding much before winter."
+But the mill was to be repaired first, and then, when it became
+absolutely necessary to dismantle the house, they were to endeavour
+to make shift, and live in the big room of the mill itself, till
+their furniture should be put back again. Mrs. Fenwick, with ready
+good nature, offered to accommodate Mrs. Brattle and Fanny at the
+Vicarage; but the old woman declined with many protestations of
+gratitude. She had never left her old man yet, and would not do so
+now. The weather would be mild for awhile, and she thought that they
+could get through. By this time the glass of wine had been sipped
+to the bottom, and the parson, mindful of his sermon, had led the
+visitor into his study. She had come to tell that Sam at last had
+returned home.
+
+"Why didn't you bring him up with you, Mrs. Brattle?" Here was a
+question to ask of an old lady, whose dominion over her son was
+absolutely none! Sam had become so frightfully independent that he
+hardly regarded the word of his father, who was a man pre-eminently
+capable of maintaining authority, and would no more do a thing
+because his mother told him than because the wind whistled.
+
+"I axed him to come up, not just with me, but of hisself, Mr.
+Fenwick; but he said as how you would know where to find him if you
+wanted him."
+
+"That's just what I don't know. However, if he's there now I'll go to
+him. It would have been better far that he should have come to me."
+
+"I told 'un so, Mr. Fenwick, I did, indeed."
+
+"It does not signify. I will go to him; only it cannot be to-day, as
+I have promised to take my wife over to Charlicoats. But I'll come
+down immediately after breakfast to-morrow. You think he'll be still
+there?"
+
+"I be sure he will, Mr. Fenwick. He and feyther have taken on again,
+till it's beautiful to see. There was none of 'em feyther ever loved
+like he,--only one." Thereupon the poor woman burst out into tears,
+and covered her face with her handkerchief. "He never makes half so
+much account of my Fan, that never had a fault belonging to her."
+
+"If Sam will stick to that it will be well for him."
+
+"He's taken up extraordinary with the repairs, Mr. Fenwick. He's in
+and about and over the place, looking to everything; and feyther says
+he knows so much about it, he b'lieves the boy could do it all out o'
+his own head. There's nothing feyther ever liked so much as folks to
+be strong and clever."
+
+"Perhaps the Squire's tradesmen won't like all that. Is Mitchell
+going to do it?"
+
+"It ain't a doing in that way, Mr. Fenwick. The Squire is allowing
+£200, and feyther is to get it done. Mister Mitchell is to see that
+it's done proper, no doubt."
+
+"And now tell me, Mrs. Brattle, what has Sam been about all the time
+that he was away?"
+
+"That's just what I cannot tell you, Mr. Fenwick."
+
+"Your husband has asked him, I suppose?"
+
+"If he has, he ain't told me, Mr. Fenwick. I don't care to come
+between them with hints and jealousies, suspecting like. Our Fan says
+he's been out working somewhere Lavington way; but I don't know as
+she knows."
+
+"Was he decent looking when he came home?"
+
+"He wasn't much amiss, Mr. Fenwick. He has that way with him that he
+most always looks decent;--don't he, sir?"
+
+"Had he any money?"
+
+"He had a some'at, because when he was working, moving the big lumber
+as though for bare life, he sent one of the boys for beer, and I
+see'd him give the boy the money."
+
+"I'm sorry for it. I wish he'd come back without a penny, and with
+hunger like a wolf in his stomach, and with his clothes all rags,
+so that he might have had a taste of the suffering of a vagabond's
+life."
+
+"Just like the Prodigal Son, Mr. Fenwick?"
+
+"Just like the Prodigal Son. He would not have come back to his
+father had he not been driven by his own vices to live with the
+swine." Then, seeing the tears coming down the poor mother's cheeks,
+he added in a kinder voice, "Perhaps it may be all well as it is. We
+will hope so at least, and to-morrow I will come down and see him.
+You need not tell him that I am coming, unless he should ask where
+you have been." Then Mrs. Brattle took her leave, and the parson
+finished his sermon.
+
+That afternoon he drove his wife across the county to visit certain
+friends at Charlicoats, and, both going and coming, could not keep
+himself from talking about the Brattles. In the first place, he
+thought that Gilmore was wrong not to complete the work himself.
+
+"Of course he'll see that the money is spent and all that, and no
+doubt in this way he may get the job done twenty or thirty pounds
+cheaper; but the Brattles have not interest enough in the place to
+justify it."
+
+"I suppose the old man liked it best so."
+
+"The old man shouldn't have been allowed to have his way. I am in an
+awful state of alarm about Sam. Much as I like him,--or at any rate
+did like him,--I fear he is going, or perhaps has gone, to the dogs.
+That those two men were housebreakers is as certain as that you sit
+there; and I cannot doubt but that he has been with them over at
+Lavington or Devizes, or somewhere in that country."
+
+"But he may, perhaps, never have joined them in anything of that
+kind."
+
+"A man is known by his companions. I would not have believed it if
+I had not found him with the men, and traced him and them about the
+county together. You see that this fellow whom they call the Grinder
+was certainly the man I struck. I tracked him to Lavington, and there
+he was complaining of being sore all over his body. I don't wonder
+that he was sore. He must be made like a horse to be no worse than
+sore. Well, then, that man and Sam were certainly in our garden
+together."
+
+"Give him a chance, Frank."
+
+"Of course, I will give him a chance. I will give him the very best
+chance I can. I would do anything to save him,--but I can't help
+knowing what I know."
+
+He had made very little to his wife of the danger of the Vicarage
+being robbed, but he could not but feel that there was danger.
+His wife had brought with her, among other plenishing for their
+household, a considerable amount of handsome plate, more than is,
+perhaps, generally to be found in country parsonages, and no doubt
+this fact was known, at any rate, to Sam Brattle. Had the men simply
+intended to rob the garden, they would not have run the risk of
+coming so near to the house windows. But then it certainly was true
+that Sam was not showing them the way. The parson did not quite know
+what to think about it, but it was clearly his duty to be on his
+guard.
+
+That same evening he sauntered across the corner of the churchyard
+to his neighbour the farmer. Looking out warily for Bone'm, he stood
+leaning upon the farm gate. Bone'm was not to be seen or heard, and
+therefore he entered, and walked up to the back door, which indeed
+was the only door for entrance or egress that was ever used. There
+was a front door opening into a little ragged garden, but this was as
+much a fixture as the wall. As he was knocking at the back door, it
+was opened by the farmer himself. Mr. Fenwick had called to inquire
+whether his friend had secured for him,--as half promised,--the
+possession of a certain brother of Bone'm's, who was supposed to be
+of a very pugnacious disposition in the silent watches of the night.
+
+"It's no go, parson."
+
+"Why not, Mr. Trumbull?"
+
+"The truth is, there be such a deal of talk o' thieves about the
+country, that no one likes to part with such a friend as that. Muster
+Crickly, over at Imber, he have another big dog it's true, a reg'lar
+mastiff, but he do say that Crunch'em be better than the mastiff, and
+he won't let 'un go, parson,--not for love nor money. I wouldn't let
+Bone'm go, I know; not for nothing." Then Mr. Fenwick walked back to
+the Vicarage, and was half induced to think that as Crunch'em was not
+to be had, it would be his duty to sit up at night, and look after
+the plate box himself.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+DON'T YOU BE AFEARD ABOUT ME.
+
+
+On the following morning Mr. Fenwick walked down to the mill. There
+was a path all along the river, and this was the way he took. He
+passed different points as he went, and he thought of the trout he
+had caught there, or had wished to catch, and he thought also how
+often Sam Brattle had been with him as he had stood there delicately
+throwing his fly. In those days Sam had been very fond of him, had
+thought it to be a great thing to be allowed to fish with the parson,
+and had been reasonably obedient. Now Sam would not even come up to
+the Vicarage when he was asked to do so. For more than a year after
+the close of those amicable relations the parson had behaved with
+kindness and almost with affection to the lad. He had interceded with
+the Squire when Sam was accused of poaching,--had interceded with
+the old miller when Sam had given offence at home,--and had even
+interceded with the constable when there was a rumour in the wind
+of offences something worse than these. Then had come the occasion
+on which Mr. Fenwick had told the father that unless the son would
+change his course evil would come of it; and both father and son had
+taken this amiss. The father had told the parson to his face that he,
+the parson, had led his son astray; and the son in his revenge had
+brought housebreakers down upon his old friend's premises.
+
+"One hasn't to do it for thanks," said Mr. Fenwick, as he became a
+little bitter while thinking of all this. "I'll stick to him as long
+as I can, if it's only for the old woman's sake,--and for the poor
+girl whom we used to love." Then he thought of a clear, sweet, young
+voice that used to be so well known in his village choir, and of the
+heavy curls, which it was a delight to him to see. It had been a
+pleasure to him to have such a girl as Carry Brattle in his church,
+and now Carry Brattle was gone utterly, and would probably never be
+seen in a church again. These Brattles had suffered much, and he
+would bear with them, let the task of doing so be ever so hard.
+
+The sound of workmen was to be already heard as he drew near to
+the mill. There were men there pulling the thatch off the building,
+and there were carts and horses bringing laths, lime, bricks, and
+timber, and taking the old rubbish away. As he crossed quickly by
+the slippery stones he saw old Jacob Brattle standing before the
+mill looking on, with his hands in his breeches pockets. He was
+too old to do much at such work as this,--work to which he was not
+accustomed--and was looking up in a sad melancholy way, as though it
+were a work of destruction, and not one of reparation.
+
+"We shall have you here as smart as possible before long, Mr.
+Brattle," said the parson.
+
+"I don't know much about smart, Muster Fenwick. The old place was
+a'most tumbling down,--but still it would have lasted out my time,
+I'm thinking. If t' Squire would 'a done it fifteen years ago, I'd
+'a thanked un; but I don't know what to say about it now, and this
+time of year and all, just when the new grist would be coming in.
+If t' Squire would 'a thought of it in June, now. But things is
+contrary--a'most allays so." After this speech, which was made in a
+low, droning voice, bit by bit, the miller took himself off and went
+into the house.
+
+At the back of the mill, perched on an old projecting beam, in the
+midst of dust and dirt, assisting with all the energy of youth in the
+demolition of the roof, Mr. Fenwick saw Sam Brattle. He perceived at
+once that Sam had seen him; but the young man immediately averted his
+eyes and went on with his work. The parson did not speak at once, but
+stepped over the ruins around him till he came immediately under the
+beam in question. Then he called to the lad, and Sam was constrained
+to answer "Yes, Mr. Fenwick, I am here;--hard at work, as you see."
+
+"I do see it, and wish you luck with your job. Spare me ten minutes,
+and come down and speak to me."
+
+"I am in such a muck now, Mr. Fenwick, that I do wish to go on with
+it, if you'll let me."
+
+But Mr. Fenwick, having taken so much trouble to get at the young
+man, was not going to be put off in this way. "Never mind your muck
+for a quarter of an hour," he said. "I have come here on purpose to
+find you, and I must speak to you."
+
+"Must!" said Sam, looking down with a very angry lower on his face.
+
+"Yes,--must. Don't be a fool now. You know that I do not wish to
+injure you. You are not such a coward as to be afraid to speak to me.
+Come down."
+
+"Afeard! Who talks of being afeard? Stop a moment, Mr. Fenwick, and
+I'll be with you;--not that I think it will do any good." Then slowly
+he crept back along the beam and came down through the interior of
+the building. "What is it, Mr. Fenwick? Here I am. I ain't a bit
+afeard of you at any rate."
+
+"Where have you been the last fortnight, Sam?"
+
+"What right have you to ask me, Mr. Fenwick?"
+
+"I have the right of old friendship, and perhaps also some right from
+my remembrance of the last place in which I saw you. What has become
+of that man, Burrows?"
+
+"What Burrows?"
+
+"Jack the Grinder, whom I hit on the back the night I made you
+prisoner. Do you think that you were doing well in being in my garden
+about midnight in company with such a fellow as that,--one of the
+most notorious jailbirds in the county? Do you know that I could have
+had you arrested and sent to prison at once?"
+
+"I know you couldn't--do nothing of the kind."
+
+"You know this, Sam,--that I've no wish to do it; that nothing would
+give me more pain than doing it. But you must feel that if we should
+hear now of any depredation about the county, we couldn't,--I at
+least could not,--help thinking of you. And I am told that there will
+be depredations, Sam. Are you concerned in these matters?"
+
+"No, I am not," said Sam, doggedly.
+
+"Are you disposed to tell me why you were in my garden, and why those
+men were with you?"
+
+"We were down in the churchyard, and the gate was open, and so we
+walked up;--that was all. If we'd meant to do anything out of the way
+we shouldn't 'a come like that, nor yet at that hour. Why, it worn't
+midnight, Mr. Fenwick."
+
+"But why was there such a man as Burrows with you? Do you think he
+was fit company for you, Sam?"
+
+"I suppose a chap may choose his own company, Mr. Fenwick?"
+
+"Yes, he may, and go to the gallows because he chooses it, as you are
+doing."
+
+"Very well; if that's all you've got to say to me, I'll go back to my
+work."
+
+"Stop one moment, Sam. That is not quite all. I caught you the other
+night where you had no business to be, and for the sake of your
+father and mother, and for old recollections, I let you go. Perhaps I
+was wrong, but I don't mean to hark back upon that again."
+
+"You are a-harking back on it, ever so often."
+
+"I shall take no further steps about it."
+
+"There ain't no steps to be taken, Mr. Fenwick."
+
+"But I see that you intend to defy me, and therefore I am bound to
+tell you that I shall keep my eye upon you."
+
+"Don't you be afeard about me, Mr. Fenwick."
+
+"And if I hear of those fellows, Burrows and the other, being about
+the place any more, I shall give the police notice that they are
+associates of yours. I don't think so badly of you yet, Sam, as to
+believe you would bring your father's grey hairs with sorrow to the
+grave by turning thief and housebreaker; but when I hear of your
+being away from home, and nobody knowing where you are, and find
+that you are living without decent employment, and prowling about at
+nights with robbers and cut-throats, I cannot but be afraid. Do you
+know that the Squire recognised you that night as well as I?"
+
+"The Squire ain't nothing to me, and if you've done with me now,
+Mr. Fenwick, I'll go back to my work." So saying, Sam Brattle again
+mounted up to the roof, and the parson returned discomfited to the
+front of the building. He had not intended to see any of the family,
+but, as he was crossing the little bridge, meaning to go home round
+by the Privets, he was stopped by Fanny Brattle.
+
+"I hope it will be all right now, Mr. Fenwick," the girl said.
+
+
+[Illustration: "I hope it will be all right now, Mr. Fenwick,"
+the girl said.]
+
+
+"I hope so too, Fanny. But you and your mother should keep an eye
+on him, so that he may know that his goings and comings are noticed.
+I dare say it will be all right as long as the excitement of these
+changes is going on; but there is nothing so bad as that he should be
+in and out of the house at nights and not feel that his absence is
+noticed. It will be better always to ask him, though he be ever so
+cross. Tell your mother I say so."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+BONE'M AND HIS MASTER.
+
+
+After leaving the mill Mr. Fenwick went up to the Squire, and, in
+contradiction, as it were, of all the hard things that he had said
+to Sam Brattle, spoke to the miller's landlord in the lad's favour.
+He was hard at work now, at any rate; and seemed inclined to stick
+to his work. And there had been an independence about him which the
+parson had half liked, even while he had been offended at it. Gilmore
+differed altogether from his friend. "What was he doing in your
+garden? What was he doing hidden in Trumbull's hedge? When I see
+fellows hiding in ditches at night, I don't suppose that they're
+after much good." Mr. Fenwick made some lame apology, even for these
+offences. Sam had, perhaps, not really known the extent of the
+iniquity of the men with whom he had associated, and had come up the
+garden probably with a view to the fruit. The matter was discussed at
+great length, and the Squire at last promised that he would give Sam
+another chance in regard to his own estimation of the young man's
+character.
+
+On that same evening,--or, rather, after the evening was over, for it
+was nearly twelve o'clock at night,--Fenwick walked round the garden
+and the orchard with his wife. There was no moon now, and the night
+was very dark. They stopped for a minute at the wicket leading into
+the churchyard, and it was evident to them that Bone'm, from the
+farmyard at the other side of the church, had heard them, for he
+commenced a low growl, with which the parson was by this time well
+acquainted.
+
+"Good dog, good dog," said the parson, in a low voice. "I wish we had
+his brother, I know."
+
+"He would only be tearing the maids and biting the children," said
+Mrs. Fenwick. "I hate having a savage beast about."
+
+"But it would be so nice to catch a burglar and crunch him. I feel
+almost bloodthirsty since I hit that fellow with the life-preserver,
+and find that I didn't kill him."
+
+"I know, Frank, you're thinking about these thieves more than you
+like to tell me."
+
+"I was thinking just then, that if they were to come and take all the
+silver it wouldn't do much harm. We should have to buy German plate,
+and nobody would know the difference."
+
+"Suppose they murdered us all?"
+
+"They never do that now. The profession is different from what it
+used to be. They only go where they know they can find a certain
+amount of spoil, and where they can get it without much danger. I
+don't think housebreakers ever cut throats in these days. They're too
+fond of their own." Then they both agreed that if these rumours of
+housebreakings were continued, they would send away the plate some
+day to be locked up in safe keeping at Salisbury. After that they
+went to bed.
+
+On the next morning, the Sunday morning, at a few minutes before
+seven, the parson was awakened by his groom at his bedroom door.
+
+"What is it, Roger?" he asked.
+
+"For the love of God, sir, get up! They've been and murdered Mr.
+Trumbull."
+
+Mrs. Fenwick, who heard the tidings, screamed; and Mr. Fenwick was
+out of bed and into his trousers in half a minute. In another half
+minute Mrs. Fenwick, clothed in her dressing-gown, was up-stairs
+among her children. No doubt she thought that as soon as the poor
+farmer had been despatched, the murderers would naturally pass on
+into her nursery. Mr. Fenwick did not believe the tidings. If a man
+be hurt in the hunting-field, it is always said that he's killed.
+If the kitchen flue be on fire, it is always said that the house is
+burned down. Something, however, had probably happened at Farmer
+Trumbull's; and down went the parson across the garden and orchard,
+and through the churchyard, as quick as his legs would carry him.
+In the farmyard he found quite a crowd of men, including the two
+constables and three or four of the leading tradesmen in the village.
+The first thing that he saw was the dead body of Bone'm, the dog. He
+was stiff and stark, and had been poisoned.
+
+"How's Mr. Trumbull?" he asked, of the nearest by-stander.
+
+"Laws, parson, ain't ye heard?" said the man. "They've knocked his
+skull open with a hammer, and he's as dead--as dead."
+
+Hearing this, the parson turned round, and made his way into the
+house. There was not a doubt about it. The farmer had been murdered
+during the night, and his money carried off. Upstairs Mr. Fenwick
+made his way to the farmer's bedroom, and there lay the body. Mr.
+Crittenden, the village doctor, was there; and a crowd of men, and
+an old woman or two. Among the women was Trumbull's sister, the wife
+of a neighbouring farmer, who, with her husband, a tenant of Mr.
+Gilmore's, had come over just before the arrival of Mr. Fenwick.
+The body had been found on the stairs, and it was quite clear that
+the farmer had fought desperately with the man or men before he had
+received the blow which despatched him.
+
+"I told 'um how it be,--I did, I did, when he would 'a all that money
+by 'um." This was the explanation given by Mr. Trumbull's sister,
+Mrs. Boddle.
+
+It seemed that Trumbull had had in his possession over a hundred
+and fifty pounds, of which the greater part was in gold, and that
+he kept this in a money-box in his bedroom. One of the two women
+who lived in his service,--he himself had been a widower without
+children,--declared that she had always known that at night he took
+the box out of his cupboard into bed with him. She had seen it there
+more than once when she had taken him up drinks when he was unwell.
+When first interrogated, she declared that she did not remember, at
+that moment, that she had ever told anybody; she thought she had
+never told anybody; at last, she would swear that she had never
+spoken a word about it to a single soul. She was supposed to be a
+good girl, had come of decent people, and was well known by Mr.
+Fenwick, of whose congregation she was one. Her name was Agnes Pope.
+The other servant was an elderly woman, who had been in the house all
+her life, but was unfortunately deaf. She had known very well about
+the money, and had always been afraid about it; had very often spoken
+to her master about it, but never a word to Agnes. She had been woken
+in the night,--that was, as it turned out, about 2 A.M.,--by the
+girl who slept with her, and who declared that she had heard a great
+noise, as of somebody tumbling,--a very great noise indeed, as though
+there were ever so many people tumbling. For a long time, for perhaps
+an hour, they had lain still, being afraid to move. Then the elder
+woman had lighted a candle, and gone down from the garret in which
+they slept. The first thing she saw was the body of her master, in
+his shirt, upon the stairs. She had then called up the only other
+human being who slept on the premises, a shepherd, who had lived for
+thirty years with Trumbull. This man had thrown open the house, and
+had gone for assistance, and had found the body of the dead dog in
+the yard.
+
+Before nine o'clock the facts, as they have been told, were known
+everywhere, and the Squire was down on the spot. The man,--or, as it
+was presumed, men,--had entered by the unaccustomed front door, which
+was so contrived as to afford the easiest possible mode of getting
+into the house; whereas, the back door, which was used by everybody,
+had been bolted and barred with all care. The men must probably have
+entered by the churchyard and the back gate of the farmyard, as that
+had been found to be unlatched, whereas the gate leading out on to
+the road had been found closed. The farmer himself had always been
+very careful to close both these gates when he let out Bone'm before
+going to bed. Poor Bone'm had been enticed to his death by a piece of
+poisoned meat, thrown to him probably some considerable time before
+the attack was made.
+
+Who were the murderers? That of course was the first question. It
+need hardly be said with how sad a heart Mr. Fenwick discussed this
+matter with the Squire. Of course inquiry must be made of the manner
+in which Sam Brattle had passed the night. Heavens! how would it be
+with that poor family if he had been concerned in such an affair as
+this! And then there came across the parson's mind a remembrance that
+Agnes Pope and Sam Brattle had been seen by him together, on more
+Sundays than one. In his anxiety, and with much imprudence, he went
+to the girl and questioned her again.
+
+"For your own sake, Agnes, tell me, are you sure you never mentioned
+about the money-box to--Sam Brattle?"
+
+The girl blushed and hesitated, and then said that she was quite sure
+she never had. She didn't think she had ever said ten words to Sam
+since she knew about the box.
+
+"But five words would be sufficient, Agnes."
+
+"Then them five words was never spoke, sir," said the girl. But still
+she blushed, and the parson thought that her manner was not in her
+favour.
+
+It was necessary that the parson should attend to his church; but the
+Squire, who was a magistrate, went down with the two constables to
+the mill. There they found Sam and his father, with Mrs. Brattle and
+Fanny. No one went to the church from the mill on that day. The news
+had reached them of the murder, and they all felt,--though no one
+of them had so said to any other,--that something might in some way
+connect them with the deed that had been done. Sam had hardly spoken
+since he had heard of Mr. Trumbull's death; though when he saw that
+his father was perfectly silent, as one struck with some sudden
+dread, he bade the old man hold up his head and fear nothing. Old
+Brattle, when so addressed, seated himself in his arm-chair, and
+there remained without a word till the magistrate with the constables
+were among them.
+
+There were not many at church, and Mr. Fenwick made the service very
+short. He could not preach the sermon which he had prepared, but said
+a few words on the terrible catastrophe which had occurred so near
+to them. This man who was now lying within only a few yards of them,
+with his brains knocked out, had been alive among them, strong and
+in good health, yesterday evening! And there had come into their
+peaceful village miscreants who had been led on from self-indulgence
+to idleness, and from idleness to theft, and from theft to murder! We
+all know the kind of words which the parson spoke, and the thrill of
+attention with which they would be heard. Here was a man who had been
+close to them, and therefore the murder came home to them all, and
+filled them with an excitement which, alas! was not probably without
+some feeling of pleasure. But the sermon, if sermon it could be
+called, was very short; and when it was over, the parson also hurried
+down to the mill.
+
+It had already been discovered that Sam Brattle had certainly been
+out during the night. He had himself denied this at first, saying,
+that though he had been the last to go to bed, he had gone to bed
+about eleven, and had not left the mill-house till late in the
+morning;--but his sister had heard him rise, and had seen his body
+through the gloom as he passed beneath the window of the room in
+which she slept. She had not heard him return, but, when she arose at
+six, had found out that he was then in the house. He manifested no
+anger against her when she gave this testimony, but acknowledged that
+he had been out, that he had wandered up to the road, and explained
+his former denial frankly,--or with well-assumed frankness,--by
+saying that he would, if possible, for his father's and mother's
+sake, have concealed the fact that he had been away,--knowing that
+his absence would give rise to suspicions which would well-nigh break
+their hearts. He had not, however,--so he said,--been any nearer
+to Bullhampton than the point of the road opposite to the lodge of
+Hampton Privets, from whence the lane turned down to the mill. What
+had he been doing down there? He had done nothing, but sat and smoked
+on a stile by the road side. Had he seen any strangers? Here he
+paused, but at last declared that he had seen none, but had heard
+the sound of wheels and of a pony's feet upon the road. The vehicle,
+whatever it was, must have passed on towards Bullhampton just before
+he reached the road. Had he followed the vehicle? No;--he had thought
+of doing so, but had not. Could he guess who was in the vehicle? By
+this time many surmises had been made aloud as to Jack the Grinder
+and his companion, and it had become generally known that the
+parson had encountered two such men in his own garden some nights
+previously. Sam, when he was pressed, said that the idea had come
+into his mind that the vehicle was the Grinder's cart. He had no
+knowledge, he said, that the man was coming to Bullhampton on that
+night;--but the man had said in his hearing, that he would like to
+strip the parson's peaches. He was asked also about Farmer Trumbull's
+money. He declared that he had never heard that the farmer kept money
+in the house. He did know that the farmer was accounted to be a very
+saving man,--but that was all that he knew. He was as much surprised,
+he said, as any of them at what had occurred. Had the men turned the
+other way and robbed the parson he would have been less surprised. He
+acknowledged that he had called the parson a turn-coat and a meddling
+tell-tale, in the presence of these men.
+
+All this ended of course in Sam's arrest. He had himself seen from
+the first that it would be so, and had bade his mother take comfort
+and hold up her head. "It won't be for long, mother. I ain't got any
+of the money, and they can't bring it nigh me." He was taken away
+to be locked up at Heytesbury that night, in order that he might be
+brought before the bench of magistrates which would sit at that place
+on Tuesday. Squire Gilmore for the present committed him.
+
+The parson remained for some time with the old man and his wife after
+Sam was gone, but he soon found that he could be of no service by
+doing so. The miller himself would not speak, and Mrs. Brattle was
+utterly prostrated by her husband's misery.
+
+"I do not know what to say about it," said Mr. Fenwick to his wife
+that night. "The suspicion is very strong; but I cannot say that
+I have an opinion one way or the other." There was no sermon in
+Bullhampton Church on that Sunday afternoon.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+CAPTAIN MARRABLE AND HIS FATHER.
+
+
+Only that it is generally conceived that in such a history as is this
+the writer of the tale should be able to make his points so clear
+by words that no further assistance should be needed, I should be
+tempted here to insert a properly illustrated pedigree tree of the
+Marrable family. The Marrable family is of very old standing in
+England, the first baronet having been created by James I., and there
+having been Marrables,--as is well known by all attentive readers of
+English history,--engaged in the Wars of the Roses, and again others
+very conspicuous in the religious persecutions of the children of
+Henry VIII. I do not know that they always behaved with consistency;
+but they held their heads up after a fashion, and got themselves
+talked of, and were people of note in the country. They were
+cavaliers in the time of Charles I. and of Cromwell,--as became men
+of blood and gentlemen,--but it is not recorded of them that they
+sacrificed much in the cause; and when William III. became king they
+submitted with a good grace to the new order of things. A certain Sir
+Thomas Marrable was member for his county in the reigns of George I.
+and George II., and enjoyed a lucrative confidence with Walpole. Then
+there came a blustering, roystering Sir Thomas, who, together with a
+fine man and gambler as a heir, brought the property to rather a low
+ebb; so that when Sir Gregory, the grandfather of our Miss Marrable,
+came to the title in the early days of George III. he was not a rich
+man. His two sons, another Sir Gregory and a General Marrable, died
+long before the days of which we are writing,--Sir Gregory in 1815,
+and the General in 1820. That Sir Gregory was the second of the
+name,--the second at least as mentioned in these pages. He had been
+our Miss Marrable's uncle, and the General had been her father, and
+the father of Mrs. Lowther,--Mary's mother. A third Sir Gregory
+was reigning at the time of our story, a very old gentleman with
+one single son,--a fourth Gregory. Now the residence of Sir
+Gregory was at Dunripple Park, just on the borders of Warwickshire
+and Worcestershire, but in the latter county. The property was
+small,--for a country gentleman with a title,--not much exceeding
+£3000 a year; and there was no longer any sitting in Parliament, or
+keeping of race-horses, or indeed any season in town for the present
+race of Marrables. The existing Sir Gregory was a very quiet man, and
+his son and only child, a man now about forty years of age, lived
+mostly at home, and occupied himself with things of antiquity. He
+was remarkably well read in the history of his own country, and it
+had been understood for the last twenty years by the Antiquarian,
+Archæological, and other societies that he was the projector of a new
+theory about Stonehenge, and that his book on the subject was almost
+ready. Such were the two surviving members of the present senior
+branch of the family. But Sir Gregory had two brothers,--the younger
+of the two being Parson John Marrable, the present rector of St.
+Peter's Lowtown and the occupier of the house within the heavy
+slate-coloured gates, where he lived a bachelor life, as had done
+before him his cousin the late rector;--the elder being a certain
+Colonel Marrable. The Colonel Marrable again had a son, who was a
+Captain Walter Marrable,--and after him the confused reader shall be
+introduced to no more of the Marrable family. The enlightened reader
+will have by this time perceived that Miss Mary Lowther and Captain
+Walter Marrable were second cousins; and he will also have perceived,
+if he has given his mind fully to the study, that the present Parson
+John Marrable had come into the living after the death of a cousin of
+the same generation as himself,--but of lower standing in the family.
+It was so; and by this may be seen how little the Sir Gregory of the
+present day had been able to do for his brother, and perhaps it may
+also be imagined from this that the present clergyman at Loring
+Lowtown had been able to do very little for himself. Nevertheless,
+he was a kindly-hearted, good, sincere old man,--not very bright,
+indeed, nor peculiarly fitted for preaching the gospel, but he was
+much liked, and he kept a curate, though his income out of the
+living was small. Now it so happened that Captain Marrable,--Walter
+Marrable,--came to stay with his uncle the parson about the same time
+that Mary Lowther returned to Loring.
+
+"You remember Walter, do you not?" said Miss Marrable to her niece.
+
+"Not the least in the world. I remember there was a Walter when I was
+at Dunripple. But that was ten years ago, and boy cousins and girl
+cousins never fraternise."
+
+"I suppose he was nearly a young man then, and you were a child?"
+
+"He was still at school, though just leaving it. He is seven years
+older than I am."
+
+"He is coming to stay with Parson John."
+
+"You don't say so, aunt Sarah? What will such a man as Captain
+Marrable do at Loring?"
+
+Then aunt Sarah explained all that she knew, and perhaps suggested
+more than she knew. Walter Marrable had quarrelled with his father,
+the Colonel,--with whom, indeed, everybody of the name of Marrable
+had always been quarrelling, and who was believed by Miss Marrable to
+be the very--mischief himself. He was a man always in debt, who had
+broken his wife's heart, who lived with low company and disgraced the
+family, who had been more than once arrested, on whose behalf all
+the family interest had been expended, so that nobody else could get
+anything, and who gambled and drank and did whatever wicked things
+a wicked old colonel living at Portsmouth could do. And indeed,
+hitherto, Miss Marrable had entertained opinions hardly more
+charitable respecting the son than she had done in regard to
+the father. She had disbelieved in this branch of the Marrables
+altogether. Captain Marrable had lived with his father a good
+deal,--at least, so she had understood,--and therefore could not but
+be bad. And, moreover, our Miss Sarah Marrable had, throughout her
+whole life, been somewhat estranged from the elder branches of the
+family. Her father, Walter, had been,--so she thought,--injured by
+his brother Sir Gregory, and there had been some law proceedings, not
+quite amicable, between her brother the parson, and the present Sir
+Gregory. She respected Sir Gregory as the head of the family, but she
+never went now to Dunripple, and knew nothing of Sir Gregory's heir.
+Of the present Parson John she had thought very little before he had
+come to Loring. Since he had been living there she had found that
+blood was thicker than water,--as she would say,--and they two were
+intimate. When she heard that Captain Marrable was coming, because
+he had quarrelled with his father, she began to think that perhaps
+it might be as well that she should allow herself to meet this new
+cousin.
+
+"What do you think of your cousin, Walter?" the old clergyman said to
+his nephew, one evening, after the two ladies, who had been dining at
+the Rectory, had left them. It was the first occasion on which Walter
+Marrable had met Mary since his coming to Loring.
+
+"I remember her as well as if it were yesterday, at Dunripple. She
+was a little girl then, and I thought her the most beautiful little
+girl in the world."
+
+"We all think her very beautiful still."
+
+"So she is; as lovely as ever she can stand. But she does not seem to
+have much to say for herself. I remember when she was a little girl
+she never would speak."
+
+"I fancy she can talk when she pleases, Walter. But you mustn't fall
+in love with her."
+
+"I won't, if I can help it."
+
+"In the first place I think she is as good as engaged to a fellow
+with a very pretty property in Wiltshire, and in the next place she
+hasn't got--one shilling."
+
+"There is not much danger. I am not inclined to trouble myself about
+any girl in my present mood, even if she had the pretty property
+herself, and wasn't engaged to anybody. I suppose I shall get over it
+some day, but I feel just at present as though I couldn't say a kind
+word to a human being."
+
+"Psha! psha! that's nonsense, Walter. Take things coolly. They're
+more likely to come right, and they won't be so troublesome, even if
+they don't." Such was the philosophy of Parson John,--for the sake
+of digesting which the captain lit a cigar, and went out to smoke it,
+standing at one of the open slate-coloured gates.
+
+It was said in the first chapter of this story that Mr. Gilmore was
+one of the heroes whose deeds the story undertakes to narrate, and
+a hint was perhaps expressed that of all the heroes he was the
+favourite. Captain Marrable is, however, another hero, and, as such,
+some word or two must be said of him. He was a better-looking man,
+certainly, than Mr. Gilmore, though perhaps his personal appearance
+did not at first sight give to the observer so favourable an idea of
+his character as did that of the other gentleman. Mr. Gilmore was
+to be read at a glance as an honest, straightforward, well-behaved
+country squire, whose word might be taken for anything, who might,
+perhaps, like to have his own way, but who could hardly do a cruel
+or an unfair thing. He was just such a man to look at as a prudent
+mother would select as one to whom she might entrust her daughter
+with safety. Now Walter Marrable's countenance was of a very
+different die. He had served in India, and the naturally dark colour
+of his face had thus become very swarthy. His black hair curled round
+his head, but the curls on his brow were becoming very thin, as
+though age were already telling on them, and yet he was four or five
+years younger than Mr. Gilmore. His eyebrows were thick and heavy,
+and his eyes seemed to be black. They were eyes which were used
+without much motion; and when they were dead set, as they were not
+unfrequently, it would seem as though he were defying those on whom
+he looked. Thus he made many afraid of him, and many who were not
+afraid of him, disliked him because of a certain ferocity which
+seemed to characterise his face. He wore no beard beyond a heavy
+black moustache, which quite covered his upper lip. His nose was long
+and straight, his mouth large, and his chin square. No doubt he was
+a handsome man. And he looked to be a tall man, though in truth he
+lacked two full inches of the normal six feet. He was broad across
+the chest, strong on his legs, and was altogether such a man to look
+at that few would care to quarrel with him, and many would think that
+he was disposed to quarrel. Of his nature he was not quarrelsome; but
+he was a man who certainly had received much injury. It need not be
+explained at length how his money affairs had gone wrong with him. He
+should have inherited, and, indeed, did inherit, a fortune from his
+mother's family, of which his father had contrived absolutely to rob
+him. It was only within the last month that he had discovered that
+his father had succeeded in laying his hands on certainly the bulk of
+his money, and it might be upon all. Words between them had been very
+bitter. The father, with a cigar between his teeth, had told his son
+that this was the fortune of war, that if justice had been done him
+at his marriage, the money would have been his own, and that by G----
+he was very sorry, and couldn't say anything more. The son had called
+the father a liar and a swindler,--as, indeed, was the truth, though
+the son was doubtless wrong to say so to the author of his being. The
+father had threatened the son with his horsewhip; and so they had
+parted, within ten days of Walter Marrable's return from India.
+
+Walter had written to his two uncles, asking their advice as to
+saving the wreck, if anything might be saved. Sir Gregory had written
+back to say that he was an old man, that he was greatly grieved at
+the misunderstanding, and that Messrs. Block and Curling were the
+family lawyers. Parson John invited his nephew to come down to Loring
+Lowtown. Captain Marrable went to Block and Curling, who were by no
+means consolatory, and accepted his uncle's invitation.
+
+It was but three days after the first meeting between the two
+cousins, that they were to be seen one evening walking together along
+the banks of the Lurwell, a little river which at Loring sometimes
+takes the appearance of a canal, and sometimes of a natural stream.
+But it is commercial, having connection with the Kennet and Avon
+navigation; and long, slow, ponderous barges, with heavy, dirty,
+sleepy bargemen, and rickety, ill-used barge-horses, are common in
+the neighbourhood. In parts it is very pretty, as it runs under the
+chalky downs, and there are a multiplicity of locks, and the turf
+of the sheep-walks comes up to the towing path; but in the close
+neighbourhood of the town the canal is straight and uninteresting;
+the ground is level, and there is a scattered community of small,
+straight-built light-brick houses, which are in themselves so ugly
+that they are incompatible with anything that is pretty in landscape.
+
+Parson John, always so called to distinguish him from the late
+parson, his cousin, who had been the Rev. James Marrable, had taken
+occasion, on behalf of his nephew, to tell the story of his wrong to
+Miss Marrable, and by Miss Marrable it had been told to Mary. To both
+these ladies the thing seemed to be so horrible,--the idea that a
+father should have robbed his son,--that the stern ferocity of the
+slow-moving eyes was forgiven, and they took him to their hearts, if
+not for love, at least for pity. Twenty thousand pounds ought to have
+become the property of Walter Marrable, when some maternal relative
+had died. It had seemed hard that the father should have none of it,
+and, on the receipt in India of representations from the Colonel,
+Walter had signed certain fatal papers, the effect of which was that
+the father had laid his hands on pretty nearly the whole, if not on
+the whole, of the money, and had caused it to vanish. There was now a
+question whether some five thousand pounds might not be saved. If so,
+Walter would stay in England; if not, he would exchange and go back
+to India; "or," as he said himself, "to the Devil."
+
+"Don't speak of it in that way," said Mary.
+
+"The worst of it is," said he "that I am ashamed of myself for being
+so absolutely cut up about money. A man should be able to bear that
+kind of thing; but this hits one all round."
+
+"I think you bear it very well."
+
+"No, I don't. I didn't bear it well when I called my father a
+swindler. I didn't bear it well when I swore that I would put him in
+prison for robbing me. I don't bear it well now, when I think of it
+every moment. But I do so hate India, and I had so absolutely made
+up my mind never to return. If it hadn't been that I knew that this
+fortune was to be mine, I could have saved money, hand over hand."
+
+"Can't you live on your pay here?"
+
+"No!" He answered her almost as though he were angry with her. "If I
+had been used all my life to the strictest economies, perhaps I might
+do so. Some men do, no doubt; but I am too old to begin it. There is
+the choice of two things,--to blow my brains out, or go back."
+
+"You are not such a coward as that."
+
+"I don't know. I ain't sure that it would be cowardice. If there were
+anybody I could injure by doing it, it would be cowardly."
+
+"The family," suggested Mary.
+
+"What does Sir Gregory care for me? I'll show you his letter to me
+some day. I don't think it would be cowardly at all to get away from
+such a lot."
+
+"I am sure you won't do that, Captain Marrable."
+
+"Think what it is to know that your father is a swindler. Perhaps
+that is the worst of it all. Fancy talking or thinking of one's
+family after that. I like my uncle John. He is very kind, and has
+offered to lend me £150, which I'm sure he can't afford to lose, and
+which I am too honest to take. But even he hardly sees it. He calls
+it a misfortune, and I've no doubt would shake hands with his brother
+to-morrow."
+
+"So would you, if he were really sorry."
+
+"No, Mary; nothing on earth shall ever induce me to set my eyes on
+him again willingly. He has destroyed all the world for me. He should
+have had half of it without a word. When he used to whine to me in
+his letters, and say how cruelly he had been treated, I always made
+up my mind that he should have half the income for life. It was
+because he should not want till I came home that I enabled him to do
+what he has done. And now he has robbed me of every cursed shilling!
+I wonder whether I shall ever get my mind free from it."
+
+"Of course you will."
+
+"It seems now that my heart is wrapped in lead." As they were coming
+home she put her hand upon his arm, and asked him to promise her to
+withdraw that threat.
+
+"Why should I withdraw it? Who cares for me?"
+
+"We all care. My aunt cares. I care."
+
+"The threat means nothing, Mary. People who make such threats don't
+carry them out. Of course I shall go on and endure it. The worst of
+all is, that the whole thing makes me so unmanly,--makes such a beast
+of me. But I'll try to get over it."
+
+Mary Lowther thought that, upon the whole, he bore his misfortune
+very well.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+COUSINHOOD.
+
+
+Mary Lowther and her cousin had taken their walk together on Monday
+evening, and on the next morning she received the following letter
+from Mrs. Fenwick. When it reached her she had as yet heard nothing
+of the Bullhampton tragedy.
+
+
+   Vicarage, Monday, Sept. 1, 186--.
+
+   DEAREST MARY,
+
+   I suppose you will have heard before you get this of the
+   dreadful murder that has taken place here, and which has
+   so startled and horrified us, that we hardly know what we
+   are doing even yet. It is hard to say why a thing should
+   be worse because it is close, but it certainly is so. Had
+   it been in the next parish, or even further off in this
+   parish, I do not think that I should feel it so much, and
+   then we knew the old man so well; and then, again,--which
+   makes it worst of all,--we all of us are unable to get rid
+   of a suspicion that one whom we knew, and was liked, has
+   been a participator in the crime.
+
+   It seems that it must have been about two o'clock on
+   Sunday morning that Mr. Trumbull was killed. It was, at
+   any rate, between one and three. As far as they can judge,
+   they think that there must have been three men concerned.
+   You remember how we used to joke about poor Mr. Trumbull's
+   dog. Well, he was poisoned first,--probably an hour before
+   the men got into the house. It has been discovered that
+   the foolish old man kept a large sum of money by him in a
+   box, and that he always took this box into bed with him.
+   The woman, who lived in the house with him, used to see it
+   there. No doubt the thieves had heard of this, and both
+   Frank and Mr. Gilmore think that the girl, Agnes Pope,
+   whom you will remember in the choir, told about it. She
+   lived with Mr. Trumbull, and we all thought her a very
+   good girl,--though she was too fond of that young man, Sam
+   Brattle.
+
+   They think that the men did not mean to do the murder, but
+   that the old man fought so hard for his money that they
+   were driven to it. His body was not in the room, but on
+   the top of the stairs, and his temple had been split open
+   with a blow of a hammer. The hammer lay beside him, and
+   was one belonging to the house. Mr. Gilmore says that
+   there was great craft in their using a weapon which they
+   did not bring with them. Of course they cannot be traced
+   by the hammer.
+
+   They got off with £150 in the box, and did not touch
+   anything else. Everybody feels quite sure that they knew
+   all about the money, and that when Mr. Gilmore saw them
+   that night down at the churchyard corner, they were
+   prowling about with a view of seeing how they could get
+   into the farmer's house, and not into the Vicarage. Frank
+   thinks that when he afterwards found them in our place,
+   Sam Brattle had brought them in with a kind of wild idea
+   of taking the fruit, but that the men, of their own
+   account, had come round to reconnoitre the house. They
+   both say that there can be no doubt about the men having
+   been the same. Then comes the terrible question whether
+   Sam Brattle, the son of that dear woman at the mill, has
+   been one of the murderers. He had been at home all the
+   previous day working very hard at the works,--which are
+   being done in obedience to your orders, my dear; but he
+   certainly was out on the Saturday night.
+
+   It is very hard to get at any man's belief in such
+   matters, but, as far as I can understand them, I don't
+   think that either Frank or Mr. Gilmore do really believe
+   that he was there. Frank says that it will go very
+   hard with him, and Mr. Gilmore has committed him. The
+   magistrates are to sit to-morrow at Heytesbury, and Mr.
+   Gilmore will be there. He has, as you may be sure, behaved
+   as well as possible, and has quite altered in his manner
+   to the old people. I was at the mill this morning. Brattle
+   himself would not speak to me, but I sat for an hour
+   with Mrs. Brattle and Fanny. It makes it almost the more
+   melancholy having all the rubbish and building things
+   about, and yet the work stopped.
+
+   Fanny Brattle has behaved so well! It was she who told
+   that her brother had been out at night. Mr. Gilmore says
+   that when the question was asked in his presence, she
+   answered it in her own quiet, simple way, without a
+   moment's doubt; but since that she has never ceased to
+   assert her conviction that her brother has had nothing to
+   do either with the murder or with the robbery. If it had
+   not been for this, Mrs. Brattle would, I think, have sunk
+   under the load. Fanny says the same thing constantly to
+   her father. He scolds her, and bids her hold her tongue;
+   but she goes on, and I think it has some effect even on
+   him. The whole place does look such a picture of ruin! It
+   would break your heart to see it. And then, when one looks
+   at the father and mother, one remembers about that other
+   child, and is almost tempted to ask why such misery should
+   have fallen upon parents who have been honest, sober,
+   and industrious. Can it really be that the man is being
+   punished here on earth because he will not believe? When
+   I hinted this to Frank, he turned upon me, and scolded
+   me, and told me I was measuring the Almighty God with a
+   foot-rule. But men were punished in the Bible because they
+   did not believe. Remember the Baptist's father. But I
+   never dare to go on with Frank on these matters.
+
+   I am so full of this affair of poor Mr. Trumbull, and so
+   anxious about Sam Brattle, that I cannot now write about
+   anything else. I can only say that no man ever behaved
+   with greater kindness and propriety than Harry Gilmore,
+   who has had to act as magistrate. Poor Fanny Brattle has
+   to go to Heytesbury to-morrow to give her evidence. At
+   first they said that they must take the father also, but
+   he is to be spared for the present.
+
+   I should tell you that Sam himself declares that he
+   got to know these men at a place where he was at work,
+   brickmaking, near Devizes. He had quarrelled with his
+   father, and had got a job there, with high wages. He used
+   to be out at night with them, and acknowledges that he
+   joined one of them, a man named Burrows, in stealing a
+   brood of pea-fowl which some poulterers wanted to buy. He
+   says he looked on it as a joke. Then it seems he had some
+   spite against Trumbull's dog, and that this man, Burrows,
+   came over here on purpose to take the dog away. This,
+   according to his story, is all that he knows of the man;
+   and he says that on that special Saturday night he had not
+   the least idea that Burrows was at Bullhampton, till he
+   heard the sound of a certain cart on the road. I tell
+   you all this, as I am sure you will share our anxiety
+   respecting this unfortunate young man,--because of his
+   mother and sister.
+
+   Good-bye, dearest; Frank sends ever so many loves;--and
+   somebody else would send them too, if he thought that I
+   would be the bearer. Try to think so well of Bullhampton
+   as to make you wish to live here.--Give my kindest love to
+   your aunt Sarah.
+
+   Your most affectionate friend,
+
+   JANET FENWICK.
+
+
+Mary was obliged to read the letter twice before she completely
+understood it. Old Mr. Trumbull murdered! Why she had known the old
+man well, had always been in the habit of speaking to him when she
+met him either at the one gate or the other of the farmyard,--had
+joked with him about Bone'm, and had heard him assert his own perfect
+security against robbers not a week before the night on which he was
+murdered! As Mrs. Fenwick had said, the truth is so much more real
+when it comes from things that are near. And then she had so often
+heard the character of Sam Brattle described,--the man who was now in
+prison as a murderer! And she herself had given lessons in singing to
+Agnes Pope, who was now in some sort accused of aiding the thieves.
+And she herself had asked Agnes whether it was not foolish for her to
+be hanging about the farmyard, outside her master's premises, with
+Sam Brattle. It was all brought very near to her!
+
+Before that day was over she was telling the story to Captain
+Marrable. She had of course told it to her aunt, and they had
+been discussing it the whole morning. Mr. Gilmore's name had been
+mentioned to Captain Marrable, but very little more than the name.
+Aunt Sarah, however, had already begun to think whether it might
+not be prudent to tell cousin Walter the story of the half-formed
+engagement. Mary had expressed so much sympathy with her cousin's
+wrongs, that aunt Sarah had begun to fear that that sympathy might
+lead to a tenderer feeling, and aunt Sarah was by no means anxious
+that her niece should fall in love with a gentleman whose chief
+attraction was the fact that he had been ruined by his own father,
+even though that gentleman was a Marrable himself. This danger might
+possibly be lessened if Captain Marrable were made acquainted with
+the Gilmore affair, and taught to understand how desirable such a
+match would be for Mary. But aunt Sarah had qualms of conscience
+on the subject. She doubted whether she had a right to tell the
+story without leave from Mary; and then there was in truth no real
+engagement. She knew indeed that Mr. Gilmore had made the offer more
+than once; but then she knew also that the offer had at any rate not
+as yet been accepted, and she felt that on Mr. Gilmore's account as
+well as on Mary's she ought to hold her tongue. It might indeed be
+admissible to tell to a cousin that which she would not tell to an
+indifferent young man; but, nevertheless, she could not bring herself
+to do, even with so good an object, that which she believed to be
+wrong.
+
+That evening Mary was again walking on the towing-path beside the
+river with her cousin Walter. She had met him now about five times,
+and there was already an intimacy between them. The idea of cousinly
+intimacy to girls is undoubtedly very pleasant; and I do not know
+whether it is not the fact that the better and the purer is the girl,
+the sweeter and the pleasanter is the idea. In America a girl may
+form a friendly intimacy with any young man she fancies, and though
+she may not be free from little jests and good-humoured joking, there
+is no injury to her from such intimacy. It is her acknowledged right
+to enjoy herself after that fashion, and to have what she calls a
+good time with young men. A dozen such intimacies do not stand in her
+way when there comes some real adorer who means to marry her and is
+able to do so. She rides with these friends, walks with them, and
+corresponds with them. She goes out to balls and picnics with them,
+and afterwards lets herself in with a latchkey, while her papa and
+mamma are a-bed and asleep, with perfect security. If there be much
+to be said against the practice, there is also something to be said
+for it. Girls on the other hand, on the continent of Europe, do not
+dream of making friendship with any man. A cousin with them is as
+much out of the question as the most perfect stranger. In strict
+families, a girl is hardly allowed to go out with her brother; and I
+have heard of mothers who thought it indiscreet that a father should
+be seen alone with his daughter at a theatre. All friendships between
+the sexes must, under such a social code, be looked forward to as
+post-nuptial joys. Here in England there is a something betwixt the
+two. The intercourse between young men and girls is free enough to
+enable the latter to feel how pleasant it is to be able to forget for
+awhile conventional restraints, and to acknowledge how joyous a thing
+it is to indulge in social intercourse in which the simple delight of
+equal mind meeting equal mind in equal talk is just enhanced by the
+unconscious remembrance that boys and girls when they meet together
+may learn to love. There is nothing more sweet in youth than
+this, nothing more natural, nothing more fitting, nothing, indeed,
+more essentially necessary for God's purposes with his creatures.
+Nevertheless, here with us, there is the restriction, and it is
+seldom that a girl can allow herself the full flow of friendship with
+a man who is not old enough to be her father, unless he is her lover
+as well as her friend. But cousinhood does allow some escape from
+the hardship of this rule. Cousins are Tom, and Jack, and George,
+and Dick. Cousins probably know all or most of your little family
+secrets. Cousins, perhaps, have romped with you, and scolded you,
+and teased you, when you were young. Cousins are almost the same as
+brothers, and yet they may be lovers. There is certainly a great
+relief in cousinhood.
+
+Mary Lowther had no brother. She had neither brother nor sister;--had
+since her earliest infancy hardly known any other relative save
+her aunt and old Parson John. When first she had heard that Walter
+Marrable was at Loring, the tidings gave her no pleasure whatever. It
+never occurred to her to say to herself: "Now I shall have one who
+may become my friend, and be to me perhaps almost a brother?" What
+she had hitherto heard of Walter Marrable had not been in his favour.
+Of his father she had heard all that was bad, and she had joined
+the father and the son together in what few ideas she had formed
+respecting them. But now, after five interviews, Walter Marrable was
+her dear cousin, with whom she sympathised, of whom she was proud,
+whose misfortunes were in some degree her misfortunes, to whom she
+thought she could very soon tell this great trouble of her life
+about Mr. Gilmore, as though he were indeed her brother. And she
+had learned to like his dark staring eyes, which now always seemed
+to be fixed on her with something of real regard. She liked them
+the better, perhaps, because there was in them so much of real
+admiration; though if it were so, Mary knew nothing of such liking
+herself. And now at his bidding she called him Walter. He had
+addressed her by her Christian name at first, as a matter of course,
+and she had felt grateful to him for doing so. But she had not dared
+to be so bold with him, till he had bade her do so, and now she felt
+that he was a cousin indeed. Captain Marrable was at present waiting,
+not with much patience, for tidings from Block and Curling. Would
+that £5000 be saved for him, or must he again go out to India and
+be heard of no more at home in his own England? Mary was not so
+impatient as the Captain, but she also was intensely interested
+in the expected letters. On this day, however, their conversation
+chiefly ran on the news which Mary had that morning heard from
+Bullhampton.
+
+"I suppose you feel sure," said the Captain, "that young Sam Brattle
+was one of the murderers?"
+
+"Oh no, Walter."
+
+"Or at least one of the thieves?"
+
+"But both Mr. Fenwick and Mr. Gilmore think that he is innocent."
+
+"I do not gather that from what your friend says. She says that she
+thinks that they think so. And then it is clear that he was hanging
+about the place before with the very men who have committed the
+crime; and that there was a way in which he might have heard and
+probably had heard of the money; and then he was out and about that
+very night."
+
+"Still I can't believe it. If you knew the sort of people his father
+and mother are." Captain Marrable could not but reflect that, if an
+honest gentleman might have a swindler for his father, an honest
+miller might have a thief for his son. "And then if you saw the place
+at which they live! I have a particular interest about it."
+
+"Then the young man, of course, must be innocent."
+
+"Don't laugh at me, Walter."
+
+"Why is the place so interesting to you?"
+
+"I can hardly tell you why. The father and the mother are interesting
+people, and so is the sister. And in their way they are so good! And
+they have had great troubles,--very great troubles. And the place
+is so cool and pretty, all surrounded by streams and old pollard
+willows, with a thatched roof that comes in places nearly to the
+ground; and then the sound of the mill wheel is the pleasantest sound
+I know anywhere."
+
+"I will hope he is innocent, Mary."
+
+"I do so hope he is innocent! And then my friends are so much
+interested about the family. The Fenwicks are very fond of them, and
+Mr. Gilmore is their landlord."
+
+"He is the magistrate?"
+
+"Yes, he is the magistrate."
+
+"What sort of fellow is he?"
+
+"A very good sort of fellow; such a sort that he can hardly be
+better; a perfect gentleman."
+
+"Indeed! And has he a perfect lady for his wife?"
+
+"Mr. Gilmore is not married."
+
+"What age is he?"
+
+"I think he is thirty-three."
+
+"With a nice estate and not married! What a chance you have left
+behind you, Mary!"
+
+"Do you think, Walter, that a girl ought to wish to marry a man
+merely because he is a perfect gentleman, and has a nice estate and
+is not yet married?"
+
+"They say that they generally do;--don't they?"
+
+"I hope you don't think so. Any girl would be very fortunate to marry
+Mr. Gilmore--if she loved him."
+
+"But you don't?"
+
+"You know I am not talking about myself, and you oughtn't to make
+personal allusions."
+
+These cousinly walks along the banks of the Lurwell were not probably
+favourable to Mr. Gilmore's hopes.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+THE POLICE AT FAULT.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+The magistrates sat at Heytesbury on the Tuesday, and Sam Brattle was
+remanded. An attorney thus was employed on his behalf by Mr. Fenwick.
+The parson on the Monday evening had been down at the mill, and
+had pressed strongly on the old miller the necessity of getting
+some legal assistance for his son. At first Mr. Brattle was stern,
+immovable, and almost dumb. He sat on the bench outside his door,
+with his eyes fixed on the dismantled mill, and shook his head
+wearily, as though sick and sore with the words that were being
+addressed to him. Mrs. Brattle the while stood in the doorway, and
+listened without uttering a sound. If the parson could not prevail,
+it would be quite out of the question that any word of hers should
+do good. There she stood, wiping the tears from her eyes, looking on
+wishfully, while her husband did not even know that she was there. At
+last he rose from his seat, and hallooed to her. "Maggie," said he,
+"Maggie." She stepped forward, and put her hand upon his shoulder.
+"Bring me down the purse, mother," he said.
+
+"There will be nothing of that kind wanted," said the parson.
+
+"Them gentlemen don't work for such as our boy for nothin'," said the
+miller. "Bring me the purse, mother, I say. There ar'n't much in it,
+but there's a few guineas as 'll do for that, perhaps. As well pitch
+'em away that way as any other."
+
+Mr. Fenwick, of course, declined to take the money. He would make the
+lawyer understand that he would be properly paid for his trouble,
+and that for the present would suffice. Only, as he explained, it
+was expedient that he should have the father's authority. Should
+any question on the matter arise, it would be bettor for the young
+man that he should be defended by his father's aid than by that
+of a stranger. "I understand, Mr. Fenwick," said the old man,--"I
+understand; and it's neighbourly of you. But it'd be better that
+you'd just leave us alone to go out like the snuff of a candle."
+
+"Father," said Fanny, "I won't have you speak in that way, making out
+our Sam to be guilty before ere a one else has said so."
+
+The miller shook his head again, but said nothing further, and the
+parson, having received the desired authority, returned to the
+Vicarage.
+
+The attorney had been employed, and Sam had been remanded. There was
+no direct evidence against him, and nothing could be done until the
+other men should be taken, for whom they were seeking. The police had
+tracked the two men back to a cottage, about fifteen miles distant
+from Bullhampton, in which lived an old woman, who was the mother
+of the Grinder. With Mrs. Burrows they found a young woman who had
+lately come to live there, and who was said in the neighbourhood to
+be the Grinder's wife.
+
+But nothing more could be learned of the Grinder than that he
+had been at the cottage on the Sunday morning, and had gone away,
+according to his wont. The old woman swore that he slept there the
+whole of Saturday night, but of course the policemen had not believed
+her statement. When does any policeman ever believe anything? Of the
+pony and cart the old woman declared she knew nothing. Her son had no
+pony, and no cart, to her knowing. Then she went on to declare that
+she knew very little about her son, who never lived with her; and
+that she had only taken in the young woman out of charity, about
+two weeks since. The mother did not for a moment pretend that her
+son was an honest man, getting his bread after an honest fashion.
+The Grinder's mode of life was too well known for even a mother
+to attempt to deny it. But she pretended that she was very honest
+herself, and appealed to sundry brandy-balls and stale biscuits in
+her window, to prove that she lived after a decent, honest,
+commercial fashion.
+
+Sam was of course remanded. The head constable of the district asked
+for a week more to make fresh inquiry, and expressed a very strong
+opinion that he would have the Grinder and his friend by the heels
+before the week should be over. The Heytesbury attorney made a
+feeble request that Sam might be released on bail, as there was not,
+according to his statement, "the remotest shadow of a tittle of
+evidence against him." But poor Sam was sent back to gaol, and there
+remained for that week. On the next Tuesday the same scene was
+re-enacted. The Grinder had not been taken, and a further remand was
+necessary. The face of the head constable was longer on this occasion
+than it had been before, and his voice less confident. The Grinder,
+he thought, must have caught one of the early Sunday trains, and
+made his way to Birmingham. It had been ascertained that he had
+friends at Birmingham. Another remand was asked for a week, with an
+understanding that at the end of the week it should be renewed if
+necessary. The policeman seemed to think that by that time, unless
+the Grinder were below the sod, his presence above it would certainly
+be proved. On this occasion the Heytesbury attorney made a very
+loud demand for Sam's liberation, talking of habeas corpus, and
+the injustice of carceration without evidence of guilt. But the
+magistrates would not let him go. "When I'm told that the young man
+was seen hiding in a ditch close to the murdered man's house, only
+a few days before the murder, is that no evidence against him, Mr.
+Jones?" said Sir Thomas Charleys, of Charlicoats.
+
+"No evidence at all, Sir Thomas. If I had been found asleep in the
+ditch, that would have been no evidence against me."
+
+"Yes, it would, very strong evidence; and I would have committed you
+on it, without hesitation, Mr. Jones."
+
+Mr. Jones made a spirited rejoinder to this; but it was of no use,
+and poor Sam was sent back to gaol for the third time.
+
+For the first ten days after the murder nothing was done as to the
+works at the mill. The men who had been employed by Brattle ceased to
+come, apparently of their own account, and everything was lying there
+just in the state in which the men had left the place on the Saturday
+night. There was something inexpressibly sad in this, as the old man
+could not even make a pretence of going into the mill for employment,
+and there was absolutely nothing to which he could put his hands, to
+do it. When ten days were over, Gilmore came down to the mill, and
+suggested that the works should be carried on and finished by him. If
+the mill were not kept at work, the old man could not live, and no
+rent would be paid. At any rate, it would be better that this great
+sorrow should not be allowed so to cloud everything as to turn
+industry into idleness, and straitened circumstances into absolute
+beggary. But the Squire found it very difficult to deal with the
+miller. At first old Brattle would neither give nor withhold his
+consent. When told by the Squire that the property could not be left
+in that way, he expressed himself willing to go out into the road,
+and lay himself down and die there;--but not until the term of his
+holding was legally brought to a close. "I don't know that I owe
+any rent over and beyond this Michaelmas as is coming, and there's
+the hay on the ground yet." Gilmore, who was very patient, assured
+him that he had no wish to allude to rent; that there should be no
+question of rent even when the day came, if at that time money was
+scarce. But would it not be better that the mill, at least, should be
+put in order?
+
+"Indeed it will, Squire," said Mrs. Brattle. "It is the idleness that
+is killing him."
+
+"Hold your jabbering tongue," said the miller, turning round upon her
+fiercely. "Who asked you? I will see to it myself, Squire, to-morrow
+or next day."
+
+After two or three further days of inaction at the mill the Squire
+came again, bringing the parson with him; and they did manage to
+arrange between them that the repairs should be at once continued.
+The mill should be completed; but the house should be left till next
+summer. As to Brattle himself, when he had been once persuaded to
+yield the point, he did not care how much they pulled down, or how
+much they built up. "Do it as you will," he said; "I ain't nobody
+now. The women drives me about my own house as if I hadn't a'most no
+business there." And so the hammers and trowels were heard again; and
+old Brattle would sit perfectly silent, gazing at the men as they
+worked. Once, as he saw two men and a boy shifting a ladder, he
+turned round, with a little chuckle to his wife, and said, "Sam'd 'a
+see'd hisself d----d, afore he'd 'a asked another chap to help him
+with such a job as that."
+
+As Mrs. Brattle told Mrs. Fenwick afterwards, he had one of the two
+erring children in his thoughts morning, noon, and night. "When I
+tell 'un of George,"--who was the farmer near Fordingbridge,--"and of
+Mrs. Jay,"--who was the ironmonger's wife at Warminster,--"he won't
+take any comfort in them," said Mrs. Brattle. "I don't think he cares
+for them, just because they can hold their own heads up."
+
+At the end of three weeks the Grinder was still missing; and others
+besides Mr. Jones, the attorney, were beginning to say that Sam
+Brattle should be let out of prison. Mr. Fenwick was clearly of
+opinion that he should not be detained, if bail could be forthcoming.
+The Squire was more cautious, and said that it might well be that his
+escape would render it impossible for the police even to get on the
+track of the real murderers. "No doubt, he knows more than he has
+told," said Gilmore, "and will probably tell it at last. If he be let
+out, he will tell nothing." The police were all of opinion that Sam
+had been present at the murder, and that he should be kept in custody
+till he was tried. They were very sharp in their manoeuvres to get
+evidence against him. His boot, they had said, fitted a footstep
+which had been found in the mud in the farm-yard. The measure had
+been taken on the Sunday. That was evidence. Then they examined
+Agnes Pope over and over again, and extracted from the poor girl an
+admission that she loved Sam better than anything in the whole wide
+world. If he were to be in prison, she would not object to go to
+prison with him. If he were to be hung, she would wish to be hung
+with him. She had no secret she would not tell him. But, as a matter
+of fact,--so she swore over and over again,--she had never told him
+a word about old Trumbull's box. She did not think she had ever told
+any one; but she would swear on her death-bed that she had never told
+Sam Brattle. The head constable declared that he had never met a
+more stubborn or a more artful young woman. Sir Thomas Charleys was
+clearly of opinion that no bail should be accepted. Another week
+of remand was granted with the understanding that, if nothing of
+importance was elicited by that time, and if neither of the other two
+suspected men were then in custody, Sam should be allowed to go at
+large upon bail--a good, substantial bail, himself in £400, and his
+bailsmen in £200 each.
+
+"Who'll be his bailsmen?" said the Squire, coming away with his
+friend the parson from Heytesbury.
+
+"There will be no difficulty about that, I should say."
+
+"But who will they be,--his father for one?"
+
+"His brother George, and Jay, at Warminster, who married his sister,"
+said the parson.
+
+"I doubt them both," said the Squire.
+
+"He sha'n't want for bail. I'll be one myself, sooner. He shall have
+bail. If there's any difficulty, Jones shall bail him; and I'll see
+Jones safe through it. He sha'n't be persecuted in that way."
+
+"I don't think anybody has attempted to persecute him, Frank."
+
+"He will be persecuted if his own brothers won't come forward to help
+him. It isn't that they have looked into the matter, and that they
+think him guilty; but that they go just the way they're told to go,
+like sheep. The more I think of it, the more I feel that he had
+nothing to do with the murder."
+
+"I never knew a man change his opinion so often as you do," said
+Gilmore.
+
+During three weeks the visits made by Head Constable Toffy to the
+cottage in which Mrs. Burrows lived were much more frequent than
+were agreeable to that lady. This cottage was about four miles from
+Devizes, and on the edge of a common, about half a mile from the
+high road which leads from that town to Marlborough. There is, or
+was a year or two back, a considerable extent of unenclosed land
+thereabouts, and on a spot called Pycroft Common there was a small
+collection of cottages, sufficient to constitute a hamlet of the
+smallest class. There was no house there of greater pretensions than
+the very small beershop which provided for the conviviality of the
+Pycroftians; and of other shops there was none, save a baker's, the
+owner of which seldom had much bread to sell, and the establishment
+for brandy-balls, which was kept by Mrs. Burrows. The inhabitants
+were chiefly labouring men, some of whom were in summer employed in
+brick making; and there was an idea abroad that Pycroft generally was
+not sustained by regular labour and sober industry. Rents, however,
+were paid for the cottages, or the cottagers would have been turned
+adrift; and Mrs. Burrows had lived in hers for five or six years, and
+was noted in the neighbourhood for her outward neatness and attention
+to decency. In the summer there were always half-a-dozen large
+sunflowers in the patch of ground called a garden, and there was a
+rose-tree, and a bush of honeysuckle over the door, and an alder
+stump in a corner, which would still put out leaves and bear berries.
+When Head Constable Toffy visited her there would be generally a few
+high words, for Mrs. Burrows was by no means unwilling to let it be
+known that she objected to morning calls from Mr. Toffy.
+
+It has been already said that at this time Mrs. Burrows did not live
+alone. Residing with her was a young woman, who was believed by Mr.
+Toffy to be the wife of Richard Burrows, alias the Grinder. On his
+first visit to Pycroft no doubt, Mr. Toffy was mainly anxious to
+ascertain whether anything was known by the old woman as to her son's
+whereabouts, but the second, third, and fourth visits were made
+rather to the younger than to the older woman. Toffy had probably
+learned in his wide experience that a man of the Grinder's nature
+will generally place more reliance on a young woman than on an old;
+and that the young woman will, nevertheless, be more likely to betray
+confidence than the older,--partly from indiscretion, and partly,
+alas! from treachery. But, if the presumed Mrs. Burrows, junior, knew
+aught of the Grinder's present doings, she was neither indiscreet nor
+treacherous. Mr. Toffy could get nothing from her. She was sickly,
+weak, sullen, and silent. "She didn't think it was her business to
+say where she had been living before she came to Pycroft. She hadn't
+been living with any husband, and had got no husband that she knew
+of. If she had she wasn't going to say so. She hadn't any children,
+and she didn't know what business he had to ask her. She came from
+Lunnun. At any rate, she came from there last, and she didn't know
+what business he had to ask her where she came from. What business
+was it of his to be asking what her name was? Her name was Anne
+Burrows, if he liked to call her so. She wouldn't answer him any more
+questions. No; she wouldn't say what her name was before she was
+married."
+
+Mr. Toffy had his reasons for interrogating this poor woman, but he
+did not for a while let any one know what those reasons were. He
+could not, however, obtain more information than what is contained in
+the answers above given, which were, for the most part, true. Neither
+the mother nor the younger woman knew where was to be found, at the
+present moment, that hero of adventure who was called the Grinder,
+and all the police of Wiltshire began to fear that they were about to
+be outwitted.
+
+"You never were at Bullhampton with your husband, I suppose?" asked
+Mr. Toffy.
+
+"Never," said the supposed Grinder's wife; "but what does it matter
+to you where I was?"
+
+"Don't answer him never another word," said old Mrs. Burrows.
+
+"I won't," said the other.
+
+"Were you ever at Bullhampton at all?" asked Mr. Toffy.
+
+"Oh dear, oh dear," said the younger woman.
+
+"I think you must have been there once," said Mr. Toffy.
+
+"What business is it of yourn?" demanded Mrs. Burrows, senior. "Drat
+you; get out of this. You ain't no right here, and you shan't stay
+here. If you ain't out of this, I'll brain yer. I don't care for
+perlice nor anything. We ain't done nothing. If he did smash the
+gen'leman's head, we didn't do it; neither she nor me."
+
+"All the same, I think that Mrs. Burrows has been at Bullhampton,"
+said the policeman.
+
+Not another word after this was said by Mrs. Burrows, junior,
+so called, and constable Toffy soon took his departure. He was
+convinced, at any rate, of this;--that wherever the murderers might
+be, the man or men who had joined Sam Brattle in the murder,--for
+of Sam's guilt he was quite convinced,--neither the mother, nor
+the so-called wife knew of their whereabouts. He, in his heart,
+condemned the constabulary of Warwickshire, of Gloucestershire, of
+Worcestershire, and of Somersetshire, because the Grinder was not
+taken. Especially he condemned the constabulary of Warwickshire,
+feeling almost sure that the Grinder was in Birmingham. If the
+constabulary in those counties would only do their duty as they in
+Wiltshire did theirs, the Grinder and his associates would soon be
+taken. But by him nothing further could be learned, and Mr. Toffy
+left Pycroft Common with a heavy heart.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+MISS LOWTHER ASKS FOR ADVICE.
+
+
+All these searchings for the murderers of Mr. Trumbull, and these
+remandings of Sam Brattle, took place in the month of September,
+and during that same month the energy of other men of law was very
+keenly at work on a widely different subject. Could Messrs. Block and
+Curling assure Captain Marrable that a portion of his inheritance
+would be saved for him, or had that graceless father of his in very
+truth seized upon it all? There was no shadow of doubt but that if
+aught was spared, it had not been spared through any delicacy on the
+part of the Colonel. The Colonel had gone to work, paying creditors
+who were clamorous against him, the moment he had got his hand
+upon the money, and had gone to work also gambling, and had made
+assignments of money, and done his very best to spend the whole. But
+there was a question whether a certain sum of £5000, which seemed
+to have got into the hands of a certain lady who protested that she
+wanted it very badly, might not be saved. Messrs. Block and Curling
+thought that it might, but were by no means certain. It probably
+might be done, if the Captain would consent to bring the matter
+before a jury; in which case the whole story of the father's iniquity
+must, of course, be proved. Or it might be that by threatening to
+do this, the lady's friends would relax their grasp on receiving a
+certain present out of the money.
+
+"We would offer them £50, and perhaps they would take £500," said
+Messrs. Block and Curling.
+
+All this irritated the Captain. He was intensely averse to any law
+proceedings by which the story should be made public.
+
+"I won't pretend that it is on my father's account," said he to
+his uncle. Parson John shrugged his shoulders, and shook his head,
+meaning to imply that it certainly was a bad case, but that as
+Colonel Marrable was a Marrable, he ought to be spared, if possible.
+"It is on my own account," continued the Captain, "and partly,
+perhaps, on that of the family. I would endure anything rather than
+have the filth of the transaction flooded through the newspapers. I
+should never be able to join my mess again if I did that."
+
+"Then you'd better let Block and Curling compromise and get what they
+can," said Parson John, with an indifferent and provoking tone, which
+clearly indicated that he would regard the matter when so settled as
+one arranged amicably and pleasantly between all the parties. His
+uncle's calmness and absence of horror at the thing that had been
+done was very grievous to Captain Marrable.
+
+"Poor Wat!" the parson had once said, speaking of his wicked brother;
+"he never could keep two shillings together. It's ever so long since
+I had to determine that nothing on earth should induce me to let him
+have half-a-crown. I must say that he did not take it amiss when I
+told him."
+
+"Why should he have wanted half-a-crown from you?"
+
+"He was always one of those thirsty sandbags that swallow small drops
+and large alike. He got £10,000 out of poor Gregory about the time
+that you were born, and Gregory is fretting about it yet."
+
+"What kills me is the disgrace of it," said the young man.
+
+"It would be disagreeable to have it in the newspapers," said Parson
+John. "And then he was such a pleasant fellow, and so handsome. I
+always enjoyed his society when once I had buttoned up my breeches'
+pocket."
+
+Yet this man was a clergyman, preaching honesty and moral conduct,
+and living fairly well up to his preaching, too, as far as he himself
+was concerned! The Captain almost thought that the earth and skies
+should be brought together, and the clouds clap with thunder, and
+the mountains be riven in twain at the very mention of his father's
+wickedness. But then sins committed against oneself are so much more
+sinful than any other sins.
+
+The Captain had much more sympathetic listeners in Uphill Lane; not
+that either of the ladies there spoke severely against his father,
+but that they entered more cordially into his own distresses. If he
+could save even £4500 out of the wreck, the interest on the money
+would enable him to live at home in his regiment. If he could get
+£4000 he would do it.
+
+"With £150 per annum," he said, "I could just hold my head up and get
+along. I should have to give up all manner of things; but I would
+never cry about that."
+
+Then, again, he would declare that the one thing necessary for his
+happiness was, that he should get the whole business of the money off
+his mind. "If I could have it settled, and have done with it," said
+he, "I should be at ease."
+
+"Quite right, my dear," said the old lady. "My idea about money is
+this, that whether you have much or little, you should make your
+arrangements so that it be no matter of thought to you. Your money
+should be just like counters at a round game with children, and
+should mean nothing. It comes to that when you once get things on a
+proper footing."
+
+They thus became very intimate, the two ladies in Uphill Lane and the
+Captain from his uncle's parsonage in the Lowtown; and the intimacy
+on his part was quite as strong with the younger as with the elder
+relative,--quite as strong, and no doubt more pleasant. They walked
+together constantly, as cousins may walk, and they discussed every
+turn that took place in the correspondence with Messrs. Block and
+Curling. Captain Marrable had come to his uncle's house for a week or
+ten days, but had been pressed to remain on till this business should
+be concluded. His leave of absence lasted till the end of November,
+and might be prolonged if he intended to return to India. "Stay here
+till the end of November," said Parson John. "What's the use of
+spending your money at a London hotel? Only don't fall in love with
+cousin Mary." So the Captain did stay, obeying one half of his
+uncle's advice, and promising obedience to the other half.
+
+Aunt Sarah also had her fears about the falling in love, and spoke a
+prudent word to Mary. "Mary, dear," she said, "you and Walter are as
+loving as turtle doves."
+
+"I do like him so much," said Mary, boldly.
+
+"So do I, my dear. He is a gentleman, and clever, and, upon the
+whole, he bears a great injury well. I like him. But I don't think
+people ought to fall in love when there is a strong reason against
+it."
+
+"Certainly not, if they can help it."
+
+"Pshaw! That's missish nonsense, Mary, and you know it. If a girl
+were to tell me she fell in love because she couldn't help it, I
+should tell her that she wasn't worth any man's love."
+
+"But what's your reason, Aunt Sarah?"
+
+"Because it wouldn't suit Mr. Gilmore."
+
+"I am not bound to suit Mr. Gilmore."
+
+"I don't know about that. And then, too, it would not suit Walter
+himself. How could he marry a wife when he has just been robbed of
+all his fortune?"
+
+"But I have not the slightest idea of falling in love with him. In
+spite of what I said, I do hope that I can help it. And then I feel
+to him just as though he were my brother. I've got almost to know
+what it would be to have a brother."
+
+In this Miss Lowther was probably wrong. She had now known her
+cousin for just a month. A month is quite long enough to realise the
+pleasure of a new lover, but it may be doubted whether the intimacy
+of a brother does not take a very much longer period for its
+creation.
+
+"I think if I were you," said Miss Marrable, after a pause, "that I
+would tell him about Mr. Gilmore."
+
+"Would you, Aunt Sarah?"
+
+"I think I would. If he were really your brother you would tell him."
+
+It was probably the case, that when Miss Marrable gave this
+advice, her opinion of Mr. Gilmore's success was greater than the
+circumstances warranted. Though there had been much said between the
+aunt and her niece about Mr. Gilmore and his offers, Mary had never
+been able quite to explain her own thoughts and feelings. She herself
+did not believe that she could be brought to accept him, and was
+now stronger in that opinion than ever. But were she to say so in
+language that would convince her aunt, her aunt would no doubt ask
+her, why then had she left the man in doubt? Though she knew that
+at every moment in which she had been called upon to act, she had
+struggled to do right, yet there hung over her a half-conviction that
+she had been weak, and almost selfish. Her dearest friends wrote to
+her and spoke to her as though she would certainly take Mr. Gilmore
+at last. Janet Fenwick wrote of it in her letters as of a thing
+almost fixed; and Aunt Sarah certainly lived as though she expected
+it. And yet Mary was very nearly sure that it could not be so. Would
+it not be better that she should write to Mr. Gilmore at once,
+and not wait till the expiration of the weary six months which he
+had specified as the time at the end of which he might renew his
+proposals? Had Aunt Sarah known all this,--had she been aware how
+very near Mary was to the writing of such a letter,--she would
+not probably have suggested that her niece should tell her cousin
+anything about Mr. Gilmore. She did think that the telling of the
+tale would make Cousin Walter understand that he should not allow
+himself to become an interloper; but the tale, if told as Mary would
+tell it, might have a very different effect.
+
+Nevertheless Mary thought that she would tell it. It would be so nice
+to consult a brother! It would be so pleasant to discuss the matter
+with some one that would sympathise with her,--with some one who
+would not wish to drive her into Mr. Gilmore's arms simply because
+Mr. Gilmore was an excellent gentleman, with a snug property! Even
+from Janet Fenwick, whom she loved dearly, she had never succeeded
+in getting the sort of sympathy that she wanted. Janet was the best
+friend in the world,--was actuated in this matter simply by a desire
+to do a good turn to two people whom she loved. But there was no
+sympathy between her and Mary in the matter.
+
+"Marry him," said Janet, "and you will adore him afterwards."
+
+"I want to adore him first," said Mary.
+
+So she resolved that she would tell Walter Marrable what was her
+position. They were again down on the banks of the Lurwell, sitting
+together on a slope which had been made to support some hundred yards
+of a canal, where the river itself rippled down a slightly rapid
+fall. They were seated between the canal and the river, with their
+feet towards the latter, and Walter Marrable was just lighting a
+cigar. It was very easy to bring the conversation round to the
+affairs of Bullhampton, as Sam was still in prison, and Janet's
+letters were full of the mystery which shrouded the murder of Mr.
+Trumbull.
+
+"By the bye," said she, "I have something to tell you about Mr.
+Gilmore."
+
+"Tell away," said he, as he turned the cigar round in his mouth, to
+complete the lighting of the edges in the wind.
+
+"Ah, but I shan't, unless you will interest yourself. What I am going
+to tell you ought to interest you."
+
+"He has made you a proposal of marriage?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I knew it."
+
+"How could you know it? Nobody has told you."
+
+"I felt sure of it from the way in which you speak of him. But I
+thought also that you had refused him. Perhaps I was wrong there?"
+
+"No."
+
+"You have refused him?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I don't see that there is very much of a story to be told, Mary."
+
+"Don't be so unkind, Walter. There is a story, and one that troubles
+me. If it were not so I should not have proposed to tell you. I
+thought that you would give me advice, and tell me what I ought to
+do."
+
+"But if you have refused him, you have done so,--no doubt
+rightly,--without my advice; and I am too late in the field to be of
+any service."
+
+"You must let me tell my own story, and you must be good to me while
+I do so. I think I shouldn't tell you if I hadn't almost made up my
+mind; but I shan't tell you which way, and you must advise me. In the
+first place, though I did refuse him, the matter is still open, and
+he is to ask me again, if he pleases."
+
+"He has your permission for that?"
+
+"Well,--yes. I hope it wasn't wrong. I did so try to be right."
+
+"I do not say you were wrong."
+
+"I like him so much, and think him so good, and do really feel that
+his affection is so great an honour to me, that I could not answer
+him as though I were quite indifferent to him."
+
+"At any rate, he is to come again?"
+
+"If he pleases."
+
+"Does he really love you?"
+
+"How am I to say? But that is missish and untrue. I am sure he loves
+me."
+
+"So that he will grieve to lose you?"
+
+"I know he will grieve. I ought not to say so. But I know he will."
+
+"You ought to tell the truth, as you believe it. And you
+yourself,--do you love him?"
+
+"I don't know. I do love him; but if I heard he was going to marry
+another girl to-morrow it would make me very happy."
+
+"Then you can't love him?"
+
+"I feel as though I should think the same of any man who wanted to
+marry me. But let me go on with my story. Everybody I care for wishes
+me to take him. I know that Aunt Sarah feels quite sure that I shall
+at last, and that she thinks I ought to do so at once. My friend,
+Janet Fenwick, cannot understand why I should hesitate, and only
+forgives me because she is sure that it will come right, in her way,
+some day. Mr. Fenwick is just the same, and will always talk to me as
+though it were my fate to live at Bullhampton all my life."
+
+"Is not Bullhampton a nice place?"
+
+"Very nice; I love the place."
+
+"And Mr. Gilmore is rich?"
+
+"He is quite rich enough. Fancy my inquiring about that, with just
+£1200 for my fortune."
+
+"Then why, in God's name, don't you accept him?"
+
+"You think I ought?"
+
+"Answer my question;--why do you not?"
+
+"Because--I do not love him--as I should hope to love my husband."
+
+After this Captain Marrable, who had been looking her full in the
+face while he had been asking these questions, turned somewhat
+away from her, as though the conversation were over. She remained
+motionless, and was minded so to remain till he should tell her that
+it was time to move, that they might return home. He had given her
+no advice; but she presumed she was to take what had passed as the
+expression of his opinion that it was her duty to accept an offer so
+favourable and so satisfactory to the family. At any rate, she would
+say nothing more on the subject till he should address her. Though
+she loved him dearly as her cousin, yet she was, in some slight
+degree, afraid of him. And now she was not sure but that he was
+expressing towards her, by his anger, some amount of displeasure
+at her weakness and inconsistency. After a while he turned round
+suddenly, and took her by the hand.
+
+"Well, Mary!" he said.
+
+"Well, Walter!"
+
+"What do you mean to do, after all?"
+
+"What ought I to do?"
+
+"What ought you to do? You know what you ought to do. Would you marry
+a man for whom you have no more regard than you have for this stick,
+simply because he is persistent in asking you? No more than you have
+for this stick, Mary. What sort of a feeling must it be, when you say
+that you would willingly see him married to any other girl to-morrow?
+Can that be love?"
+
+"I have never loved any one better."
+
+"And never will?"
+
+"How can I say? It seems to me that I haven't got the feeling that
+other girls have. I want some one to love me;--I do. I own that. I
+want to be first with some one; but I have never found the one yet
+that I cared for."
+
+"You had better wait till you find him," said he, raising himself up
+on his arm. "Come, let us get up and go home. You have asked me for
+my advice, and I have given it you. Do not throw yourself away upon
+a man because other people ask you, and because you think you might
+as well oblige them and oblige him. If you do, you will soon live to
+repent it. What would you do, if after marrying this man you found
+there was some one you could love?"
+
+"I do not think it would come to that, Walter."
+
+"How can you tell? How can you prevent its coming to that, except
+by loving the man you do marry? You don't care two straws for Mr.
+Gilmore; and I cannot understand how you can have the courage to
+think of becoming his wife. Let us go home. You have asked my advice,
+and you've got it. If you do not take it, I will endeavour to forget
+that I gave it you."
+
+Of course she would take it. She did not tell him so then; but, of
+course, he should guide her. With how much more accuracy, with how
+much more delicacy of feeling had he understood her position, than
+had her other friends! He had sympathised with her at a word. He
+spoke to her sternly, severely, almost cruelly. But it was thus that
+she had longed to be spoken to by some one who would care enough for
+her, would take sufficient interest in her, to be at the trouble so
+to advise her. She would trust him as a brother, and his words should
+be sweet to her, were they ever so severe.
+
+They walked together home in silence, and his very manner was stern
+to her; but it might be just thus that a loving brother would carry
+himself who had counselled his sister wisely, and had not as yet been
+assured that his counsel would be taken.
+
+"Walter," she said, as they neared the town, "I hope you have no
+doubt about it."
+
+"Doubt about what, Mary?"
+
+"It is quite a matter of course that I shall do as you tell me."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+THE MARQUIS OF TROWBRIDGE.
+
+
+By the end of September it had come to be pretty well understood that
+Sam Brattle must be allowed to go out of prison, unless something
+in the shape of fresh evidence should be brought up on the next
+Tuesday. There had arisen a very strong feeling in the county on
+the subject;--a Brattle feeling, and an anti-Brattle feeling. It
+might have been called a Bullhampton feeling and an anti-Bullhampton
+feeling, were it not that the biggest man concerned in Bullhampton,
+with certain of his hangers-on and dependents, were very clearly of
+opinion that Sam Brattle had committed the murder, and that he should
+be kept in prison till the period for hanging him might come round.
+This very big person was the Marquis of Trowbridge, under whom poor
+Farmer Trumbull had held his land, and who now seemed to think that
+a murder committed on one of his tenants was almost as bad as insult
+to himself. He felt personally angry with Bullhampton, had ideas
+of stopping his charities to the parish, and did resolve, then and
+there, that he would have nothing to do with a subscription for the
+repair of the church, at any rate for the next three years. In making
+up his mind on which subject he was, perhaps, a little influenced by
+the opinions and narratives of Mr. Puddleham, the Methodist minister
+in the village.
+
+It was not only that Mr. Trumbull had been murdered. So great and
+wise a man as Lord Trowbridge would, no doubt, know very well, that
+in a free country, such as England, a man could not be specially
+protected from the hands of murderers, or others, by the fact of
+his being the tenant, or dependent,--by his being in some sort
+the possession of a great nobleman. The Marquis's people were all
+expected to vote for his candidates, and would soon have ceased to be
+the Marquis's people had they failed to do so. They were constrained,
+also in many respects, by the terms of their very short leases. They
+could not kill a head of game on their farms. They could not sell
+their own hay off the land, nor, indeed, any produce other than their
+corn or cattle. They were compelled to crop their land in certain
+rotation; and could take no other lands than those held under the
+Marquis without his leave. In return for all this, they became the
+Marquis's people. Each tenant shook hands with the Marquis perhaps
+once in three years; and twice a year was allowed to get drunk at the
+Marquis's expense--if such was his taste--provided that he had paid
+his rent. If the duties were heavy, the privileges were great. So
+the Marquis himself felt; and he knew that a mantle of security, of
+a certain thickness, was spread upon the shoulders of each of his
+people by reason of the tenure which bound them together. But he did
+not conceive that this mantle would be proof against the bullet of
+the ordinary assassin, or the hammer of the outside ruffian. But here
+the case was very different. The hammer had been the hammer of no
+outside ruffian. To the best of his lordship's belief,--and in that
+belief he was supported by the constabulary of the whole county,--the
+hammer had been wielded by a man of Bullhampton,--had been wielded
+against his tenant by the son of "a person who holds land under a
+gentleman who has some property in the parish." It was thus the
+Marquis was accustomed to speak of his neighbour, Mr. Gilmore, who,
+in the Marquis's eyes, was a man not big enough to have his tenants
+called his people. That such a man as Sam Brattle should have
+murdered such a one as Mr. Trumbull, was to the Marquis an insult
+rather than an injury; and now it was to be enhanced by the release
+of the man from prison, and that by order of a bench of magistrates
+on which Mr. Gilmore sat!
+
+And there was more in it even than all this. It was very well known
+at Turnover Park,--the seat of Lord Trowbridge, near Westbury,--that
+Mr. Gilmore, the gentleman who held property in his lordship's parish
+of Bullhampton, and Mr. Fenwick, who was vicar of the same, were
+another Damon and Pythias. Now the ladies at Turnover, who were much
+devoted to the Low Church, had heard and doubtless believed, that our
+friend, Mr. Fenwick, was little better than an infidel. When first
+he had come into the county, they had been very anxious to make him
+out to be a High Churchman, and a story or two about a cross and
+a candlestick were fabricated for their gratification. There was
+at that time the remnant of a great fight going on between the
+Trowbridge people and another great family in the neighbourhood on
+this subject; and it would have suited the Ladies Stowte,--John
+Augustus Stowte was the Marquis of Trowbridge,--to have enlisted our
+parson among their enemies of this class; but the accusation fell so
+plump to the ground, was so impossible of support, that they were
+obliged to content themselves with knowing that Mr. Fenwick was--an
+infidel! To do the Marquis justice, we must declare that he would
+not have troubled himself on this score, if Mr. Fenwick would have
+submitted himself to become one of his people. The Marquis was master
+at home, and the Ladies Sophie and Carolina would have been proud to
+entertain Mr. Fenwick by the week together at Turnover, had he been
+willing, infidel or believer, to join that faction. But he never
+joined that faction, and he was not only the bosom friend of the
+"gentleman who owned some land in the parish;" but he was twice more
+rebellious than that gentleman himself. He had contradicted the
+Marquis flat to his face,--so the Marquis said himself,--when they
+met once about some business in the parish; and again, when, in the
+Vicar's early days in Bullhampton, some gathering for school-festival
+purposes was made in the great home field behind Farmer Trumbull's
+house, Mrs. Fenwick misbehaved herself egregiously.
+
+"Upon my word, she patronised us," said Lady Sophie, laughing. "She
+did, indeed! And you know what she was. Her father was just a common
+builder at Loring, who made some money by a speculation in bricks and
+mortar."
+
+When Lady Sophie said this she was, no doubt, ignorant of the fact
+that Mr. Balfour had been the younger son of a family much more
+ancient than her own, that he had taken a double-first at Oxford,
+had been a member of half the learned societies in Europe, and had
+belonged to two or three of the best clubs in London.
+
+From all this it will be seen that the Marquis of Trowbridge would
+be disposed to think ill of whatever might be done in regard to the
+murder by the Gilmore-Fenwick party in the parish. And then there
+were tales about for which there was perhaps some foundation, that
+the Vicar and the murderer had been very dear friends. It was
+certainly believed at Turnover that the Vicar and Sam Brattle had
+for years past spent the best part of their Sundays fishing together.
+There were tales of rat-killing matches in which they had been
+engaged,--originating in the undeniable fact of a certain campaign
+against rats at the mill, in which the Vicar had taken an ardent
+part. Undoubtedly the destruction of vermin, and, in regard to one
+species, its preservation for the sake of destruction,--and the
+catching of fish,--and the shooting of birds,--were things lovely
+in the Vicar's eyes. He, perhaps, did let his pastoral dignity go
+a little by the board, when he and Sam stooped together, each with
+a ferret in his hand, grovelling in the dust to get at certain
+rat-advantages in the mill. Gilmore, who had seen it, had told him
+of this. "I understand it all, old fellow," Fenwick had said to his
+friend, "and know very well I have got to choose between two things.
+I must be called a hypocrite, or else I must be one. I have no doubt
+that as years go on with me I shall see the advantage of choosing the
+latter." There were at that time frequent discussions between them
+on the same subject, for they were friends who could dare to discuss
+each other's modes of life; but the reader need not be troubled
+further now with this digression. The position which the Vicar held
+in the estimation of the Marquis of Trowbridge will probably be
+sufficiently well understood.
+
+The family at Turnover Park would have thought it a great blessing
+to have had a clergyman at Bullhampton with whom they could have
+cordially co-operated; but, failing this, they had taken Mr.
+Puddleham, the Methodist minister, to their arms. From Mr. Puddleham
+they learned parish facts and parish fables, which would never have
+reached them but for his assistance. Mr. Fenwick was well aware of
+this, and used to declare that he had no objection to it. He would
+protest that he could not see why Mr. Puddleham should not get along
+in the parish just as well as himself, he having, and meaning to
+keep to himself, the slight advantages of the parish church, the
+vicarage-house, and the small tithes. Of this he was quite sure, that
+Mr. Puddleham's religious teaching was better than none at all; and
+he was by no means convinced,--so he said,--that, for some of his
+parishioners, Mr. Puddleham was not a better teacher than he himself.
+He always shook hands with Mr. Puddleham, though Mr. Puddleham
+would never look him in the face, and was quite determined that Mr.
+Puddleham should not be a thorn in his side.
+
+In this matter of Sam Brattle's imprisonment and now intended
+liberation, tidings from the parish were doubtless conveyed by Mr.
+Puddleham to Turnover,--probably not direct, but still in such a
+manner that the great people at Turnover knew to whom they were
+indebted. Now Mr. Gilmore had certainly, from the first, been by no
+means disposed to view favourably the circumstances attaching to
+Sam Brattle on that Saturday night. When the great blow fell on the
+Brattle family, his demeanour to them was changed, and he forgave
+the miller's contumacy; but he had always thought that Sam had been
+guilty. The parson had from the first regarded the question with
+great doubt, but, nevertheless, his opinion too had at first been
+averse to Sam. Even now, when he was so resolute that Sam should be
+released, he founded his demand, not on Sam's innocence, but on the
+absence of any evidence against him.
+
+"He's entitled to fair play, Harry," he would say to Gilmore, "and he
+is not getting it, because there is a prejudice against him. You hear
+what that old ass, Sir Thomas, says."
+
+"Sir Thomas is a very good magistrate."
+
+"If he don't take care, he'll find himself in trouble for keeping the
+lad locked up without authority. Is there a juryman in the country
+would find him guilty because he was lying in the old man's ditch a
+week before?" In this way Gilmore also became a favourer of Sam's
+claim to be released; and at last it came to be understood that on
+the next Tuesday he would be released, unless further evidence should
+be forthcoming.
+
+And then it came to pass that a certain very remarkable meeting took
+place in the parish. Word was brought to Mr. Gilmore on Monday, the
+5th October, that the Marquis of Trowbridge was to be at the Church
+Farm,--poor Trumbull's farm,--on that day at noon, and that his
+lordship thought that it might be expedient that he and Mr. Gilmore
+should meet on the occasion. There was no note, but the message was
+brought by Mr. Packer, a sub-agent, one of the Marquis's people, with
+whom Mr. Gilmore was very well acquainted.
+
+"I'll walk down about that time, Packer," said Mr. Gilmore, "and
+shall be very happy to see his lordship."
+
+Now the Marquis never sat as a magistrate at the Heytesbury bench,
+and had not been present on any of the occasions on which Sam had
+been examined; nor had Mr. Gilmore seen the Marquis since the
+murder,--nor, for the matter of that, for the last twelve months. Mr.
+Gilmore had just finished breakfast when the news was brought to him,
+and he thought he might as well walk down and see Fenwick first. His
+interview with the parson ended in a promise that he, Fenwick, would
+also look in at the farm.
+
+At twelve o'clock the Marquis was seated in the old farmer's
+arm-chair, in the old farmer's parlour. The house was dark and
+gloomy, never having been altogether opened since the murder. With
+the Marquis was Packer, who was standing, and the Marquis was
+pretending to cast his eye over one or two books which had been
+brought to him. He had been taken all over the house; had stood
+looking at the bed where the old man lay when he was attacked,
+as though he might possibly discover, if he looked long enough,
+something that would reveal the truth; had gazed awe-struck at the
+spot on which the body had been found, and had taken occasion to
+remark to himself that the house was a good deal out of order. The
+Marquis was a man nearer seventy than sixty, but very hale, and with
+few signs of age. He was short and plump, with hardly any beard on
+his face, and short grey hair, of which nothing could be seen when he
+wore his hat. His countenance would not have been bad, had not the
+weight of his marquisate always been there; nor would his heart have
+been bad, had it not been similarly burdened. But he was a silly,
+weak, ignorant man, whose own capacity would hardly have procured
+bread for him in any trade or profession, had bread not been so
+adequately provided for him by his fathers before him.
+
+"Mr. Gilmore said he would be here at twelve, Packer?"
+
+"Yes, my lord."
+
+"And it's past twelve now?"
+
+"One minute, my lord."
+
+Then the peer looked again at poor old Trumbull's books.
+
+"I shall not wait, Packer."
+
+"No, my lord."
+
+"You had better tell them to put the horses to."
+
+"Yes, my lord."
+
+But just as Packer went out into the passage for the sake of giving
+the order he met Mr. Gilmore, and ushered him into the room.
+
+"Ha! Mr. Gilmore; yes, I am very glad to see you, Mr. Gilmore;" and
+the Marquis came forward to shake hands with his visitor. "I thought
+it better that you and I should meet about this sad affair in the
+parish;--a very sad affair, indeed."
+
+"It certainly is, Lord Trowbridge; and the mystery makes it more so."
+
+"I suppose there is no real mystery, Mr. Gilmore? I suppose there can
+be no doubt that that unfortunate young man did,--did,--did bear a
+hand in it at least?"
+
+"I think that there is very much doubt, my lord."
+
+"Do you, indeed? I think there is none,--not the least. And all the
+police force are of the same opinion. I have considerable experiences
+of my own in these matters; but I should not venture, perhaps, to
+express my opinion so confidently, if I were not backed by the
+police. You are aware, Mr. Gilmore, that the police are--very--seldom
+wrong?"
+
+"I should be tempted to say that they are very seldom right--except
+when the circumstances are all under their noses."
+
+"I must say I differ from you entirely, Mr. Gilmore. Now, in this
+case--" The Marquis was here interrupted by a knock at the door, and,
+before the summons could be answered, the parson entered the room.
+And with the parson came Mr. Puddleham. The Marquis had thought that
+the parson might, perhaps, intrude; and Mr. Puddleham was in waiting
+as a make-weight, should he be wanting. When Mr. Fenwick had met
+the minister hanging about the farmyard, he had displayed not the
+slightest anger. If Mr. Puddleham chose to come in also, and make
+good his doing so before the Marquis, it was nothing to Mr. Fenwick.
+The great man looked up, as though he were very much startled and
+somewhat offended; but he did at last condescend to shake hands,
+first with one clergyman and then with the other, and to ask them to
+sit down. He explained that he had come over to make some personal
+inquiry into the melancholy matter, and then proceeded with his
+opinion respecting Sam Brattle. "From all that I can hear and see,"
+said his lordship, "I fear there can be no doubt that this murder has
+been due to the malignity of a near neighbour."
+
+"Do you mean the poor boy that is in prison, my lord?" asked the
+parson.
+
+"Of course I do, Mr. Fenwick. The constabulary are of opinion--"
+
+"We know that, Lord Trowbridge."
+
+"Perhaps, Mr. Fenwick, you will allow me to express my own ideas. The
+constabulary, I say, are of opinion that there is no manner of doubt
+that he was one of those who broke into my tenant's house on that
+fatal night; and, as I was explaining to Mr. Gilmore when you did us
+the honour to join us, in the course of a long provincial experience
+I have seldom known the police to be in error."
+
+"Why, Lord Trowbridge--!"
+
+"If you please, Mr. Fenwick, I will go on. My time here cannot be
+long, and I have a proposition which I am desirous of making to
+Mr. Gilmore, as a magistrate acting in this part of the county. Of
+course, it is not for me to animadvert upon what the magistrates may
+do at the bench to-morrow."
+
+"I am sure your lordship would make no such animadversion," said Mr.
+Gilmore.
+
+"I do not intend it, for many reasons. But I may go so far as to say
+that a demand for the young man's release will be made."
+
+"He is to be released, I presume, as a matter of course," said the
+parson.
+
+The Marquis made no allusion to this, but went on. "If that be
+done,--and I must say that I think no such step would be taken by the
+bench at Westbury,--whither will the young man betake himself?"
+
+"Home to his father, of course," said the parson.
+
+"Back into this parish, with his paramour, to murder more of my
+tenants."
+
+"My lord, I cannot allow such an unjust statement to be made," said
+the parson.
+
+"I wish to speak for one moment; and I wish it to be remembered that
+I am addressing myself especially to your neighbour, Mr. Gilmore, who
+has done me the honour of waiting upon me here at my request. I do
+not object to your presence, Mr. Fenwick, or to that of any other
+gentleman," and the Marquis bowed to Mr. Puddleham, who had stood by
+hitherto without speaking a word; "but, if you please, I must carry
+out the purpose that has brought me here. I shall think it very sad
+indeed, if this young man be allowed to take up his residence in the
+parish after what has taken place."
+
+"His father has a house here," said Mr. Gilmore.
+
+"I am aware of the fact," said the Marquis. "I believe that the young
+man's father holds a mill from you, and some few acres of land?"
+
+"He has a very nice farm."
+
+"So be it. We will not quarrel about terms. I believe there is no
+lease?--though, of course, that is no business of mine."
+
+"I must say that it is not, my lord," said Mr. Gilmore, who was
+waxing wrothy and becoming very black about the brows.
+
+"I have just said so; but I suppose you will admit that I have some
+interest in this parish? I presume that these two gentlemen, who are
+God's ministers here, will acknowledge that it is my duty, as the
+owner of the greater part of the parish, to interfere?"
+
+"Certainly, my lord," said Mr. Puddleham.
+
+Mr. Fenwick said nothing. He sat, or rather leant, against the edge
+of a table, and smiled. His brow was not black, like that of his
+friend; but Gilmore, who knew him, and who looked into his face,
+began to fear that the Marquis would be addressed before long in
+terms stronger than he himself, Mr. Gilmore, would approve.
+
+"And when I remember," continued his lordship, "that the unfortunate
+man who has fallen a victim had been for nearly half a century a
+tenant of myself and of my family, and that he was foully murdered
+on my own property,--dragged from his bed in the middle of the night,
+and ruthlessly slaughtered in this very house in which I am sitting,
+and that this has been done in a parish of which I own, I think,
+something over two-thirds--"
+
+"Two thousand and two acres out of two thousand nine hundred and
+ten," said Mr. Puddleham.
+
+"I suppose so. Well, Mr. Puddleham, you need not have interrupted
+me."
+
+"I beg pardon, my lord."
+
+"What I mean to say is this, Mr. Gilmore,--that you should take steps
+to prevent that young man's return among our people. You should
+explain to the father that it cannot be allowed. From what I hear, it
+would be no loss if the whole family left the parish. I am told that
+one of the daughters is a--prostitute."
+
+"It is too true, my lord," said Mr. Puddleham.
+
+The parson turned round and looked at his colleague, but said
+nothing. It was one of the principles of his life that he wouldn't
+quarrel with Mr. Puddleham; and at the present moment he certainly
+did not wish to waste his anger on so weak an enemy.
+
+"I think that you should look to this, Mr. Gilmore," said the
+Marquis, completing his harangue.
+
+"I cannot conceive, my lord, what right you have to dictate to me in
+such a matter," said Mr. Gilmore.
+
+"I have not dictated at all; I have simply expressed my opinion,"
+said the Marquis.
+
+"Now, my lord, will you allow me for a moment?" said Mr. Fenwick.
+"In the first place, if Sam Brattle could not find a home at the
+mill,--which I hope he will do for many a long year to come,--he
+should have one at the Vicarage."
+
+"I dare say," said the Marquis.
+
+Mr. Puddleham held up both hands.
+
+"You might as well hold your tongue, Frank," said Gilmore.
+
+"It is a matter on which I wish to say a word or two, Harry. I have
+been appealed to as one of God's ministers here, and I acknowledge my
+responsibility. I never in my life heard any proposition more cruel
+or inhuman than that made by Lord Trowbridge. This young man is to be
+turned out because a tenant of his lordship has been murdered! He is
+to be adjudged to be guilty by us, without any trial, in the absence
+of all evidence, in opposition to the decision of the magistrates--"
+
+"It is not in opposition to the magistrates, sir," said the Marquis.
+
+"And to be forbidden to return to his own home, simply because Lord
+Trowbridge thinks him guilty! My lord, his father's house is his own,
+to entertain whom he may please, as much as is yours. And were I to
+suggest to you to turn out your daughters, it would be no worse an
+offence than your suggesting to Mr. Brattle that he should turn out
+his son."
+
+"My daughters!"
+
+"Yes, your daughters, my lord."
+
+"How dare you mention my daughters?"
+
+
+[Illustration: "How dare you mention my daughters?"]
+
+
+"The ladies, I am well aware, are all that is respectable. I have
+not the slightest wish that you should ill-use them. But if you
+desire that your family concerns should be treated with reserve and
+reticence, you had better learn to treat the family affairs of others
+in the same way."
+
+The Marquis by this time was on his feet, and was calling for
+Packer,--was calling for his carriage and horses,--was calling on
+the very gods to send down their thunder to punish such insolence
+as this. He had never heard of the like in all his experience. His
+daughters! And then there came across his dismayed mind an idea that
+his daughters had been put upon a par with that young murderer, Sam
+Brattle,--perhaps even on a par with something worse than this. And
+his daughters were such august persons,--old and ugly, it is true,
+and almost dowerless in consequence of the nature of the family
+settlements and family expenditure. It was an injury and an insult
+that Mr. Fenwick should make the slightest allusion to his daughters;
+but to talk of them in such a way as this, as though they were
+mere ordinary human beings, was not to be endured! The Marquis had
+hitherto had his doubts, but now he was quite sure that Mr. Fenwick
+was an infidel. "And a very bad sort of infidel, too," as he said to
+Lady Carolina on his return home. "I never heard of such conduct in
+all my life," said Lord Trowbridge, walking down to his carriage.
+"Who can be surprised that there should be murderers and prostitutes
+in the parish?"
+
+"My lord, they don't sit under me," said Mr. Puddleham.
+
+"I don't care who they sit under," said his lordship.
+
+As they walked away together, Mr. Fenwick had just a word to say to
+Mr. Puddleham. "My friend," he said, "you were quite right about his
+lordship's acres."
+
+"Those are the numbers," said Mr. Puddleham.
+
+"I mean that you were quite right to make the observation. Facts are
+always valuable, and I am sure Lord Trowbridge was obliged to you.
+But I think you were a little wrong as to another statement."
+
+"What statement, Mr. Fenwick?"
+
+"What you said about poor Carry Brattle. You don't know it as a
+fact."
+
+"Everybody says so."
+
+"How do you know she has not married, and become an honest woman?"
+
+"It is possible, of course. Though as for that,--when a young woman
+has once gone astray--"
+
+"As did Mary Magdalene, for instance!"
+
+"Mr. Fenwick, it was a very bad case."
+
+"And isn't my case very bad,--and yours? Are we not in a bad
+way,--unless we believe and repent? Have we not all so sinned as to
+deserve eternal punishment?"
+
+"Certainly, Mr. Fenwick."
+
+"Then there can't be much difference between her and us. She can't
+deserve more than eternal punishment. If she believes and repents,
+all her sins will be white as snow."
+
+"Certainly, Mr. Fenwick."
+
+"Then speak of her as you would of any other sister or brother,--not
+as a thing that must be always vile because she has fallen once.
+Women will so speak,--and other men. One sees something of a reason
+for it. But you and I, as Christian ministers, should never allow
+ourselves to speak so thoughtlessly of sinners. Good morning, Mr.
+Puddleham."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+BLANK PAPER.
+
+
+Early in October Captain Marrable was called up to town by letters
+from Messrs. Block and Curling, and according to promise wrote
+various letters to Mary Lowther, telling her of the manner in which
+his business progressed. All of these letters were shown to Aunt
+Sarah,--and would have been shown to Parson John were it not that
+Parson John declined to read them. But though the letters were purely
+cousinly,--just such letters as a brother might write,--yet Miss
+Marrable thought that they were dangerous. She did not say so; but
+she thought that they were dangerous. Of late Mary had spoken no word
+of Mr. Gilmore; and Aunt Sarah, through all this silence, was able
+to discover that Mr. Gilmore's prospects were not becoming brighter.
+Mary herself, having quite made up her mind that Mr. Gilmore's
+prospects, so far as she was concerned, were all over, could not
+decide how and when she should communicate the resolve to her lover.
+According to her present agreement with him, she was to write to him
+at once should she accept any other offer; and was to wait for six
+months if this should not be the case. Certainly, there was no rival
+in the field, and therefore she did not quite know whether she ought
+or ought not to write at once in her present circumstances of assured
+determination. She soon told herself that in this respect also she
+would go to her new-found brother for advice. She would ask him, and
+do just as he might bid her. Had he not already proved how fit a
+person he was to give advice on such a subject?
+
+After an absence of ten days he came home, and nothing could exceed
+Mary's anxiety as to the tidings which he should bring with him. She
+endeavoured not to be selfish about the matter; but she could not but
+acknowledge that, even as regarded herself, the difference between
+his going to India or staying at home was so great as to affect
+the whole colour of her life. There was, perhaps, something of the
+feeling of being subject to desertion about her, as she remembered
+that in giving up Mr. Gilmore she must also give up the Fenwicks. She
+could not hope to go to Bullhampton again, at least for many a long
+day. She would be very much alone if her new brother were to leave
+her now. On the morning after his arrival he came up to them at
+Uphill, and told them that the matter was almost settled. Messrs.
+Block and Curling had declared that it was as good as settled; the
+money would be saved, and there would be, out of the £20,000 which
+he had inherited, something over £4000 for him; so that he need not
+return to India. He was in very high spirits, and did not speak a
+word of his father's iniquities.
+
+"Oh, Walter, what a joy!" said Mary, with the tears streaming from
+her eyes.
+
+He took her by both her hands, and kissed her forehead. At that
+moment Aunt Sarah was not in the room.
+
+"I am so very, very happy," she said, pressing her little hands
+against his.
+
+Why should he not kiss her? Was he not her brother? And then,
+before he went, she remembered she had something special to tell
+him;--something to ask him. Would he not walk with her that evening?
+Of course he would walk with her.
+
+"Mary, dear," said her aunt, putting her little arm round her niece's
+waist, and embracing her, "don't fall in love with Walter."
+
+"How can you say anything so foolish, Aunt Sarah?"
+
+"It would be very foolish to do so."
+
+"You don't understand how completely different it is. Do you think
+I could be so intimate with him as I am if anything of the kind were
+possible?"
+
+"I do not know how that may be."
+
+"Do not begrudge it me because I have found a cousin that I can love
+almost as I would a brother. There has never been anybody yet for
+whom I could have that sort of feeling."
+
+Aunt Sarah, whatever she might think, had not the heart to repeat her
+caution; and Mary, quite happy and contented with herself, put on her
+hat to run down the hill and meet her cousin at the great gates of
+the Lowtown Rectory. Why should he be dragged up the hill, to escort
+a cousin down again? This arrangement had, therefore, been made
+between them.
+
+For the first mile or two the talk was all about Messrs. Block and
+Curling and the money. Captain Marrable was so full of his own
+purposes, and so well contented that so much should be saved to him
+out of the fortune he had lost, that he had, perhaps, forgotten that
+Mary required more advice. But when they had come to the spot on
+which they had before sat, she bade him stop and seat himself.
+
+"And now what is it?" he said, as he rolled himself comfortably close
+to her side. She told her story, and explained her doubts, and asked
+for the revelations of his wisdom. "Are you quite sure about the
+propriety of this, Mary?" he said.
+
+"The propriety of what, Walter?"
+
+"Giving up a man who loves you so well, and who has so much to
+offer?"
+
+"What was it you said yourself? Sure! Of course I am sure. I am quite
+sure. I do not love him. Did I not tell you that there could be no
+doubt after what you said?"
+
+"I did not mean that my words should be so powerful."
+
+"They were powerful; but, independently of that, I am quite sure now.
+If I could do it myself, I should be false to him. I know that I do
+not love him." He was not looking at her where he was lying, but was
+playing with a cigar-case which he had taken out, as though he were
+about to resume his smoking. But he did not open the case, or look
+towards her, or say a word to her. Two minutes had perhaps passed
+before she spoke again. "I suppose it would be best that I should
+write to him at once?"
+
+"There is no one else, then, you care for, Mary?" he asked.
+
+"No one," she said, as though the question were nothing.
+
+"It is all blank paper with you?"
+
+
+[Illustration: "It is all blank paper with you?"]
+
+
+"Quite blank," she said, and laughed. "Do you know, I almost think it
+always will be blank."
+
+"By G----! it is not blank with me," he said, springing up
+and jumping to his feet. She stared at him, not in the least
+understanding what he meant, not dreaming even that he was about to
+tell her his love secrets in reference to another. "I wonder what you
+think I'm made of, Mary;--whether you imagine I have any affection to
+bestow?"
+
+"I do not in the least understand."
+
+"Look here, dear," and he knelt down beside her as he spoke, "it
+is simply this, that you have become to me more than all the
+world;--that I love you better than my own soul;--that your beauty
+and sweetness, and soft, darling touch, are everything to me. And
+then you come to me for advice! I can only give you one bit of advice
+now, Mary."
+
+"And what is that?"
+
+"Love me."
+
+"I do love you."
+
+"Ay, but love me and be my wife."
+
+She had to think of it; but she knew from the first moment that the
+thinking of it was a delight to her. She did not quite understand
+at first that her chosen brother might become her lover, with no
+other feeling than that of joy and triumph; and yet there was a
+consciousness that no other answer but one was possible. In the first
+place, to refuse him anything, asked in love, would be impossible.
+She could not say No to him. She had struggled often in reference
+to Mr. Gilmore, and had found it impossible to say Yes. There was
+now the same sort of impossibility in regard to the No. She couldn't
+blacken herself with such a lie. And yet, though she was sure of
+this, she was so astounded by his declaration, so carried off her
+legs by the alteration in her position, so hard at work within
+herself with her new endeavour to change the aspect in which she must
+look at the man, that she could not even bring herself to think of
+answering him. If he would only sit down near her for awhile,--very
+near,--and not speak to her, she thought that she would be happy.
+Everything else was forgotten. Aunt Sarah's caution, Janet Fenwick's
+anger, poor Gilmore's sorrow,--of all these she thought not at all,
+or only allowed her mind to dwell on them as surrounding trifles, of
+which it would be necessary that she, that they--they two who were
+now all in all to each other--must dispose; as they must, also, of
+questions of income, and such like little things. She was without a
+doubt. The man was her master, and had her in his keeping, and of
+course she would obey him. But she must settle her voice, and let her
+pulses become calm, and remember herself before she could tell him
+so. "Sit down again, Walter," she said at last.
+
+"Why should I sit?"
+
+"Because I ask you. Sit down, Walter."
+
+"No. I understand how wise you will be, and how cold; and I
+understand, too, what a fool I have been."
+
+"Walter, will you not come when I ask you?"
+
+"Why should I sit?"
+
+"That I may try to tell you how dearly I love you."
+
+He did not sit, but he threw himself at her feet, and buried his face
+upon her lap. There were but few more words spoken then. When it
+comes to this, that a pair of lovers are content to sit and rub their
+feathers together like two birds, there is not much more need of
+talking. Before they had arisen, her fingers had been playing through
+his curly hair, and he had kissed her lips and cheeks as well as her
+forehead. She had begun to feel what it was to have a lover and to
+love him. She could already talk to him almost as though he were a
+part of herself, could whisper to him little words of nonsense, could
+feel that everything of hers was his, and everything of his was hers.
+She knew more clearly now even than she had done before that she had
+never loved Mr. Gilmore, and never could have loved him. And that
+other doubt had been solved for her. "Do you know," she had said,
+not yet an hour ago, "that I think it always will be blank." And now
+every spot of the canvas was covered.
+
+"We must go home now," she said at last.
+
+"And tell Aunt Sarah," he replied, laughing.
+
+"Yes, and tell Aunt Sarah;--but not to-night. I can do nothing
+to-night but think about it. Oh, Walter, I am so happy!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+SAM BRATTLE RETURNS HOME.
+
+
+The Tuesday's magistrates' meeting had come off at Heytesbury, and
+Sam Brattle had been discharged. Mr. Jones had on this occasion
+indignantly demanded that his client should be set free without bail;
+but to this the magistrates would not assent. The attorney attempted
+to demonstrate to them that they could not require bail for the
+reappearance of an accused person, when that accused person was
+discharged simply because there was no evidence against him. But to
+this exposition of the law Sir Thomas and his brother magistrates
+would not listen. "If the other persons should at last be taken, and
+Brattle should not then be forthcoming, justice would suffer," said
+Sir Thomas. County magistrates, as a rule, are more conspicuous for
+common sense and good instincts than for sound law; and Mr. Jones
+may, perhaps, have been right in his view of the case. Nevertheless
+bail was demanded, and was not forthcoming without considerable
+trouble. Mr. Jay, the ironmonger at Warminster, declined. When spoken
+to on the subject by Mr. Fenwick, he declared that the feeling among
+the gentry was so strong against his brother-in-law, that he could
+not bring himself to put himself forward. He couldn't do it for the
+sake of his family. When Fenwick promised to make good the money
+risk, Jay declared that the difficulty did not lie there. "There's
+the Marquis, and Sir Thomas, and Squire Greenthorne, and our parson,
+all say, sir, as how he shouldn't be bailed at all. And then, sir,
+if one has a misfortune belonging to one, one doesn't want to flaunt
+it in everybody's face, sir." And there was trouble, too, with
+George Brattle from Fordingbridge. George Brattle was a prudent,
+hard-headed, hard-working man, not troubled with much sentiment, and
+caring very little what any one could say of him as long as his rent
+was paid; but he had taken it into his head that Sam was guilty,
+that he was at any rate a thoroughly bad fellow who should be turned
+out of the Brattle nest, and that no kindness was due to him. With
+the farmer, however, Mr. Fenwick did prevail, and then the parson
+became the other bondsman himself. He had been strongly advised,--by
+Gilmore, by Gilmore's uncle, the prebendary at Salisbury, and by
+others,--not to put himself forward in this position. The favour
+which he had shown to the young man had not borne good results
+either for the young man or for himself; and it would be unwise,--so
+said his friends,--to subject his own name to more remark than
+was necessary. He had so far assented as to promise not to come
+forward himself, if other bailsmen could be procured. But, when the
+difficulty came, he offered himself, and was, of necessity, accepted.
+
+When Sam was released, he was like a caged animal who, when liberty
+is first offered to him, does not know how to use it. He looked
+about him in the hall of the Court House, and did not at first seem
+disposed to leave it. The constable had asked him whether he had
+means of getting home, to which he replied, that "it wasn't no more
+than a walk." Dinner was offered to him by the constable, but this he
+refused, and then he stood glaring about him. After a while Gilmore
+and Fenwick came up to him, and the Squire was the first to speak.
+"Brattle," he said, "I hope you will now go home, and remain there
+working with your father for the present."
+
+"I don't know nothing about that," said the lad, not deigning to look
+at the Squire.
+
+"Sam, pray go home at once," said the parson. "We have done what we
+could for you, and you should not oppose us."
+
+"Mr. Fenwick, if you tells me to go to--to--to,"--he was going to
+mention some very bad place, but was restrained by the parson's
+presence,--"if you tells me to go anywheres, I'll go."
+
+"That's right. Then I tell you to go to the mill."
+
+"I don't know as father'll let me in," said he, almost breaking into
+sobs as he spoke.
+
+"That he will, heartily. Do you tell him that you had a word or two
+with me here, and that I'll come up and call on him to-morrow." Then
+he put his hand into his pocket, and whispering something, offered
+the lad money. But Sam turned away, and shook his head, and walked
+off. "I don't believe that that fellow had any more to do with it
+than you or I," said Fenwick.
+
+"I don't know what to believe," said Gilmore. "Have you heard that
+the Marquis is in the town? Greenthorne just told me so."
+
+"Then I had better get out of it, for Heytesbury isn't big enough
+for the two of us. Come, you've done here, and we might as well jog
+home."
+
+Gilmore dined at the Vicarage that evening, and of course the day's
+work was discussed. The quarrel, too, which had taken place at the
+farmhouse had only yet been in part described to Mrs. Fenwick. "Do
+you know I feel half triumphant and half frightened," Mrs. Fenwick
+said to the Squire. "I know that the Marquis is an old fool,
+imperious, conceited, and altogether unendurable when he attempts
+to interfere. And yet I have a kind of feeling that because he is a
+Marquis, and because he owns two thousand and so many acres in the
+parish, and because he lives at Turnover Park, one ought to hold him
+in awe."
+
+"Frank didn't hold him in awe yesterday," said the Squire.
+
+"He holds nothing in awe," said the wife.
+
+"You wrong me there, Janet. I hold you in great awe, and every lady
+in Wiltshire more or less;--and I think I may say every woman. And
+I would hold him in a sort of awe, too, if he didn't drive me beyond
+myself by his mixture of folly and pride."
+
+"He can do us a great deal of mischief, you know," said Mrs. Fenwick.
+
+"What he can do, he will do," said the parson. "He even gave me a bad
+name, no doubt; but I fancy he was generous enough to me in that way
+before yesterday. He will now declare that I am the Evil One himself,
+and people won't believe that. A continued persistent enmity,
+always at work, but kept within moderate bounds, is more dangerous
+now-a-days, than a hot fever of revengeful wrath. The Marquis can't
+send out his men-at-arms and have me knocked on the head, or cast
+into a dungeon. He can only throw mud at me, and the more he throws
+at once, the less will reach me."
+
+As to Sam, they were agreed that, whether he were innocent or guilty,
+the old miller should be induced to regard him as innocent, as far as
+their joint exertion in that direction might avail.
+
+"He is innocent before the law till he has been proved to be guilty,"
+said the Squire.
+
+"Then of course there can be nothing wrong in telling his father that
+he is innocent," said the lady.
+
+The Squire did not quite admit this, and the parson smiled as he
+heard the argument; but they both acknowledged that it would be right
+to let it be considered throughout the parish that Sam was to be
+regarded as blameless for that night's transaction. Nevertheless, Mr.
+Gilmore's mind on the subject was not changed.
+
+"Have you heard from Loring?" the Squire asked Mrs. Fenwick as he got
+up to leave the Vicarage.
+
+"Oh, yes,--constantly. She is quite well, Mr. Gilmore."
+
+"I sometimes think that I'll go off and have a look at her."
+
+"I'm sure both she and her aunt would be glad to see you."
+
+"But would it be wise?"
+
+"If you ask me, I am bound to say that I think it would not be wise.
+If I were you, I would leave her for awhile. Mary is as good as gold,
+but she is a woman; and, like other women, the more she is sought,
+the more difficult she will be."
+
+"It always seems to me," said Mr. Gilmore, "that to be successful in
+love, a man should not be in love at all; or, at any rate, he should
+hide it." Then he went off home alone, feeling on his heart that
+pernicious load of a burden which comes from the unrestrained longing
+for some good thing which cannot be attained. It seemed to him now
+that nothing in life would be worth a thought if Mary Lowther should
+continue to say him nay; and it seemed to him, too, that unless the
+yea were said very quickly, all his aptitudes for enjoyment would be
+worn out of him.
+
+On the next morning, immediately after breakfast, Mr. and Mrs.
+Fenwick walked down to the mill together. They went through the
+village, and thence by a pathway down to a little foot-bridge, and so
+along the river side. It was a beautiful October morning, the 7th of
+October, and Fenwick talked of the pheasants. Gilmore, though he was
+a sportsman, and shot rabbits and partridges about his own property,
+and went occasionally to shooting-parties at a distance, preserved
+no game. There had been some old unpleasantness about the Marquis's
+pheasants, and he had given it up. There could be no doubt that his
+property in the parish being chiefly low lying lands and water meads
+unfit for coverts, was not well disposed for preserving pheasants,
+and that in shooting he would more likely shoot Lord Trowbridge's
+birds than his own. But it was equally certain that Lord Trowbridge's
+pheasants made no scruple of feeding on his land. Nevertheless, he
+had thought it right to give up all idea of keeping up a head of game
+for his own use in Bullhampton.
+
+"Upon my word, if I were you, Gilmore," said the parson, as a bird
+rose from the ground close at their feet, "I should cease to be nice
+about the shooting after what happened yesterday."
+
+"You don't mean that you would retaliate, Frank?"
+
+"I think I should."
+
+"Is that good parson's law?"
+
+"It's very good squire's law. And as for that doctrine of
+non-retaliation, a man should be very sure of his own motives before
+he submits to it. If a man be quite certain that he is really
+actuated by a Christian's desire to forgive, it may be all very well;
+but if there be any admixture of base alloy in his gold, if he allows
+himself to think that he may avoid the evils of pugnacity, and have
+things go smooth for him here, and become a good Christian by the
+same process, why then I think he is likely to fall to the ground
+between two stools." Had Lord Trowbridge heard him, his lordship
+would now have been quite sure that Mr. Fenwick was an infidel.
+
+They had both doubted whether Sam would be found at the mill; but
+there he was, hard at work among the skeleton timbers, when his
+friends reached the place.
+
+"I am glad to see you at home again, Sam," said Mrs. Fenwick, with
+something, however, of an inner feeling that perhaps she might be
+saluting a murderer.
+
+Sam touched his cap, but did not utter a word, or look away from his
+work. They passed on amidst the heaps in front of the mill, and came
+to the porch before the cottage. Here, as had been his wont in all
+these idle days, the miller was sitting with a pipe in his mouth.
+When he saw the lady he got up and ducked his head, and then sat down
+again. "If your wife is here, I'll just step in, Mr. Brattle," said
+Mrs. Fenwick.
+
+"She be there, ma'am," said the miller, pointing towards the kitchen
+window with his head. So Mrs. Fenwick lifted the latch and entered.
+The parson sat himself down by the miller's side.
+
+"I am heartily glad, Mr. Brattle, that Sam is back with you here once
+again."
+
+"He be there, at work among the rest o' 'em," said the miller.
+
+"I saw him as I came along. I hope he will remain here now."
+
+"I can't say, Muster Fenwick."
+
+"But he intends to do so?"
+
+"I can't say, Muster Fenwick."
+
+"Would it not be well that you should ask him?"
+
+"Not as I knows on, Muster Fenwick."
+
+It was manifest enough that the old man had not spoken to his son
+on the subject of the murder, and that there was no confidence,--at
+least, no confidence that had been expressed,--between the father and
+the son. No one had as yet heard the miller utter any opinion as to
+Sam's innocence or his guilt. This of itself seemed to the clergyman
+to be a very terrible condition for two persons who were so closely
+united, and who were to live together, work together, eat together,
+and have mutual interests.
+
+"I hope, Mr. Brattle," he said, "that you give Sam the full benefit
+of his discharge."
+
+"He'll get his vittles and his bed, and a trifle of wages if he works
+for 'em."
+
+"I didn't mean that. I'm quite sure you wouldn't see him want a
+comfortable home, as long as you have one to give him."
+
+"There ain't much comfort about it now."
+
+"I was speaking of your own opinion of the deed that was done. My own
+opinion is that Sam had nothing to do with it."
+
+"I'm sure I can't say, Muster Fenwick."
+
+"But it would be a comfort to you to think that he is innocent."
+
+"I ain't no comfort in talking about it,--not at all,--and I'd
+rayther not, if it's all one to you, Muster Fenwick."
+
+"I will not ask another question, but I'll repeat my own opinion, Mr.
+Brattle. I don't believe that he had anything more to do with the
+robbery or the murder, than I had."
+
+"I hope not, Muster Fenwick. Murder is a terrible crime. And now, if
+you'll tell me how much it was you paid the lawyer at Heytesbury--"
+
+"I cannot say as yet. It will be some trifle. You need not trouble
+yourself about that."
+
+"But I mean to pay 'un, Muster Fenwick. I can pay my way as yet,
+though it's hard enough at times." The parson was obliged to promise
+that Mr. Jones's bill of charges should be sent to him, and then he
+called his wife, and they left the mill. Sam was still up among the
+timbers, and had not once come down while the visitors were in the
+cottage. Mrs. Fenwick had been more successful with the women than
+the parson had been with the father. She had taken upon herself to
+say that she thoroughly believed Sam to be innocent, and they had
+thanked her with many protestations of gratitude.
+
+They did not go back by the way they had come, but went up to the
+road, which they crossed, and thence to some outlying cottages which
+were not very far from Hampton Privets House. From these cottages
+there was a path across the fields back to Bullhampton, which led by
+the side of a small wood belonging to the Marquis. There was a good
+deal of woodland just here, and this special copse, called Hampton
+bushes, was known to be one of the best pheasant coverts in that part
+of the country. Whom should they meet, standing on the path, armed
+with his gun, and with his keeper behind him armed with another, than
+the Marquis of Trowbridge himself. They had heard a shot or two, but
+they had thought nothing of it, or they would have gone back to the
+road. "Don't speak," said the parson, as he walked on quickly with
+his wife on his arm. The Marquis stood and scowled; but he had the
+breeding of a gentleman, and when Mrs. Fenwick was close to him, he
+raised his hat. The parson also raised his, the lady bowed, and then
+they passed on without a word. "I had no excuse for doing so, or I
+would certainly have told him that Sam Brattle was comfortably at
+home with his father," said the parson.
+
+"How you do like a fight, Frank!"
+
+"If it's stand up, and all fair, I don't dislike it."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+I HAVE A JUPITER OF MY OWN NOW.
+
+
+When Mary Lowther returned home from the last walk with her cousin
+that has been mentioned, she was quite determined that she would
+not disturb her happiness on that night by the task of telling her
+engagement to her aunt. It must, of course, be told, and that at
+once; and it must be told also to Parson John; and a letter must be
+written to Janet; and another, which would be very difficult in the
+writing, to Mr. Gilmore; and she must be prepared to bear a certain
+amount of opposition from all her friends; but for the present
+moment, she would free herself from these troubles. To-morrow, after
+breakfast, she would tell her aunt. To-morrow, at lunch-time, Walter
+would come up to the lane as her accepted lover. And then, after
+lunch, after due consultation with him and with Aunt Sarah, the
+letter should be written.
+
+She had solved, at any rate, one doubt, and had investigated one
+mystery. While conscious of her own coldness towards Mr. Gilmore, she
+had doubted whether she was capable of loving a man, of loving him as
+Janet Fenwick loved her husband. Now she would not admit to herself
+that any woman that ever lived adored a man more thoroughly than she
+adored Walter Marrable. It was sweet to her to see and to remember
+the motions of his body. When walking by his side she could hardly
+forbear to touch him with her shoulder. When parting from him it was
+a regret to her to take her hand from his. And she told herself that
+all this had come to her in the course of one morning's walk, and
+wondered at it,--that her heart should be a thing capable of being
+given away so quickly. It had, in truth, been given away quickly
+enough, though the work had not been done in that one morning's walk.
+She had been truly honest, to herself and to others, when she said
+that her cousin Walter was and should be a brother to her; but had
+her new brother, in his brotherly confidence, told her that his
+heart was devoted to some other woman, she would have suffered a
+blow, though she would never have confessed even to herself that
+she suffered. On that evening, when she reached home, she said very
+little.
+
+She was so tired. Might she go to bed? "What, at nine o'clock?" asked
+Aunt Sarah.
+
+"I'll stay up, if you wish it," said Mary.
+
+But before ten she was alone in her own chamber, sitting in her own
+chair, with her arms folded, feeling, rather than thinking, how
+divine a thing it was to be in love. What could she not do for him?
+What would she not endure to have the privilege of living with him?
+What other good fortune in life could be equal to this good fortune?
+Then she thought of her relations with Mr. Gilmore, and shuddered
+as she remembered how near she had been to accepting him. "It would
+have been so wrong. And yet I did not see it! With him I am sure that
+it is right, for I feel that in going to him I can be every bit his
+own."
+
+So she thought, and so she dreamed; and then the morning came, and
+she had to go down to her aunt. She ate her breakfast almost in
+silence, having resolved that she would tell her story the moment
+breakfast was over. She had, over night, and while she was in bed,
+studiously endeavoured not to con any mode of telling it. Up to
+the moment at which she rose her happiness was, if possible, to be
+untroubled. But while she dressed herself, she endeavoured to arrange
+her plans. She at last came to the conclusion that she could do it
+best without any plan.
+
+As soon as Aunt Sarah had finished her breakfast, and just as she
+was about to proceed, according to her morning custom, down-stairs
+to the kitchen, Mary spoke. "Aunt Sarah, I have something to tell
+you. I may as well bring it out at once. I am engaged to marry Walter
+Marrable." Aunt Sarah immediately let fall the sugar-tongs, and stood
+speechless. "Dear aunt, do not look as if you were displeased. Say a
+kind word to me. I am sure you do not think that I have intended to
+deceive you."
+
+"No; I do not think that," said Aunt Sarah.
+
+"And is that all?"
+
+"I am very much surprised. It was yesterday that you told me, when
+I hinted at this, that he was no more to you than a cousin,--or a
+brother."
+
+"And so I thought; indeed I did. But when he told me how it was with
+him, I knew at once that I had only one answer to give. No other
+answer was possible. I love him better than anyone else in all the
+world. I feel that I can promise to be his wife without the least
+reserve or fear. I don't know why it should be so; but it is. I
+know I am right in this." Aunt Sarah still stood silent, meditating.
+"Don't you think I was right, feeling as I do, to tell him so? I had
+before become certain, quite, quite certain that it was impossible to
+give any other answer but one to Mr. Gilmore. Dearest aunt, do speak
+to me."
+
+"I do not know what you will have to live upon."
+
+"It is settled, you know, that he will save four or five thousand
+pounds out of his money, and I have got twelve hundred. It is not
+much, but it will be just something. Of course he will remain in the
+army, and I shall be a soldier's wife. I shall think nothing of going
+out to India, if he wishes it; but I don't think he means that. Dear
+Aunt Sarah, do say one word of congratulation."
+
+Aunt Sarah did not know how to congratulate her niece. It seemed to
+her that any congratulation must be false and hypocritical. To her
+thinking, it would be a most unfitting match. It seemed to her that
+such an engagement had been most foolish. She was astonished at
+Mary's weakness, and was indignant with Walter Marrable. As regarded
+Mary, though she had twice uttered a word or two, intended as a
+caution, yet she had never thought it possible that a girl so steady
+in her ordinary demeanour, so utterly averse to all flirtation, so
+little given to the weakness of feminine susceptibility, would fall
+at once into such a quagmire of indiscreet love-troubles. The caution
+had been intended, rather in regard to outward appearances, and
+perhaps with the view of preventing the possibility of some slight
+heart-scratches, than with the idea that danger of this nature was to
+be dreaded. As Mr. Gilmore was there as an acknowledged suitor,--a
+suitor, as to whose ultimate success Aunt Sarah had her strong
+opinions,--it would be well those cousinly-brotherly associations
+and confidences should not become so close as to create possible
+embarrassment. Such had been the nature of Aunt Sarah's caution; and
+now,--in the course of a week or two,--when the young people were
+in truth still strangers to each other,--when Mr. Gilmore was still
+waiting for his answer,--Mary came to her, and told her that the
+engagement was a thing completed! How could she utter a word of
+congratulation?
+
+"You mean, then, to say that you disapprove of it?" said Mary, almost
+sternly.
+
+"I cannot say that I think it wise."
+
+"I am not speaking of wisdom. Of course, Mr. Gilmore is very much
+richer, and all that."
+
+"You know, Mary, that I would not counsel you to marry a man because
+he was rich."
+
+"That is what you mean when you tell me I am not wise. I tried
+it,--with all the power of thought and calculation that I could give
+to it, and I found that I could not marry Mr. Gilmore."
+
+"I am not speaking about that now."
+
+"You mean that Walter is so poor, that he never should be allowed to
+marry."
+
+"I don't care twopence about Walter."
+
+"But I do, Aunt Sarah. I care more about him than all the world
+beside. I had to think for him."
+
+"You did not take much time to think."
+
+"Hardly a minute--and yet it was sufficient." Then she paused,
+waiting for her aunt; but it seemed that her aunt had nothing further
+to say. "Well," continued Mary, "if it must be so, it must. If you
+cannot wish me joy--"
+
+"Dearest, you know well enough that I wish you all happiness."
+
+"This is my happiness." It seemed to the bewildered old lady that the
+whole nature of the girl was altered. Mary was speaking now as might
+have spoken some enthusiastic young female who had at last succeeded
+in obtaining for herself the possession,--more or less permanent,--of
+a young man, after having fed her imagination on novels for the last
+five years; whereas Mary Lowther had hitherto, in all moods of her
+life, been completely opposite to such feminine ways and doings.
+"Very well," continued Mary; "we will say nothing more about it at
+present. I am greatly grieved that I have incurred your displeasure;
+but I cannot wish it otherwise."
+
+"I have said nothing of displeasure."
+
+"Walter is to be up after lunch, and I will only ask that he may not
+be received with black looks. If it must be visited as a sin, let it
+be visited on me."
+
+"Mary, that is unkind and ungenerous."
+
+"If you knew, Aunt Sarah, how I have longed during the night for your
+kind voice,--for your sympathy and approval!"
+
+Aunt Sarah paused again for a moment, and then went down to her
+domestic duties without another word.
+
+In the afternoon Walter came, but Aunt Sarah did not see him. When
+Mary went to her the old lady declared that, for the present, it
+would be better so. "I do not know what to say to him at present. I
+must think of it, and speak to his uncle, and try to find out what
+had best be done."
+
+She was sitting as she said this up in her own room, without even a
+book in her hand; in very truth, passing an hour in an endeavour to
+decide what, in the present emergency, she ought to say or do. Mary
+stooped over her and kissed her, and the aunt returned her niece's
+caresses.
+
+"Do not let you and me quarrel, at any rate," said Miss Marrable.
+"Who else is there that I care for? Whose happiness is anything to me
+except yours?"
+
+"Then come to him, and tell him that he also shall be dear to you."
+
+"No; at any rate, not now. Of course you can marry, Mary, without any
+sanction from me. I do not pretend that you owe to me that obedience
+which would be due to a mother. But I cannot say,--at least, not
+yet,--that such sanction as I have to give can be given to this
+engagement. I have a dread that it will come to no good. It grieves
+me. I do not forbid you to receive him; but for the present it would
+be better that I should not see him."
+
+"What is her objection?" demanded Walter, with grave indignation.
+
+"She thinks we shall be poor."
+
+"Shall we ask her for anything? Of course we shall be poor. For the
+present there will be but £300 a year, or thereabouts, beyond my
+professional income. A few years back, if so much had been secured,
+friends would have thought that everything necessary had been done.
+If you are afraid, Mary--"
+
+"You know I am not afraid."
+
+"What is it to her, then? Of course we shall be poor,--very poor. But
+we can live."
+
+There did come upon Mary Lowther a feeling that Walter spoke of the
+necessity of a comfortable income in a manner very different from
+that in which he had of late been discussing the same subject ever
+since she had known him. He had declared that it was impossible that
+he should exist in England as a bachelor on his professional income,
+and yet surely he would be poorer as a married man with that £300
+a year added to it, than he would have been without it, and also
+without a wife. But what girl that loves a man can be angry with him
+for such imprudence and such inconsistency? She had already told him
+that she would be ready, if it were necessary, to go with him to
+India. She had said so before she went up to her aunt's room. He had
+replied that he hoped no such sacrifice would be demanded from her.
+"There can be no sacrifice on my part," she had replied, "unless I
+am required to give up you." Of course he had taken her in his arms
+and kissed her. There are moments in one's life in which not to be
+imprudent, not to be utterly, childishly forgetful of all worldly
+wisdom, would be to be brutal, inhuman, and devilish. "Had he told
+Parson John?" she asked.
+
+"Oh, yes!"
+
+"And what does he say?"
+
+"Just nothing. He raised his eyebrows, and suggested 'that I had
+changed my ideas of life.' 'So I have,' I said. 'All right!' he
+replied. 'I hope that Block and Curling won't have made any mistake
+about the £5000.' That was all he said. No doubt he thinks we're two
+fools; but then one's folly won't embarrass him."
+
+"Nor will it embarrass Aunt Sarah," said Mary.
+
+"But there is this difference. If we come to grief, Parson John will
+eat his dinner without the slightest interference with his appetite
+from our misfortunes; but Aunt Sarah would suffer on your account."
+
+"She would, certainly," said Mary.
+
+"But we will not come to grief. At any rate, darling, we cannot
+consent to be made wise by the prospect of her possible sorrows on
+our behalf."
+
+It was agreed that on that afternoon Mary should write both to Mr.
+Gilmore and to Janet Fenwick. She offered to keep her letters, and
+show them, when written, to her lover; but he declared that he would
+prefer not to see them. "It is enough for me that I triumph," he
+said, as he left her. When he had gone, she at once told her aunt
+that she would write the letters, and bring that to Mr. Gilmore to be
+read by her when they were finished.
+
+"I would postpone it for awhile, if I were you," said Aunt Sarah.
+
+But Mary declared that any such delay would be unfair to Mr. Gilmore.
+She did write the letters before dinner, and they were as follows:--
+
+
+   MY DEAR MR. GILMORE,
+
+   When last you came down to the Vicarage to see me I
+   promised you, as you may perhaps remember, that if it
+   should come to pass that I should engage myself to any
+   other man, I would at once let you know that it was so. I
+   little thought then that I should so soon be called upon
+   to keep my promise. I will not pretend that the writing of
+   this letter is not very painful to me; but I know that it
+   is my duty to write it, and to put an end to a suspense
+   which you have been good enough to feel on my account. You
+   have, I think, heard the name of my cousin, Captain Walter
+   Marrable, who returned from India two or three months ago.
+   I found him staying here with his uncle, the clergyman,
+   and now I am engaged to be his wife.
+
+   Perhaps it would be better that I should say nothing more
+   than this, and that I should leave myself and my character
+   and name to your future kindness,--or unkindness,--without
+   any attempt to win the former or to decry the latter; but
+   you have been to me ever so good and noble that I cannot
+   bring myself to be so cold and short. I have always felt
+   that your preference for me has been a great honour to
+   me. I have appreciated your esteem most highly, and have
+   valued your approbation more than I have been able to say.
+   If it could be possible that I should in future have your
+   friendship, I should value it more than that of any other
+   person. God bless you, Mr. Gilmore. I shall always hope
+   that you may be happy, and I shall hear with delight any
+   tidings which may seem to show that you are so.
+
+   Pray believe that I am
+   Your most sincere friend,
+
+   MARY LOWTHER.
+
+   I have thought it best to tell Janet Fenwick what I have
+   done.
+
+
+   Loring, Thursday.
+
+   DEAREST JANET,
+
+   I wonder what you will say to my news? But you must not
+   scold me. Pray do not scold me. It could never, never have
+   been as you wanted. I have engaged myself to marry my
+   cousin, Captain Walter Marrable, who is a nephew of Sir
+   Gregory Marrable, and a son of Colonel Marrable. We shall
+   be very poor, having not more than £300 a-year above his
+   pay as a captain; but if he had nothing, I think I should
+   do the same. Do you remember how I used to doubt whether I
+   should ever have that sort of love for a man for which I
+   used to envy you? I don't envy you any longer, and I don't
+   regard Mr. Fenwick as being nearly so divine as I used to
+   do. I have a Jupiter of my own now, and need envy no woman
+   the reality of her love.
+
+   I have written to Mr. Gilmore by the same post as will
+   take this, and have just told him the bare truth. What
+   else could I tell him? I have said something horribly
+   stilted about esteem and friendship, which I would have
+   left out, only that my letter seemed to be heartless
+   without it. He has been to me as good as a man could be;
+   but was it my fault that I could not love him? If you knew
+   how I tried,--how I tried to make believe to myself that I
+   loved him; how I tried to teach myself that that sort of
+   very chill approbation was the nearest approach to love
+   that I could ever reach; and how I did this because you
+   bade me;--if you could understand all this, then you would
+   not scold me. And I did almost believe that it was so. But
+   now--! Oh, dear! how would it have been if I had engaged
+   myself to Mr. Gilmore, and that then Walter Marrable had
+   come to me! I get sick when I think how near I was to
+   saying that I would love a man whom I never could have
+   loved.
+
+   Of course I used to ask myself what I should do with
+   myself. I suppose every woman living has to ask and to
+   answer that question. I used to try to think that it would
+   be well not to think of the outer crust of myself. What
+   did it matter whether things were soft to me or not?
+   I could do my duty. And as this man was good, and a
+   gentleman, and endowed with high qualities and appropriate
+   tastes, why should he not have the wife he wanted? I
+   thought that I could pretend to love him, till, after some
+   fashion, I should love him; but as I think of it now, all
+   this seems to be so horrid! I know now what to do with
+   myself. To be his from head to foot! To feel that nothing
+   done for him would be mean or distasteful! To stand at
+   a washtub and wash his clothes, if it were wanted. Oh,
+   Janet, I used to dread the time in which he would have to
+   put his arm round me and kiss me! I cannot tell you what I
+   feel now about that other he.
+
+   I know well how provoked you will be,--and it will all
+   come of love for me; but you cannot but own that I am
+   right. If you have any justice in you, write to me and
+   tell me that I am right.
+
+   Only that Mr. Gilmore is your great friend, and that,
+   therefore, just at first, Walter will not be your friend,
+   I would tell you more about him,--how handsome he is, how
+   manly, and how clever. And then his voice is like the
+   music of the spheres. You won't feel like being his friend
+   at first, but you must look forward to his being your
+   friend; you must love him--as I do Mr. Fenwick; and you
+   must tell Mr. Fenwick that he must open his heart for the
+   man who is to be my husband. Alas, alas! I fear it will be
+   long before I can go to Bullhampton. How I do wish that he
+   would find some nice wife to suit him!
+
+   Good bye, dearest Janet. If you are really good, you will
+   write me a sweet, kind, loving letter, wishing me joy.
+   You must know all. Aunt Sarah has refused to congratulate
+   me, because the income is so small. Nevertheless, we have
+   not quarrelled. But the income will be nothing to you,
+   and I do look forward to a kind word. When everything is
+   settled, of course I will tell you.
+
+   Your most affectionate friend,
+
+   MARY LOWTHER.
+
+
+The former letter of the two was shown to Miss Marrable. That lady
+was of opinion that it should not be sent; but would not say that, if
+to be sent, it could be altered for the better.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+WHAT PARSON JOHN THINKS ABOUT IT.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+On that same Thursday, the Thursday on which Mary Lowther wrote her
+two despatches to Bullhampton, Miss Marrable sent a note down to
+Parson John, requesting that she might have an interview with him.
+If he were at home and disengaged, she would go down to him that
+evening, or he might, if he pleased, come to her. The former she
+thought would be preferable. Parson John assented, and very soon
+after dinner the private brougham came round from the Dragon, and
+conveyed Miss Marrable down to the rectory at Lowtown.
+
+"I am going down to Parson John," said she to Mary. "I think it best
+to speak to him about the engagement."
+
+Mary received the information with a nod of her head that was
+intended to be gracious, and Aunt Sarah proceeded on her way. She
+found her cousin alone in his study, and immediately opened the
+subject which had brought her down the hill. "Walter, I believe, has
+told you about this engagement, Mr. Marrable."
+
+"Never was so astonished in my life! He told me last night. I had
+begun to think that he was getting very fond of her, but I didn't
+suppose it would come to this."
+
+"Don't you think it very imprudent?"
+
+"Of course it's imprudent, Sarah. It don't require any thinking to
+be aware of that. It's downright stupid;--two cousins with nothing
+a year between them, when no doubt each of them might do very well.
+They're well-born, and well-looking, and clever, and all that. It's
+absurd, and I don't suppose it will ever come to anything."
+
+"Did you tell Walter what you thought?"
+
+"Why should I tell him? He knows what I think without my telling him;
+and he wouldn't care a pinch of snuff for my opinion. I tell you
+because you ask me."
+
+"But ought not something to be done to prevent it?"
+
+"What can we do? I might tell him that I wouldn't have him here
+any more, but I shouldn't like to do that. Perhaps she'll do your
+bidding."
+
+"I fear not, Mr. Marrable."
+
+"Then you may be quite sure he won't do mine. He'll go away and
+forget her. That'll be the end of it. It'll be as good as a year gone
+out of her life, and she'll lose this other lover of hers at--what's
+the name of the place? It's a pity, but that's what she'll have to go
+through."
+
+"Is he so light as that?" asked Aunt Sarah, shocked.
+
+"He's about the same as other men, I take it; and she'll be the same
+as other girls. They like to have their bit of fun now, and there'd
+be no great harm,--only such fun costs the lady so plaguy dear. As
+for their being married, I don't think Walter will ever be such a
+fool as that."
+
+There was something in this that was quite terrible to Aunt Sarah.
+Her Mary Lowther was to be treated in this way;--to be played with
+as a plaything, and then to be turned off when the time for playing
+came to an end! And this little game was to be played for Walter
+Marrable's delectation, though the result of it would be the ruin of
+Mary's prospects in life!
+
+"I think," said she, "that if I believed him to be so base as that, I
+would send him out of the house."
+
+"He does not mean to be base at all. He's just like the rest of 'em,"
+said Parson John.
+
+Aunt Sarah used every argument in her power to show that something
+should be done; but all to no purpose. She thought that if Sir
+Gregory were brought to interfere, that perhaps might have an effect;
+but the old clergyman laughed at this. What did Captain Walter
+Marrable, who had been in the army all his life, and who had no
+special favour to expect from his uncle, care about Sir Gregory? Head
+of the family, indeed! What was the head of the family to him? If
+a girl would be a fool, the girl must take the result of her folly.
+That was Parson John's doctrine,--that and a confirmed assurance
+that this engagement, such as it was, would lead to nothing. He was
+really very sorry for Mary, in whose praise he said ever so many
+good-natured things; but she had not been the first fool, and she
+would not be the last. It was not his business, and he could do no
+good by interfering. At last, however, he did promise that he would
+himself speak to Walter. Nothing would come of it, but, as his cousin
+asked him, he would speak to his nephew.
+
+He waited for four-and-twenty hours before he spoke, and during that
+time was subject to none of those terrors which were now making Miss
+Marrable's life a burden to her. In his opinion it was almost a
+pity that a young fellow like Walter should be interrupted in his
+amusement. According to his view of life, very much wisdom was not
+expected from ladies, young or old. They, for the most part, had
+their bread found for them; and were not required to do anything,
+whether they were rich or poor. Let them be ever so poor, the
+disgrace of poverty did not fall upon them as it did upon men. But
+then, if they would run their heads into trouble, trouble came harder
+upon them than on men; and for that they had nobody to blame but
+themselves. Of course it was a very nice thing to be in love. Verses
+and pretty speeches and easy-spoken romance were pleasant enough in
+their way. Parson John had no doubt tried them himself in early life,
+and had found how far they were efficacious for his own happiness.
+But young women were so apt to want too much of the excitement! A
+young man at Bullhampton was not enough without another young man at
+Loring. That, we fear, was the mode in which Parson John looked at
+the subject,--which mode of looking at it, had he ever ventured to
+explain it to Mary Lowther, would have brought down upon his head
+from that young woman an amount of indignant scorn which would have
+been very disagreeable to Parson John. But then he was a great deal
+too wise to open his mind on such a subject to Mary Lowther.
+
+"I think, sir, I'd better go up and see Curling again next week,"
+said the Captain.
+
+"I dare say. Is anything not going right?"
+
+"I suppose I shall get the money, but I shall like to know when. I am
+very anxious, of course, to fix a day for my marriage."
+
+"I should not be over quick about that, if I were you," said Parson
+John.
+
+"Why not? Situated as I am, I must be quick. I must make up my mind
+at any rate where we're to live."
+
+"You'll go back to your regiment, I suppose, next month?"
+
+"Yes, sir. I shall go back to my regiment next month, unless we may
+make up our minds to go out to India."
+
+"What, you and Mary?"
+
+"Yes, I and Mary."
+
+"As man and wife?" said Parson John, with a smile.
+
+"How else should we go?"
+
+"Well, no. If she goes with you, she must go as Mrs. Captain
+Marrable, of course. But if I were you, I would not think of anything
+so horrible."
+
+"It would be horrible," said Walter Marrable.
+
+"I should think it would. India may be very well when a man is quite
+young, and if he can keep himself from beer and wine; but to go back
+there at your time of life with a wife, and to look forward to a
+dozen children there, must be an unpleasant prospect, I should say."
+
+Walter Marrable sat silent and black.
+
+"I should give up all idea of India," continued his uncle.
+
+"What the deuce is a man to do?" asked the Captain.
+
+The parson shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"I'll tell you what I've been thinking of," said the Captain. "If I
+could get a farm of four or five hundred acres--"
+
+"A farm!" exclaimed the parson.
+
+"Why not a farm? I know that a man can do nothing with a farm unless
+he has capital. He should have £10 or £12 an acre for his land, I
+suppose. I should have that and some trifle of an income besides if
+I sold out. I suppose my uncle would let me have a farm under him?"
+
+"He'd see you--further first."
+
+"Why shouldn't I do as well with a farm as another?"
+
+"Why not turn shoemaker? Because you have not learned the business.
+Farmer, indeed! You'd never get the farm, and if you did, you would
+not keep it for three years. You've been in the army too long to be
+fit for anything else, Walter."
+
+Captain Marrable looked black and angry at being so counselled; but
+he believed what was said to him, and had no answer to make to it.
+
+"You must stick to the army," continued the old man; "and if you'll
+take my advice, you'll do so without the impediment of a wife."
+
+"That's quite out of the question."
+
+"Why is it out of the question?"
+
+"How can you ask me, Uncle John? Would you have me go back from an
+engagement after I have made it?"
+
+"I would have you go back from anything that was silly."
+
+"And tell a girl, after I have asked her to be my wife, that I don't
+want to have anything more to do with her?"
+
+"I should not tell her that; but I should make her understand, both
+for her own sake and for mine, that we had been too fast, and that
+the sooner we gave up our folly the better for both of us. You can't
+marry her, that's the truth of it."
+
+"You'll see if I can't."
+
+"If you choose to wait ten years, you may."
+
+"I won't wait ten months, nor, if I can have my own way, ten weeks."
+What a pity that Mary could not have heard him. "Half the fellows in
+the army are married without anything beyond their pay; and I'm to
+be told that we can't get along with £300 a year? At any rate, we'll
+try."
+
+"Marry in haste, and repent at leisure," said Uncle John.
+
+"According to the doctrines that are going now-a-days," said the
+Captain, "it will be held soon that a gentleman can't marry unless
+he has got £3000 a year. It is the most heartless, damnable teaching
+that ever came up. It spoils the men, and makes women, when they do
+marry, expect ever so many things that they ought never to want."
+
+"And you mean to teach them better, Walter?"
+
+"I mean to act for myself, and not be frightened out of doing what I
+think right, because the world says this and that."
+
+As he so spoke, the angry Captain got up to leave the room.
+
+"All the same," rejoined the parson, firing the last shot; "I'd think
+twice about it, if I were you, before I married Mary Lowther."
+
+"He's more of an ass, and twice as headstrong as I thought him," said
+Parson John to Miss Marrable the next day; "but still I don't think
+it will come to anything. As far as I can observe, three of these
+engagements are broken off for one that goes on. And when he comes to
+look at things he'll get tired of it. He's going up to London next
+week, and I shan't press him to come back. If he does come I can't
+help it. If I were you, I wouldn't ask him up the hill, and I should
+tell Miss Mary a bit of my mind pretty plainly."
+
+Hitherto, as far as words went, Aunt Sarah had told very little of
+her mind to Mary Lowther on the subject of her engagement, but she
+had spoken as yet no word of congratulation; and Mary knew that the
+manner in which she proposed to bestow herself was not received with
+favour by any of her relatives at Loring.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+WHAT THE FENWICKS THOUGHT ABOUT IT.
+
+
+Bullhampton unfortunately was at the end of the postman's walk, and
+as the man came all the way from Lavington, letters were seldom
+received much before eleven o'clock. Now this was a most pernicious
+arrangement, in respect to which Mr. Fenwick carried on a perpetual
+feud with the Post-office authorities, having put forward a great
+postal doctrine that letters ought to be rained from heaven on to
+everybody's breakfast-table exactly as the hot water is brought in
+for tea. He, being an energetic man, carried on a long and angry
+correspondence with the authorities aforesaid; but the old man
+from Lavington continued to toddle into the village just at eleven
+o'clock. It was acknowledged that ten was his time; but, as he argued
+with himself, ten and eleven were pretty much of a muchness. The
+consequence of this was, that Mary Lowther's letters to Mrs. Fenwick
+had been read by her two or three hours before she had an opportunity
+of speaking on the subject to her husband. At last, however, he
+returned, and she flew at him with the letter in her hand. "Frank,"
+she said, "Frank, what do you think has happened?"
+
+"The Bank of England must have stopped, from the look of your face."
+
+"I wish it had, with all my heart, sooner than this. Mary has gone
+and engaged herself to her cousin, Walter Marrable."
+
+"Mary Lowther!"
+
+"Yes; Mary Lowther! Our Mary! And from what I remember hearing about
+him, he is anything but nice."
+
+"He had a lot of money left to him the other day."
+
+"It can't have been much, because Mary owns that they will be very
+poor. Here is her letter. I am so unhappy about it. Don't you
+remember hearing about that Colonel Marrable who was in a horrible
+scrape about somebody's wife?"
+
+"You shouldn't judge the son from the father."
+
+"They've been in the army together, and they're both alike. I hate
+the army. They are almost always no better than they should be."
+
+"That's true, my dear, certainly of all services, unless it be the
+army of martyrs; and there may be a doubt on the subject even as to
+them. May I read it?"
+
+"Oh, yes; she has been half ashamed of herself every word she has
+written. I know her so well. To think that Mary Lowther should have
+engaged herself to any man after two days' acquaintance!"
+
+Mr. Fenwick read the letter through attentively, and then handed it
+back.
+
+"It's a good letter," he said.
+
+"You mean that it's well written?"
+
+"I mean that it's true. There are no touches put in to make effect.
+She does love the one man, and she doesn't love the other. All I can
+say is, that I'm very sorry for it. It will drive Gilmore out of the
+place."
+
+"Do you mean it?"
+
+"I do, indeed. I never knew a man to be at the same time so strong
+and so weak in such a matter. One would say that the intensity of his
+affection would be the best pledge of his future happiness if he were
+to marry the girl; but seeing that he is not to marry her, one cannot
+but feel that a man shouldn't stake his happiness on a thing beyond
+his reach."
+
+"You think it is all up, then;--that she really will marry this man?"
+
+"What else can I think?"
+
+"These things do go off sometimes. There can't be much money,
+because, you see, old Miss Marrable opposes the whole thing on
+account of there not being income enough. She is anything but rich
+herself, and is the last person of all the world to make a fuss about
+money. If it could be broken off--."
+
+"If I understand Mary Lowther," said Mr. Fenwick, "she is not the
+woman to have her match broken off for her by any person. Of course I
+know nothing about the man; but if he is firm, she'll be as firm."
+
+"And then she has written to Mr. Gilmore," said Mrs. Fenwick.
+
+"It's all up with Harry as far as this goes," said Mr. Fenwick.
+
+The Vicar had another matter of moment to discuss with his wife. Sam
+Brattle, after having remained hard at work at the mill for nearly a
+fortnight,--so hard at work as to induce his father to declare that
+he'd bet a guinea there wasn't a man in the three parishes who could
+come nigh his Sam for a right down day's work;--after all this,
+Sam had disappeared, had been gone for two days, and was said by
+the constable to have been seen at night on the Devizes side, from
+whence was supposed to come the Grinder, and all manner of Grinder's
+iniquities. Up to this time no further arrest had been made on
+account of Mr. Trumbull's murder, nor had any trace been found of the
+Grinder, or of that other man who had been his companion. The leading
+policeman, who still had charge of the case, expressed himself as
+sure that the old woman at Pycroft Common knew nothing of her son's
+whereabouts; but he had always declared, and still continued to
+declare, that Sam Brattle could tell them the whole story of the
+murder if he pleased, and there had been a certain amount of watching
+kept on the young man, much to his own disgust, and to that of his
+father. Sam had sworn aloud in the village--so much aloud that he had
+shown his determination to be heard by all men--that he would go to
+America, and see whether anyone would dare to stop him. He had been
+told of his bail, and had replied that he would demand to be relieved
+of his bail;--that his bail was illegal, and that he would have it
+all tried in a court of law. Mr. Fenwick had heard of this, and had
+replied that as far as he was concerned he was not in the least
+afraid. He believed that the bail was illegal, and he believed also
+that Sam would stay where he was. But now Sam was gone, and the
+Bullhampton constable was clearly of opinion that he had gone to join
+the Grinder. "At any rate, he's off somewhere," said Mr. Fenwick,
+"and his mother doesn't know where he's gone. Old Brattle, of course,
+won't say a word."
+
+"And will it hurt you?"
+
+"Not unless they get hold of those other fellows and require Sam's
+appearance. I don't doubt but that he'd turn up in that case."
+
+"Then it does not signify?"
+
+"It signifies for him. I've an idea that I know where he's gone, and
+I think I shall go after him."
+
+"Is it far, Frank?"
+
+"Something short of Australia, luckily."
+
+"Oh, Frank!"
+
+"I'll tell you the truth. It's my belief that Carry Brattle is living
+about twenty miles off, and that he's gone to see his sister."
+
+"Carry Brattle!--down here!"
+
+"I don't know it, and I don't want to hear it mentioned; but I fancy
+it is so. At any rate, I shall go and see."
+
+"Poor, dear, bright little Carry! But how is she living, Frank?"
+
+"She's not one of the army of martyrs, you may be sure. I daresay
+she's no better than she should be."
+
+"You'll tell me if you see her?"
+
+"Oh, yes."
+
+"Shall I send her anything?"
+
+"The only thing to send her is money. If she is in want, I'll relieve
+her,--with a very sparing hand."
+
+"Will you bring her back,--here?"
+
+"Ah, who can say? I should tell her mother, and I suppose we should
+have to ask her father to receive her. I know what his answer will
+be."
+
+"He'll refuse to see her."
+
+"No doubt. Then we should have to put our heads together, and the
+chances are that the poor girl will be off in the meantime,--back to
+London and the Devil. It is not easy to set crooked things straight."
+
+In spite, however, of this interruption, Mary Lowther and her
+engagement to Captain Marrable was the subject of greatest interest
+at the Vicarage that day and through the night. Mrs. Fenwick half
+expected that Gilmore would come down in the evening; but the Vicar
+declared that his friend would be unwilling to show himself after the
+blow which he would have received. They knew that he would know that
+they had received the news, and that therefore he could not come
+either to tell it, or with the intention of asking questions without
+telling it. If he came at all, he must come like a beaten cur with
+his tail between his legs. And then there arose the question whether
+it would not be better that Mary's letter should be answered before
+Mr. Gilmore was seen. Mrs. Fenwick, whose fingers were itching for
+pen and paper, declared at last that she would write at once; and did
+write, as follows, before she went to bed:--
+
+
+   The Vicarage, Friday.
+
+   DEAREST MARY,
+
+   I do not know how to answer your letter. You tell me to
+   write pleasantly, and to congratulate you; but how is one
+   to do that so utterly in opposition to one's own interests
+   and wishes? Oh dear, oh dear! how I do so wish you had
+   stayed at Bullhampton! I know you will be angry with me
+   for saying so, but how can I say anything else? I cannot
+   picture you to myself going about from town to town and
+   living in country-quarters. And as I never saw Captain
+   Marrable, to the best of my belief, I cannot interest
+   myself about him as I do about one whom I know and love
+   and esteem. I feel that this is not a nice way of writing
+   to you, and indeed I would be nice if I could. Of course
+   I wish you to be full of joy;--of course I wish with all
+   my heart that you may be happy if you marry your cousin;
+   but the thing has come so suddenly that we cannot bring
+   ourselves to look upon it as a reality.
+
+
+"You should speak for yourself, Janet," said Mr. Fenwick, when he
+came to this part of the letter. He did not, however, require that
+the sentence should be altered.
+
+
+   You talk so much of doing what is right! Nobody has ever
+   doubted that you were right both in morals and sentiment.
+   The only regret has been that such a course should be
+   right, and that the other thing should be wrong. Poor man!
+   we have not seen him yet, nor heard from him. Frank says
+   that he will take it very badly. I suppose that men do
+   always get over that kind of thing much quicker than women
+   do. Many women never can get over it at all; and Harry
+   Gilmore, though there is so little about him that seems to
+   be soft, is in this respect more like a woman than a man.
+   Had he been otherwise, and had only half cared for you,
+   and asked you to be his wife as though your taking him
+   were a thing he didn't much care about, and were quite
+   a matter of course, I believe you would have been up at
+   Hampton Privets this moment, instead of going soldiering
+   with a captain.
+
+   Frank bids me send you his kindest love and his best
+   wishes for your happiness. Those are his very words, and
+   they seem to be kinder than mine. Of course you have my
+   love and my best wishes; but I do not know how to write as
+   though I could rejoice with you. Your husband will always
+   be dear to us, whoever he may be, if he be good to you.
+   At present I feel very, very angry with Captain Marrable;
+   as though I wish he had had his head blown off in battle.
+   However, if he is to be the happy man, I will open my
+   heart to him;--that is, if he be good.
+
+   I know this is not nice, but I cannot make it nicer now.
+   God bless you, dearest Mary.
+
+   Ever your most affectionate friend,
+
+   JANET FENWICK.
+
+
+The letter was not posted till the hour for despatch on the following
+day; but, up to that hour, nothing had been seen at the Vicarage of
+Mr. Gilmore.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+WHAT MR. GILMORE THOUGHT ABOUT IT.
+
+
+Mr. Gilmore was standing on the doorsteps of his own house when
+Mary's letter was brought to him. It was a modest-sized country
+gentleman's residence, built of variegated uneven stones, black and
+grey and white, which seemed to be chiefly flint; but the corners
+and settings of the windows and of the door-ways, and the chimneys,
+were of brick. There was something sombre about it, and many perhaps
+might call it dull of aspect; but it was substantial, comfortable,
+and unassuming. It was entered by broad stone steps, with iron
+balustrades curving outwards as they descended, and there was an open
+area round the house, showing that the offices were in the basement.
+In these days it was a quiet house enough, as Mr. Gilmore was a man
+not much given to the loudness of bachelor parties. He entertained
+his neighbours at dinner perhaps once a month, and occasionally
+had a few guests staying with him. His uncle, the prebendary from
+Salisbury, was often with him, and occasionally a brother who was in
+the army. For the present, however, he was much more inclined, when
+in want of society, to walk off to the Vicarage than to provide it
+for himself at home. When Mary's letter was handed to him with his
+"Times" and other correspondence, he looked, as everybody does, at
+the address, and at once knew that it came from Mary Lowther. He
+had never hitherto received a letter from her, but yet he knew her
+handwriting well. Without waiting a moment, he turned upon his heel,
+and went back into his house, and through the hall to the library.
+When there, he first opened three other letters, two from tradesmen
+in London, and one from his uncle, offering to come to him on the
+next Monday. Then he opened the "Times," and cut it, and put it down
+on the table. Mary's letter meanwhile was in his hand, and anyone
+standing by might have thought that he had forgotten it. But he
+had not forgotten it, nor was it out of his mind for a moment.
+While looking at the other letters, while cutting the paper, while
+attempting, as he did, to read the news, he was suffering under the
+dread of the blow that was coming. He was there for twenty minutes
+before he dared to break the envelope; and though during the whole of
+that time he pretended to deceive himself by some employment, he knew
+that he was simply postponing an evil thing that was coming to him.
+At last he cut the letter open, and stood for some moments looking
+for courage to read it. He did read it, and then sat himself down in
+his chair, telling himself that the thing was over, and that he would
+bear it as a man. He took up his newspaper, and began to study it. It
+was the time of the year when newspapers are not very interesting,
+but he made a rush at the leading articles, and went through two of
+them. Then he turned over to the police reports. He sat there for an
+hour, and read hard during the whole time. Then he got up and shook
+himself, and knew that he was a crippled man, with every function out
+of order, disabled in every limb. He walked from the library into the
+hall, and thence to the dining-room, and so, backwards and forwards,
+for a quarter of an hour. At last he could walk no longer, and,
+closing the door of the library behind him, he threw himself on a
+sofa and cried like a woman.
+
+What was it that he wanted, and why did he want it? Were there not
+other women whom the world would say were as good? Was it ever known
+that a man had died, or become irretrievably broken and destroyed by
+disappointed love? Was it not one of those things that a man should
+shake off from him, and have done with it? He asked himself these,
+and many such-like questions, and tried to philosophise with himself
+on the matter. Had he no will of his own, by which he might conquer
+this enemy? No; he had no will of his own, and the enemy would not be
+conquered. He had to tell himself that he was so poor a thing that he
+could not stand up against the evil that had fallen on him.
+
+He walked out round his shrubberies and paddocks, and tried to take
+an interest in the bullocks and the horses. He knew that if every
+bullock and horse about the place had been struck dead it would not
+enhance his misery. He had not had much hope before, but now he would
+have seen the house of Hampton Privets in flames, just for the chance
+that had been his yesterday. It was not only that he wanted her, or
+that he regretted the absence of some recognised joys which she would
+have brought to him; but that the final decision on her part seemed
+to take from him all vitality, all power of enjoyment, all that
+inward elasticity which is necessary for an interest in worldly
+affairs.
+
+He had as yet hardly thought of anything but himself;--had hardly
+observed the name of his successful rival, or paid any attention to
+aught but the fact that she had told him that it was all over. He
+had not attempted to make up his mind whether anything could still
+be done, whether he might yet have a chance, whether it would be
+well for him to quarrel with the man; whether he should be indignant
+with her, or remonstrate once again in regard to her cruelty. He had
+thought only of the blow, and of his inability to support it. Would
+it not be best that he should go forth, and blow out his brains, and
+have done with it?
+
+He did not look at the letter again till he had returned to the
+library. Then he took it from his pocket, and read it very carefully.
+Yes, she had been quick about it. Why; how long had it been since she
+had left their parish? It was still October, and she had been there
+just before the murder--only the other day! Captain Walter Marrable!
+No; he didn't think he had ever heard of him. Some fellow with a
+moustache and a military strut--just the man that he had always
+hated; one of a class which, with nothing real to recommend it, is
+always interfering with the happiness of everybody. It was in some
+such light as this that Mr. Gilmore at present regarded Captain
+Marrable. How could such a man make a woman happy,--a fellow who
+probably had no house nor home in which to make her comfortable?
+Staying with his uncle the clergyman! Poor Gilmore expressed a
+wish that the uncle the clergyman had been choked before he had
+entertained such a guest. Then he read the concluding sentence of
+poor Mary's letter, in which she expressed a hope that they might be
+friends. Was there ever such cold-blooded trash? Friends indeed! What
+sort of friendship could there be between two persons, one of whom
+had made the other so wretched,--so dead as was he at present!
+
+For some half-hour he tried to comfort himself with an idea that he
+could get hold of Captain Marrable and maul him; that it would be a
+thing permissible for him, a magistrate, to go forth with a whip and
+flog the man, and then perhaps shoot him, because the man had been
+fortunate in love where he had been unfortunate. But he knew the
+world in which he lived too well to allow himself long to think that
+this could really be done. It might be that it would be a better
+world were such revenge practicable in it; but, as he well knew, it
+was not practicable now, and if Mary Lowther chose to give herself to
+this accursed Captain, he could not help it. There was nothing that
+he could do but to go away and chafe at his suffering in some part of
+the world in which nobody would know that he was chafing.
+
+When the evening came, and he found that his solitude was terribly
+oppressive to him, he thought that he would go down to the Vicarage.
+He had been told by that false one that her tidings had been sent to
+her friend. He took his hat and sauntered out across the fields, and
+did walk as far as the churchyard gate close to poor Mr. Trumbull's
+farm, the very spot on which he had last seen Mary Lowther; but when
+he was there he could not endure to go through to the Vicarage. There
+is something mean to a man in the want of success in love. If a
+man lose a venture of money he can tell his friend; or if he be
+unsuccessful in trying for a seat in parliament; or be thrown out of
+a run in the hunting-field; or even if he be blackballed for a club;
+but a man can hardly bring himself to tell his dearest comrade that
+his Mary has preferred another man to himself. This wretched fact
+the Fenwicks already knew as to poor Gilmore's Mary; and yet, though
+he had come down there, hoping for some comfort, he did not dare to
+face them. He went back all alone, and tumbled and tossed and fretted
+through the miserable night.
+
+And the next morning was as bad. He hung about the place till about
+four, utterly crushed by his burden. It was a Saturday, and when the
+postman called no letter had yet been even written in answer to his
+uncle's proposition. He was moping about the grounds, with his hands
+in his pockets, thinking of this, when suddenly Mrs. Fenwick appeared
+in the path before him. There had been another consultation that
+morning between herself and her husband, and this visit was the
+result of it. He dashed at the matter immediately.
+
+"You have come," he said, "to talk to me about Mary Lowther."
+
+"I have come to say a word, if I can, to comfort you. Frank bade me
+to come."
+
+
+[Illustration: "I have come to say a word, if I can, to
+comfort you."]
+
+
+"There isn't any comfort," he replied.
+
+"We knew that it would be hard to bear, my friend," she said, putting
+her hand within his arm; "but there is comfort."
+
+"There can be none for me. I had set my heart upon it so that I
+cannot forget it."
+
+"I know you had, and so had we. Of course there will be sorrow, but
+it will wear off." He shook his head without speaking. "God is too
+good," she continued, "to let such troubles remain with us long."
+
+"You think, then," he said, "that there is no chance?"
+
+What could she say to him? How, under the circumstances of Mary's
+engagement, could she encourage his love for her friend?
+
+"I know that there is none," he continued. "I feel, Mrs. Fenwick,
+that I do not know what to do with myself or how to hold myself. Of
+course it is nonsense to talk about dying, but I do feel as though if
+I didn't die I should go crazy. I can't settle my mind to a single
+thing."
+
+"It is fresh with you yet, Harry," she said. She had never called him
+Harry before, though her husband did so always, and now she used the
+name in sheer tenderness.
+
+"I don't know why such a thing should be different with me than with
+other people," he said; "only perhaps I am weaker. But I've known
+from the very first that I have staked everything upon her. I have
+never questioned to myself that I was going for all or nothing.
+I have seen it before me all along, and now it has come. Oh, Mrs.
+Fenwick, if God would strike me dead this moment, it would be a
+mercy!" And then he threw himself on the ground at her feet. He was
+not there a moment before he was up again. "If you knew how I despise
+myself for all this, how I hate myself!"
+
+She would not leave him, but stayed there till he consented to come
+down with her to the Vicarage. He should dine there, and Frank
+should walk back with him at night. As to that question of Mr.
+Chamberlaine's visit, respecting which Mrs. Fenwick did not feel
+herself competent to give advice herself, it should become matter of
+debate between them and Frank, and then a man and horse could be sent
+to Salisbury on Sunday morning. As he walked down to the Vicarage
+with that pretty woman at his elbow, things perhaps were a little
+better with him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+THE REV. HENRY FITZACKERLEY CHAMBERLAINE.
+
+
+It was decided that evening at the Vicarage that it would be better
+for all parties that the reverend uncle from Salisbury should be told
+to make his visit, and spend the next week at Hampton Privets; that
+is, that he should come on the Monday and stay till the Saturday.
+The letter was written down at the Vicarage, as Fenwick feared that
+it would never be written if the writing of it were left to the
+unassisted energy of the Squire. The letter was written, and the
+Vicar, who walked back to Hampton Privets with his friend, took care
+that it was given to a servant on that night.
+
+On the Sunday nothing was seen of Mr. Gilmore. He did not come to
+church, nor would he dine at the Vicarage. He remained the whole day
+in his own house, pretending to write, trying to read, with accounts
+before him, with a magazine in his hand, even with a volume of
+sermons open on the table before him. But neither the accounts, nor
+the magazines, nor the sermons, could arrest his attention for a
+moment. He had staked everything on obtaining a certain object, and
+that object was now beyond his reach. Men fail often in other things,
+in the pursuit of honour, fortune, or power, and when they fail they
+can begin again. There was no beginning again for him. When Mary
+Lowther should have married this captain, she would be a thing lost
+to him for ever;--and was she not as bad as married to this man
+already? He could do nothing to stop her marriage.
+
+Early in the afternoon of Monday the Rev. Henry Fitzackerley
+Chamberlaine reached Hampton Privets. He came with his own carriage
+and a pair of post-horses, as befitted a prebendary of the good
+old times. Not that Mr. Chamberlaine was a very old man, but that
+it suited his tastes and tone of mind to adhere to the well-bred
+ceremonies of life, so many of which went out of fashion when
+railroads came in. Mr. Chamberlaine was a gentleman of about
+fifty-five years of age, unmarried, possessed of a comfortable
+private independence, the incumbent of a living in the fens of
+Cambridgeshire, which he never visited,--his health forbidding him
+to do so,--on which subject there had been a considerable amount of
+correspondence between him and a certain right rev. prelate, in which
+the prebendary had so far got the better in the argument as not to be
+disturbed in his manner of life; and he was, as has been before said,
+the owner of a stall in Salisbury Cathedral. His lines had certainly
+fallen to him in very pleasant places. As to that living in the
+fens, there was not much to prick his conscience, as he gave up the
+parsonage house and two-thirds of the income to his curate, expending
+the other third on local charities. Perhaps the argument which
+had most weight in silencing the bishop was contained in a short
+postscript to one of his letters. "By-the-by," said the postscript,
+"perhaps I ought to inform your lordship that I have never drawn
+a penny of income out of Hardbedloe since I ceased to live there."
+"It's a bishop's living," said the happy holder of it, "to one or two
+clerical friends, and Dr. ---- thinks the patronage would be better
+in his hands than in mine. I disagree with him, and he'll have to
+write a great many letters before he succeeds." But his stall was
+worth £800 a year and a house, and Mr. Chamberlaine, in regard to his
+money matters, was quite in clover.
+
+He was a very handsome man, about six feet high, with large light
+grey eyes, a straight nose, and a well cut chin. His lips were thin,
+but his teeth were perfect,--only that they had been supplied by a
+dentist. His grey hair encircled his head, coming round upon his
+forehead in little wavy curls, in a manner that had conquered the
+hearts of spinsters by the dozen in the cathedral. It was whispered,
+indeed, that married ladies would sometimes succumb, and rave about
+the beauty, and the dignity, and the white hands, and the deep
+rolling voice of the Rev. Henry Fitzackerley Chamberlaine. Indeed,
+his voice was very fine when it would be heard from the far-off end
+of the choir during the communion service, altogether trumping the
+exertion of the other second-rate clergyman who would be associated
+with him at the altar. And he had, too, great gifts of preaching,
+which he would exercise once a week during thirteen weeks of the
+year. He never exceeded twenty-five minutes; every word was audible
+throughout the whole choir, and there was a grace about it that was
+better than any doctrine. When he was to be heard the cathedral was
+always full, and he was perhaps justified in regarding himself as one
+of the ecclesiastical stars of the day. Many applications were made
+to him to preach here and there, but he always refused. Stories
+were told of how he had declined to preach before the Queen at
+St. James's, averring that if Her Majesty would please to visit
+Salisbury, every accommodation should be provided for her. As to
+preaching at Whitehall, Westminster, and St. Paul's, it was not
+doubted that he had over and over again declared that his appointed
+place was in his own stall, and that he did not consider that he was
+called to holding forth in the market-place. He was usually abroad
+during the early autumn months, and would make sundry prolonged
+visits to friends; but his only home was his prebendal residence in
+the Close. It was not much of a house to look at from the outside,
+being built with the plainest possible construction of brick; but
+within it was very pleasant. All that curtains, and carpets, and
+armchairs, and books, and ornaments could do, had been done lavishly,
+and the cellar was known to be the best in the city. He always used
+post-horses, but he had his own carriage. He never talked very much,
+but when he did speak people listened to him. His appetite was
+excellent, but he was a feeder not very easy to please; it was
+understood well by the ladies of Salisbury that if Mr. Chamberlaine
+was expected to dinner, something special must be done in the way of
+entertainment. He was always exceedingly well dressed. What he did
+with his hours nobody knew, but he was supposed to be a man well
+educated at all points. That he was such a judge of all works of
+art, that not another like him was to be found in Wiltshire, nobody
+doubted. It was considered that he was almost as big as the bishop,
+and not a soul in Salisbury would have thought of comparing the dean
+to him. But the dean had seven children, and Mr. Chamberlaine was
+quite unencumbered.
+
+Henry Gilmore was a little afraid of his uncle, but would always
+declare that he was not so. "If he chooses to come over here he is
+welcome," the nephew would say; "but he must live just as I do."
+Nevertheless, though there was but little left of the '47 Lafitte in
+the cellar of Hampton Privets, a bottle was always brought up when
+Mr. Chamberlaine was there, and Mrs. Bunker, the cook, did not
+pretend but that she was in a state of dismay from the hour of his
+coming to that of his going. And yet, Mrs. Bunker and the other
+servants liked him to be there. His presence honoured the Privets.
+Even the boy who blacked his boots felt that he was blacking the
+boots of a great man. It was acknowledged throughout the household
+that the Squire having such an uncle, was more of a Squire than he
+would have been without him. The clergyman, being such as he was, was
+greater than the country gentleman. And yet Mr. Chamberlaine was only
+a prebendary, was the son of a country clergyman who had happened
+to marry a wife with money, and had absolutely never done anything
+useful in the whole course of his life. It is often very curious to
+trace the sources of greatness. With Mr. Chamberlaine, I think it
+came from the whiteness of his hands, and from a certain knack he
+had of looking as though he could say a great deal, though it suited
+him better to be silent, and say nothing. Of outside deportment, no
+doubt, he was a master.
+
+Mr. Fenwick always declared that he was very fond of Mr.
+Chamberlaine, and greatly admired him. "He is the most perfect
+philosopher I ever met," Fenwick would say, "and has gone to the very
+centre depth of contemplation. In another ten years he will be the
+great Akinetos. He will eat and drink, and listen, and be at ease,
+and desire nothing. As it is, no man that I know disturbs other
+people so little." On the other hand, Mr. Chamberlaine did not
+profess any great admiration for Mr. Fenwick, who he designated
+as one of the smart "windbag tribe, clever, no doubt, and perhaps
+conscientious, but shallow and perhaps a little conceited." The
+Squire, who was not clever and not conceited, understood them both,
+and much preferred his friend the Vicar to his uncle the prebendary.
+
+Gilmore had once consulted his uncle,--once in an evil moment, as
+he now felt,--whether it would not be well for him to marry Miss
+Lowther. The uncle had expressed himself as very adverse to the
+marriage, and would now, on this occasion, be sure to ask some
+question about it. When the great man arrived the Squire was out,
+still wandering round among the bullocks and sheep; but the evening
+after dinner would be very long. On the following day Mr. and Mrs.
+Fenwick, with Mr. and Mrs. Greenthorne, were to dine at the Privets.
+If this first evening were only through, Gilmore thought that
+he could get some comfort, even from his uncle. As he came near
+the house, he went into the yard, and saw the Prebendary's grand
+carriage, which was being washed. No; as far as the groom knew, Mr.
+Chamberlaine had not gone out; but was in the house then. So Gilmore
+entered, and found his uncle in the library.
+
+His first questions were about the murder. "You did catch one man,
+and let him go?" said the Prebendary.
+
+"Yes; a tenant of mine; but there was no evidence against him. He was
+not the man."
+
+"I would not have let him go," said Mr. Chamberlaine.
+
+"You would not have kept a man that was innocent?" said Gilmore.
+
+"I would not have let the young man go."
+
+"But the law would not support us in detaining him."
+
+"Nevertheless, I would not have let him go," said Mr. Chamberlaine.
+"I heard all about it."
+
+"From whom did you hear?"
+
+"From Lord Trowbridge. I certainly would not have let him go." It
+appeared, however, that Lord Trowbridge's opinion had been given to
+the Prebendary prior to that fatal meeting which had taken place in
+the house of the murdered man.
+
+The uncle drank his claret in silence on this evening. He said
+nothing, at least, about Mary Lowther.
+
+"I don't know where you got it, Harry, but that is not a bad glass of
+wine."
+
+"We think there's none better in the country, sir," said Harry.
+
+"I should be very sorry to commit myself so far; but it is a good
+glass of wine. By the bye, I hope your chef has learned to make a
+cup of coffee since I was here in the spring. I think we will try it
+now." The coffee was brought, and the Prebendary shook his head,--the
+least shake in the world,--and smiled blandly.
+
+"Coffee is the very devil in the country," said Harry Gilmore, who
+did not dare to say that the mixture was good in opposition to his
+uncle's opinion.
+
+After the coffee, which was served in the library, the two men sat
+silent together for half an hour, and Gilmore was endeavouring to
+think what it was that made his uncle come to Bullhampton. At last,
+before he had arrived at any decision on this subject, there came
+first a little nod, then a start and a sweet smile, then another nod
+and a start without the smile, and, after that, a soft murmuring of a
+musical snore, which gradually increased in deepness till it became
+evident that the Prebendary was extremely happy. Then it occurred to
+Gilmore that perhaps Mr. Chamberlaine might become tired of going to
+sleep in his own house, and that he had come to the Privets, as he
+could not do so with comfortable self-satisfaction in the houses
+of indifferent friends. For the benefit of such a change it might
+perhaps be worth the great man's while to undergo the penalty of a
+bad cup of coffee.
+
+And could not he, too, go to sleep,--he, Gilmore? Could he not fall
+asleep,--not only for a few moments on such an occasion as this,--but
+altogether, after the Akinetos fashion, as explained by his friend
+Fenwick? Could he not become an immoveable one, as was this divine
+uncle of his? No Mary Lowther had ever disturbed that man's
+happiness. A good dinner, a pretty ring, an easy chair, a china
+tea-cup, might all be procured with certainty, as long as money
+lasted. Here was a man before him superbly comfortable, absolutely
+happy, with no greater suffering than what might come to him from a
+chance cup of bad coffee, while he, Harry Gilmore himself, was as
+miserable a devil as might be found between the four seas, because a
+certain young woman wouldn't come to him and take half of all that he
+owned! If there were any curative philosophy to be found, why could
+not he find it? The world might say that the philosophy was a low
+philosophy; but what did that matter, if it would take away out
+of his breast that horrid load which was more than he could bear?
+He declared to himself that he would sell his heart with all its
+privileges for half-a-farthing, if he could find anybody to take it
+with all its burden. Here, then, was a man who had no burden. He was
+snoring with almost harmonious cadence,--slowly, discreetly,--one
+might say, artistically, quite like a gentleman; and the man who so
+snored could not but be happy. "Oh, d----n it!" said Gilmore, in a
+private whisper, getting up and leaving the room; but there was more
+of envy than of anger in the exclamation.
+
+"Ah! you've been out," said Mr. Chamberlaine, when his nephew
+returned.
+
+"Been to look at the horses made up."
+
+"I never can see the use of that; but I believe a great many men
+do it. I suppose it's an excuse for smoking generally." Now, Mr.
+Chamberlaine did not smoke.
+
+"Well; I did light my pipe."
+
+"There's not the slightest necessity for telling me so, Harry. Let us
+see if Mrs. Bunker's tea is better than her coffee." Then the bell
+was rung, and Mr. Chamberlaine desired that he might have a cup of
+black tea, not strong, but made with a good deal of tea, and poured
+out rapidly, without much decoction. "If it be strong and harsh I
+can't sleep a wink," he said. The tea was brought, and sipped very
+leisurely. There was then a word or two said about certain German
+baths from which Mr. Chamberlaine had just returned; and Mr. Gilmore
+began to believe that he should not be asked to say anything about
+Mary Lowther that night.
+
+But the Fates were not so kind. The Prebendary had arisen with the
+intention of retiring for the night, and was already standing before
+the fire, with his bedroom candle in his hand, when something,--the
+happiness probably of his own position in life, which allowed him to
+seek the blessings of an undivided couch,--brought to his memory the
+fact that his nephew had spoken to him about some young woman, some
+young woman who had possessed not even the merit of a dowry.
+
+"By the bye," said he, "what has become of that flame of yours,
+Harry?" Harry Gilmore became black and glum. He did not like to hear
+Mary spoken of as a flame. He was standing at this moment with his
+back to his uncle, and so remained, without answering him. "Do you
+mean to say that you did not ask her, after all?" asked the uncle.
+"If there be any scrape, Harry, you had better let me hear it."
+
+"I don't know what you call a scrape," said Harry. "She's not going
+to marry me."
+
+"Thank God, my boy!" Gilmore turned round, but his uncle did
+not probably see his face. "I can assure you," continued Mr.
+Chamberlaine, "that the idea made me quite uncomfortable. I set some
+inquiries on foot, and she was not the sort of girl that you should
+marry."
+
+"By G----," said Gilmore, "I'd give every acre I have in the world,
+and every shilling, and every friend, and twenty years of my life, if
+I could only be allowed at this moment to think it possible that she
+would ever marry me!"
+
+"Good heavens!" said Mr. Chamberlaine. While he was saying it, Harry
+Gilmore walked off, and did not show himself to his uncle again that
+night.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+CARRY BRATTLE.
+
+
+On the day after the dinner-party at Hampton Privets Mr. Fenwick made
+his little excursion out in the direction towards Devizes, of which
+he had spoken to his wife. The dinner had gone off very quietly, and
+there was considerable improvement in the coffee. There was some
+gentle sparring between the two clergymen, if that can be called
+sparring in which all the active pugnacity was on one side. Mr.
+Fenwick endeavoured to entrap Mr. Chamberlaine into arguments, but
+the Prebendary escaped with a degree of skill,--without the shame of
+sullen refusal,--that excited the admiration of Mr. Fenwick's wife.
+"After all, he is a clever man," she said, as she went home, "or he
+could never slip about as he does, like an eel, and that with so very
+little motion."
+
+On the next morning the Vicar started alone in his gig. He had
+at first said that he would take with him a nondescript boy, who
+was partly groom, partly gardener, and partly shoeblack, and who
+consequently did half the work of the house; but at last he decided
+that he would go alone. "Peter is very silent, and most meritoriously
+uninterested in everything," he said to his wife. "He wouldn't tell
+much, but even he might tell something." So he got himself into
+his gig, and drove off alone. He took the Devizes road, and passed
+through Lavington without asking a question; but when he was half way
+between that place and Devizes, he stopped his horse at a lane that
+led away to the right. He had been on the road before, but he did
+not know that lane. He waited awhile till an old woman whom he saw
+coming to him, reached him, and asked her whether the lane would take
+him across to the Marlborough Road. The old woman knew nothing of
+the Marlborough Road, and looked as though she had never heard of
+Marlborough. Then he asked the way to Pycroft Common. Yes; the lane
+would take him to Pycroft Common. Would it take him to the Bald-faced
+Stag? The old woman said it would take him to Rump End Corner,
+"but she didn't know nowt o' t'other place." He took the lane,
+however, and without much difficulty made his way to the Bald-faced
+Stag,--which, in the days of the glory of that branch of the Western
+Road, used to supply beer to at least a dozen coaches a-day, but
+which now, alas! could slake no drowth but that of the rural
+aborigines. At the Bald-faced Stag, however, he found that he could
+get a feed of corn, and here he put up his horse,--and saw the corn
+eaten.
+
+Pycroft Common was a mile from him, and to Pycroft Common he walked.
+He took the road towards Marlborough for half a mile, and then broke
+off across the open ground to the left. There was no difficulty in
+finding this place, and now it was his object to discover the cottage
+of Mrs. Burrows without asking the neighbours for her by name. He had
+obtained a certain amount of information, and thought that he could
+act on it. He walked on to the middle of the common, and looked for
+his points of bearing. There was the beer-house, and there was the
+lane that led away to Pewsey, and there were the two brick cottages
+standing together. Mrs. Burrows lived in the little white cottage
+just behind. He walked straight up to the door, between the
+sunflowers and the rose-bush, and, pausing for a few moments to think
+whether or no he would enter the cottage unannounced, knocked at the
+door. A policeman would have entered without doing so,--and so would
+a poacher knock over a hare on its form; but whatever creature a
+gentleman or a sportsman be hunting, he will always give it a chance.
+He rapped, and immediately heard that there were sounds within. He
+rapped again, and in about a minute was told to enter. Then he opened
+the door, and found but one person within. It was a young woman, and
+he stood for a moment looking at her before he spoke.
+
+"Carry Brattle," he said, "I am glad that I have found you."
+
+"Laws, Mr. Fenwick!"
+
+"Carry, I am so glad to see you;"--and then he put out his hand to
+her.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Fenwick, I ain't fit for the likes of you to touch," she
+said. But as his hand was still stretched out she put her own into
+it, and he held it in his grasp for a few seconds. She was a poor,
+sickly-looking thing now, but there were the remains of great beauty
+in the face,--or rather, the presence of beauty, but of beauty
+obscured by flushes of riotous living and periods of want, by
+ill-health, harsh usage, and, worst of all, by the sharp agonies of
+an intermittent conscience. It was a pale, gentle face, on which
+there were still streaks of pink,--a soft, laughing face it had been
+once, and still there was a gleam of light in the eyes that told of
+past merriment, and almost promised mirth to come, if only some great
+evil might be cured. Her long flaxen curls still hung down her face,
+but they were larger, and, as Fenwick thought, more tawdry than of
+yore; and her cheeks were thin, and her eyes were hollow; and then
+there had come across her mouth that look of boldness which the use
+of bad, sharp words, half-wicked and half-witty, will always give.
+She was dressed decently, and was sitting in a low chair, with a
+torn, disreputable-looking old novel in her hand. Fenwick knew that
+the book had been taken up on the spur of the moment, as there had
+certainly been someone there when he had knocked at the door.
+
+And yet, though vice had laid its heavy hand upon her, the glory
+and the brightness, and the sweet outward flavour of innocence, had
+not altogether departed from her. Though her mouth was bold, her
+eyes were soft and womanly, and she looked up into the face of the
+clergyman with a gentle, tamed, beseeching gaze, which softened and
+won his heart at once. Not that his heart had ever been hard against
+her. Perhaps it was a fault with him that he never hardened his heart
+against a sinner, unless the sin implied pretence and falsehood.
+At this moment, remembering the little Carry Brattle of old, who
+had sometimes been so sweetly obedient, and sometimes so wilful,
+under his hands, whom he had petted, and caressed, and scolded, and
+loved,--whom he had loved undoubtedly in part because she had been so
+pretty,--whom he had hoped that he might live to marry to some good
+farmer, in whose kitchen he would ever be welcome, and whose children
+he would christen;--remembering all this, he would now, at this
+moment, have taken her in his arms and embraced her, if he dared,
+showing her that he did not account her to be vile, begging her to
+become more good, and planning some course for her future life.
+
+"I have come across from Bullhampton, Carry, to find you," he said.
+
+"It's a poor place you're come to, Mr. Fenwick. I suppose the police
+told you of my being here?"
+
+"I had heard of it. Tell me, Carry, what do you know of Sam?"
+
+"Of Sam?"
+
+"Yes--of Sam. Don't tell me an untruth. You need tell me nothing, you
+know, unless you like. I don't come to ask as having any authority,
+only as a friend of his, and of yours."
+
+She paused a moment before she replied. "Sam hasn't done any harm to
+nobody," she said.
+
+"I don't say he has. I only want to know where he is. You can
+understand, Carry, that it would be best that he should be at home."
+
+She paused again, and then she blurted out her answer. "He went out
+o' that back door, Mr. Fenwick, when you came in at t'other." The
+Vicar immediately went to the back door, but Sam, of course, was not
+to be seen.
+
+"Why should he be hiding if he has done no harm?" said the Vicar.
+
+"He thought it was one of them police. They do be coming here a'most
+every day, till one's heart faints at seeing 'em. I'd go away if I'd
+e'er a place to go to."
+
+"Have you no place at home, Carry?"
+
+"No, sir; no place."
+
+This was so true that he couldn't tell himself why he had asked the
+question. She certainly had no place at home till her father's heart
+should be changed towards her.
+
+"Carry," said he, speaking very slowly, "they tell me that you are
+married. Is that true?"
+
+She made him no answer.
+
+"I wish you would tell me, if you can. The state of a married woman
+is honest at any rate, let her husband be who he may."
+
+"My state is not honest."
+
+"You are not married, then?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+He hardly knew how to go on with this interrogation, or to ask
+questions about her past and present life, without expressing a
+degree of censure which, at any rate for the present, he wished to
+repress.
+
+"You are living here, I believe, with old Mrs. Burrows?" he said.
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"I was told that you were married to her son."
+
+"They told you untrue, sir. I know nothing of her son, except just to
+have see'd him."
+
+"Is that true, Carry?"
+
+"It is true. It wasn't he at all."
+
+"Who was it, Carry?"
+
+"Not her son;--but what does it signify? He's gone away, and I shall
+see un no more. He wasn't no good, Mr. Fenwick, and if you please we
+won't talk about un."
+
+"He was not your husband?"
+
+"No, Mr. Fenwick; I never had a husband, nor never shall, I suppose.
+What man would take the likes of me? I have just got one thing to do,
+and that's all."
+
+"What thing is that, Carry?"
+
+"To die and have done with it," she said, bursting out into loud
+sobs. "What's the use o' living? Nobody 'll see me, or speak to me.
+Ain't I just so bad that they'd hang me if they knew how to catch
+me?"
+
+"What do you mean, girl?" said Fenwick, thinking for the moment that
+from her words she, too, might have had some part in the murder.
+
+"Ain't the police coming here after me a'most every day? And when
+they hauls about the place, and me too, what can I say to 'em? I have
+got that low that a'most everybody can say what they please to me.
+And where can I go out o' this? I don't want to be living here always
+with that old woman."
+
+"Who is the old woman, Carry?"
+
+"I suppose you knows, Mr. Fenwick?"
+
+"Mrs. Burrows, is it?" She nodded her head. "She is the mother of the
+man they call the Grinder?" Again she nodded her head. "It is he whom
+they accuse of the murder?" Yet again she nodded her head. "There was
+another man?" She nodded it again. "And they say that there was a
+third," he said,--"your brother Sam."
+
+"Then they lie," she shouted, jumping up from her seat. "They lie
+like devils. They are devils; and they'll go, oh, down into the fiery
+furnace for ever and ever." In spite of the tragedy of the moment,
+Mr. Fenwick could not help joining this terribly earnest threat and
+the Marquis of Trowbridge together in his imagination. "Sam hadn't no
+more to do with it than you had, Mr. Fenwick."
+
+"I don't believe he had," said Mr. Fenwick.
+
+"Yes; because you're good, and kind, and don't think ill of poor folk
+when they're a bit down. But as for them, they're devils."
+
+"I did not come here, however, to talk about the murder, Carry. If I
+thought you knew who did it, I shouldn't ask you. That is business
+for the police, not for me. I came here partly to look after Sam. He
+ought to be at home. Why has he left his home and his work while his
+name is thus in people's mouths?"
+
+"It ain't for me to answer for him, Mr. Fenwick. Let 'em say what
+they will, they can't make the white of his eye black. But as for
+me, I ain't no business to speak of nobody. How should I know why he
+comes and why he goes? If I said as how he'd come to see his sister,
+it wouldn't sound true, would it, sir, she being what she is?"
+
+He got up and went to the front door, and opened it, and looked about
+him. But he was looking for nothing. His eyes were full of tears, and
+he didn't care to wipe the drops away in her presence.
+
+"Carry," he said, coming back to her, "it wasn't all for him that I
+came."
+
+
+[Illustration: "Carry," he said, coming back to her, "it
+wasn't all for him that I came."]
+
+
+"For who else, then?"
+
+"Do you remember how we loved you when you were young, Carry? Do you
+remember my wife, and how you used to come and play with the children
+on the lawn? Do you remember, Carry, where you sat in church, and the
+singing, and what trouble we had together with the chaunts? There are
+one or two at Bullhampton who never will forget it?"
+
+"Nobody loves me now," she said, talking at him over her shoulder,
+which was turned to him.
+
+He thought for a moment that he would tell her that the Lord loved
+her; but there was something human at his heart, something perhaps
+too human, which made him feel that were he down low upon the ground,
+some love that was nearer to him, some love that was more easily
+intelligible, which had been more palpably felt, would in his frailty
+and his wickedness be of more immediate avail to him than the love
+even of the Lord God.
+
+"Why should you think that, Carry?"
+
+"Because I am bad."
+
+"If we were to love only the good, we should love very few. I love
+you, Carry, truly. My wife loves you dearly."
+
+"Does she?" said the girl, breaking into low sobs. "No, she don't. I
+know she don't. The likes of her couldn't love the likes of me. She
+wouldn't speak to me. She wouldn't touch me."
+
+"Come and try, Carry."
+
+"Father would kill me," she said.
+
+"Your father is full of wrath, no doubt. You have done that which
+must make a father angry."
+
+"Oh, Mr. Fenwick, I wouldn't dare to stand before his eye for a
+minute. The sound of his voice would kill me straight. How could I go
+back?"
+
+"It isn't easy to make crooked things straight, Carry, but we may
+try; and they do become straighter if one tries in earnest. Will you
+answer me one question more?"
+
+"Anything about myself, Mr. Fenwick?"
+
+"Are you living in sin now, Carry?" She sat silent, not that she
+would not answer him, but that she did not comprehend the extent
+of the meaning of his question. "If it be so, and if you will not
+abandon it, no honest person can love you. You must change yourself,
+and then you will be loved."
+
+"I have got the money which he gave me, if you mean that," she said.
+
+Then he asked no further questions about herself, but reverted to the
+subject of her brother. Could she bring him in to say a few words to
+his old friend? But she declared that he was gone, and that she did
+not know whither; that he might probably return this very day to the
+mill, having told her that it was his purpose to do so soon. When he
+expressed a hope that Sam held no consort with those bad men who had
+murdered and robbed Mr. Trumbull, she answered him with such naïve
+assurance that any such consorting was out of the question, that he
+became at once convinced that the murderers were far away, and that
+she knew that such was the case. As far as he could learn from her,
+Sam had really been over to Pycroft with the view of seeing his
+sister, taking probably a holiday of a day or two on the way. Then he
+again reverted to herself, having as he thought obtained a favourable
+answer to that vital question which he had asked her.
+
+"Have you nothing to ask of your mother?" he said.
+
+"Sam has told me of her and of Fan."
+
+"And would you not care to see her?"
+
+"Care, Mr. Fenwick! Wouldn't I give my eyes to see her? But how can
+I see her? And what could she say to me? Father 'd kill her if she
+spoke to me. Sometimes I think I'll walk there all the day, and so
+get there at night, and just look about the old place, only I know
+I'd drown myself in the mill-stream. I wish I had. I wish it was
+done. I've seed an old poem in which they thought much of a poor girl
+after she was drowned, though nobody wouldn't think nothing at all
+about her before."
+
+"Don't drown yourself, Carry, and I'll care for you. Keep your
+hands clean. You know what I mean, and I will not rest till I find
+some spot for your weary feet. Will you promise me?" She made him
+no answer. "I will not ask you for a spoken promise, but make it
+yourself, Carry, and ask God to help you to keep it. Do you say your
+prayers, Carry?"
+
+"Never a prayer, sir."
+
+"But you don't forget them. You can begin again. And now I must ask
+for a promise. If I send for you will you come?"
+
+"What--to Bull'ompton?"
+
+"Wheresoever I may send for you? Do you think that I would have you
+harmed?"
+
+"Perhaps it'd be--for a prison; or to live along with a lot of
+others. Oh, Mr. Fenwick, I could not stand that."
+
+He did not dare to proceed any further lest he should be tempted to
+make promises which he himself could not perform; but she did give
+him an assurance before he went that if she left her present abode
+within a month, she would let him know whither she was going.
+
+He went to the Bald-faced Stag and got his gig; and on his way home,
+just as he was leaving the village of Lavington, he overtook Sam
+Brattle. He stopped and spoke to the lad, asking him whether he was
+returning home, and offering him a seat in the gig. Sam declined the
+seat, but said that he was going straight to the mill.
+
+"It is very hard to make crooked things straight," said Mr. Fenwick
+to himself as he drove up to his own hall-door.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+THE TURNOVER CORRESPONDENCE.
+
+
+It is hoped that the reader will remember that the Marquis of
+Trowbridge was subjected to very great insolence from Mr. Fenwick
+during the discussion which took place in poor old farmer Trumbull's
+parlour respecting the murder. Our friend, the Vicar, did not content
+himself with personal invective, but made allusion to the Marquis's
+daughters. The Marquis, as he was driven home in his carriage, came
+to sundry conclusions about Mr. Fenwick. That the man was an infidel
+he had now no matter of doubt whatever; and if an infidel, then also
+a hypocrite, and a liar, and a traitor, and a thief. Was he not
+robbing the parish of the tithes, and all the while entrapping the
+souls of men and women? Was it not to be expected that with such a
+pastor there should be such as Sam Brattle and Carry Brattle in the
+parish? It was true that as yet this full blown iniquity had spread
+itself only among the comparatively small number of tenants belonging
+to the objectionable "person," who unfortunately owned a small number
+of acres in his lordship's parish;--but his lordship's tenant had
+been murdered! And with such a pastor in the parish, and such an
+objectionable person, owning acres, to back the pastor, might it not
+be expected that all his tenants would be murdered? Many applications
+had already been made to the Marquis for the Church Farm; but as it
+happened that the applicant whom the Marquis intended to favour, had
+declared that he did not wish to live in the house because of the
+murder, the Marquis felt himself justified in concluding that if
+everything about the parish were not changed very shortly, no decent
+person would be found willing to live in any of his houses. And now,
+when they had been talking of murderers, and worse than murderers,
+as the Marquis said to himself, shaking his head with horror in the
+carriage as he thought of such iniquity, this infidel clergyman had
+dared to allude to his lordship's daughters! Such a man had no right
+even to think of women so exalted. The existence of the Ladies Stowte
+must no doubt be known to such men, and among themselves probably
+some allusion in the way of faint guesses might be made as to their
+modes of life, as men guess at kings and queens, and even at gods and
+goddesses. But to have an illustration, and a very base illustration,
+drawn from his own daughters in his own presence, made with the
+object of confuting himself,--this was more than the Marquis could
+endure. He could not horsewhip Mr. Fenwick; nor could he send out
+his retainers to do so; but, thank God, there was a bishop! He did
+not quite see his way, but he thought that Mr. Fenwick might be made
+at least to leave that parish. "Turn my daughters out of my house,
+because--oh, oh!" He almost put his fist through the carriage window
+in the energy of his action as he thought of it.
+
+As it happened, the Marquis of Trowbridge had never sat in the House
+of Commons, but he had a son who sat there now. Lord St. George was
+member for another county in which Lord Trowbridge had an estate,
+and was a man of the world. His father admired him much, and trusted
+him a good deal, but still had an idea that his son hardly estimated
+in the proper light the position in the world which he was called
+to fill. Lord St. George was now at home at the Castle, and in the
+course of that evening the father, as a matter of course, consulted
+the son. He considered that it would be his duty to write to the
+bishop, but he would like to hear St. George's idea on the subject.
+He began, of course, by saying that he did not doubt but that St.
+George would agree with him.
+
+"I shouldn't make any fuss about it," said the son.
+
+"What! pass it over?"
+
+"Yes; I think so."
+
+"Do you understand the kind of allusion that was made to your
+sisters?"
+
+"It won't hurt them, my lord; and people make allusion to everything
+now-a-days. The bishop can't do anything. For aught you know he and
+Fenwick may be bosom friends."
+
+"The bishop, St. George, is a most right-thinking man."
+
+"No doubt. The bishops, I believe, are all right-thinking men, and it
+is well for them that they are so very seldom called on to go beyond
+thinking. No doubt he'll think that this fellow was indiscreet; but
+he can't go beyond thinking. You'll only be raising a blister for
+yourself."
+
+"Raising a what?"
+
+"A blister, my lord. The longer I live the more convinced I become
+that a man shouldn't keep his own sores open."
+
+There was something in the tone of his son's conversation which
+pained the Marquis much; but his son was known to be a wise and
+prudent man, and one who was rising in the political world. The
+Marquis sighed, and shook his head, and murmured something as to the
+duty which lay upon the great to bear the troubles incident to their
+greatness;--by which he meant that sores and blisters should be
+kept open, if the exigencies of rank so required. But he ended the
+discussion at last by declaring that he would rest upon the matter
+for forty-eight hours. Unfortunately before those forty-eight hours
+were over Lord St. George had gone from Turnover Castle, and the
+Marquis was left to his own lights. In the meantime, the father and
+son and one or two friends, had been shooting over at Bullhampton;
+so that no further steps of warfare had been taken when Mr. and Mrs.
+Fenwick met the Marquis on the pathway.
+
+On the following day his lordship sat in his own private room
+thinking of his grievance. He had thought of it and of little else
+for now nearly sixty hours. "Suggest to me to turn out my daughters!
+Heaven and earth! My daughters!" He was well aware that, though he
+and his son often differed, he could never so safely keep himself out
+of trouble as by following his son's advice. But surely this was a
+matter per se, standing altogether on its own bottom, very different
+from those ordinary details of life on which he and his son were wont
+to disagree. His daughters! The Ladies Sophie and Carolina Stowte! It
+had been suggested to him to turn them out of his house because-- Oh!
+oh! The insult was so great that no human marquis could stand it.
+He longed to be writing a letter to the bishop. He was proud of his
+letters. Pen and paper were at hand, and he did write.
+
+
+   RIGHT REV. AND DEAR LORD BISHOP,
+
+   I think it right to represent to your lordship the
+   conduct,--I believe I may be justified in saying the
+   misconduct,--of the Reverend ---- Fenwick, the vicar of
+   Bullhampton.
+
+
+He knew our friend's Christian name very well, but he did not choose
+to have it appear that his august memory had been laden with a thing
+so trifling.
+
+
+   You may have heard that there has been a most horrid
+   murder committed in the parish on one of my tenants; and
+   that suspicion is rife that the murder was committed in
+   part by a young man, the son of a miller who lives under
+   a person who owns some land in the parish. The family is
+   very bad, one of the daughters being, as I understand,
+   a prostitute. The other day I thought it right to visit
+   the parish with the view of preventing, if possible, the
+   sojourn there among my people of these objectionable
+   characters. When there I was encountered by Mr. Fenwick,
+   not only in a most unchristian spirit, but in a bearing so
+   little gentlemanlike, that I cannot describe it to you.
+   He had obtruded himself into my presence, into one of my
+   own houses, the very house of the murdered man, and there,
+   when I was consulting with the person to whom I have
+   alluded as to the expediency of ridding ourselves of these
+   objectionable characters, he met me with ribaldry and
+   personal insolence. When I tell your lordship that he
+   made insinuations about my own daughters, so gross that
+   I cannot repeat them to you, I am sure that I need go no
+   further. There were present at this meeting Mr. Puddleham,
+   the Methodist minister, and Mr. Henry Gilmore, the
+   landlord of the persons in question.
+
+   Your lordship has probably heard the character, in a
+   religious point of view, of this gentleman. It is not for
+   me to express an opinion of the motives which can induce
+   such a one to retain his position as an incumbent of a
+   parish. But I do believe that I have a right to ask from
+   your lordship for some inquiry into the scene which I have
+   attempted to describe, and to expect some protection for
+   the future. I do not for a moment doubt that your lordship
+   will do what is right in the matter.
+
+   I have the honour to be,
+   Right Reverend and dear Lord Bishop,
+   Your most obedient and faithful Servant,
+
+   TROWBRIDGE.
+
+
+He read this over thrice, and became so much in love with the
+composition, that on the third reading he had not the slightest doubt
+as to the expediency of sending it. Nor had he much doubt but that
+the bishop would do something to Mr. Fenwick, which would make the
+parish too hot to hold that disgrace to the Church of England.
+
+When Fenwick came home from Pycroft Common he found a letter from the
+bishop awaiting him. He had driven forty miles on that day, and was
+rather late for dinner. His wife, however, came upstairs with him in
+order that she might hear something of his story, and brought his
+letters with her. He did not open that from the bishop till he was
+half dressed, and then burst out into loud laughter as he read it.
+
+"What is it, Frank?" asked his wife, through the open door of her own
+room.
+
+"Here's such a game," said he. "Never mind; let's have dinner, and
+then you shall see it." The reader, however, may be quite sure that
+Mrs. Fenwick did not wait till dinner was served before she knew the
+nature of the game.
+
+The bishop's letter to the Vicar was very short and very rational,
+and it was not that which made the Vicar laugh; but inside the
+bishop's letter was that from the Marquis. "My dear Mr. Fenwick,"
+said the bishop,
+
+
+   after a good deal of consideration, I have determined to
+   send you the enclosed. I do so because I have made it a
+   rule never to receive an accusation against one of my
+   clergy without sending it to the person accused. You will,
+   of course, perceive that it alludes to some matter which
+   lies outside of my control and right of inquiry; but
+   perhaps you will allow me, as a friend, to suggest to you
+   that it is always well for a parish clergyman to avoid
+   controversy and quarrel with his neighbours; and that it
+   is especially expedient that he should be on good terms
+   with those who have influence in his parish. Perhaps
+   you will forgive me if I add that a spirit of pugnacity,
+   though no doubt it may lead to much that is good, has its
+   bad tendencies if not watched closely.
+
+   Pray remember that Lord Trowbridge is a worthy man, doing
+   his duty on the whole well; and that his position, though
+   it be entitled to no veneration, is entitled to much
+   respect. If you can tell me that you will feel no grudge
+   against him for what has taken place, I shall be very
+   happy.
+
+   You will observe that I have been careful that this letter
+   shall have no official character.
+
+   Yours very faithfully,
+
+   &c., &c., &c.
+
+
+The letter was answered that evening, but before the answer was
+written, the Marquis of Trowbridge was discussed between the husband
+and wife, not in complimentary terms. Mrs. Fenwick on the occasion
+was more pugnacious than her husband. She could not forgive the man
+who had hinted to the bishop that her husband held his living from
+unworthy motives, and that he was a bad clergyman.
+
+"My dear girl," said Fenwick, "what can you expect from an ass but
+his ears?"
+
+"I don't expect downright slander from such a man as the Marquis of
+Trowbridge, and if I were you I should tell the bishop so."
+
+"I shall tell him nothing of the kind. I shall write about the
+Marquis with the kindliest feelings."
+
+"But you don't feel kindly?"
+
+"Yes, I do. The poor old idiot has nobody to keep him right, and does
+the best he can according to his lights. I have no doubt he thinks
+that I am everything that is horrid. I am not a bit angry with him,
+and would be as civil to him to-morrow as my nature would allow me,
+if he would only be civil to me."
+
+Then he wrote his letter which will complete the correspondence, and
+which he dated for the following day:--
+
+
+   Bullhampton Vicarage, Oct. 23, 186--.
+
+   MY DEAR LORD BISHOP,
+
+   I return the Marquis's letter with many thanks. I can
+   assure you that I take in proper spirit your little hints
+   as to my pugnacity of disposition, and will endeavour
+   to profit by them. My wife tells me that I am given to
+   combativeness, and I have no doubt that she is right.
+
+   As to Lord Trowbridge, I can assure your lordship that I
+   will not bear any malice against him, or even think ill of
+   him because of his complaint. He and I probably differ in
+   opinion about almost everything, and he is one of those
+   who pity the condition of all who are so blinded as to
+   differ from him. The next time that I am thrown into his
+   company I shall act exactly as though no such letter had
+   been written, and as if no such meeting had taken place as
+   that which he describes.
+
+   I hope I may be allowed to assure your lordship, without
+   any reference to my motives for keeping it, that I shall
+   be very slow to give up a living in your lordship's
+   diocese. As your letter to me is unofficial,--and I thank
+   you heartily for sending it in such form,--I have ventured
+   to reply in the same strain.
+
+   I am, my dear Lord Bishop,
+   Your very faithful servant,
+
+   FRANCIS FENWICK.
+
+
+"There," said he, as he folded it, and handed it to his wife, "I
+shall never see the remainder of the series. I would give a shilling
+to know how the bishop gets out of it in writing to the Marquis,
+and half-a-crown to see the Marquis's rejoinder." The reader shall
+be troubled with neither, as he would hardly price them so high as
+did the Vicar. The bishop's letter really contained little beyond
+an assurance on his part that Mr. Fenwick had not meant anything
+wrong, and that the matter was one with which he, the bishop, had no
+concern; all which was worded with most complete episcopal courtesy.
+The rejoinder of the Marquis was long, elaborate, and very pompous.
+He did not exactly scold the bishop, but he expressed very plainly
+his opinion that the Church of England was going to the dogs, because
+a bishop had not the power of utterly abolishing any clergyman who
+might be guilty of an offence against so distinguished a person as
+the Marquis of Trowbridge.
+
+But what was to be done about Carry Brattle? Mrs. Fenwick, when
+she had expressed her anger against the Marquis, was quite ready
+to own that the matter of Carry's position was to them of much
+greater moment than the wrath of the peer. How were they to put
+out their hands and save that brand from the burning? Fenwick, in
+his ill-considered zeal, suggested that she might be brought to
+the Vicarage; but his wife at once knew that such a step would be
+dangerous in every way. How could she live, and what would she do?
+And what would the other servants think of it?
+
+"Why would the other servants mind it?" asked Fenwick. But his wife
+on such a matter could have a way of her own, and that project was
+soon knocked on the head. No doubt her father's house was the proper
+place for her, but then her father was so dour a man.
+
+"Upon my word," said the Vicar, "he is the only person in the world
+of whom I believe myself to be afraid. When I get at him I do not
+speak to him as I would to another; and of course he knows it."
+
+Nevertheless, if anything was to be done for Carry Brattle, it seemed
+as though it must be done by her father's permission and assistance.
+"There can be no doubt that it is his duty," said Mrs. Fenwick.
+
+"I will not say that as a certainty," said the husband. "There is a
+point at which, I presume, a father may be justified in disowning a
+child. The possession of such a power, no doubt, keeps others from
+going wrong. What one wants is that a father should be presumed
+to have the power; but that when the time comes, he should never
+use it. It is the comfortable doctrine which we are all of us
+teaching;--wrath, and abomination of the sinner, before the sin;
+pardon and love after it. If you were to run away from me, Janet--"
+
+"Frank, do not dare to speak of anything so horrible."
+
+"I should say now probably that were you to do so, I would never
+blast my eyes by looking at you again; but I know that I should run
+after you, and implore you to come back to me."
+
+"You wouldn't do anything of the kind; and it isn't proper to talk
+about it; and I shall go to bed."
+
+"It is very difficult to make crooked things straight," said the
+Vicar, as he walked about the room after his wife had left him. "I
+suppose she ought to go into a reformatory. But I know she wouldn't;
+and I shouldn't like to ask her after what she said."
+
+It is probably the case that Mr. Fenwick would have been able to do
+his duty better, had some harsher feeling towards the sinner been
+mixed with his charity.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+"I NEVER SHAMED NONE OF THEM."
+
+
+"Something must be done about Carry Brattle at once." The Vicar felt
+that he had pledged himself to take some steps for her welfare, and
+it seemed to him, as he thought of the matter, that there were only
+two steps possible. He might intercede with her father, or he might
+use his influence to have her received into some house of correction,
+some retreat, in which she might be kept from evil and disciplined
+for good. He knew that the latter would be the safer plan, if it
+could be brought to bear; and it would certainly be the easier for
+himself. But he thought that he had almost pledged himself to the
+girl not to attempt it, and he felt sure that she would not accede
+to it. In his doubt he went up to his friend Gilmore, intending to
+obtain the light of his friend's wisdom. He found the Squire and the
+Prebendary together, and at once started his subject.
+
+"You'll do no good, Mr. Fenwick," said Mr. Chamberlaine, after the
+two younger men had been discussing the matter for half an hour.
+
+"Do you mean that I ought not to try to do any good?"
+
+"I mean that such efforts never come to anything."
+
+"All the unfortunate creatures in the world, then, should be left to
+go to destruction in their own way."
+
+"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 assistance 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 Saturday 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 assistant. 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 friendship; 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 asserting 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 Fanny. 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 Fanny 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 God for that!" said the mother, taking him by the hand. Then
+Fanny 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 assumed 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 God, 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 friendship to a man who had offended him so deeply.
+
+After a moment's thought he determined to tell the wife, and informed
+her and Fanny 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 Fanny.
+
+"I believe she would. I feel sure that she would."
+
+"And what did he say, Mr. Fenwick?" asked the mother. The Vicar only
+shook his head. "He's very good; to me he's ever been good as gold.
+But, oh, Mr. Fenwick, he is so hard."
+
+"He will not let you speak of her?"
+
+"Never a word, Mr. Fenwick. He'd look at you, sir, so that the gleam
+of his eyes would fall on you like a blow. I wouldn't dare;--nor yet
+wouldn't Fanny, who dares more with him than any of us."
+
+"If it'd serve her, I'd speak," said Fanny.
+
+"But couldn't I see her, Mr. Fenwick? Couldn't you take me in the
+gig with you, sir? I'd slip out arter breakfast up the road, and he
+wouldn't be no wiser, at least till I war back again. He wouldn't ax
+no questions then, I'm thinking. Would he, Fan?"
+
+"He'd ask at dinner; but if I said you were out for the day along
+with Mr. Fenwick, he wouldn't say any more, maybe. He'd know well
+enough where you was gone to."
+
+Mr. Fenwick said that he would think of it, and let Fanny know on
+the following Sunday. He would not make a promise now, and at any
+rate he could not go before Sunday. He did not like to pledge himself
+suddenly to such an adventure, knowing that it would be best that he
+should first have his wife's ideas on the matter. Then he took his
+leave, and as he went out of the house he saw the miller standing at
+the door of the mill. He raised his hand and said, "Good-bye," but
+the miller quickly turned his back to him and retreated into his
+mill.
+
+As he walked up to his house through the village he met Mr.
+Puddleham. "So Sam Brattle is off again, sir," said the minister.
+
+"Off what, Mr. Puddleham?"
+
+"Gone clean away. Out of the country."
+
+"Who has told you that, Mr. Puddleham?"
+
+"Isn't it true, sir? You ought to know, Mr. Fenwick, as you're one of
+the bailsmen."
+
+"I've just been at the mill, and I didn't see him."
+
+"I don't think you'll ever see him at the mill again, Mr. Fenwick;
+nor yet in Bullhampton, unless the police have to bring him here."
+
+"As I was saying, I didn't see him at the mill, Mr. Puddleham,
+because I didn't go in; but he's working there at this moment, and
+has been all the day. He's all right, Mr. Puddleham. You go and have
+a few words with him, or with his father, and you'll find they're
+quite comfortable at the mill now."
+
+"Constable Hicks told me that he was out of the country," said Mr.
+Puddleham, walking away in considerable disgust.
+
+Mrs. Fenwick's opinion was, upon the whole, rather in favour of the
+second expedition to Pycroft Common, as she declared that the mother
+should at any rate be allowed to see her child. She indeed would not
+submit to the idea of the miller's indomitable powers. If she were
+Mrs. Brattle, she said, she'd pull the old man's ears, and make him
+give way.
+
+"You go and try," said the Vicar.
+
+On the Sunday morning following, Fanny was told that on Wednesday
+Mr. Fenwick would drive her mother over to Pycroft Common. He had no
+doubt, he said, but that Carry would still be found living with Mrs.
+Burrows. He explained that the old woman had luckily been absent
+during his visit, but would probably be there when they went again.
+As to that they must take their chance. And the whole plan was
+arranged. Mr. Fenwick was to be on the road in his gig at Mr.
+Gilmore's gate at ten o'clock, and Mrs. Brattle was to meet him there
+at that hour.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+MRS. BRATTLE'S JOURNEY.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Mrs. Brattle was waiting at the stile opposite to Mr. Gilmore's gate
+as Mr. Fenwick drove up to the spot. No doubt the dear old woman
+had been there for the last half-hour, thinking that the walk would
+take her twice as long as it did, and fearing that she might keep
+the Vicar waiting. She had put on her Sunday clothes and her Sunday
+bonnet, and when she climbed up into the vacant place beside her
+friend she found her position to be so strange that for a while she
+could hardly speak. He said a few words to her, but pressed her with
+no questions, understanding the cause of her embarrassment. He could
+not but think that of all his parishioners no two were so unlike
+each other as were the miller and his wife. The one was so hard and
+invincible;--the other so soft and submissive! Nevertheless it had
+always been said that Brattle had been a tender and affectionate
+husband. By degrees the woman's awe at the horse and gig and
+strangeness of her position wore off, and she began to talk of her
+daughter. She had brought a little bundle with her, thinking that she
+might supply feminine wants, and had apologised humbly for venturing
+to come so laden. Fenwick, who remembered what Carry had said about
+money that she still had, and who was nearly sure that the murderers
+had gone to Pycroft Common after the murder had been committed, had
+found a difficulty in explaining to Mrs. Brattle that her child was
+probably not in want. The son had been accused of the murder of the
+man, and now the Vicar had but little doubt that the daughter was
+living on the proceeds of the robbery. "It's a hard life she must be
+living, Mr. Fenwick, with an old 'ooman the likes of that," said Mrs.
+Brattle. "Perhaps if I'd brought a morsel of some'at to eat--"
+
+"I don't think they're pressed in that way, Mrs. Brattle."
+
+"Ain't they now? But it's a'most worse, Mr. Fenwick, when one thinks
+where it's to come from. The Lord have mercy on her, and bring her
+out of it!"
+
+"Amen," said the Vicar.
+
+"And is she bright at all, and simple still? She was the brightest,
+simplest lass in all Bull'ompton, I used to think. I suppose her old
+ways have a'most left her, Mr. Fenwick?"
+
+"I thought her very like what she used to be."
+
+"'Deed now, did you, Mr. Fenwick? And she wasn't mopish and
+slatternly like?"
+
+"She was tidy enough. You wouldn't wish me to say that she was
+happy?"
+
+"I suppose not, Mr. Fenwick. I shouldn't ought;--ought I, now? But,
+Mr. Fenwick, I'd give my left hand she should be happy and gay once
+more. I suppose none but a mother feels it, but the sound of her
+voice through the house was ever the sweetest music I know'd on.
+It'll never have the same ring again, Mr. Fenwick."
+
+He could not tell her that it would. That sainted sinner of whom he
+had reminded Mr. Puddleham, though she had attained to the joy of the
+Lord,--even she had never regained the mirth of her young innocence.
+There is a bloom on the flower which may rest there till the
+flower has utterly perished, if the handling of it be sufficiently
+delicate;--but no care, nothing that can be done by friends on earth,
+or even by better friendship from above, can replace that when once
+displaced. The sound of which the mother was thinking could never be
+heard again from Carry Brattle's voice. "If we could only get her
+home once more," said the Vicar, "she might be a good daughter to you
+still."
+
+"I'd be a good mother to her, Mr. Fenwick;--but I'm thinking he'll
+never have it so. I never knew him to change on a thing like that,
+Mr. Fenwick. He felt it that keenly, it nigh killed 'im. Only that he
+took it out o' hisself in thrashing that wicked man, I a'most think
+he'd a' died o' it."
+
+Again the Vicar drove to the Bald-faced Stag, and again he walked
+along the road and over the common. He offered his arm to the old
+woman, but she wouldn't accept it; nor would she upon any entreaty
+allow him to carry her bundle. She assured him that his doing so
+would make her utterly wretched, and at last he gave up the point.
+She declared that she suffered nothing from fatigue, and that her two
+miles' walk would not be more than her Sunday journey to church and
+back. But as she drew near to the house she became uneasy, and once
+asked to be allowed to pause for a moment. "May be, then," said she,
+"after all, my girl'd rather that I wouldn't trouble her." He took
+her by the arm and led her along, and comforted her,--assuring her
+that if she would take her child in her arms Carry would for the
+moment be in a heaven of happiness. "Take her into my arms, Mr.
+Fenwick? Why,--isn't she in my very heart of hearts at this moment?
+And I won't say not a word sharp to her;--not now, Mr. Fenwick. And
+why would I say sharp words at all? I suppose she understands it
+all."
+
+"I think she does, Mrs. Brattle."
+
+They had now reached the door, and the Vicar knocked. No answer came
+at once; but such had been the case when he knocked before. He had
+learned to understand that in such a household it might not be wise
+to admit all comers without consideration. So he knocked again,--and
+then again. But still there came no answer. Then he tried the door,
+and found that it was locked. "May be she's seen me coming," said the
+mother, "and now she won't let me in." The Vicar then went round the
+cottage, and found that the back door also was closed. Then he looked
+in at one of the front windows, and became aware that no one was
+sitting, at least in the kitchen. There was an upstairs room, but of
+that the window was closed.
+
+"I begin to fear," he said, "that neither of them is at home."
+
+At this moment he heard the voice of a woman calling to him from the
+door of the nearest cottage,--one of the two brick tenements which
+stood together,--and from her he learned that Mrs. Burrows had gone
+into Devizes, and would not probably be home till the evening. Then
+he asked after Carry, not mentioning her name, but speaking of her as
+the young woman who lived with Mrs. Burrows. "Her young man come and
+took her up to Lon'on o' Saturday," said the woman.
+
+Fenwick heard the words, but Mrs. Brattle did not hear them. It did
+not occur to him not to believe the woman's statement, and all his
+hopes about the poor creature were at once dashed to the ground. His
+first feeling was no doubt one of resentment, that she had broken
+her word to him. She had said that she would not go within a month
+without letting him know that she was going; and there is no fault,
+no vice, that strikes any of us so strongly as falsehood or injustice
+against ourselves. And then the nature of the statement was so
+terrible! She had gone back into utter degradation and iniquity. And
+who was the young man? As far as he could obtain a clue, through the
+information which had reached him from various sources, this young
+man must be the companion of the Grinder in the murder and robbery of
+Mr. Trumbull. "She has gone away, Mrs. Brattle," said he, with as sad
+a voice as ever a man used.
+
+"And where be she gone to, Mr. Fenwick? Cannot I go arter her?" He
+simply shook his head and took her by the arm to lead her away. "Do
+they know nothing of her, Mr. Fenwick?"
+
+"She has gone away; probably to London. We must think no more about
+her, Mrs. Brattle--at any rate for the present. I can only say that I
+am very, very sorry that I brought you here."
+
+The drive back to Bullhampton was very silent and very sad. Mrs.
+Brattle had before her the difficulty of explaining her journey to
+her husband, together with the feeling that the difficulty had been
+incurred altogether for nothing. As for Fenwick, he was angry with
+himself for his own past enthusiasm about the girl. After all, Mr.
+Chamberlaine had shown himself to be the wiser man of the two. He
+had declared it to be no good to take up special cases, and the
+Vicar as he drove himself home notified to himself his assent with
+the Prebendary's doctrine. The girl had gone off the moment she
+had ascertained that her friends were aware of her presence and
+situation. What to her had been the kindness of her clerical friend,
+or the stories brought to her from her early home, or the dirt and
+squalor of the life which she was leading? The moment that there was
+a question of bringing her back to the decencies of the world, she
+escaped from her friends and hurried back to the pollution which, no
+doubt, had charms for her. He had allowed himself to think that in
+spite of her impurity, she might again be almost pure, and this was
+his reward! He deposited the poor woman at the spot at which he had
+taken her up, almost without a word, and then drove himself home with
+a heavy heart. "I believe it will be best to be like her father, and
+never to name her again," said he to his wife.
+
+"But what has she done, Frank?"
+
+"Gone back to the life which I suppose she likes best. Let us say no
+more about it,--at any rate for the present. I'm sick at heart when I
+think of it."
+
+Mrs. Brattle, when she got over the stile close to her own home, saw
+her husband standing at the mill door. Her heart sank within her, if
+that could be said to sink which was already so low. He did not move,
+but stood there with his eyes fixed upon her. She had hoped that she
+might get into the house unobserved by him, and learn from Fanny what
+had taken place; but she felt so like a culprit that she hardly dared
+to enter the door. Would it not be best to go to him at once, and ask
+his pardon for what she had done? When he spoke to her, which he did
+at last, his voice was a relief to her. "Where hast been, Maggie?" he
+asked. She went up to him, put her hand on the lappet of his coat and
+shook her head. "Best go in and sit easy, and hear what God sends,"
+he said. "What's the use of scouring about the country here and
+there?"
+
+"There has been no use in it to-day, feyther," she said.
+
+"There arn't no use in it,--not never," he said; and after that there
+was no more about it. She went into the house and handed the bundle
+to Fanny, and sat down on the bed and cried. On the following morning
+Frank Fenwick received the following letter:--
+
+
+   London, Sunday.
+
+   HONOURED SIR,
+
+   I told you that I would write if it came as I was going
+   away, but I've been forced to go without writing. There
+   was nothing to write with at the cottage. Mrs. Burrows
+   and me had words, and I thought as she would rob me, and
+   perhaps worse. She is a bad woman, and I could stand it no
+   longer, so I just come up here, as there was nowhere else
+   for me to find a place to lie down in. I thought I'd just
+   write and tell you, because of my word; but I know it
+   isn't no use.
+
+   I'd send my respects and love to father and mother, if I
+   dared. I did think of going over; but I know he'd kill me,
+   and so he ought. I'd send my respects to Mrs. Fenwick,
+   only that I isn't fit to name her;--and my love to sister
+   Fanny. I've come away here, and must just wait till I die.
+
+   Yours humbly, and most unfortunate,
+
+   CARRY.
+
+   If it's any good to be sorry, nobody can be more sorry
+   than me, and nobody more unhappy. I did try to pray when
+   you was gone, but it only made me more ashamed. If there
+   was only anywhere to go to, I'd go.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX.
+
+THE BULL AT LORING.
+
+
+Gilmore had told his friend that he would do two things,--that he
+would start off and travel for four or five years, and that he would
+pay a visit to Loring. Fenwick had advised him to do neither, but to
+stay at home and dig and say his prayers. But in such emergencies
+no man takes his friend's advice; and when Mr. Chamberlaine had
+left him, Gilmore had made up his mind that he would at any rate go
+to Loring. He went to church on the Sunday morning, and was half
+resolved to tell Mrs. Fenwick of his purpose; but chance delayed her
+in the church, and he sauntered away home without having mentioned
+it. He let half the next week pass by without stirring beyond his
+own ground. During those three days he changed his mind half a dozen
+times; but at last, on the Thursday, he had his portmanteau packed
+and started on his journey. As he was preparing to leave the house
+he wrote one line to Fenwick in pencil. "I am this moment off to
+Loring.--H. G." This he left in the village as he drove through to
+the Westbury station.
+
+He had formed no idea in his own mind of any definite purpose in
+going. He did not know what he should do or what say when he got to
+Loring. He had told himself a hundred times that any persecution of
+the girl on his part would be mean and unworthy of him. And he was
+also aware that no condition in which a man could place himself was
+more open to contempt than that of a whining, pining, unsuccessful
+lover. A man is bound to take a woman's decision against him, bear
+it as he may, and say as little against it as possible. He is bound
+to do so when he is convinced that a woman's decision is final; and
+there can be no stronger proof of such finality than the fact that
+she has declared a preference for some other man. All this Gilmore
+knew, but he would not divest himself of the idea that there might
+still be some turn in the wheel of fortune. He had heard a vague
+rumour that Captain Marrable, his rival, was a very dangerous man.
+His uncle was quite sure that the Captain's father was thoroughly
+bad, and had thrown out hints against the son, which Gilmore in his
+anxiety magnified till he felt convinced that the girl whom he loved
+with all his heart was going to throw herself into the arms of a
+thorough scamp. Could he not do something, if not for his own sake,
+then for hers? Might it not be possible for him to deliver her from
+her danger? What, if he should discover some great iniquity;--would
+she not then in her gratitude be softened towards him? It was on
+the cards that this reprobate was married already, and was about
+to commit bigamy. It was quite probable that such a man should be
+deeply in debt. As for the fortune that had been left to him, Mr.
+Chamberlaine had already ascertained that that amounted to nothing.
+It had been consumed to the last shilling in paying the joint debts
+of the father and son. Men such as Mr. Chamberlaine have sources of
+information which are marvellous to the minds of those who are more
+secluded, and not the less marvellous because the information is
+invariably false. Gilmore in this way almost came to a conviction
+that Mary Lowther was about to sacrifice herself to a man utterly
+unworthy of her, and he taught himself, not to think,--but to believe
+it to be possible that he might save her. Those who knew him would
+have said that he was the last man in the world to be carried away
+by a romantic notion;--but he had his own idea of romance as plainly
+developed in his mind as was ever the case with a knight of old, who
+went forth for the relief of a distressed damsel. If he could do
+anything towards saving her, he would do it, or try to do it, though
+he should be brought to ruin in the attempt. Might it not be that at
+last he would have the reward which other knights always attained?
+The chance in his favour was doubtless small, but the world was
+nothing to him without this chance.
+
+He had never been at Loring before, but he had learned the way. He
+went to Chippenham and Swindon, and then by the train to Loring. He
+had no very definite plan formed for himself. He rather thought that
+he would call at Miss Marrable's house,--call if possible when Mary
+Lowther was not there,--and learn from the elder lady something of
+the facts of the case. He had been well aware for many weeks past,
+from early days in the summer, that old Miss Marrable had been in
+favour of his claim. He had heard too that there had been family
+quarrels among the Marrables, and a word had been dropped in his
+hearing by Mrs. Fenwick, which had implied that Miss Marrable was
+by no means pleased with the match which her niece Mary Lowther was
+proposing to herself. Everything seemed to show that Captain Marrable
+was a most undesirable person.
+
+When he reached the station at Loring it was incumbent on him to go
+somewhither at once. He must provide for himself for the night. He
+found two omnibuses at the station, and two inn servants competing
+with great ardour for his carpet bag. There were the Dragon and the
+Bull fighting for him. The Bull in the Lowtown was commercial and
+prosperous. The Dragon at Uphill was aristocratic, devoted to county
+purposes, and rather hard set to keep its jaws open and its tail
+flying. Prosperity is always becoming more prosperous, and the
+allurements of the Bull prevailed. "Are you a going to rob the gent
+of his walise?" said the indignant Boots of the Bull as he rescued
+Mr. Gilmore's property from the hands of his natural enemy, as soon
+as he had secured the entrance of Mr. Gilmore into his own vehicle.
+Had Mr. Gilmore known that the Dragon was next door but one to Miss
+Marrable's house, and that the Bull was nearly equally contiguous
+to that in which Captain Marrable was residing, his choice probably
+would not have been altered. In such cases, the knight who is to be
+the deliverer desires above all things that he may be near to his
+enemy.
+
+He was shown up to a bedroom, and then ushered into the commercial
+room of the house. Loring, though it does a very pretty trade as a
+small town, and now has for some years been regarded as a thriving
+place in its degree, is not of such importance in the way of business
+as to support a commercial inn of the first class. At such houses the
+commercial room is as much closed against the uninitiated as is a
+first-class club in London. In such rooms a non-commercial man would
+be almost as much astray as is a non-broker in Capel Court, or an
+attorney in a bar mess-room. At the Bull things were a little mixed.
+The very fact that the words "Commercial Room" were painted on the
+door proved to those who understood such matters that there was a
+doubt in the case. They had no coffee room at the Bull, and strangers
+who came that way were of necessity shown into that in which the
+gentlemen of the road were wont to relax themselves. Certain
+commercial laws are maintained in such apartments. Cigars are not
+allowed before nine o'clock, except upon some distinct arrangement
+with the waiter. There is not, as a rule, a regular daily commercial
+repast; but when three or more gentlemen dine together at five
+o'clock, the dinner becomes a commercial dinner, and the commercial
+laws as to wine, &c., are enforced, with more or less restriction as
+circumstances may seem to demand. At the present time there was but
+one occupant of the chamber to greet Mr. Gilmore when he entered,
+and this greeting was made with all the full honours of commercial
+courtesy. The commercial gentleman is of his nature gregarious, and
+although he be exclusive to a strong degree, more so probably than
+almost any other man in regard to the sacred hour of dinner, when
+in the full glory of his confraternity, he will condescend, when
+the circumstances of his profession have separated him from his
+professional brethren, to be festive with almost any gentleman whom
+chance may throw in his way. Mr. Cockey had been alone for a whole
+day when Gilmore arrived, having reached Loring just twenty-four
+hours in advance of our friend, and was contemplating the sadly
+diminished joys of a second solitary dinner at the Bull, when fortune
+threw this stranger in his way. The waiter, looking at the matter in
+a somewhat similar light, and aware that a combined meal would be for
+the advantage of all parties, very soon assisted Mr. Cockey in making
+his arrangements for the evening. Mr. Gilmore would no doubt want to
+dine. Dinner would be served at five o'clock. Mr. Cockey was going to
+dine, and Mr. Gilmore, the waiter thought, would probably be glad to
+join him. Mr. Cockey expressed himself as delighted, and would only
+be too happy. Now men in love, let their case be ever so bad, must
+dine or die. So much no doubt is not admitted by the chroniclers
+of the old knights who went forth after their ladies; but the
+old chroniclers, if they soared somewhat higher than do those
+of the present day, are admitted to have been on the whole less
+circumstantially truthful. Our knight was very sad at heart, and
+would have done according to his prowess as much as any Orlando of
+them all for the lady whom he loved,--but nevertheless he was an
+hungered; the mention of dinner was pleasant to him, and he accepted
+the joint courtesies of Mr. Cockey and the waiter with gratitude.
+
+The codfish and beefsteak, though somewhat woolly and tough, were
+wholesome; and the pint of sherry which at Mr. Cockey's suggestion
+was supplied to them, if not of itself wholesome, was innocent
+by reason of its dimensions. Mr. Cockey himself was pleasant and
+communicative, and told Mr. Gilmore a good deal about Loring. Our
+friend was afraid to ask any leading questions as to the persons in
+the place who interested himself, feeling conscious that his own
+subject was one which would not bear touch from a rough hand. He did
+at last venture to make inquiry about the clergyman of the parish.
+Mr. Cockey, with some merriment at his own wit, declared that the
+church was a house of business at which he did not often call for
+orders. Though he had been coming to Loring now for four years, he
+had never heard anything of the clergyman; but the waiter no doubt
+would tell them. Gilmore rather hesitated, and protested that he
+cared little for the matter; but the waiter was called in and
+questioned, and was soon full of stories about old Mr. Marrable. He
+was a good sort of man in his way, the waiter thought, but not much
+of a preacher. The people liked him because he never interfered with
+them. "He don't go poking his nose into people's 'ouses like some
+of 'em," said the waiter, who then began to tell of the pertinacity
+in that respect of a younger clergyman at Uphill. Yes; Parson
+Marrable had a relation living at Uphill; an old lady. "No; not
+his grandmother." This was in answer to a joke on the part of Mr.
+Cockey. Nor yet a daughter. The waiter thought she was some kind of
+a cousin, though he did not know what kind. A very grand lady was
+Miss Marrable, according to his showing, and much thought of by the
+quality. There was a young lady living with her, though the waiter
+did not know the young lady's name.
+
+"Does the Rev. Mr. Marrable live alone?" asked Gilmore. "Well, yes;
+for the most part quite alone. But just at present he had a visitor."
+Then the waiter told all that he knew about the Captain. The most
+material part of this was that the Captain had returned from London
+that very evening;--had come in by the Express while the two "gents"
+were at dinner, and had been taken to the Lowtown parsonage by the
+Bull 'bus. "Quite the gentleman," was the Captain, according to the
+waiter, and one of the "handsomest gents as ever he'd set his eyes
+upon." "D---- him," said poor Harry Gilmore to himself. Then he
+ventured upon another question. Did the waiter know anything of
+Captain Marrable's father? The waiter only knew that the Captain's
+father was "a military gent, and was high up in the army." From all
+which the only information which Gilmore received was the fact that
+the match between Marrable and Mary Lowther had not as yet become the
+talk of the town. After dinner Mr. Cockey proposed a glass of toddy
+and a cigar, remarking that he would move a bill for dispensing
+with the smoking rule for that night only, and to this also Gilmore
+assented. Now that he was at Loring he did not know what to do with
+himself better than drinking toddy with Mr. Cockey. Mr. Cockey
+declared the bill to be carried nem. con., and the cigars and toddy
+were produced. Mr. Cockey remarked that he had heard of Sir Gregory
+Marrable, of Dunripple Park. He travelled in Warwickshire, and was in
+the habit, as he said, of fishing up little facts. Sir Gregory wasn't
+much of a man, according to his account. The estate was small and,
+as Mr. Cockey fancied, a little out at elbows. Mr. Cockey thought it
+all very well to be a country gentleman and a "barrow knight," as he
+called it, as long as you had an estate to follow; but he thought
+very little of a title without plenty of stuff. Commerce, according
+to his notions, was the back bone of the nation;--and that the corps
+of travelling commercial gentlemen was the back bone of trade, every
+child knew. Mr. Cockey became warm and friendly as he drank his
+toddy. "Now, I don't know what you are, sir," said he.
+
+"I'm not very much of anything," said Gilmore.
+
+"Perhaps not, sir. Let that be as it may. But a man, sir, that feels
+that he's one of the supports of the commercial supremacy of this
+nation ain't got much reason to be ashamed of himself."
+
+"Not on that account, certainly."
+
+"Nor yet on no other account, as long as he's true to his employers.
+Now you talk of country gentlemen."
+
+"I didn't talk of them," said Gilmore.
+
+"Well,--no,--you didn't; but they do, you know. What does a country
+gentleman know, and what does he do? What's the country the better of
+him? He 'unts, and he shoots, and he goes to bed with his skin full
+of wine, and then he gets up and he 'unts and he shoots again, and
+'as his skin full once more. That's about all."
+
+"Sometimes he's a magistrate."
+
+"Yes, justices' justice! we know all about that. Put an old man in
+prison for a week because he looks into his 'ay-field on a Sunday; or
+send a young one to the treadmill for two months because he knocks
+over a 'are! All them cases ought to be tried in the towns, and there
+should be beaks paid as there is in London. I don't see the good of a
+country gentleman. Buying and selling;--that's what the world has to
+go by."
+
+"They buy and sell land."
+
+"No; they don't. They buy a bit now and then when they're screws, and
+they sell a bit now and then when the eating and drinking has gone
+too fast. But as for capital and investment, they know nothing about
+it. After all, they ain't getting above two-and-a-half per cent. for
+their money. We all know what that must come to."
+
+Mr. Cockey had been so mild before the pint of sherry and the glass
+of toddy, that Mr. Gilmore was somewhat dismayed by the change. Mr.
+Cockey, however, in his altered aspect seemed to be so much the less
+gracious, that Gilmore left him and strolled out into the town. He
+climbed up the hill and walked round the church and looked up at the
+windows of Miss Marrable's house, of which he had learned the site;
+but he had no adventure, saw nothing that interested him, and at
+half-past nine took himself wearily to bed.
+
+That same day Captain Marrable had run down from London to Loring
+laden with terrible news. The money on which he had counted was all
+gone! "What do you mean?" said his uncle; "have the lawyers been
+deceiving you all through?"
+
+"What is it to me?" said the ruined man. "It is all gone. They have
+satisfied me that nothing more can be done." Parson John whistled
+with a long-drawn note of wonder. "The people they were dealing with
+would be willing enough to give up the money, but it's all gone. It's
+spent, and there's no trace of it."
+
+"Poor fellow!"
+
+
+[Illustration: Parson John and Walter Marrable.]
+
+
+"I've seen my father, uncle John."
+
+"And what passed?"
+
+"I told him that he was a scoundrel, and then I left him. I didn't
+strike him."
+
+"I should hope not that, Walter."
+
+"I kept my hands off him; but when a man has ruined you as he has
+me, it doesn't much matter who he is. Your father and any other man
+are much the same to you then. He was worn, and old, and pale, or I
+should have felled him to the ground."
+
+"And what will you do now?"
+
+"Just go to that hell upon earth on the other side of the globe.
+There's nothing else to be done. I've applied for extension of leave,
+and told them why."
+
+Nothing more was said that night between the uncle and nephew, and
+no word had been spoken about Mary Lowther. On the next morning the
+breakfast at the parsonage passed by in silence. Parson John had been
+thinking a good deal of Mary, but had resolved that it was best that
+he should hold his tongue for the present. From the moment in which
+he had first heard of the engagement, he had made up his mind that
+his nephew and Mary Lowther would never be married. Seeing what
+his nephew was--or rather seeing that which he fancied his nephew
+to be,--he was sure that he would not sacrifice himself by such a
+marriage. There was always a way out of things, and Walter Marrable
+would be sure to find it. The way out of it had been found now with
+a vengeance. Immediately after breakfast the Captain took his hat
+without a word, and walked steadily up the hill to Uphill Lane. As
+he passed the door of the Bull he saw, but took no notice of, a
+gentleman who was standing under the covered entrance to the inn, and
+who had watched him coming out from the parsonage gate; but Gilmore,
+the moment that his eyes fell upon the Captain, declared to himself
+that that was his rival. Captain Marrable walked straight up the
+hill and knocked at Miss Marrable's door. Was Miss Lowther at home?
+Of course Miss Lowther was at home at such an hour. The girl said
+that Miss Mary was alone in the breakfast parlour. Miss Marrable had
+already gone down to the kitchen. Without waiting for another word,
+he walked into the little back room, and there he found his love.
+"Walter," she said, jumping up and running to him; "how good of you
+to come so soon! We didn't expect you these two days." She had thrown
+herself into his arms, but, though he embraced her, he did not kiss
+her. "There is something the matter!" she said. "What is it?" As she
+spoke she drew away from him and looked up into his face. He smiled
+and shook his head, still holding her by the waist. "Tell me, Walter;
+I know there is something wrong."
+
+"It is only that dirty money. My father has succeeded in getting it
+all."
+
+"All, Walter?" said she, again drawing herself away.
+
+"Every shilling," said he, dropping his arm.
+
+"That will be very bad."
+
+"Not a doubt of it. I felt it just as you do."
+
+"And all our pretty plans are gone."
+
+"Yes;--all our pretty plans."
+
+"And what shall you do now?"
+
+"There is only one thing. I shall go to India again. Of course it is
+just the same to me as though I were told that sentence of death had
+gone against me;--only it will not be so soon over."
+
+"Don't say that, Walter."
+
+"Why not say it, my dear, when I feel it?"
+
+"But you don't feel it. I know it must be bad for you, but it is not
+quite that. I will not think that you have nothing left worth living
+for."
+
+"I can't ask you to go with me to that happy Paradise."
+
+"But I can ask you to take me," she said;--"though perhaps it will be
+better that I should not."
+
+"My darling!--my own darling!" Then she came back to him and laid her
+head upon his shoulders, and lifted his hand till it came again round
+her waist. And he kissed her forehead, and smoothed her hair. "Swear
+to me," she said, "that whatever happens you will not put me away
+from you."
+
+"Put you away, dearest! A man doesn't put away the only morsel he has
+to keep him from starving. But yet as I came up here this morning I
+resolved that I would put you away."
+
+"Walter!"
+
+"And even now I know that they will tell me that I should do so. How
+can I take you out there to such a life as that without having the
+means of keeping a house over your head?"
+
+"Officers do marry without fortunes."
+
+"Yes;--and what sort of a time do their wives have? Oh, Mary, my own,
+my own, my own!--it is very bad! You cannot understand it all at
+once, but it is very bad."
+
+"If it be better for you, Walter,--" she said, again drawing herself
+away.
+
+"It is not that, and do not say that it is. Let us at any rate trust
+each other."
+
+She gave herself a little shake before she answered him. "I will
+trust you in everything;--as God is my judge, in everything. What you
+tell me to do, I will do. But, Walter, I will say one thing first.
+I can look forward to nothing but absolute misery in any life that
+will separate me from you. I know the difference between comfort and
+discomfort in money matters, but all that is as a feather in the
+balance. You are my god upon earth, and to you I must cling. Whether
+you be away from me or with me, I must cling to you the same. If I
+am to be separated from you for a time, I can do it with hope. If
+I am to be separated from you for ever, I shall still do so,--with
+despair. And now I will trust you, and I will do whatever you tell
+me. If you forbid me to call you mine any longer,--I will obey, and
+will never reproach you."
+
+"I will always be yours," he said, taking her again to his heart.
+
+"Then, dearest, you shall not find me wanting for anything you may
+ask of me. Of course you can't decide at present."
+
+"I have decided that I must go to India. I have asked for the
+exchange."
+
+"Yes;--I understand; but about our marriage. It may be that you
+should go out first. I would not be unmaidenly, Walter; but remember
+this--the sooner the better, if I can be a comfort to you;--but I can
+bear any delay rather than be a clog upon you."
+
+Marrable, as he had walked up the hill,--and during all his thoughts,
+indeed, since he had been convinced that the money was gone from
+him,--had been disposed to think that his duty to Mary required him
+to give her up. He had asked her to be his wife when he believed his
+circumstances to be other than they were; and now he knew that the
+life he had to offer to her was one of extreme discomfort. He had
+endeavoured to shake off any idea that as he must go back to India it
+would be more comfortable for himself to return without than with a
+wife. He wanted to make the sacrifice of himself, and had determined
+that he would do so. Now, at any rate for the moment, all his
+resolves were thrown to the wind. His own love was so strong and was
+so gratified by her love, that half his misery was carried away in an
+enthusiasm of romantic devotion. Let the worst come to the worst, the
+man that was so loved by such a woman could not be of all men the
+most miserable.
+
+He left the house, giving to her the charge of telling the bad news
+to Miss Marrable; and as he went he saw in the street before the
+house the man whom he had seen standing an hour before under the
+gateway of the inn. And Gilmore saw him too, and well knew where he
+had been.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX.
+
+THE AUNT AND THE UNCLE.
+
+
+Miss Marrable heard the story of the Captain's loss in perfect
+silence. Mary told it craftily, with a smile on her face, as though
+she were but slightly affected by it, and did not think very much on
+the change it might effect in her plans and those of her lover. "He
+has been ill-treated; has he not?" she said.
+
+"Very badly treated. I can't understand it, but it seems to me that
+he has been most shamefully treated."
+
+"He tried to explain it all to me; but I don't know that he
+succeeded."
+
+"Why did the lawyers deceive him?"
+
+"I think he was a little rash there. He took what they told him for
+more than it was worth. There was some woman who said that she would
+resign her claim; but when they came to look into it, she too had
+signed some papers and the money was all gone. He could recover it
+from his father by law, only that his father has got nothing."
+
+"And that is to be the end of it."
+
+"That is the end of our five thousand pounds," said Mary, forcing
+a little laugh. Miss Marrable for a few moments made no reply. She
+sat fidgety in her seat, feeling that it was her duty to explain to
+Mary what must, in her opinion, be the inevitable result of this
+misfortune, and yet not knowing how to begin her task. Mary was
+partly aware of what was coming, and had fortified herself to reject
+all advice, to assert her right to do as she pleased with herself,
+and to protest that she cared nothing for the prudent views of
+worldly-minded people. But she was afraid of what was coming. She
+knew that arguments would be used which she would find it very
+difficult to answer; and, although she had settled upon certain
+strong words which she would speak, she felt that she would be
+driven at last to quarrel with her aunt. On one thing she was quite
+resolved. Nothing should induce her to give up her engagement,--short
+of the expression of a wish to that effect from Walter Marrable
+himself.
+
+"How will this affect you, dear?" said Miss Marrable at last.
+
+"I should have been a poor man's wife any how. Now I shall be the
+wife of a very poor man. I suppose that will be the effect."
+
+"What will he do?"
+
+"He has, aunt, made up his mind to go to India."
+
+"Has he made up his mind to anything else?"
+
+"Of course, I know what you mean, aunt?"
+
+"Why should you not know? I mean, that a man going out to India, and
+intending to live there as an officer on his pay, cannot be in want
+of a wife."
+
+"You speak of a wife as if she were the same as a coach-and-four, or
+a box at the opera,--a sort of luxury for rich men. Marriage, aunt,
+is like death, common to all."
+
+"In our position in life, Mary, marriage cannot be made so common as
+to be undertaken without foresight for the morrow. A poor gentleman
+is further removed from marriage than any other man."
+
+"One knows, of course, that there will be difficulties."
+
+"What I mean, Mary, is, that you will have to give it up."
+
+"Never, Aunt Sarah. I shall never give it up."
+
+"Do you mean that you will marry him now, at once, and go out to
+India with him, as a dead weight round his neck?"
+
+"I mean that he shall choose about that."
+
+"It is for you to choose, Mary. Don't be angry. I am bound to tell
+you what I think. You can, of course, act as you please; but I think
+that you ought to listen to me. He cannot go back from his engagement
+without laying himself open to imputation of bad conduct."
+
+"Nor can I."
+
+"Pardon me, dear. That depends, I think, upon what passes between
+you. It is at any rate for you to propose the release to him,--not to
+fix him with the burthen of proposing it." Mary's heart quailed as
+she heard this, but she did not show her feeling by any expression
+on her face. "For a man, placed as he is, about to return to such a
+climate as that of India, with such work before him as I suppose men
+have there,--the burden of a wife, without the means of maintaining
+her according to his views of life and hers--"
+
+"We have no views of life. We know that we shall be poor."
+
+"It is the old story of love and a cottage,--only under the most
+unfavourable circumstances. A woman's view of it is, of course,
+different from that of a man. He has seen more of the world, and
+knows better than she does what poverty and a wife and family mean."
+
+"There is no reason why we should be married at once."
+
+"A long engagement for you would be absolutely disastrous."
+
+"Of course, there is disaster," said Mary. "The loss of Walter's
+money is disastrous. One has to put up with disaster. But the worst
+of all disasters would be to be separated. I can stand anything but
+that."
+
+"It seems to me, Mary, that within the last few weeks your character
+has become altogether altered."
+
+"Of course it has."
+
+"You used to think so much more of other people than yourself."
+
+"Don't I think of him, Aunt Sarah?"
+
+"As of a thing of your own. Two months ago you did not know him, and
+now you are a millstone round his neck."
+
+"I will never be a millstone round anybody's neck," said Mary,
+walking out of the room. She felt that her aunt had been very cruel
+to her,--had attacked her in her misery without mercy; and yet she
+knew that every word that had been uttered had been spoken in pure
+affection. She did not believe that her aunt's chief purpose had been
+to save Walter from the fruits of an imprudent marriage. Had she
+so believed, the words would have had more effect on her. She saw,
+or thought that she saw, that her aunt was trying to save herself
+against her own will, and at this she was indignant. She was
+determined to persevere; and this endeavour to make her feel that
+her perseverance would be disastrous to the man she loved was, she
+thought, very cruel. She stalked upstairs with unruffled demeanour;
+but when there, she threw herself on her bed and sobbed bitterly.
+Could it be that it was her duty, for his sake, to tell him that the
+whole thing should be at an end? It was impossible for her to do so
+now, because she had sworn to him that she would be guided altogether
+by him in his present troubles. She must keep her word to him,
+whatever happened; but of this she was quite sure,--that if he should
+show the slightest sign of a wish to be free from his engagement,
+she would make him free--at once. She would make him free, and would
+never allow herself to think for a moment that he had been wrong.
+She had told him what her own feelings were very plainly,--perhaps,
+in her enthusiasm, too plainly,--and now he must judge for himself
+and for her. In respect to her aunt, she would endeavour to avoid
+any further conversation on the subject till her lover should have
+decided finally what would be best for both of them. If he should
+choose to say that everything between them should be over, she would
+acquiesce,--and all the world should be over for her at the same
+time.
+
+While this was going on in Uphill Lane something of the same kind was
+taking place at the Lowtown Parsonage. Parson John became aware that
+his nephew had been with the ladies at Uphill, and when the young
+man came in for lunch, he asked some question which introduced the
+subject. "You've told them of this fresh trouble, no doubt."
+
+"I didn't see Miss Marrable," said the Captain.
+
+"I don't know that Miss Marrable much signifies. You haven't asked
+Miss Marrable to be your wife."
+
+"I saw Mary, and I told her."
+
+"I hope you made no bones about it."
+
+"I don't know what you mean, sir."
+
+"I hope you told her that you two had had your little game of play,
+like two children, and that there must be an end of it."
+
+"No; I didn't tell her that."
+
+"That's what you have got to tell her in some kind of language, and
+the sooner you do it the better. Of course you can't marry her. You
+couldn't have done it if this money had been all right, and it's out
+of the question now. Bless my soul! how you would hate each other
+before six months were over. I can understand that for a strong
+fellow like you, when he's used to it, India may be a jolly place
+enough."
+
+"It's a great deal more than I can understand."
+
+"But for a poor man with a wife and family;--oh dear! it must be very
+bad indeed. And neither of you have ever been used to that kind of
+thing."
+
+"I have not," said the Captain.
+
+"Nor has she. That old lady up there is not rich, but she is as proud
+as Lucifer, and always lives as though the whole place belonged to
+her. She's a good manager, and she don't run in debt;--but Mary
+Lowther knows no more of roughing it than a duchess."
+
+"I hope I may never have to teach her."
+
+"I trust you never may. It's a very bad lesson for a young man
+to have to teach a young woman. Some women die in the learning.
+Some won't learn it at all. Others do, and become dirty and rough
+themselves. Now, you are very particular about women."
+
+"I like to see them well turned out."
+
+"What would you think of your own wife, nursing perhaps a couple of
+babies, dressed nohow when she gets up in the morning, and going on
+in the same way till night? That's the kind of life with officers who
+marry on their pay. I don't say anything against it. If the man likes
+it,--or rather if he's able to put up with it,--it may be all very
+well; but you couldn't put up with it. Mary's very nice now, but
+you'd come to be so sick of her, that you'd feel half like cutting
+her throat,--or your own."
+
+"It would be the latter for choice, sir."
+
+"I dare say it would. But even that isn't a pleasant thing to look
+forward to. I'll tell you the truth about it, my boy. When you first
+came to me and told me that you were going to marry Mary Lowther, I
+knew it could not be. It was no business of mine; but I knew it could
+not be. Such engagements always get themselves broken off somehow.
+Now and again there are a pair of fools who go through with it;--but
+for the most part it's a matter of kissing and lovers' vows for a
+week or two."
+
+"You seem to know all about it, Uncle John."
+
+"I haven't lived to be seventy without knowing something, I suppose.
+And now here you are without a shilling. I dare say, if the truth
+were known, you've a few debts here and there."
+
+"I may owe three or four hundred pounds or so."
+
+"As much as a year's income;--and you talk of marrying a girl without
+a farthing."
+
+"She has twelve hundred pounds."
+
+"Just enough to pay your own debts, and take you out to India,--so
+that you may start without a penny. Is that the sort of career that
+will suit you, Walter? Can you trust yourself to that kind of thing,
+with a wife under your arm? If you were a man of fortune, no doubt
+Mary would make a very nice wife; but, as it is,--you must give it
+up."
+
+Whereupon Captain Marrable lit a pipe and took himself into the
+parson's garden, thence into the stables and stable-yard, and again
+back to the garden, thinking of all this. There was not a word spoken
+by Parson John which Walter did not know to be true. He had already
+come to the conclusion that he must go out to India before he
+married. As for marrying Mary at once and taking her with him this
+winter, that was impossible. He must go and look about him;--and as
+he thought of this he was forced to acknowledge to himself that he
+regarded the delay as a reprieve. The sooner the better had been
+Mary's view with him. Though he was loath enough to entertain the
+idea of giving her up, he was obliged to confess that, like the
+condemned man, he desired a long day. There was nothing happy before
+him in the whole prospect of his life. Of course he loved Mary. He
+loved her very dearly. He loved her so dearly, that to have her taken
+from him would be to have his heart plucked asunder. So he swore to
+himself;--and yet he was in doubt whether it would not be better that
+his heart should be plucked asunder, than that she should be made to
+live in accordance with those distasteful pictures which his uncle
+had drawn for him. Of himself he would not think at all. Everything
+must be bad for him. What happiness could a man expect who had been
+misused, cheated, and mined by his own father? For himself it did not
+much matter what became of him; but he began to doubt whether for
+Mary's sake it would not be well that they should be separated. And
+then Mary had thrust upon him the whole responsibility of a decision!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI.
+
+MARY LOWTHER FEELS HER WAY.
+
+
+That afternoon there came down to the parsonage a note from Mary to
+the Captain, asking her lover to meet her, and walk with her before
+dinner. He met her, and they took their accustomed stroll along the
+towing-path and into the fields. Mary had thought much of her aunt's
+words before the note was written, and had a fixed purpose of her own
+in view. It was true enough that though she loved this man with all
+her heart and soul, so loved him that she could not look forward to
+life apart from him without seeing that such life would be a great
+blank, yet she was aware that she hardly knew him. We are apt to
+suppose that love should follow personal acquaintance; and yet love
+at third sight is probably as common as any love at all, and it takes
+a great many sights before one human being can know another. Years
+are wanted to make a friendship, but days suffice for men and women
+to get married. Mary was, after a fashion, aware that she had been
+too quick in giving away her heart, and that now, when the gift had
+been made in full, it became her business to learn what sort of man
+was he to whom she had given it. And it was not only his nature as
+it affected her, but his nature as it affected himself that she
+must study. She did not doubt but that he was good, and true, and
+noble-minded; but it might be possible that a man good, true, and
+noble-minded, might have lived with so many indulgences around him
+as to be unable to achieve the constancy of heart which would be
+necessary for such a life as that which would be now before them if
+they married. She had told him that he should decide for himself
+and for her also,--thus throwing upon him the responsibility, and
+throwing upon him also, very probably, the necessity of a sacrifice.
+She had meant to be generous and trusting; but it might be that of
+all courses that which she had adopted was the least generous. In
+order that she might put this wrong right, if there were a wrong,
+she had asked him to come and walk with her. They met at the usual
+spot, and she put her hand through his arm with her accustomed smile,
+leaning upon him somewhat heavily for a minute, as girls do when they
+want to show that they claim the arm that they lean on as their own.
+
+"Have you told Parson John?" said Mary.
+
+"Oh, yes."
+
+"And what does he say?"
+
+"Just what a crabbed, crafty, selfish old bachelor of seventy would
+be sure to say."
+
+"You mean that he has told you to give up all idea of comforting
+yourself with a wife."
+
+"Just that."
+
+"And Aunt Sarah has been saying exactly the same to me. You can't
+think how eloquent Aunt Sarah has been. And her energy has quite
+surprised me."
+
+"I don't think Aunt Sarah was ever much of a friend of mine," said
+the Captain.
+
+"Not in the way of matrimony; in other respects she approves of you
+highly, and is rather proud of you as a Marrable. If you were only
+heir to the title, or something of that kind, she would think you the
+finest fellow going."
+
+"I wish I could gratify her, with all my heart."
+
+"She is such a dear old creature! You don't know her in the least,
+Walter. I am told she was ever so pretty when she was a girl; but she
+had no fortune of her own at that time, and she didn't care to marry
+beneath her position. You mustn't abuse her."
+
+"I've not abused her."
+
+"What she has been saying I am sure is very true; and I dare say
+Parson John has been saying the same thing."
+
+"If she has caused you to change your mind, say so at once, Mary. I
+shan't complain."
+
+Mary pressed his arm involuntarily, and loved him so dearly for the
+little burst of wrath. Was it really true that he, too, had set his
+heart upon it?--that all that the crafty old uncle had said had been
+of no avail?--that he also loved so well that he was willing to
+change the whole course of his life and become another person for the
+sake of her? If it were so, she would not say a word that could by
+possibility make him think that she was afraid. She would feel her
+way carefully, so that he might not be led by a chance phrase to
+imagine that what she was about to say was said on her own behalf.
+She would be very careful, but at the same time she would be so
+explicit that there should be no doubt on his mind but that he had
+her full permission to retire from the engagement if he thought it
+best to do so. She was quite ready to share the burthens of life with
+him, let them be what they might; but she would not be a mill-stone
+round his neck. At any rate, he should not be weighted with the
+mill-stone, if he himself looked upon a loving wife in that light.
+
+"She has not caused me to change my mind at all, Walter. Of course I
+know that all this is very serious. I knew that without Aunt Sarah's
+telling me. After all, Aunt Sarah can't be so wise as you ought to
+be, who have seen India and who know it well."
+
+"India is not a nice place to live in--especially for women."
+
+"I don't know that Loring is very nice;--but one has to take that as
+it comes. Of course it would be nicer if you could live at home and
+have plenty of money. I wish I had a fortune of my own. I never cared
+for it before, but I do now."
+
+"Things don't come by wishing, Mary."
+
+"No; but things do come by resolving and struggling. I have no doubt
+but that you will live yet to do something and to be somebody. I have
+that faith in you. But I can well understand that a wife may be a
+great impediment in your way."
+
+"I don't want to think of myself at all."
+
+"But you must think of yourself. For a woman, after all, it doesn't
+matter much. She isn't expected to do anything particular. A man
+of course must look to his own career, and take care that he does
+nothing to mar it."
+
+"I don't quite understand what you're driving at," said the Captain.
+
+"Well;--I'm driving at this: that I think that you are bound to
+decide upon doing that which you feel to be wisest without reference
+to my feelings. Of course I love you better than anything in the
+world. I can't be so false as to say it isn't so. Indeed, to tell the
+truth, I don't know that I really ever loved anybody else. But if it
+is proper that we should be separated, I shall get over it,--in a
+way."
+
+"You mean you'd marry somebody else in the process of time."
+
+"No, Walter; I don't mean that. Women shouldn't make protestations;
+but I don't think I ever should. But a woman can live and get on very
+well without being married, and I should always have you in my heart,
+and I should try to comfort myself with remembering that you had
+loved me."
+
+"I am quite sure that I shall never marry anyone else," said the
+Captain.
+
+"You know what I'm driving at now;--eh, Walter?"
+
+"Partly."
+
+"I want you to know wholly. I told you this morning that I should
+leave it to you to decide. I still say the same. I consider myself
+for the present as much bound to obey you as though I were your wife
+already. But after saying that, and after hearing Aunt Mary's sermon,
+I felt that I ought to make you understand that I am quite aware
+that it may be impossible for you to keep to your engagement. You
+understand all that better than I do. Our engagement was made when
+you thought you had money, and even then you felt that there was
+little enough."
+
+"It was very little."
+
+"And now there is none. I don't profess to be afraid of poverty
+myself, because I don't quite know what it means."
+
+"It means something very unpleasant."
+
+"No doubt; and it would be unpleasant to be parted;--wouldn't it?"
+
+"It would be horrible."
+
+She pressed his arm again as she went on. "You must judge between the
+two. What I want you to understand is this, that whatever you may
+judge to be right and best, I will agree to it, and will think that
+it is right and best. If you say that we will get ourselves married
+and try it, I shall feel that not to get ourselves married and not to
+try it is a manifest impossibility; and if you say that we should be
+wrong to get married and try it, then I will feel that to have done
+so was quite a manifest impossibility."
+
+"Mary," said he, "you're an angel."
+
+"No; but I'm a woman who loves well enough to be determined not to
+hurt the man she loves if she can help it."
+
+"There is one thing on which I think we must decide."
+
+"What is that?"
+
+"I must at any rate go out before we are married." Mary Lowther felt
+this to be a decision in her favour,--to be a decision which for the
+time made her happy and light-hearted. She had so dreaded a positive
+and permanent separation, that the delay seemed to her to be hardly
+an evil.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII.
+
+MR. GILMORE'S SUCCESS.
+
+
+Harry Gilmore, the prosperous country gentleman, the county
+magistrate, the man of acres, the nephew of Mr. Chamberlaine,
+respected by all who knew him,--with the single exception of the
+Marquis of Trowbridge,--was now so much reduced that he felt himself
+to be an inferior being to Mr. Cockey, with whom he breakfasted. He
+had come to Loring, and now he was there he did not know what to do
+with himself. He had come there, in truth, not because he really
+thought he could do any good, but driven out of his home by sheer
+misery. He was a man altogether upset, and verging on to a species of
+insanity. He was so uneasy in his mind that he could read nothing.
+He was half-ashamed of being looked at by those who knew him; and
+had felt some relief in the society of Mr. Cockey till Mr. Cockey
+had become jovial with wine, simply because Mr. Cockey was so poor a
+creature that he felt no fear of him. But as he had come to Loring,
+it was necessary that he should do something. He could not come to
+Loring and go back again without saying a word to anybody. Fenwick
+would ask him questions, and the truth would come out. There came
+upon him this morning an idea that he would not go back home;--that
+he would leave Loring and go away without giving any reason to any
+one. He was his own master. No one would be injured by anything
+that he might do. He had a right to spend his income as he pleased.
+Everything was distasteful that reminded him of Bullhampton. But
+still he knew that this was no more than a madman's idea;--that it
+would ill become him so to act. He had duties to perform, and he must
+perform them, let them be ever so distasteful. It was only an idea,
+made to be rejected; but, nevertheless, he thought of it.
+
+To do something, however, was incumbent on him. After breakfast he
+sauntered up the hill and saw Captain Marrable enter the house in
+which Mary Lowther lived. He felt thoroughly ashamed of himself
+in thus creeping about, and spying things out,--and, in truth, he
+had not intended thus to watch his rival. He wandered into the
+churchyard, sat there sometime on the tombstones, and then again went
+down to the inn. Mr. Cockey was going to Gloucester by an afternoon
+train, and invited him to join an early dinner at two. He assented,
+though by this time he had come to hate Mr. Cockey. Mr. Cockey
+assumed an air of superiority, and gave his opinions about matters
+political and social as though his companion were considerably below
+him in intelligence and general information. He dictated to poor
+Gilmore, and laid down the law as to eating onions with beefsteaks
+in a manner that was quite offensive. Nevertheless, the unfortunate
+man bore with his tormentor, and felt desolate when he was left
+alone in the commercial room, Cockey having gone out to complete
+his last round of visits to his customers. "Orders first and money
+afterwards," Cockey had said, and Cockey had now gone out to look
+after his money.
+
+Gilmore sat for some half-hour helpless over the fire; and then
+starting up, snatched his hat, and hurried out of the house. He
+walked as quickly as he could up the hill, and rang the bell at Miss
+Marrable's house. Had he been there ten minutes sooner, he would have
+seen Mary Lowther tripping down the side path to meet her lover. He
+rang the bell, and in a few minutes found himself in Miss Marrable's
+drawing-room. He had asked for Miss Marrable, had given his name, and
+had been shown upstairs. There he remained alone for a few minutes
+which seemed to him to be interminable. During these minutes Miss
+Marrable was standing in her little parlour downstairs, trying to
+think what she would say to Mr. Gilmore,--trying also to think why
+Mr. Gilmore should have come to Loring.
+
+After a few words of greeting Miss Marrable said that Miss Lowther
+was out walking. "She will be very glad, I'm sure, to hear good news
+from her friends at Bullhampton."
+
+"They're all very well," said Mr. Gilmore.
+
+"I've heard a great deal of Mr. Fenwick," said Miss Marrable; "so
+much that I seem almost to be acquainted with him."
+
+"No doubt," said Mr. Gilmore.
+
+"Your parish has become painfully known to the public by that
+horrible murder," said Miss Marrable.
+
+"Yes, indeed," said Mr. Gilmore.
+
+"I fear that they will hardly catch the perpetrator of it," said Miss
+Marrable.
+
+"I fear not," said Mr. Gilmore.
+
+At this period of the conversation Miss Marrable found herself in
+great difficulty. If anything was to be said about Mary Lowther, she
+could not begin to say it. She had heard a great deal in favour of
+Mr. Gilmore. Mrs. Fenwick had written to her about the man; and Mary,
+though she would not love him, had always spoken very highly of his
+qualities. She knew well that he had gone through Oxford with credit,
+that he was a reading man,--so reputed, that he was a magistrate, and
+in all respects a gentleman. Indeed, she had formed an idea of him as
+quite a pearl among men. Now that she saw him, she could not repress
+a feeling of disappointment. He was badly dressed, and bore a sad,
+depressed, downtrodden aspect. His whole appearance was what the
+world now calls seedy. And he seemed to be almost unable to speak.
+Miss Marrable knew that Mr. Gilmore was a man disappointed in his
+love, but she did not conceive that love had done him all these
+injuries. Love, however, had done them all. "Are you going to stay
+long in this neighbourhood?" asked Miss Marrable, almost in despair
+for a subject.
+
+Then the man's mouth was opened. "No; I suppose not," he said. "I
+don't know what should keep me here, and I hardly know why I'm come.
+Of course you have heard of my suit to your niece." Miss Marrable
+bowed her courtly little head in token of assent. "When Miss Lowther
+left us, she gave me some hope that I might be successful. At least,
+she consented that I should ask her once more. She has now written to
+tell me that she is engaged to her cousin."
+
+"There is something of the kind," said Miss Marrable.
+
+"Something of the kind! I suppose it is settled; isn't it?"
+
+Miss Marrable was a sensible woman, one not easily led away by
+appearances. Nevertheless, it is probable that had Mr. Gilmore been
+less lugubrious, more sleek, less "seedy," she would have been more
+prone than she now was to have made instant use of Captain Marrable's
+loss of fortune on behalf of this other suitor. She would immediately
+have felt that perhaps something might be done, and she would have
+been tempted to tell him the whole story openly. As it was she could
+not so sympathise with the man before her, as to take him into her
+confidence. No doubt he was Mr. Gilmore, the favoured friend of the
+Fenwicks, the owner of the Privets, and the man of whom Mary had
+often said that there was no fault to be found with him. But there
+was nothing bright about him, and she did not know how to encourage
+him as a lover. "As Mary has told you," she said, "I suppose there
+can be no harm in my repeating that they are engaged," said Miss
+Marrable.
+
+"Of course they are. I am aware of that. I believe the gentleman is
+related to you."
+
+"He is a cousin,--not very near."
+
+"And I suppose he has your good will?"
+
+"As to that, Mr. Gilmore, I don't know that I can do any good by
+speaking. Young ladies in these days don't marry in accordance with
+the wishes of their old aunts."
+
+"But Miss Lowther thinks so much of you! I don't want to ask any
+questions that ought not to be asked. If this match is so settled
+that it must go on, why there's an end of it. I'll just tell you the
+truth openly, Miss Marrable. I have loved,--I do love your niece with
+all my heart. When I received her letter it upset me altogether, and
+every hour since has made the feeling worse. I have come here just
+to learn whether there may still possibly be a chance. You will not
+quarrel with me because I have loved her so well?"
+
+"Indeed no," said Miss Marrable, whose heart was gradually becoming
+soft, and who was learning to forget the mud on Mr. Gilmore's boots
+and trousers.
+
+"I heard that Captain Marrable was,--at any rate, not a very rich
+man; that he could hardly afford to marry his cousin. I did hear,
+also, that the match might in other respects not be suitable."
+
+"There is no other objection, Mr. Gilmore."
+
+"It is the case, Miss Marrable, that these things sometimes come
+on suddenly and go off suddenly. I won't deny that if I could
+have gained Miss Lowther's heart without the interference of any
+interloper, it would have been to me a brighter joy than anything
+that can now be possible. A man cannot be proud of his position who
+seeks to win a woman who owns a preference for another man." Miss
+Marrable's heart had now become very soft, and she began to perceive,
+of her own knowledge, that Mr. Gilmore was at any rate a gentleman.
+"But I would take her in any way that I could get her. Perhaps--that
+is to say, it might be--" And then he stopped.
+
+Should she tell him everything? She had a strong idea that it was her
+first duty to be true to her own sex and to her own niece. But were
+she to tell the man the whole story it would do her niece no harm.
+She still believed that the match with Captain Marrable must be
+broken off. Even were this done it would be very long, she thought,
+before Mary would bring herself to listen with patience to another
+suitor. But of course it would be best for them all that this episode
+in Mary's life should be forgotten and put out of sight as soon as
+possible. Had not this dangerous captain come up, Mary, no doubt,--so
+thought Miss Marrable,--would at last have complied with her friends'
+advice, and have accepted a marriage which was in all respects
+advantageous. If the episode could only get itself forgotten and put
+out of sight, she might do so still. But there must be delay. Miss
+Marrable, after waiting for half a minute to consider, determined
+that she would tell him something. "No doubt," she said, "Captain
+Marrable's income is so small that the match is one that Mary's
+friends cannot approve."
+
+"I don't think much of money," he said.
+
+"Still it is essential to comfort, Mr. Gilmore."
+
+"What I mean to say is, that I am the last man in the world to insist
+upon that kind of thing, or to appear to triumph because my income is
+larger than another man's." Miss Marrable was now quite sure that Mr.
+Gilmore was a gentleman. "But if the match is to be broken off--"
+
+"I cannot say that it will be broken off."
+
+"But it may be?"
+
+"Certainly it is possible. There are difficulties which may
+necessarily separate them."
+
+"If it be so, my feelings will be the same as they have always been
+since I first knew her. That is all that I have got to say."
+
+Then she told him pretty nearly everything. She said nothing of the
+money which Walter Marrable would have inherited had it not been for
+Colonel Marrable's iniquity; but she did tell him that the young
+people would have no income except the Captain's pay, and poor Mary's
+little fifty pounds a-year; and she went on to explain that, as
+far as she was concerned, and as far as her cousin the clergyman
+was concerned, everything would be done to prevent a marriage so
+disastrous as that in question, and the prospect of a life with so
+little of allurement as that of the wife of a poor soldier in India.
+At the same time she bade him remember that Mary Lowther was a girl
+very apt to follow her own judgment, and that she was for the present
+absolutely devoted to her cousin. "I think it will be broken off,"
+she said. "That is my opinion. I don't think it can go on. But it is
+he that will do it; and for a time she will suffer greatly."
+
+"Then I will wait," said Mr. Gilmore. "I will go home, and wait
+again. If there be a chance, I can live and hope."
+
+"God grant that you may not hope in vain!"
+
+"I would do my best to make her happy. I will leave you now, and am
+very thankful for your kindness. There would be no good in my seeing
+Mary?"
+
+"I think not, Mr. Gilmore."
+
+"I suppose not. She would only feel that I was teasing her. You will
+not tell her of my being here, I suppose?"
+
+"It would do no good, I think."
+
+"None in the least. I'll just go home and wait. If there should be
+anything to tell me--"
+
+"If the match be broken off, I will take care that you shall hear it.
+I will write to Janet Fenwick. I know that she is your friend."
+
+Then Mr. Gilmore left the house, descended the hill without seeing
+Mary, packed up his things, and returned by the night train to
+Westbury. At seven o'clock in the morning he reached home in a
+Westbury gig, very cold, but upon the whole, a much more comfortable
+man than when he had left it. He had almost brought himself to think
+that even yet he would succeed at last.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII.
+
+FAREWELL.
+
+
+Christmas came, and a month beyond Christmas, and by the end of
+January Captain Marrable and Miss Lowther had agreed to regard
+all their autumn work as null and void,--to look back upon the
+love-making as a thing that had not been, and to part as friends.
+Both of them suffered much in this arrangement,--the man being the
+louder in the objurgations which he made against his ill-fortune, and
+in his assurances to himself and others that he was ruined for life.
+And, indeed, no man could have been much more unhappy than was Walter
+Marrable in these days. To him was added the trouble, which he did
+not endeavour to hide from himself or Mary, that all this misery
+came to him from his own father. Before the end of November, sundry
+renewed efforts were made to save a portion of the money, and the
+lawyers descended so low as to make an offer to take £2000. They
+might have saved themselves the humiliation, for neither £2000 nor
+£200 could have been made to be forthcoming. Walter Marrable, when
+the time came, was painfully anxious to fight somebody; but he was
+told very clearly by Messrs. Block and Curling, that there was nobody
+whom he could fight but his father, and that even by fighting his
+father, he would never obtain a penny. "My belief," said Mr. Curling,
+"is, that you could put your father in prison, but that probably is
+not your object." Marrable was forced to own that that was not his
+object; but he did so in a tone which seemed to imply that a prison,
+were it even for life, would be the best place for his father. Block
+and Curling had been solicitors to the Marrables for ever so many
+years; and though they did not personally love the Colonel, they
+had a professional feeling that the blackness of a black sheep of a
+family should not be made public, at any rate by the family itself
+or by the family solicitors. Almost every family has a black sheep,
+and it is the especial duty of a family solicitor to keep the family
+black sheep from being dragged into the front and visible ranks
+of the family. The Captain had been fatally wrong in signing the
+paper which he had signed, and must take the consequences. "I don't
+think, Captain Marrable, that you would save yourself in any way by
+proceeding against the Colonel," said Mr. Curling. "I have not the
+slightest intention of proceeding against him," said the Captain, in
+great dudgeon,--and then he left the office and shook the dust off
+his feet, as against Block and Curling as well as against his father.
+
+After this,--immediately after it,--he had one other interview with
+his father. As he told his uncle, the devil prompted him to go down
+to Portsmouth to see the man to whom his interests should have been
+dearer than to all the world beside, and who had robbed him so
+ruthlessly. There was nothing to be gained by such a visit. Neither
+money nor counsel, nor even consolation would be forthcoming from
+Colonel Marrable. Probably Walter Marrable felt in his anger that
+it would be unjust that his father should escape without a word to
+remind him from his son's mouth of all that he had done for his son.
+The Colonel held some staff office at Portsmouth, and his son came
+upon him in his lodgings one evening as he was dressing to go out
+to dinner. "Is that you, Walter?" said the battered old reprobate,
+appearing at the door of his bed-room; "I am very glad to see you."
+
+"I don't believe it," said the son.
+
+"Well;--what would you have me say? If you'll only behave decently, I
+shall be glad to see you."
+
+"You've given me an example in that way, sir; have you not? Decency
+indeed!"
+
+"Now, Walter, if you're going to talk about that horrid money, I tell
+you at once, that I won't listen to you."
+
+"That's kind of you, sir."
+
+"I've been unfortunate. As soon as I can repay it, or a part of it,
+I will. Since you've been back, I've done everything in my power to
+get a portion of it for you,--and should have got it, but for those
+stupid people in Bedford Row. After all, the money ought to have been
+mine, and that's what I suppose you felt when you enabled me to draw
+it."
+
+"By heavens, that's cool!"
+
+"I mean to be cool;--I'm always cool. The cab will be here to take
+me to dinner in a very few minutes. I hope you will not think I am
+running away from you?"
+
+"I don't mean you to go till you've heard what I've got to say," said
+the Captain.
+
+"Then, pray say it quickly." Upon this, the Colonel stood still and
+faced his son; not exactly with a look of anger, but assuming an
+appearance as though he were the person injured. He was a thin old
+man, who wore padded coats, and painted his beard and his eyebrows,
+and had false teeth, and who, in spite of chronic absence of means,
+always was possessed of clothes apparently just new from the hands of
+a West-end tailor. He was one of those men who, through their long,
+useless, ill-flavoured lives, always contrive to live well, to eat
+and drink of the best, to lie softly, and to go about in purple
+and fine linen,--and yet, never have any money. Among a certain
+set Colonel Marrable, though well known, was still popular. He was
+good-tempered, well-mannered, sprightly in conversation, and had not
+a scruple in the world. He was over seventy, had lived hard, and must
+have known that there was not much more of it for him. But yet he
+had no qualms, and no fears. It may be doubted whether he knew that
+he was a bad man,--he, than whom you could find none worse though
+you were to search the country from one end to another. To lie, to
+steal,--not out of tills or pockets, because he knew the danger; to
+cheat--not at the card-table, because he had never come in the way
+of learning the lesson; to indulge every passion, though the cost to
+others might be ruin for life; to know no gods but his own bodily
+senses, and no duty but that which he owed to those gods; to eat all,
+and produce nothing; to love no one but himself; to have learned
+nothing but how to sit at table like a gentleman; to care not at all
+for his country, or even for his profession; to have no creed, no
+party, no friend, no conscience, to be troubled with nothing that
+touched his heart;--such had been, was, and was to be the life of
+Colonel Marrable. Perhaps it was accounted to him as a merit by some
+that he did not quail at any coming fate. When his doctor warned him
+that he must go soon, unless he would refrain from this and that
+and the other,--so wording his caution that the Colonel could not
+but know and did know, that let him refrain as he would he must go
+soon,--he resolved that he would refrain, thinking that the charms
+of his wretched life were sweet enough to be worth such sacrifice;
+but in no other respect did the caution affect him. He never asked
+himself whether he had aught even to regret before he died, or to
+fear afterwards.
+
+There are many Colonel Marrables about in the world, known well to be
+so at clubs, in drawing-rooms, and by the tradesmen who supply them.
+Men give them dinners and women smile upon them. The best of coats
+and boots are supplied to them. They never lack cigars nor champagne.
+They have horses to ride, and servants to wait upon them more
+obsequious than the servants of other people. And men will lend them
+money too,--well knowing that there is no chance of repayment. Now
+and then one hears a horrid tale of some young girl who surrenders
+herself to such a one, absolutely for love! Upon the whole the
+Colonel Marrables are popular. It is hard to follow such a man quite
+to the end and to ascertain whether or no he does go out softly at
+last, like the snuff of a candle,--just with a little stink.
+
+"I will say it as quickly as I can," said the Captain. "I can gain
+nothing I know by staying here in your company."
+
+"Not while you are so very uncivil."
+
+"Civil, indeed! I have to-day made up my mind, not for your sake, but
+for that of the family, that I will not prosecute you as a criminal
+for the gross robbery which you have perpetrated."
+
+"That is nonsense, Walter, and you know it as well as I do."
+
+"I am going back to India in a few weeks, and I trust I may never be
+called upon to see you again. I will not, if I can help it. It may
+be a toss-up which of us may die first, but this will be our last
+meeting. I hope you may remember on your death-bed that you have
+utterly ruined your son in every relation of life. I was engaged to
+marry a girl,--whom I loved; but it is all over, because of you."
+
+"I had heard of that, Walter, and I really congratulate you on your
+escape."
+
+"I can't strike you--"
+
+"No; don't do that."
+
+"Because of your age, and because you are my father. I suppose you
+have no heart, and that I cannot make you feel it."
+
+"My dear boy, I have an appetite, and I must go and satisfy it." So
+saying the Colonel escaped, and the Captain allowed his father to
+make his way down the stairs and into the cab before he followed.
+
+Though he had thus spoken to his father of his blasted hopes in
+regard to Mary Lowther, he had not as yet signified his consent to
+the measure by which their engagement was to be brought altogether
+to an end. The question had come to be discussed widely among their
+friends, as is the custom with such questions in such circumstances,
+and Mary had been told from all sides that she was bound to give it
+up,--that she was bound to give it up for her own sake, and more
+especially for his; that the engagement, if continued, would never
+lead to a marriage, and that it would in the meantime be absolutely
+ruinous to her,--and to him. Parson John came up and spoke to her
+with a strength for which she had not hitherto given Parson John
+credit. Her Aunt Sarah was very gentle with her, but never veered
+from her opinion that the engagement must of necessity be abandoned.
+Mr. Fenwick wrote to her a letter full of love and advice, and Mrs.
+Fenwick made a journey to Loring to discuss the matter with her. The
+discussion between them was very long. "If you are saying this on my
+account," said Mary, "it is quite useless."
+
+"On what other account? Mr. Gilmore? Indeed, indeed, I am not
+thinking of him. He is out of my mind altogether. I say it because I
+know it is impossible that you and your cousin should be married, and
+because such an engagement is destructive to both the parties."
+
+"For myself," said Mary, "it can make no difference."
+
+"It will make the greatest difference. It would wear you to pieces
+with a deferred hope. There is nothing so killing, so terrible, so
+much to be avoided. And then for him!-- How is a man, thrown about on
+the world as he will be, to live in such a condition."
+
+The upshot of it all was that Mary wrote a letter to her cousin
+proposing to surrender her engagement, and declaring that it would be
+best for them both that he should agree to accept her surrender. That
+plan which she had adopted before, of leaving all the responsibility
+to him, would not suffice. She had come to perceive during these
+weary discussions that if a way out of his bondage was to be given to
+Walter Marrable it must come from her action and not from his. She
+had intended to be generous when she left everything to him; but it
+was explained to her, both by her aunt and Mrs. Fenwick, that her
+generosity was of a kind which he could not use. It was for her to
+take the responsibility upon herself; it was for her to make the
+move; it was, in short, for her to say that the engagement should be
+over.
+
+The very day that Mrs. Fenwick left her she wrote the letter, and
+Captain Marrable had it in his pocket when he went down to bid a
+last farewell to his father. It had been a sad, weary, tear-laden
+performance,--the writing of that letter. She had resolved that
+no sign of a tear should be on the paper, and she had rubbed the
+moisture away from her eyes a dozen times during the work lest it
+should fall. There was but little of intended pathos in it; there
+were no expressions of love till she told him at the end that she
+would always love him dearly; there was no repining,--no mention of
+her own misery. She used all the arguments which others had used to
+her, and then drew her conclusion. She remembered that were she to
+tell him that she would still be true to him, she would in fact be
+asking for some such pledge back from him; and she said not a word
+of any such constancy on her own part. It was best for both of them
+that the engagement should be broken off; and, therefore, broken off
+it was, and should be now and for ever. That was the upshot of Mary
+Lowther's letter.
+
+
+[Illustration: Mary Lowther writes to Walter Marrable.]
+
+
+Captain Marrable when he received it, though he acknowledged the
+truth of all the arguments, loved the girl far too well to feel that
+this release gave him any comfort. He had doubtless felt that the
+engagement was a burthen on him,--that he would not have entered into
+it had he not felt sure of his diminished fortune, and that there
+was a fearful probability that it might never result in their being
+married; but not the less did the breaking up of it make him very
+wretched. An engagement for marriage can never be so much to a man as
+it is to a woman,--marriage itself can never be so much, can never
+be so great a change, produce such utter misery, or of itself be
+efficient for such perfect happiness,--but his love was true and
+steadfast, and when he learned that she was not to be his, he was as
+a man who had been robbed of his treasure. Her letter was long and
+argumentative. His reply was short and passionate;--and the reader
+shall see it.
+
+
+   Duke Street, January, 186--.
+
+   DEAREST MARY,
+
+   I suppose you are right. Everybody tells me so, and no
+   doubt everybody tells you the same. The chances are that
+   I shall get bowled over; and as for getting back again, I
+   don't know when I can hope for it. In such a condition it
+   would I believe be very wrong and selfish were I to go and
+   leave you to think of me as your future husband. You would
+   be waiting for that which would never come.
+
+   As for me, I shall never care for any other woman. A
+   soldier can get on very well without a wife, and I shall
+   always regard myself now as one of those useless but
+   common animals who are called "not marrying men." I shall
+   never marry. I shall always carry your picture in my
+   heart, and shall not think that I am sinning against you
+   or any one else when I do so after hearing that you are
+   married.
+
+   I need not tell you that I am very wretched. It is not
+   only that I am separated from you, my own dear, dearest
+   girl, but that I cannot refrain from thinking how it has
+   come to pass that it is so. I went down to see my father
+   yesterday. I did see him, and you may imagine of what
+   nature was the interview. I sometimes think, when I lie in
+   bed, that no man was ever so ill-treated as I have been.
+
+   Dearest love, good-bye. I could not have brought myself to
+   say what you have said, but I know that you are right. It
+   has not been my fault, dear. I did love you, and do love
+   you as truly as any man ever loved a woman.
+
+   Yours with all my heart,
+
+   WALTER MARRABLE.
+
+   I should like to see you once more before I start. Is
+   there any harm in this? I must run down to my uncle's, but
+   I will not go up to you if you think it better not. If you
+   can bring yourself to see me, pray, pray do.
+
+
+In answer to this Mary wrote to him to say that she would certainly
+see him when he came. She knew no reason, she said, why they should
+not meet. When she had written her note she asked her aunt's opinion.
+Aunt Sarah would not take upon herself to say that no such meeting
+ought to take place, but it was very evident that she thought that it
+would be dangerous.
+
+Captain Marrable did come down to Loring about the end of January,
+and the meeting did take place. Mary had stipulated that she should
+be alone when he called. He had suggested that they should walk out
+together, as had been their wont; but this she had declined, telling
+him that the sadness of such a walk would be too much for her, and
+saying to her aunt with a smile that were she once again out with him
+on the towing-path, there would be no chance of their ever coming
+home. "I could not ask him to turn back," she said, "when I should
+know that it would be for the last time." It was arranged, therefore,
+that the meeting should take place in the drawing-room at Uphill
+Lane.
+
+He came into the room with a quick, uneasy step, and when he reached
+her he put his arm round her and kissed her. She had formed certain
+little resolutions on this subject. He should kiss her, if he
+pleased, once again when he went,--and only once. And now, almost
+without a motion on her part that was perceptible, she took herself
+out of his arms. There should be no word about that if she could help
+it,--but she was bound to remember that he was nothing to her now but
+a distant cousin. He must cease to be her lover, though she loved
+him. Nay,--he had so ceased already. There must be no more laying of
+her head upon his shoulder, no more twisting of her fingers through
+his locks, no more looking into his eyes, no more amorous pressing
+of her lips against his own. Much as she loved him she must remember
+now that such outward signs of love as these would not befit her.
+"Walter," she said, "I am so glad to see you! And yet I do not know
+but what it would have been better that you should have stayed away."
+
+"Why should it have been better? It would have been unnatural not to
+have met each other."
+
+"So I thought. Why should not friends endure to say good-bye, even
+though their friendship be as dear as ours? I told Aunt Sarah that
+I should be angry with myself afterwards if I feared to tell you to
+come."
+
+"There is nothing to fear,--only that it is so wretched an ending,"
+said he.
+
+"In one way I will not look on it as an ending. You and I cannot be
+married, Walter; but I shall always have your career to look to, and
+shall think of you as my dearest friend. I shall expect you to write
+to me;--not at first, but after a year or so. You will be able to
+write to me then as though you were my brother."
+
+"I shall never be able to do that."
+
+"Oh yes;--that is, if you will make the effort for my sake. I do not
+believe but what people can manage and mould their own wills if they
+will struggle hard enough. You must not be unhappy, Walter."
+
+"I am not so wise or self-confident as you, Mary. I shall be unhappy.
+I should be deceiving myself if I were to tell myself otherwise.
+There is nothing before me to make me happy. When I came home there
+was very little that I cared for, though I had the prospect of this
+money and thought that my cares in that respect were over. Then I
+met you, and the whole world seemed altered. I was happy even when
+I found how badly I had been treated. Now all that has gone, and I
+cannot think that I shall be happy again."
+
+"I mean to be happy, Walter."
+
+"I hope you may, dear."
+
+"There are gradations in happiness. The highest I ever came to yet
+was when you told me that you loved me." When she said that, he
+attempted to take her hand, but she withdrew from him, almost without
+a sign that she was doing so. "I have not quite lost that yet," she
+continued, "and I do not mean to lose it altogether. I shall always
+remember that you loved me; and you will not forget that I too loved
+you."
+
+"Forget it?--no, I don't exactly think that I shall forget it."
+
+"I don't know why it should make us altogether unhappy. For a time, I
+suppose, we shall be down-hearted."
+
+"I shall, I know. I can't pretend to such strength as to say that I
+can lose what I want, and not feel it."
+
+"We shall both feel it, Walter;--but I do not know that we must be
+miserable. When do you leave England?"
+
+"Nothing is settled. I have not had the heart to think of it. It will
+not be for a month or two yet. I suppose I shall stay out my regular
+Indian time."
+
+"And what shall you do with yourself?"
+
+"I have no plans at all, Mary. Sir Gregory has asked me to Dunripple,
+and I shall remain there probably till I am tired of it. It will be
+so pleasant, talking to my uncle of my father."
+
+"Do not talk of him at all, Walter. You will best forgive him by not
+talking of him. We shall hear, I suppose, of what you do from Parson
+John."
+
+She had seated herself a little away from him, and he did not attempt
+to draw near to her again till at her bidding he rose to leave her.
+He sat there for nearly an hour, and during that time much more was
+said by her than by him. She endeavoured to make him understand that
+he was as free as air, and that she would hope some day to hear that
+he was married. In reply to this, he asserted very loudly that he
+would never call any woman his wife, unless unexpected circumstances
+should enable him to return and again ask for her hand. "Not that you
+are to wait for me, Mary," he said. She smiled, but made no definite
+answer to this. She had told herself that it would not be for his
+welfare that she should allude to the possibility of a renewed
+engagement, and she did not allude to it.
+
+"God bless you, Walter," she said at last, coming to him and offering
+him her hand.
+
+"God bless you, for ever and ever, dearest Mary," he said, taking her
+in his arms and kissing her again and again. It was to be the last,
+and she did not seem to shun him. Then he left her, went as far as
+the door,--and returned again. "Dearest, dearest Mary. You will give
+me one more kiss?"
+
+"It shall be the last, Walter," she said. Then she did kiss him,
+as she would have kissed her brother that was going from her, and
+escaping from his arms she left the room.
+
+He had come to Loring late on the previous evening, and on that same
+day he returned to London. No doubt he dined at his club, drank a
+pint of wine and smoked a cigar or two, though he did it all after a
+lugubrious fashion. Men knew that he had fallen into great trouble in
+the matter of his inheritance, and did not expect him to be joyful
+and of pleasant countenance. "By George!" said little Captain Boodle,
+"if it was my governor, I'd go very near being hung for him; I would,
+by George!" Which remark obtained a good deal of general sympathy in
+the billiard-room of that military club. In the meantime Mary Lowther
+at Loring had resolved that she would not be lugubrious, and she sat
+down to dinner opposite to her aunt with a pleasant smile on her
+face. Before the evening was over, however, she had in some degree
+broken down. "I fear I can't get along with novels, Aunt Sarah," she
+said. "Don't you think I could find something to do." Then the old
+lady came round the room and kissed her niece;--but she made no other
+reply.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV.
+
+BULLHAMPTON NEWS.
+
+
+When the matter was quite settled at Loring,--when Miss Marrable not
+only knew that the engagement had been surrendered on both sides, but
+that it had been so surrendered as to be incapable of being again
+patched up, she bethought herself of her promise to Mr. Gilmore.
+This did not take place for a fortnight after the farewell which
+was spoken in the last chapter,--at which time Walter Marrable was
+staying with his uncle, Sir Gregory, at Dunripple. Miss Marrable
+had undertaken that Mr. Gilmore should be informed as soon as the
+engagement was brought to an end, and had been told that this
+information should reach him through Mrs. Fenwick. When a fortnight
+had passed, Miss Marrable was aware that Mary had not herself written
+to her friend at Bullhampton; and though she felt herself to be shy
+of the subject, though she entertained a repugnance to make any
+communication based on a hope that Mary might after a while receive
+her old lover graciously,--for time must of course be needed before
+such grace could be accorded,--she did write a few lines to Mrs.
+Fenwick. She explained that Captain Marrable was to return to India,
+and that he was to go as a free man. Mary, she said, bore her burden
+well. Of course, it must be some time before the remembrance of her
+cousin would cease to be a burden to her; but she went about her
+heavy task with a good will,--so said Miss Marrable,--and would no
+doubt conquer her own unhappiness after a time by the strength of her
+personal character. Not a word was spoken of Mr. Gilmore, but Mrs.
+Fenwick understood it all. The letter, she knew well, was a message
+to Mr. Gilmore;--a message which it would be her duty to give as soon
+as possible, that he might extract from it such comfort as it would
+contain for him,--though it would be his duty not to act upon it for,
+at any rate, many months to come. "And it will be a comfort to him,"
+said her husband when he read Miss Marrable's letter.
+
+"Of all the men I know, he is the most constant," said Mrs. Fenwick,
+"and best deserves that his constancy should be rewarded."
+
+"It is the man's nature," said the parson. "Of course, he will get
+her at last; and when he has got her, he will be quite contented with
+the manner in which he has won her. There's nothing like going on
+with a thing. I believe I might be a bishop if I set my heart on it."
+
+"Why don't you, then?"
+
+"I am not sure that the beauty of the thing is so well-defined to me
+as is Mary Lowther's to poor Harry. In perseverance and success of
+that kind the man's mind should admit of no doubt. Harry is quite
+clear of this,--that in spite of Mary's preference for her cousin, it
+would be the grandest thing in the world to him that she should marry
+him. The certainty of his condition will pull him through at last."
+
+Two days after this Mrs. Fenwick put Miss Marrable's letter into Mr.
+Gilmore's hand,--having perceived that it was specially written that
+it might be so treated. She kept it in her pocket till she should
+chance to see him, and at last handed it to him as she met him
+walking on his own grounds. "I have a letter from Loring," she said.
+
+"From Mary?"
+
+"No;--from Mary's aunt. I have it here, and I think you had better
+read it. To tell you the truth, Harry, I have been looking for you
+ever since I got it. Only you must not make too much of it."
+
+Then he read the letter. "What do you mean," he asked, "by making too
+much of it?"
+
+"You must not suppose that Mary is the same as before she saw this
+cousin of hers."
+
+"But she is the same."
+
+"Well;--yes, in body and in soul, no doubt. But such an experience
+leaves a mark which cannot be rubbed out quite at once."
+
+"You mean that I must wait before I ask her again."
+
+"Of course you must wait. The mark must be rubbed out first, you
+know."
+
+"I will wait; but as for the rubbing out of the mark, I take it that
+will be altogether beyond me. Do you think, Mrs. Fenwick, that no
+woman should ever, under any circumstances, marry one man when she
+loves another?"
+
+She could not bring herself to tell him that in her opinion Mary
+Lowther would of all women be the least likely to do so. "That is one
+of those questions," she said, "which it is almost impossible for a
+person to answer. In the first place, before answering it, we should
+have a clear definition of love."
+
+"You know what I mean well enough."
+
+"I do know what you mean, but I hardly do know how to answer you. If
+you went to Mary Lowther now, she would take it almost as an insult;
+and she would feel it in that light, because she is aware that you
+know of this story of her cousin."
+
+"Of course I shall not go to her at once."
+
+"She will never forget him altogether."
+
+"Such things cannot be forgotten," said Gilmore.
+
+"Nevertheless," said Mrs. Fenwick, "it is probable that Mary will be
+married some day. These wounds get themselves cured as do others."
+
+"I shall never be cured of mine," said he, laughing. "As for Mary,
+I hardly know what to think. I suppose girls do marry without caring
+very much for the men they take. One sees it every day; and then
+afterwards, they love their husbands. It isn't very romantic, but it
+seems to me that it is so."
+
+"Don't think of it too much, Harry," said Mrs. Fenwick. "If you still
+are devoted to her--"
+
+"Indeed I am."
+
+"Then wait awhile, and we will have her at Bullhampton again. You
+know at any rate what our wishes are."
+
+Everything had been very quiet at Bullhampton during the last three
+months. The mill was again in regular work, and Sam had remained at
+home with fair average regularity. The Vicar had heard nothing more
+of Carry Brattle, and had been unable to trace her or to learn where
+she was living. He had taken various occasions to mention her name to
+her mother, but Mrs. Brattle knew nothing of her, and believed that
+Sam was equally ignorant with herself. Both she and the Vicar found
+it impossible to speak to Sam on the subject, though they knew that
+he had been with his sister more than once when she was living at
+Pycroft Common. As for the miller himself, no one had mentioned
+Carry's name to him since the day on which the Vicar had made his
+attempt. And from that day to the present there had been, if not ill
+blood, at least cold blood between Mr. Fenwick and old Brattle. The
+Vicar had gone down to the mill as often as usual, having determined
+that what had occurred should make no difference with him; and the
+intercourse with Mrs. Brattle and Fanny had been as kind on each side
+as usual;--but the miller had kept out of his way, retreating from
+him openly, going from the house to the mill as soon as he appeared,
+never speaking to him, and taking no other notice of him beyond a
+slight touch of the hat. "Your husband is still angry with me," he
+said one day to Mrs. Brattle. She shook her head and smiled sadly,
+and said that it would pass over some day,--only that Jacob was so
+persistent. With Sam, the Vicar held little or no communication.
+Sam in these days never went to church, and though he worked at the
+mill pretty constantly, he would absent himself from the village
+occasionally for a day or two together, and tell no one where he had
+been.
+
+The strangest and most important piece of business going on at
+this time in Bullhampton was the building of a new chapel or
+tabernacle,--the people called it a Salem,--for Mr. Puddleham. The
+first word as to the erection reached Mr. Fenwick's ears from Grimes,
+the builder and carpenter, who, meeting him in Bullhampton Street,
+pointed out to him a bit of spare ground just opposite the vicarage
+gates,--a morsel of a green on which no building had ever yet stood,
+and told him that the Marquis had given it for a chapel. "Indeed,"
+said Fenwick. "I hope it may be convenient and large enough for them.
+All the same, I wish it had been a little farther from my gate." This
+he said in a cheery tone, showing thereby considerable presence of
+mind. That such a building should be so placed was a trial to him,
+and he knew at once that the spot must have been selected to annoy
+him. Doubtless, the land in question was the property of the Marquis
+of Trowbridge. When he came to think of it, he had no doubt on
+the matter. Nevertheless, the small semi-circular piece of grass
+immediately opposite to his own swinging gate, looked to all the
+world as though it were an appendage of the Vicarage. A cottage
+built there would have been offensive; but a staring brick Methodist
+chapel, with the word Salem inserted in large letters over the door,
+would, as he was aware, flout him every time he left or entered his
+garden. He had always been specially careful to avoid any semblance
+of a quarrel with the Methodist minister, and had in every way shown
+his willingness to regard Mr. Puddleham's flock as being equal to his
+own in the general gifts of civilisation. To Mr. Puddleham himself,
+he had been very civil, sending him fruit and vegetables out of
+the Vicarage garden, and lending him newspapers. When the little
+Puddlehams were born, Mrs. Fenwick always inquired after the mother
+and infant. The greatest possible care had been exercised at the
+Vicarage since Mr. Fenwick's coming to show that the Established
+Church did not despise the dissenting congregation. For the last
+three years there had been talk of a new chapel, and Mr. Fenwick had
+himself discussed the site with Mr. Puddleham. A large and commodious
+spot of ground, remote from the vicarage, had, as he believed, been
+chosen. When he heard those tidings, and saw what would be the effect
+of the building, it seemed to him almost impossible that a Marquis
+could condescend to such revenge. He went at once to Mr. Puddleham,
+and learned from him that Grimes' story was true. This had been in
+December. After Christmas, the foundations were to be begun at once,
+said Mr. Puddleham, so that the brickwork might go on as soon as the
+frosts were over. Mr. Puddleham was in high spirits, and expressed a
+hope that he should be in his new chapel by next August. When the
+Vicar asked why the change of site was made, being careful to show
+no chagrin by the tone of his voice, Mr. Puddleham remarked that
+the Marquis's agent thought that it would be an improvement, "in
+which opinion I quite coincide," said Mr. Puddleham, looking very
+stern,--showing his teeth, as it were, and displaying an inclination
+for a parish quarrel. Fenwick, still prudent, made no objection to
+the change, and dropped no word of displeasure in Mr. Puddleham's
+hearing.
+
+"I don't believe he can do it," said Mrs. Fenwick, boiling with
+passion.
+
+"He can, no doubt," said the Vicar.
+
+"Do you mean to say the street is his;--to do what he likes with it?"
+
+"The street is the Queen's highway,--which means that it belongs to
+the public; but this is not the street. I take it that all the land
+in the village belongs to the Marquis. I never knew of any common
+right, and I don't believe there is any."
+
+"It is the meanest thing I ever heard of in my life," said Mrs.
+Fenwick.
+
+"There I agree with you." Later in the day, when he had been thinking
+of it for hours, he again spoke to his wife. "I shall write to the
+Marquis and remonstrate. It will probably be of no avail; but I think
+I ought to do so for the sake of those who come after me. I shall be
+able to bother him a good deal, if I can do nothing else," he added,
+laughing. "I feel, too, that I must quarrel with somebody, and I
+won't quarrel with dear old Puddleham, if I can help it."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV.
+
+MR. PUDDLEHAM'S NEW CHAPEL.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+The Vicar devoted a week to the consideration of his grievance about
+the chapel, and then did write to the Marquis. Indeed, there was no
+time to be lost if he intended to do anything, as on the second day
+after his interview with Mr. Grimes, Grimes himself, with two men to
+assist him, began their measuring on the devoted spot, sticking in
+little marks for the corners of the projected building, and turning
+up a sod here and there. Mr. Grimes was a staunch Churchman; and
+though in the way of business he was very glad to have the building
+of a Methodist chapel,--or of a Pagan temple, if such might come in
+his way,--yet, even though he possibly might give some offence to
+the great man's shadow in Bullhampton, he was willing to postpone
+his work for two or three days at the Vicar's request. "Grimes," the
+Vicar said, "I'm not quite sure that I like this."
+
+
+[Illustration: Site of Mr. Puddleham's new chapel.]
+
+
+"Well, sir;--no, sir. I was thinking myself, sir, that maybe you
+might take it unkind in the Marquis."
+
+"I think I shall write to him. Perhaps you wouldn't mind giving over
+for a day or two." Grimes yielded at once, and took his spade and
+measurements away, although Mr. Puddleham fretted a good deal. Mr.
+Puddleham had been much elated by the prospect of his new Bethel, and
+had, it must be confessed, received into his mind an idea that it
+would be a good thing to quarrel with the Vicar under the auspices of
+the landlord. Fenwick's character had hitherto been too strong for
+him, and he had been forced into parochial quiescence and religious
+amity almost in spite of his conscience. He was a much older man than
+Mr. Fenwick, having been for thirty years in the ministry, and he had
+always previously enjoyed the privilege of being on bad terms with
+the clergyman of the Establishment. It had been his glory to be a
+poacher on another man's manor, to filch souls, as it were, out of
+the keeping of a pastor of a higher grade than himself, to say severe
+things of the short comings of an endowed clergyman, and to obtain
+recognition of his position by the activity of his operations in the
+guise of a blister. Our Vicar, understanding something of this, had,
+with some malice towards the gentleman himself, determined to rob
+Mr. Puddleham of his blistering powers. There is no doubt a certain
+pleasure in poaching which does not belong to the licit following of
+game; but a man can't poach if the right of shooting be accorded to
+him. Mr. Puddleham had not been quite happy in his mind amidst the
+ease and amiable relations which Mr. Fenwick enforced upon him, and
+had long since begun to feel that a few cabbages and peaches did not
+repay him for the loss of those pleasant and bitter things, which it
+would have been his to say in his daily walks and from the pulpit of
+his Salem, had he not been thus hampered, confined, and dominated.
+Hitherto he had hardly gained a single soul from under Mr. Fenwick's
+grasp,--had indeed on the balance lost his grasp on souls, and was
+beginning to be aware that this was so because of the cabbages and
+the peaches. He told himself that though he had not hankered after
+these flesh-pots, that though he would have preferred to be without
+the flesh-pots, he had submitted to them. He was painfully conscious
+of the guile of this young man, who had, as it were, cheated him out
+of that appropriate acerbity of religion, without which a proselyting
+sect can hardly maintain its ground beneath the shadow of an endowed
+and domineering Church. War was necessary to Mr. Puddleham. He had
+come to be hardly anybody at all, because he was at peace with the
+vicar of the parish in which he was established. His eyes had been
+becoming gradually open to all this for years; and when he had been
+present at the bitter quarrel between the Vicar and the Marquis,
+he had at once told himself that now was his opportunity. He had
+intended to express a clear opinion to Mr. Fenwick that he, Mr.
+Fenwick, had been very wrong in speaking to the Marquis as he had
+spoken, and as he was walking out of the farm-house he was preparing
+some words as to the respect due to those in authority. It happened,
+however, that at that moment the wind was taken out of his sails by
+a strange comparison which the Vicar made to him between the sins
+of them two, ministers of God as they were, and the sins of Carry
+Brattle. Mr. Puddleham at the moment had been cowed and quelled. He
+was not quite able to carry himself in the Vicar's presence as though
+he were the Vicar's equal. But the desire for a quarrel remained,
+and when it was suggested to him by Mr. Packer, the Marquis's man of
+business, that the green opposite to the Vicarage gate would be a
+convenient site for his chapel, and that the Marquis was ready to
+double his before-proffered subscription, then he saw plainly that
+the moment had come, and that it was fitting that he should gird up
+his loins and return all future cabbages to the proud donor.
+
+Mr. Puddleham had his eye keenly set on the scene of his future
+ministration, and was aware of Grimes's default almost as soon as
+that man with his myrmidons had left the ground. He at once went to
+Grimes with heavy denunciations, with threats of the Marquis, and
+with urgent explanation as to the necessity of instant work. But
+Grimes was obdurate. The Vicar had asked him to leave the work for
+a day or two, and of course he must do what the Vicar asked. If
+he couldn't be allowed to do as much as that for the Vicar of the
+parish, Bullhampton wouldn't be, in Mr. Grimes's opinion, any place
+for anybody to live in. Mr. Puddleham argued the matter out, but he
+argued in vain. Mr. Grimes declared that there was time enough, and
+that he would have the work finished by the time fixed,--unless,
+indeed, the Marquis should change his mind. Mr. Puddleham regarded
+this as a most improbable supposition. "The Marquis doesn't change
+his mind, Mr. Grimes," he said; and then he walked forth from Mr.
+Grimes's house with much offence.
+
+By this time all Bullhampton knew of the quarrel,--knew of it,
+although Mr. Fenwick had been so very careful to guard himself from
+any quarrelling at all. He had not spoken a word in anger on the
+subject to anyone but his wife; and in making his request to Grimes
+had done so with hypocritical good humour. But, nevertheless, he was
+aware that the parish was becoming hot about it; and when he sat down
+to write his letter to the Marquis he was almost minded to give up
+the idea of writing, to return to Grimes, and to allow the measuring
+and sod-turning to be continued. Why should a place of worship
+opposite to his gate be considered by him as an injury? Why should
+the psalm-singing of Christian brethren hurt his ears as he walked
+about his garden? And if, through the infirmity of his nature, his
+eyes and his ears were hurt, what was that to the great purport for
+which he had been sent into the parish? Was he not about to create
+enmity by his opposition; and was it not his special duty to foster
+love and goodwill among his people? After all he, within his own
+Vicarage grounds, had all that it was intended that he should
+possess; and that he held very firmly. Poor Mr. Puddleham had no such
+firm holding; and why should he quarrel with Mr. Puddleham because
+that ill-paid preacher sought to strengthen the ground on which his
+Salem stood?
+
+As he paused, however, to think of all this, there came upon him the
+conviction that in this thing that was to be done the Marquis was
+determined to punish him personally, and he could not resist the
+temptation of fighting the Marquis. And then, if he succumbed easily
+in this matter, would it not follow almost as a matter of course that
+the battle against him would be carried on elsewhere? If he yielded
+now, resolving to ignore altogether any idea of his own comfort or
+his own taste, would he thereby maintain that tranquillity in his
+parish which he thought so desirable? He had already seen that in Mr.
+Puddleham's manner to himself which made him sure that Mr. Puddleham
+was ambitious to be a sword in the right hand of the Marquis.
+Personally the Vicar was himself pugnacious. Few men, perhaps, were
+more so. If there must be a fight let them come on, and he would do
+his best. Turning the matter thus backwards and forwards in his mind,
+he came at last to the conclusion that there must be a fight, and
+consequently he wrote the following letter to the Marquis;--
+
+
+   Bullhampton Vicarage, January 3, 186--.
+
+   MY LORD MARQUIS,
+
+   I learned by chance the other day in the village that
+   a new chapel for the use of the Methodist congregation
+   of the parish was to be built on the little open green
+   immediately opposite the Vicarage gate, and that this
+   special spot of ground had been selected and given by
+   your lordship for this purpose. I do not at all know what
+   truth there may be in this,--except that Mr. Grimes, the
+   carpenter here, has received orders from your agent about
+   the work. It may probably be the case that the site has
+   been chosen by Mr. Packer, and not by your lordship. As no
+   real delay to the building can at this time of the year
+   arise from a short postponement of the beginning, I have
+   asked Mr. Grimes to desist till I shall have written to
+   you on the subject.
+
+   I can assure your lordship, in the first place, that no
+   clergyman of the Established Church in the kingdom can be
+   less unwilling than I am that they who dissent from my
+   teaching in the parish should have a commodious place of
+   worship. If land belonged to me in the place I would give
+   it myself for such a purpose; and were there no other
+   available site than that chosen, I would not for a moment
+   remonstrate against it. I had heard, with satisfaction,
+   from Mr. Puddleham himself that another spot was chosen
+   near the cross roads in the village, on which there is
+   more space, to which as I believe there is no objection,
+   and which would certainly be nearer than that now selected
+   to the majority of the congregation.
+
+   But of course it would not be for me to trouble your
+   lordship as to the ground on which a Methodist chapel
+   should be built, unless I had reason to show why the
+   site now chosen is objectionable. I do not for a moment
+   question your lordship's right to give the site. There is
+   something less than a quarter of an acre in the patch in
+   question; and though hitherto I have always regarded it
+   as belonging in some sort to the Vicarage,--as being a
+   part, as it were, of the entrance,--I feel convinced that
+   you, as landlord of the ground, would not entertain the
+   idea of bestowing it for any purpose without being sure
+   of your right to do so. I raise no question on this
+   point, believing that there is none to be raised; but I
+   respectfully submit to your lordship, whether such an
+   erection as that contemplated by you will not be a lasting
+   injury to the Vicarage of Bullhampton, and whether you
+   would wish to inflict a lasting and gratuitous injury
+   on the vicar of a parish, the greatest portion of which
+   belongs to yourself.
+
+   No doubt life will be very possible to me and my wife, and
+   to succeeding vicars and their wives, with a red-brick
+   chapel built as a kind of watch-tower over the Vicarage
+   gate. So would life be possible at Turnover Park with
+   a similar edifice immediately before your lordship's
+   hall-door. Knowing very well that the reasonable wants of
+   the Methodists cannot make such a building on such a spot
+   necessary, you no doubt would not consent to it; and I now
+   venture to ask you to put a stop to this building here for
+   the same reason. Were there no other site in the parish
+   equally commodious I would not say a word.
+
+   I have the honour to be,
+   Your lordship's most obedient servant,
+
+   FRANCIS FENWICK.
+
+
+Lord Trowbridge, when he received this letter,--when he had only
+partially read it, and had not at all digested it, was disposed to
+yield the point. He was a silly man, thinking much too highly of his
+own position, believing himself entitled to unlimited deference from
+all those who in any way came within the rays of his magnificence,
+and easily made angry by opposition; but he was not naturally prone
+to inflict evil, and did in some degree recognise it as a duty
+attached to his splendour that he should be beneficent to the
+inferiors with whom he was connected. Great as was his wrath against
+the present Vicar of Bullhampton, and thoroughly as he conceived it
+to be expedient that so evil-minded a pastor should be driven out of
+the parish, nevertheless he felt some scruple at taking a step which
+would be injurious to the parish vicar, let the parish vicar be who
+he might. Packer was the sinner who had originated the new plan for
+punishing Mr. Fenwick,--Packer, with the assistance of Mr. Puddleham;
+and the Marquis, though he had in some sort authorised the plan, had
+in truth thought very little about it. When the Vicar spoke of the
+lasting injury to the Vicarage, and when Lord Trowbridge remembered
+that he owned two thousand and two acres within the parish,--as Mr.
+Puddleham had told him,--he began to think that the chapel had better
+be built elsewhere. The Vicar was a pestilent man to whom punishment
+was due, but the punishment should be made to attach itself to the
+man, rather than to the man's office. So was working the Marquis's
+mind, till the Marquis came upon that horrid passage in the Vicar's
+letter, in which it was suggested that the building of a Methodist
+chapel in his own park, immediately in front of his own august
+hall-door might under certain circumstances be expedient. The remark
+was almost as pernicious and unpardonable as that which had been
+made about his lordship's daughters. It was manifest to him that the
+Vicar intended to declare that marquises were no more than other
+people,--and that the declaration was made and insisted on with the
+determination of insulting him. Had this apostate priest been capable
+of feeling any proper appreciation of his own position and that
+of the Marquis, he would have said nothing of Turnover Park. When
+the Marquis had read the letter a second time and had digested it
+he perceived that its whole tenour was bad, that the writer was
+evil-minded, and that no request made by him should be granted. Even
+though the obnoxious chapel should have to be pulled down for the
+benefit of another vicar, it should be put up for the punishment of
+this vicar. A man who wants to have a favour done for him, can hardly
+hope to be successful if he asks for the favour with insolence. So
+the heart of the Marquis was hardened, and he was strengthened to do
+that which misbecame him both as a gentleman and a landlord.
+
+He did not answer the letter for some time; but he saw Packer, saw
+his head agent, and got out the map of the property. The map of
+the property was not very clear in the matter, but he remembered
+the space well, and convinced himself that no other place in all
+Bullhampton could be so appropriate for a Methodist chapel. At the
+end of a week he caused a reply to be written to Mr. Fenwick. He
+would not demean himself by writing with his own hand, but he gave
+his orders to the head agent. The head agent merely informed the
+Vicar that it was considered that the spot of ground in question was
+the most appropriate in the village for the purpose in hand.
+
+Mrs. Fenwick when she heard the reply burst out into tears. She was a
+woman by no means over devoted to things of this world, who thought
+much of her duties and did them, who would have sacrificed anything
+for her husband and children, who had learned the fact that both
+little troubles and great, if borne with patience, may be borne with
+ease; but she did think much of her house, was proud of her garden,
+and rejoiced in the external prettiness of her surroundings. It was
+gall to her that this hideous building should be so placed as to
+destroy the comeliness of that side of her abode. "We shall hear
+their singing and ranting whenever we open our front windows," she
+said.
+
+"Then we won't open them," said the Vicar.
+
+"We can't help ourselves. Just see what it will be whenever we go in
+and out. We might just as well have it inside the house at once."
+
+"You speak as though Mr. Puddleham were always in his pulpit."
+
+"They're always doing something,--and then the building will be there
+whether it's open or shut. It will alter the parish altogether, and I
+really think it will be better that you should get an exchange."
+
+"And run away from my enemy?"
+
+"It would be running away from an intolerable nuisance."
+
+"I won't do that," said the Vicar. "If there were no other reason for
+staying, I won't put it in the power of the Marquis of Trowbridge
+to say that he has turned me out of my parish, and so punished me
+because I have not submitted myself to him. I have not sought the
+quarrel. He has been overbearing and insolent, and now is meanly
+desirous to injure me because I will not suffer his insolence. No
+doubt, placed as he is, he can do much; but he cannot turn me out of
+Bullhampton."
+
+"What is the good of staying, Frank, if we are to be made wretched?"
+
+"We won't be made wretched. What! be wretched because there is an
+ugly building opposite to your outside gate? It is almost wicked to
+say so. I don't like it. I like the doing of the thing less even than
+the thing itself. If it can be stopped, I will stop it. If it could
+be prevented by any amount of fighting, I should think myself right
+to fight in such a cause. If I can see my way to doing anything to
+oppose the Marquis, it shall be done. But I won't run away." Mrs.
+Fenwick said nothing more on the subject at that moment, but she felt
+that the glory and joy of the Vicarage were gone from it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI.
+
+SAM BRATTLE GOES OFF AGAIN.
+
+
+Mr. Grimes had suggested to the Vicar in a very low whisper that the
+new chapel might perhaps be put down as a nuisance. "It ain't for me
+to say, of course," said Mr. Grimes, "and in the way of business one
+building is as good as another as long as you see your money. But
+buildings is stopped because they're nuisances." This occurred a day
+or two after the receipt of the agent's letter from Turnover, and the
+communication was occasioned by orders given to Mr. Grimes to go on
+with the building instantly, unless he intended to withdraw from the
+job. "I don't think, Grimes, that I can call a place of Christian
+worship a nuisance," said the Vicar. To this Grimes rejoined that he
+had known a nunnery bell to be stopped because it was a nuisance, and
+that he didn't see why a Methodist chapel bell was not as bad as a
+nunnery bell. Fenwick had declared that he would fight if he could
+find a leg to stand upon, and he thanked Grimes, saying that he would
+think of the suggestion. But when he thought of it, he did not see
+that any remedy was open to him on that side. In the meantime Mr.
+Puddleham attacked Grimes with great severity because the work was
+not continued. Mr. Puddleham, feeling that he had the Marquis at
+his back, was eager for the fight. He had already received in the
+street a salutation from the Vicar, cordial as usual, with the
+very slightest bend of his neck, and the sourest expression of his
+mouth. Mrs. Puddleham had already taught the little Puddlehams that
+the Vicarage cabbages were bitter with the wormwood of an endowed
+Establishment, and ought no longer to be eaten by the free children
+of an open Church. Mr. Puddleham had already raised up his voice in
+his existing tabernacle, as to the injury which was being done to
+his flock, and had been very touching on the subject of the little
+vineyard which the wicked king coveted. When he described himself as
+Naboth, it could not but be supposed that Ahab and Jezebel were both
+in Bullhampton. It went forth through the village that Mr. Puddleham
+had described Mrs. Fenwick as Jezebel, and the torch of discord had
+been thrown down, and war was raging through the parish.
+
+There had come to be very high words indeed between Mr. Grimes and
+Mr. Puddleham, and some went so far as to declare that they had heard
+the builder threaten to punch the minister's head. This Mr. Grimes
+denied stoutly, as the Methodist party were making much of it in
+consequence of Mr. Puddleham's cloth and advanced years. "There's no
+lies is too hot for them," said Mr. Grimes, in his energy, and "no
+lawlessness too heavy." Then he absolutely refused to put his hand to
+a spade or a trowel. He had his time named in his contract, he said,
+and nobody had a right to drive him. This was ended by the appearance
+on a certain Monday morning of a Baptist builder from Salisbury, with
+all the appurtenances of his trade, and with a declaration on Mr.
+Grimes' part, that he would have the law on the two leading members
+of the Puddleham congregation, from whom he had received his original
+order. In truth, however, there had been no contract, and Mr.
+Grimes had gone to work upon a verbal order which, according to the
+Puddleham theory, he had already vitiated by refusing compliance with
+its terms. He, however, was hot upon his lawsuit, and thus the whole
+parish was by the ears.
+
+It may be easily understood how much Mr. Fenwick would suffer from
+all this. It had been specially his pride that his parish had been at
+peace, and he had plumed himself on the way in which he had continued
+to clip the claws with which nature had provided the Methodist
+minister. Though he was fond of a fight himself, he had taught
+himself to know that in no way could he do the business of his
+life more highly or more usefully than as a peacemaker; and as a
+peacemaker he had done it. He had never put his hand within Mr.
+Puddleham's arm, and whispered a little parochial nothing into his
+neighbour's ear, without taking some credit to himself for his
+cleverness. He had called his peaches angels of peace, and had spoken
+of his cabbages as being dove-winged. All this was now over, and
+there was hardly one in Bullhampton who was not busy hating and
+abusing somebody else.
+
+And then there came another trouble on the Vicar. Just at the end of
+January, Sam Brattle came up to the Vicarage and told Mr. Fenwick
+that he was going to leave the mill. Sam was dressed very decently;
+but he was attired in an un-Bullhampton fashion, which was not
+pleasant to Mr. Fenwick's eyes; and there was about him an air which
+seemed to tell of filial disobedience and personal independence.
+
+"But you mean to come back again, Sam?" said the Vicar.
+
+"Well, sir; I don't know as I do. Father and I has had words."
+
+"And that is to be a reason why you should leave him? You speak of
+your father as though he were no more to you than another man."
+
+"I wouldn't a' borne not a tenth of it from no other man, Mr.
+Fenwick."
+
+"Well--and what of that? Is there any measure of what is due by you
+to your father? Remember, Sam, I know your father well."
+
+"You do, sir."
+
+"He is a very just man, and he is very fond of you. You are the apple
+of his eye, and now you would bring his gray hairs with sorrow to the
+grave."
+
+"You ask mother, sir, and she'll tell you how it is. I just said a
+word to him,--a word as was right to be said, and he turned upon me,
+and bade me go away and come back no more."
+
+"Do you mean that he has banished you from the mill?"
+
+"He said what I tells you. He told mother afterwards, that if so as I
+would promise never to mention that thing again, I might come and go
+as I pleased. But I wasn't going to make no such promise. I up and
+told him so; and then he--cursed me."
+
+For a moment or two the Vicar was silent, thinking whether in this
+affair Sam had been most wrong, or the old man. Of course he was
+hearing but one side of the question. "What was it, Sam, that he
+forbade you to mention?"
+
+"It don't matter now, sir; only I thought I'd better come and tell
+you, along of your being the bail, sir."
+
+"Do you mean that you are going to leave Bullhampton altogether?"
+
+"To leave it altogether, Mr. Fenwick. I ain't doing no good here."
+
+"And why shouldn't you do good? Where can you do more good?"
+
+"It can't be good to be having words with father day after day."
+
+"But, Sam, I don't think you can go away. You are bound by the
+magistrates' orders. I don't speak for myself, but I fear the police
+would be after you."
+
+"And is it to go on allays,--that a chap can't move to better
+hisself, because them fellows can't catch the men as murdered old
+Trumbull? That can't be law,--nor yet justice." Upon this there arose
+a discussion in which the Vicar endeavoured to explain to the young
+man that as he had evidently consorted with the men who were, on the
+strongest possible grounds, suspected to be the murderers, and as
+he had certainly been with those men where he had no business to
+be,--namely, in Mr. Fenwick's own garden at night,--he had no just
+cause of complaint at finding his own liberty more crippled than that
+of other people. No doubt Sam understood this well enough, as he was
+sharp and intelligent; but he fought his own battle, declaring that
+as the Vicar had not prosecuted him for being in the garden, nobody
+could be entitled to punish him for that offence; and that as it had
+been admitted that there was no evidence connecting him with the
+murder, no policeman could have a right to confine him to one parish.
+He argued the matter so well, that Mr. Fenwick was left without much
+to say. He was unwilling to press his own responsibility in the
+matter of the bail, and therefore allowed the question to fall
+through,--tacitly admitting that if Sam chose to leave the parish,
+there was nothing in the affair of the murder to hinder him. He went
+back, therefore, to the inexpediency of the young man's departure,
+telling him that he would rush right into the Devil's jaws. "May be
+so, Mr. Fenwick," said Sam, "but I'm sure I'll never be out of 'em as
+long as I stays here in Bullhampton."
+
+"But what is it all about, Sam?" The Vicar, as he asked the question
+had a very distinct idea in his own head as to the cause of the
+quarrel, and was aware that his sympathies were with the son rather
+than with the father. Sam answered never a word, and the Vicar
+repeated his question. "You have quarrelled with your father before
+this, and have made it up. Why should not you make up this quarrel?"
+
+"Because he cursed me," said Sam.
+
+"An idle word, spoken in wrath! Don't you know your father well
+enough to take that for what it is worth? What was it about?"
+
+"It was about Carry, then."
+
+"What had you said?"
+
+"I said as how she ought to be let come home again, and that if I was
+to stay there at the mill, I'd fetch her. Then he struck at me with
+one of the mill-bolts. But I didn't think much o' that."
+
+"Was it then he--cursed you?"
+
+"No; mother came up, and I went aside with her. I told her as I'd go
+on speaking to the old man about Carry;--and so I did."
+
+"And where is Carry?" Sam made no reply to this whatever. "You know
+where she can be found, Sam?" Sam shook his head, but didn't speak.
+"You couldn't have said that you would fetch her, if you didn't know
+where to find her."
+
+"I wouldn't stop till I did find her, if the old man would take her
+back again. She's bad enough, no doubt, but there's others worse nor
+her."
+
+"When did you see her last?"
+
+"Over at Pycroft."
+
+"And whither did she go from Pycroft, Sam?"
+
+"She went to Lon'on, I suppose, Mr. Fenwick."
+
+"And what is her address in London?" In reply to this Sam again shook
+his head. "Do you mean to seek her now?"
+
+"What's the use of seeking her if I ain't got nowhere to put her
+into. Father's got a house and plenty of room in it. Where could I
+put her?"
+
+"Sam, if you'll find her, and bring her to any place for me to see
+her, I'll find a home for her somewhere. I will, indeed. Or, if I
+knew where she was, I'd go up to London to her myself. She's not my
+sister--!"
+
+"No, sir, she ain't. The likes of you won't likely have a sister the
+likes of her. She's a--"
+
+"Sam, stop. Don't say a bitter word of her. You love her."
+
+"Yes;--I do. That don't make her not a bad 'un."
+
+"So do I love her. And as for being bad, which of us isn't bad? The
+world is very hard on her offence."
+
+"Down on it, like a dog on a rat."
+
+"It is not for me to make light of her sin;--but her sin can be
+washed away as well as other sin. I love her too. She was the
+brightest, kindest, sauciest little lass in all the parish, when I
+came here."
+
+"Father was proud enough of her then, Mr. Fenwick."
+
+"You find her and let me know where she is, and I will make out a
+home for her somewhere;--that is, if she will be tractable. I'm
+afraid your father won't take her at the mill."
+
+"He'll never set eyes on her again, if he can help it. As for you,
+Mr. Fenwick, if there was only a few more like you about, the world
+wouldn't be so bad to get on in. Good-bye, Mr. Fenwick."
+
+"Good-bye, Sam;--if it must be so."
+
+"And don't you be afeared about me, Mr. Fenwick. If the hue-and-cry
+is out anyways again me, I'll turn up. That I will,--though it was to
+be hung afterwards,--sooner than you'd be hurt by anything I'd been a
+doing."
+
+So they parted, as friends rather than as enemies, though the Vicar
+knew very well that the young man was wrong to go and leave his
+father and mother, and that in all probability he would fall at
+once into some bad mode of living. But the conversation about Carry
+Brattle had so softened their hearts to each other, that Mr. Fenwick
+found it impossible to be severe. And he knew, moreover, that no
+severity of expression would have been of avail. He couldn't have
+stopped Sam from going had he preached to him for an hour.
+
+After that the building of the chapel went on apace, the large
+tradesman from Salisbury being quicker in his work than could have
+been the small tradesman belonging to Bullhampton. In February there
+came a hard frost, and still the bricklayers were at work. It was
+said in Bullhampton that walls built as those walls were being built
+could never stand. But then it might be that these reports were
+spread by Mr. Grimes, that the fanatical ardour of the Salisbury
+Baptist lent something to the rapidity of his operations, and that
+the Bullhampton feeling in favour of Mr. Fenwick and the Church
+Establishment added something to the bitterness of the prevailing
+criticisms. At any rate, the walls of the new chapel were mounting
+higher and higher all through February, and by the end of the first
+week in March there stood immediately opposite to the Vicarage gate a
+hideously ugly building, roofless, doorless, windowless;--with those
+horrid words,--"New Salem, 186--" legibly inscribed on a visible
+stone inserted above the doorway, a thing altogether as objectionable
+to the eyes of a Church of England parish clergyman as the
+imagination of any friend or enemy could devise. We all know the
+abominable adjuncts of a new building,--the squalid half-used heaps
+of bad mortar, the eradicated grass, the truculent mud, the scattered
+brickbats, the remnants of timber, the debris of the workmen's
+dinners, the morsels of paper scattered through the dirt! There had
+from time to time been actual encroachments on the Vicarage grounds,
+and Mrs. Fenwick, having discovered that the paint had been injured
+on the Vicarage gate, had sent an angry message to the Salisbury
+Baptist. The Salisbury Baptist had apologised to Mr. Fenwick, saying
+that such things would happen in the building of houses, &c., and Mr.
+Fenwick had assured him that the matter was of no consequence. He was
+not going to descend into the arena with the Salisbury Baptist. In
+this affair the Marquis of Trowbridge was his enemy, and with the
+Marquis he would fight, if there was to be any fight at all. He would
+stand at his gate and watch the work, and speak good-naturedly to
+the workmen; but he was in truth sick at heart. The thing, horrible
+as it was to him, so fascinated him that he could not keep his mind
+from it. During all this time it made his wife miserable. She had
+literally grown thin under the infliction of the new chapel. For more
+than a fortnight she had refused to visit the front gate of her own
+house. To and from church she always went by the garden wicket; but
+in going to the school, she had to make a long round to avoid the
+chapel,--and this round she made day after day. Fenwick himself,
+still hoping that there might be some power of fighting, had written
+to an enthusiastic archdeacon, a friend of his, who lived not very
+far distant. The Archdeacon had consulted the Bishop,--really
+troubled deeply about the matter,--and the Bishop had taken upon
+himself, with his own hands, to write words of mild remonstrance to
+the Marquis. "For the welfare of the parish generally," said the
+Bishop, "I venture to make this suggestion to your lordship, feeling
+sure that you will do anything that may not be unreasonable to
+promote the comfort of the parishioners." In this letter he made no
+allusion to his late correspondence with the Marquis as to the sins
+of the Vicar. Nor did the Marquis in his reply allude to the former
+correspondence. He expressed an opinion that the erection of a
+place of Christian worship on an open space outside the bounds of a
+clergyman's domain ought not to be held to be objectionable by that
+clergyman;--and that as he had already given the spot, he could not
+retract the gift. These letters, however, had been written before the
+first brick had been laid, and the world in that part of the country
+was of opinion that the Marquis might have retracted his gift. After
+this Mr. Fenwick found no ground whatever on which he could fight his
+battle. He could only stand at his gateway, and look at the thing as
+it rose above the ground, fascinated by its ugliness.
+
+He was standing there once, about a month or five weeks after his
+interview with Sam Brattle, just at the beginning of March, when he
+was accosted by the Squire. Mr. Gilmore, through the winter,--ever
+since he had heard that Mary Lowther's engagement with Walter
+Marrable had been broken off,--had lived very much alone. He had been
+pressed to come to the Vicarage, but had come but seldom, waiting
+patiently till the time should come when he might again ask Mary to
+be his wife. He was not so gloomy as he had been during the time the
+engagement had lasted, but still he was a man much altered from his
+former self. Now he came across the road, and spoke a word or two to
+his friend. "If I were you, Frank, I should not think so much about
+it."
+
+"Yes, you would, old boy, if it touched you as it does me. It isn't
+that the chapel should be there. I could have built a chapel for them
+with my own hands on the same spot, if it had been necessary."
+
+"I don't see what there is to annoy you."
+
+"This annoys me,--that after all my endeavours, there should be
+people here, and many people, who find a gratification in doing that
+which they think I shall look upon as an annoyance. The sting is
+in their desire to sting, and in my inability to show them their
+error, either by stopping what they are doing, or by proving myself
+indifferent to it. It isn't the building itself, but the double
+disgrace of the building."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII.
+
+FEMALE MARTYRDOM.
+
+
+Early in February Captain Marrable went to Dunripple to stay with
+his uncle, Sir Gregory, and there he still was when the middle of
+March had come. News of his doings reached the ladies at Loring, but
+it reached them through hands which were not held to be worthy of a
+perfect belief,--at any rate, on Mary Lowther's part. Dunripple Park
+is in Warwickshire, and lies in the middle of a good hunting country.
+Now, according to Parson John, from whom these tidings came, Walter
+Marrable was hunting three days a week; and, as Sir Gregory himself
+did not keep hunters, Walter must have hired his horses,--so said
+Parson John, deploring that a nephew so poor in purse should have
+allowed himself to be led into such heavy expense. "He brought home
+a little ready money with him," said the parson; "and I suppose he
+thinks he may have his fling as long as that lasts." No doubt Parson
+John, in saying this, was desirous of proving to Mary that Walter
+Marrable was not dying of love, and was, upon the whole, leading a
+jolly life, in spite of the little misfortune that had happened to
+him. But Mary understood all this quite as well as did Parson John
+himself; and simply declined to believe the hunting three days a
+week. She said not a word about it, however, either to him or to her
+aunt. If Walter could amuse himself, so much the better; but she was
+quite sure that, at such a period of his life as this, he would not
+spend his money recklessly. The truth lay between Parson John's
+stories and poor Mary's belief. Walter Marrable was hunting,--perhaps
+twice a week, hiring a horse occasionally, but generally mounted by
+his uncle, Sir Gregory. He hunted; but did so after a lugubrious
+fashion, as became a man with a broken heart, who was laden with many
+sorrows, and had just been separated from his lady love for ever and
+ever. But still, when there came anything good, in the way of a run,
+and when our Captain could get near to hounds, he enjoyed the fun,
+and forgot his troubles for a while. Is a man to know no joy because
+he has an ache at his heart?
+
+In this matter of disappointed and, as it were, disjointed affection,
+men are very different from women, and for the most part, much more
+happily circumstanced. Such sorrow a woman feeds;--but a man starves
+it. Many will say that a woman feeds it, because she cannot but feed
+it; and that a man starves it, because his heart is of the starving
+kind. But, in truth, the difference comes not so much from the inner
+heart, as from the outer life. It is easier to feed a sorrow upon
+needle-and-thread and novels, than it is upon lawyers' papers, or
+even the out-a-door occupations of a soldier home upon leave who has
+no work to do. Walter Marrable told himself again and again that he
+was very unhappy about his cousin, but he certainly did not suffer in
+that matter as Mary suffered. He had that other sorrow, arising from
+his father's cruel usage of him, to divide his thoughts, and probably
+thought quite as much of the manner in which he had been robbed, as
+he did of the loss of his love.
+
+But poor Mary was, in truth, very wretched. When a girl asks herself
+that question,--what shall she do with her life? it is so natural
+that she should answer it by saying that she will get married, and
+give her life to somebody else. It is a woman's one career--let
+women rebel against the edict as they may; and though there may
+be word-rebellion here and there, women learn the truth early in
+their lives. And women know it later in life when they think of
+their girls; and men know it, too, when they have to deal with their
+daughters. Girls, too, now acknowledge aloud that they have learned
+the lesson; and Saturday Reviewers and others blame them for their
+lack of modesty in doing so,--most unreasonably, most uselessly, and,
+as far as the influence of such censors may go, most perniciously.
+Nature prompts the desire, the world acknowledges its ubiquity,
+circumstances show that it is reasonable, the whole theory of
+creation requires it; but it is required that the person most
+concerned should falsely repudiate it, in order that a mock modesty
+may be maintained, in which no human being can believe! Such is the
+theory of the censors who deal heavily with our Englishwomen of
+the present day. Our daughters should be educated to be wives, but,
+forsooth, they should never wish to be wooed! The very idea is but a
+remnant of the tawdry sentimentality of an age in which the mawkish
+insipidity of the women was the reaction from the vice of that
+preceding it. That our girls are in quest of husbands, and know well
+in what way their lines in life should be laid, is a fact which none
+can dispute. Let men be taught to recognise the same truth as regards
+themselves, and we shall cease to hear of the necessity of a new
+career for women.
+
+Mary Lowther, though she had never encountered condemnation as a
+husband-hunter, had learned all this, and was well aware that for her
+there was but one future mode of life that could be really blessed.
+She had eyes, and could see; and ears, and could hear. She could
+make,--indeed, she could not fail to make,--comparisons between
+her aunt and her dear friend, Mrs. Fenwick. She saw, and could not
+fail to see, that the life of the one was a starved, thin, poor
+life,--which, good as it was in its nature, reached but to few
+persons, and admitted but of few sympathies; whereas the other woman,
+by means of her position as a wife and a mother, increased her roots
+and spread out her branches, so that there was shade, and fruit, and
+beauty, and a place in which the birds might build their nests. Mary
+Lowther had longed to be a wife,--as do all girls healthy in mind and
+body; but she had found it to be necessary to her to love the man who
+was to become her husband. There had come to her a suitor recommended
+to her by all her friends,--recommended to her also by all outward
+circumstances,--and she had found that she did not love him! For a
+while she had been sorely perplexed, hardly knowing what it might
+be her duty to do, not understanding how it was that the man was
+indifferent to her, doubting whether, after all, the love of which
+she had dreamt was not a passion which might come after marriage,
+rather than before it,--but still fearing to run so great a hazard.
+She had doubted, feared, and had hitherto declined,--when that other
+lover had fallen in her way. Mr. Gilmore had wooed her for months
+without touching her heart. Then Walter Marrable had come and had
+conquered her almost in an hour. She had never felt herself disposed
+to play with Mr. Gilmore's hair, to lean against his shoulder, to be
+touched by his fingers,--never disposed to wait for his coming, or
+to regret his going. But she had hardly become acquainted with her
+cousin before his presence was a pleasure to her; and no sooner had
+he spoken to her of his love, than everything that concerned him was
+dear to her. The atmosphere that surrounded him was sweeter to her
+than the air elsewhere. All those little aids which a man gives to a
+woman were delightful to her when they came to her from his hands.
+She told herself that she had found the second half that was needed
+to make herself one whole; that she had become round and entire in
+joining herself to him; and she thought that she understood well why
+it had been that Mr. Gilmore had been nothing to her. As Mr. Fenwick
+was manifestly the husband appointed for his wife, so had Walter
+Marrable been appointed for her. And so there had come upon her a
+dreamy conviction that marriages are made in heaven. That question,
+whether they were to be poor or rich, to have enough or much less
+than enough for the comforts of life, was, no doubt, one of much
+importance; but, in the few happy days of her assured engagement, it
+was not allowed by her to interfere for a moment with the fact that
+she and Walter were intended, each to be the companion of the other,
+as long as they two might live.
+
+Then by degrees,--by degrees, though the process had been quick,--had
+fallen upon her that other conviction, that it was her duty to him
+to save him from the burdens of that life to which she herself had
+looked forward so fondly. At first she had said that he should judge
+of the necessity; swearing to herself that his judgment, let it be
+what it might, should be right to her. Then she had perceived that
+this was not sufficient;--that in this way there would be no escape
+for him;--that she herself must make the decision, and proclaim
+it. Very tenderly and very cautiously had she gone about her task;
+feeling her way to the fact that this separation, if it came from
+her, would be deemed expedient by him. That she would be right in all
+this, was her great resolve; that she might after all be wrong, her
+constant fear. She, too, had heard of public censors, of the girl of
+the period, and of the forward indelicacy with which women of the
+age were charged. She knew not why, but it seemed to her that the
+laws of the world around her demanded more of such rectitude from
+a woman than from a man, and, if it might be possible to her, she
+would comply with these laws. She had convinced herself, forming her
+judgment from every tone of his voice, from every glance of his eye,
+from every word that fell from his lips, that this separation would
+be expedient for him. And then, assuring herself that the task should
+be hers, and not his, she had done it. She had done it, and, counting
+up the cost afterwards, she had found herself to be broken in pieces.
+That wholeness and roundness, in which she had rejoiced, had gone
+from her altogether. She would try to persuade herself that she could
+live as her aunt had lived, and yet be whole and round. She tried,
+but knew that she failed. The life to which she had looked forward
+had been the life of a married woman; and now, as that was taken from
+her, she could be but a thing broken, a fragment of humanity, created
+for use, but never to be used.
+
+She bore all this well, for a while,--and indeed never ceased to bear
+it well, to the eyes of those around her. When Parson John told her
+of Walter's hunting, she laughed, and said that she hoped he would
+distinguish himself. When her aunt on one occasion congratulated
+her, telling her that she had done well and nobly, she bore the
+congratulation with a smile and a kind word. But she thought about it
+much, and within the chambers of her own bosom there were complaints
+made that the play which had been played between him and her during
+the last few months should for her have been such a very tragedy,
+while for him the matter was no more than a melodrama, touched with
+a pleasing melancholy. He had not been made a waif upon the waters
+by the misfortune of a few weeks, by the error of a lawyer, by a
+mistaken calculation,--not even by the crime of his father. His
+manhood was, at any rate, perfect to him. Though he might be a poor
+man, he was still a man with his hands free, and with something
+before him which he could do. She understood, too, that the rough
+work of his life would be such that it would rub away, perhaps too
+quickly, the impression of his late love, and enable him hereafter
+to love another. But for her,--for her there could be nothing but
+memory, regrets, and a life which would simply be a waiting for
+death. But she had done nothing wrong,--and she must console herself
+with that, if consolation could then be found.
+
+Then there came to her a letter from Mrs. Fenwick which moved her
+much. It was the second which she had received from her friend since
+she had made it known that she was no longer engaged to her cousin.
+In her former letter Mrs. Fenwick had simply expressed her opinion
+that Mary had done rightly, and had, at the same time, promised that
+she would write again, more at length, when the passing by of a few
+weeks should have so far healed the first agony of the wound, as to
+make it possible for her to speak of the future. Mary, dreading this
+second letter, had done nothing to elicit it; but at last it came.
+And as it had some effect on Mary Lowther's future conduct, it shall
+be given to the reader:--
+
+
+   Bullhampton Vicarage, March 12, 186--.
+
+   DEAREST MARY,
+
+   I do so wish you were here, if it were only to share our
+   misery with us. I did not think that so small a thing as
+   the building of a wretched chapel could have put me out so
+   much, and made me so uncomfortable as this has done. Frank
+   says that it is simply the feeling of being beaten,--the
+   insult not the injury, which is the grievance; but they
+   both rankle with me. I hear the click of the trowel every
+   hour, and though I never go near the front gate, yet I
+   know that it is all muddy and foul with brickbats and
+   mortar. I don't think that anything so cruel and unjust
+   was ever done before; and the worst of it is that Frank,
+   though he hates it just as much as I do, does preach
+   such sermons to me about the wickedness of caring for
+   small evils. 'Suppose you had to go to it every Sunday
+   yourself,' he said the other day, trying to make me
+   understand what a real depth of misery there is in the
+   world. 'I shouldn't mind that half so much,' I answered.
+   Then he bade me try it,--which wasn't fair because he
+   knows I can't. However, they say it will all tumble down
+   because it has been built so badly.
+
+   I have been waiting to hear from you, but I can understand
+   why you should not write. You do not wish to speak of your
+   cousin, or to write without speaking of him. Your aunt has
+   written to me twice, as doubtless you know, and has told
+   me that you are well, only more silent than heretofore.
+   Dearest Mary, do write to me, and tell me what is in
+   your heart. I will not ask you to come to us,--not
+   yet,--because of our neighbour; but I do think that if you
+   were here I could do you good. I know so well, or fancy
+   that I know so well, the current in which your thoughts
+   are running! You have had a wound, and think that
+   therefore you must be a cripple for life. But it is not
+   so; and such thoughts, if not wicked, are at least wrong.
+   I would that it had been otherwise. I would that you had
+   not met your cousin.--
+
+
+"So would not I," said Mary to herself; but as she said it she knew
+that she was wrong. Of course it would be for her welfare, and for
+his too, if his heart was as hers, that she should never have seen
+him.--
+
+
+   But because you have met him, and have fancied that you
+   and he would be all in all together, you will be wrong
+   indeed if you let that fancy ruin your future life. Or
+   if you encourage yourself to feel that, because you
+   have loved one man from whom you are necessarily parted,
+   therefore you should never allow yourself to become
+   attached to another, you will indeed be teaching yourself
+   an evil lesson. I think I can understand the arguments
+   with which you may perhaps endeavour to persuade your
+   heart that its work of loving has been done, and should
+   not be renewed; but I am quite sure that they are false
+   and inhuman. The Indian, indeed, allows herself to be
+   burned through a false idea of personal devotion; and if
+   that idea be false in a widow, how much falser is it in
+   one who has never been a wife.
+
+   You know what have ever been our wishes. They are the same
+   now as heretofore; and his constancy is of that nature,
+   that nothing will ever change it. I am persuaded that it
+   would have been unchanged, even if you had married your
+   cousin, though in that case he would have been studious to
+   keep out of your way. I do not mean to press his claims at
+   present. I have told him that he should be patient, and
+   that if the thing be to him as important as he makes it,
+   he should be content to wait. He replied that he would
+   wait. I ask for no word from you at present on this
+   subject. It will be much better that there should be no
+   word. But it is right that you should know that there is
+   one who loves you with a devotion which nothing can alter.
+
+   I will only add to this my urgent prayer that you will not
+   make too much to yourself of your own misfortune, or allow
+   yourself to think that because this and that have taken
+   place, therefore everything must be over. It is hard to
+   say who makes the greatest mistakes, women who treat their
+   own selves with too great a reverence, or they who do so
+   with too little.
+
+   Frank sends his kindest love. Write to me at once, if only
+   to condole with me about the chapel.
+
+   Most affectionately yours,
+
+   JANET FENWICK.
+
+   My sister and Mr. Quickenham are coming here for
+   Easter week, and I have still some hopes of getting my
+   brother-in-law to put us up to some way of fighting the
+   Marquis and his myrmidons. I have always heard it said
+   that there was no case in which Mr. Quickenham couldn't
+   make a fight.
+
+
+Mary Lowther understood well the whole purport of this letter,--all
+that was meant as well as all that was written. She had told herself
+again and again that there had been that between her and the lover
+she had lost,--tender embraces, warm kisses, a bird-like pressure
+of the plumage,--which alone should make her deem it unfit that she
+should be to another man as she had been to him, even should her
+heart allow it. It was against this doctrine that her friend had
+preached, with more or less of explicitness in her sermon. And how
+was the truth? If she could take a lesson on that subject from any
+human being in the world, she would take it from her friend Janet
+Fenwick. But she rebelled against the preaching, and declared to
+herself that her friend had never been tried, and therefore did not
+understand the case. Must she not be guided by her own feelings, and
+did she not feel that she could never lay her head on the shoulder of
+another lover without blushing at her memories of the past?
+
+And yet how hard was it all! It was not the joys of young love
+that she regretted in her present mood, not the loss of those soft
+delights of which she had suddenly found herself to be so capable;
+but that all the world should be dark and dreary before her! And he
+could hunt, could dance, could work,--no doubt could love again! How
+happy would it be for her if her reason would allow her to be a Roman
+Catholic, and a nun!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII.
+
+A LOVER'S MADNESS.
+
+
+The letter from Mrs. Fenwick, which the reader has just seen, was the
+immediate effect of a special visit which Mr. Gilmore had made to
+her. On the 10th of March he had come to her with a settled purpose,
+pointing out to her that he had now waited a certain number of months
+since he had heard of the rupture between Mary and her cousin, naming
+the exact period which Mrs. Fenwick had bade him wait before he
+should move again in the matter, and asking her whether he might not
+now venture to take some step. Mrs. Fenwick had felt it to be unfair
+that her very words should be quoted against her, as to the three or
+four months, feeling that she had said three or four instead of six
+or seven to soften the matter to her friend; but, nevertheless, she
+had been induced to write to Mary Lowther.
+
+"I was thinking that perhaps you might ask her to come to you
+again," Mr. Gilmore had said when Mrs. Fenwick rebuked him for his
+impatience. "If you did that, the thing might come on naturally."
+
+"But she wouldn't come if I did ask her."
+
+"Because she hates me so much that she will not venture to come near
+me?"
+
+"What nonsense that is, Harry. It has nothing to do with hating. If I
+thought that she even disliked you, I should tell you so, believing
+that it would be for the best. But of course if I asked her here
+just at present, she could not but remember that you are our nearest
+neighbour, and feel that she was pressed to come with some reference
+to your hopes."
+
+"And therefore she would not come?"
+
+"Exactly; and if you will think of it, how could it be otherwise?
+Wait till he is in India. Wait at any rate till the summer, and then
+Frank and I will do our best to get her here."
+
+"I will wait," said Mr. Gilmore, and immediately took his leave, as
+though there were no other subject of conversation now possible to
+him.
+
+Since his return from Loring, Mr. Gilmore's life at his own house had
+been quite secluded. Even the Fenwicks had hardly seen him, though
+they lived so near to him. He had rarely been at church, had seen no
+company at home since his uncle, the prebendary, had left him, and
+had not dined even at the Vicarage more than once or twice. All this
+had of course been frequently discussed between Mr. and Mrs. Fenwick,
+and had made the Vicar very unhappy. He had expressed a fear that
+his friend would be driven half crazy by a foolish indulgence in a
+hopeless passion, and had suggested that it might perhaps be for the
+best that Gilmore should let his place and travel abroad for two
+or three years, so that, in that way, his disappointment might be
+forgotten. But Mrs. Fenwick still hoped better things than this. She
+probably thought more of Mary Lowther than she did of Harry Gilmore,
+and still believed that a cure for both their sorrows might be found,
+if one would only be patient, and the other would not despair.
+
+Mr. Gilmore had promised that he would wait, and then Mrs. Fenwick
+had written her letter. To this there came a very quick answer. In
+respect to the trouble about the chapel, Mary Lowther was sympathetic
+and droll, as she would have been had there been upon her the weight
+of no love misfortune. "She had trust," she said, "in Mr. Quickenham,
+who no doubt would succeed in harassing the enemy, even though he
+might be unable to obtain ultimate conquest. And then there seemed
+to be a fair prospect that the building would fall of itself, which
+surely would be a great triumph. And, after all, might it not fairly
+be hoped that the pleasantness of the Vicarage garden, which Mr.
+Puddleham must see every time he visited his chapel, might be quite
+as galling and as vexatious to him as would be the ugliness of the
+Methodist building to the Fenwicks?
+
+"You should take comfort in the reflection that his sides will be
+quite as full of thorns as your own," said Mary; "and perhaps there
+may come some blessed opportunity for crushing him altogether by
+heaping hot coals of fire on his head. Offer him the use of the
+Vicarage lawn for one of his school tea-parties, and that, I should
+think, would about finish him."
+
+This was all very well, and was written on purpose to show to Mrs.
+Fenwick that Mary could still be funny in spite of her troubles; but
+the pith of the letter, as Mrs. Fenwick well understood, lay in the
+few words of the last paragraph.
+
+"Don't suppose, dear, that I am going to die of a broken heart. I
+mean to live and to be as happy as any of you. But you must let me go
+on in my own way. I am not at all sure that being married is not more
+trouble than it is worth."
+
+That she was deceiving herself in saying this Mary knew well enough;
+and Mrs. Fenwick, too, guessed that it was so. Nevertheless, it was
+plain enough that nothing more could be said about Mr. Gilmore just
+at present.
+
+"You ought to blow him up, and make him come to us," Mrs. Fenwick
+said to her husband.
+
+"It is all very well to say that, but one man can't blow another
+up, as women do. Men don't talk to each other about the things that
+concern them nearly,--unless it be about money."
+
+"What do they talk about, then?"
+
+"About matters that don't concern them nearly;--game, politics, and
+the state of the weather. If I were to mention Mary's name to him, he
+would feel it to be an impertinence. You can say what you please."
+
+Soon after this, Gilmore came again to the Vicarage; but he was
+careful to come when the Vicar would not be there. He sauntered into
+the garden by the little gate from the churchyard, and showed himself
+at the drawing-room window, without going round to the front door. "I
+never go to the front now," said Mrs. Fenwick; "I have only once been
+through the gate since they began to build."
+
+"Is not that very inconvenient?"
+
+"Of course it is. When we came home from dining at Sir Thomas's the
+other day, I had myself put down at the church gate, and walked all
+the way round, though it was nearly pitch dark. Do come in, Harry."
+
+
+[Illustration: "Do come in, Harry."]
+
+
+Then Mr. Gilmore came in, and seated himself before the fire. Mrs.
+Fenwick understood his moods so well, that she would not say a word
+to hurry him. If he chose to talk about Mary Lowther, she knew very
+well what she would say to him; but she would not herself introduce
+the subject. She spoke for awhile about the Brattles, saying that the
+old man had suffered much since his son had gone from him. Sam had
+left Bullhampton at the end of January, never having returned to the
+mill after his visit to the Vicar, and had not been heard of since.
+Gilmore, however, had not been to see his tenant; and though he
+expressed an interest about the Brattles, had manifestly come to
+the Vicarage with the object of talking upon matters more closely
+interesting to himself.
+
+"Did you write to Loring, Mrs. Fenwick?" he asked at last.
+
+"I wrote to Mary soon after you were last here."
+
+"And has she answered you?"
+
+"Yes; she wrote again almost at once. She could not but write, as I
+had said so much to her about the chapel."
+
+"She did not allude to--anything else, then?"
+
+"I can't quite say that, Harry. I had written to her out of a
+very full heart, telling her what I thought as to her future life
+generally, and just alluding to our wishes respecting you."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"She said just what might have been expected,--that for the present
+she would rather be let alone."
+
+"I have let her alone. I have neither spoken to her nor written to
+her. She does not mean to say that I have troubled her?"
+
+"Of course you have not troubled her,--but she knows what we all
+mean."
+
+"I have waited all the winter, Mrs. Fenwick, and have said not a
+word. How long was it that she knew her cousin before she was engaged
+to him?"
+
+"What has that to do with it? You know what our wishes are; but,
+indeed, indeed, nothing can be done by hurrying her."
+
+"She was engaged to that man, and the engagement broken off all
+within a month. It was no more than a dream."
+
+"But the remembrance of such dreams will not fade away quickly.
+Let us hope that hereafter it may be as a dream;--but time must be
+allowed to efface the idea of its reality."
+
+"Time;--yes; but cannot we arrange some plan for the future? Cannot
+something be done? I thought you said you would ask her to come
+here?"
+
+"So I did,--but not yet."
+
+"Why shouldn't she come now? You needn't ask because I am here. There
+is no saying whom she may meet, and then my chance will be gone
+again."
+
+"Is that all you know about women, Harry? Do you think that the girl
+whom you love so dearly will take up with one man after another in
+that fashion?"
+
+"Who can say? She was not very long in taking up, as you call it,
+with Captain Marrable. I should be happier if she were here, even if
+I did not see her."
+
+"Of course you would see her, and of course you would propose
+again,--and of course she would refuse you."
+
+"Then there is no hope?"
+
+"I do not say that. Wait till the summer comes; and then, if I can
+influence her, we will have her here. If you find that remaining at
+the Privets all alone is wearisome to you--"
+
+"Of course it is wearisome."
+
+"Then go up to London--or abroad--or anywhere for a change. Take some
+occupation in hand and stick to it."
+
+"That is so easily said, Mrs. Fenwick."
+
+"No man ever did anything by moping; and you mope. I know I am
+speaking plainly, and you may be angry with me, if you please."
+
+"I am not at all angry with you; but I think you hardly understand."
+
+"I do understand," said Mrs. Fenwick, speaking with all the energy
+she could command; "and I am most anxious to do all that you wish.
+But it cannot be done in a day. If I were to ask her now, she would
+not come; and if she came it would not be for your good. Wait till
+the summer. You may be sure that no harm will be done by a little
+patience."
+
+Then he went away, declaring again that he would wait with patience;
+but saying, at the same time, that he would remain at home. "As for
+going to London," he said, "I should do nothing there. When I find
+that there is no chance left, then probably I shall go abroad."
+
+"It is my belief," said the Vicar, that evening, when his wife told
+him what had occurred, "that she will never have him; not because she
+does not like him, or could not learn to like him if he were as other
+men are, but simply because he is so unreasonably unhappy about her.
+No woman was ever got by that sort of puling and whining love. If it
+were not that I think him crazy, I should say that it was unmanly."
+
+"But he is crazy."
+
+"And will be still worse before he has done with it. Anything would
+be good now which would take him away from Bullhampton. It would be a
+mercy that his house should be burned down, or that some great loss
+should fall upon him. He sits there at home, and does nothing. He
+will not even look after the farm. He pretends to read, but I don't
+believe that he does even that."
+
+"And all because he is really in love, Frank."
+
+"I am very glad that I have never been in love with the same
+reality."
+
+"You never had any need, sir. The plums fell into your mouth too
+easily."
+
+"Plums shouldn't be too difficult," said the Vicar, "or they lose
+their sweetness."
+
+A few days after this Mr. Fenwick was standing at his own gate,
+watching the building of the chapel and talking to the men, when
+Fanny Brattle from the mill came up to him. He would stand there by
+the hour at a time, and had made quite a friendship with the foreman
+of the builder from Salisbury, although the foreman, like his master,
+was a Dissenter, and had come into the parish as an enemy. All
+Bullhampton knew how infinite was the disgust of the Vicar at what
+was being done; and that Mrs. Fenwick felt it so strongly, that she
+would not even go in and out of her own gate. All Bullhampton was
+aware that Mr. Puddleham spoke openly of the Vicar as his enemy,--in
+spite of the peaches and cabbages on which the young Puddlehams
+had been nourished; and that the Methodist minister had, more than
+once within the last month or two, denounced his brother of the
+Established Church from his own pulpit. All Bullhampton was talking
+of the building of the chapel,--some abusing the Marquis and Mr.
+Puddleham and the Salisbury builder; others, on the other hand,
+declaring that it was very good that the Establishment should have a
+fall. Nevertheless there Mr. Fenwick would stand and chat with the
+men, fascinated after a fashion by the misfortune which had come upon
+him. Mr. Packer, the Marquis's steward, had seen him there, and had
+endeavoured to slink away unobserved,--for Mr. Packer was somewhat
+ashamed of the share he had had in the matter,--but Mr. Fenwick had
+called to him, and had spoken to him of the progress of the building.
+
+"Grimes never could have done it so fast," said the Vicar.
+
+"Well,--not so fast, Mr. Fenwick, certainly."
+
+"I suppose it won't signify about the frost?" said the Vicar. "I
+should be inclined to think that the mortar will want repointing."
+
+Mr. Packer had nothing to say to this. He was not responsible for the
+building. He endeavoured to explain that the Marquis had nothing to
+do with the work, and had simply given the land.
+
+"Which was all that he could do," said the Vicar, laughing.
+
+It was on the same day and while Packer was still standing close to
+him, that Fanny Brattle accosted him. When he had greeted the young
+woman and perceived that she wished to speak to him, he withdrew
+within his own gate, and asked her whether there was anything that he
+could do for her. She had a letter in her hand, and after a little
+hesitation she asked him to read it. It was from her brother, and had
+reached her by private means. A young man had brought it to her when
+her father was in the mill, and had then gone off, declining to wait
+for any answer.
+
+"Father, sir, knows nothing about it as yet," she said.
+
+Mr. Fenwick took the letter and read it. It was as follows:--
+
+
+   DEAR SISTER,
+
+   I want you to help me a little, for things is very bad
+   with me. And it is not for me neither, or I'd sooner
+   starve nor ax for a sixpence from the mill. But Carry is
+   bad too, and if you've got a trifle or so, I think you'd
+   be of a mind to send it. But don't tell father, on no
+   account. I looks to you not to tell father. Tell mother,
+   if you will; but I looks to her not to mention it to
+   father. If it be so you have two pounds by you, send it to
+   me in a letter, to the care of
+
+      Muster Thomas Craddock,
+      Number 5, Crooked Arm Yard,
+      Cowcross Street,
+      City of London.
+
+   My duty to mother, but don't say a word to father,
+   whatever you do. Carry don't live nowhere there, nor they
+   don't know her.
+
+   Your affectionate brother,
+
+   SAM BRATTLE.
+
+
+"Have you told your father, Fanny?"
+
+"Not a word, sir."
+
+"Nor your mother?"
+
+"Oh yes, sir. She has read the letter, and thinks I had better come
+to you to ask what we should do."
+
+"Have you got the money, Fanny?"
+
+Fanny Brattle explained that she had in her pocket something over the
+sum named, but that money was so scarce with them now at the mill,
+that she could hardly send it without her father's knowledge. She
+would not, she said, be afraid to send it and then to tell her father
+afterwards. The Vicar considered the matter for some time, standing
+with the open letter in his hand, and then he gave his advice.
+
+"Come into the house, Fanny," he said, "and write a line to your
+brother, and then get a money order at the post-office for four
+pounds, and send it to your brother; and tell him that I lend it
+to him till times shall be better with him. Do not give him your
+father's money without your father's leave. Sam will pay me some day,
+unless I be mistaken in him."
+
+Then Fanny Brattle with many grateful thanks did as the Vicar bade
+her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX.
+
+THE THREE HONEST MEN.
+
+
+The Vicar of Bullhampton was--a "good sort of fellow." In praise of
+him to this extent it is hoped that the reader will cordially agree.
+But it cannot be denied that he was the most imprudent of men. He
+had done very much that was imprudent in respect to the Marquis of
+Trowbridge; and since he had been at Bullhampton had been imprudent
+in nearly everything that he had done regarding the Brattles. He was
+well aware that the bold words which he had spoken to the Marquis had
+been dragon's teeth sown by himself, and that they had sprung up from
+the ground in the shape of the odious brick building which now stood
+immediately in face of his own Vicarage gate. Though he would smile
+and be droll, and talk to the workmen, he hated that building quite
+as bitterly as did his wife. And now, in regard to the Brattles,
+there came upon him a great trouble. About a week after he had lent
+the four pounds to Fanny on Sam's behalf, there came to him a dirty
+note from Salisbury, written by Sam himself, in which he was told
+that Carry Brattle was now at the Three Honest Men, a public-house in
+one of the suburbs of the city, waiting there till Mr. Fenwick should
+find a home for her,--in accordance with his promise given to her
+brother. Sam, in his letter, had gone on to explain that it would be
+well that Mr. Fenwick should visit the Three Honest Men speedily, as
+otherwise there would be a bill there which neither Carry nor Sam
+would be able to defray. Poor Sam's letter was bald, and they who did
+not understand his position might have called it bold. He wrote to
+the Vicar as though the Vicar's coming to Salisbury for the required
+purpose was a matter of course; and demanded a home for his sister
+without any reference to her future mode of life, or power of earning
+her bread, as though it was the Vicar's manifest duty to provide such
+home. And then that caution in regard to the bill was rather a threat
+than anything else. If you don't take her quickly from the Three
+Honest Men there'll be the very mischief of a bill for you to pay.
+That was the meaning of the caution, and so the Vicar understood it.
+
+But Mr. Fenwick, though he was imprudent, was neither unreasonable
+nor unintelligent. He had told Sam Brattle that he would provide
+a home for Carry, if Sam would find his sister and induce her to
+accept the offer. Sam had gone to work, and had done his part. Having
+done it, he was right to claim from the Vicar his share of the
+performance. And then, was it not a matter of course that Carry, when
+found, should be without means to pay her own expenses? Was it to be
+supposed that a girl in her position would have money by her. And had
+not Mr. Fenwick known the truth about their poverty when he had given
+those four pounds to Fanny Brattle to be sent up to Sam in London?
+Mr. Fenwick was both reasonable and intelligent as to all this; and,
+though he felt that he was in trouble, did not for a moment think
+of denying his responsibility, or evading the performance of his
+promise. He must find a home for poor Carry, and pay any bill at the
+Three Honest Men which he might find standing there in her name.
+
+Of course he told his trouble to his wife; and of course he was
+scolded for the promise he had given. "But, my dear Frank, if for
+her, why not for others; and how is it possible?"
+
+"For her and not for others, because she is an old friend, a
+neighbour's child, and one of the parish." That question was easily
+answered.
+
+"But how is it possible, Frank? Of course one would do anything that
+it is possible to save her. What I mean is, that one would do it for
+all of them, if only it were possible."
+
+"If you can do it for one, will not even that be much?"
+
+"But what is to be done? Who will take her? Will she go into a
+reformatory?"
+
+"I fear not."
+
+"There are so many, and I do not know how they are to be treated
+except in a body. Where can you find a home for her?"
+
+"She has a married sister, Janet."
+
+"Who would not speak to her, or let her inside the door of her house!
+Surely, Frank, you know the unforgiving nature of women of that class
+for such sin as poor Carry Brattle's?"
+
+"I wonder whether they ever say their prayers," said the Vicar.
+
+"Of course they do. Mrs. Jay, no doubt, is a religious woman. But it
+is permitted to them not to forgive that sin."
+
+"By what law?"
+
+"By the law of custom. It is all very well, Frank, but you can't
+fight against it. At any rate, you can't ignore it till it has been
+fought against and conquered. And it is useful. It keeps women from
+going astray."
+
+"You think, then, that nothing should be done for this poor creature,
+who fell so piteously, with so small a sin?"
+
+"I have not said so. But when you promised her a home, where did
+you think of finding one for her? Her only fitting home is with her
+mother, and you know that her father will not take her there."
+
+Mr. Fenwick said nothing more at that moment, not having clearly made
+up his mind as to what he might best do; but he had before his eyes,
+dimly, a plan by which he thought it possible that he might force
+Carry Brattle on her father's heart. If this plan might be carried
+out, he would take her to the mill-house and seat her in the room
+in which the family lived, and then bring the old man in from his
+work. It might be that Jacob Brattle, in his wrath, would turn with
+violence upon the man who had dared thus to interfere in the affairs
+of his family; but he would certainly offer no rough usage to the
+poor girl. Fenwick knew the man well enough to be sure that he would
+not lay his hands in anger upon a woman.
+
+But something must be done at once,--something before any such plan
+as that which was running through his brain could be matured and
+carried into execution. There was Carry at the Three Honest Men, and,
+for aught the Vicar knew, her brother staying with her,--with his,
+the Vicar's credit, pledged for their maintenance. It was quite clear
+that something must be done. He had applied to his wife, and his
+wife did not know how to help him. He had suggested the wife of the
+ironmonger at Warminster as the proper guardian for the poor child,
+and his own wife had at once made him understand that this was
+impractical. Indeed, how was it possible that such a one as Carry
+Brattle should be kept out of sight and stowed away in an open
+hardware-shop in a provincial town? The properest place for her would
+be in the country, on some farm; and, so thinking, he determined to
+apply to the girl's eldest brother.
+
+George Brattle was a prosperous man, living on a large farm near
+Fordingbridge, ten or twelve miles the other side of Salisbury. Of
+him the Vicar knew very little, and of his wife nothing. That the man
+had been married fourteen or fifteen years, and had a family growing
+up, the Vicar did know; and, knowing it, feared that Mrs. Brattle of
+Startup, as their farm was called, would not be willing to receive
+this proposed new inmate. But he would try. He would go on to Startup
+after having seen Carry at the Three Honest Men, and use what
+eloquence he could command for the occasion.
+
+He drove himself over on the next day to meet an early train, and
+was in Salisbury by nine o'clock. He had to ask his way to the Three
+Honest Men, and at last had some difficulty in finding the house.
+It was a small beershop, in a lane on the very outskirts of the
+city, and certainly seemed to him, as he looked at it, to be as
+disreputable a house, in regard to its outward appearance, as ever he
+had proposed to enter. It was a brick building of two stories, with a
+door in the middle of it which stood open, and a red curtain hanging
+across the window on the left-hand side. Three men dressed like
+navvies were leaning against the door-posts. There is no sign,
+perhaps, which gives to a house of this class so disreputable an
+appearance as red curtains hung across the window; and yet there is
+no other colour for pot-house curtains that has any popularity. The
+one fact probably explains the other. A drinking-room with a blue or
+a brown curtain would offer no attraction to the thirsty navvy who
+likes to have his thirst indulged without criticism. But, in spite of
+the red curtain, Fenwick entered the house, and asked the uncomely
+woman at the bar after Sam Brattle. Was there a man named Sam Brattle
+staying there;--a man with a sister?
+
+Then were let loose against the unfortunate clergyman the floodgates
+of a drunken woman's angry tongue. It was not only that the landlady
+of the Three Honest Men was very drunk, but also that she was very
+angry. Sam Brattle and his sister had been there, but they had been
+turned out of the house. There had manifestly been some great row,
+and Carry Brattle was spoken of with all the worst terms of reproach
+which one woman can heap upon the name of another. The mistress of
+the Three Honest Men was a married woman,--and, as far as that went,
+respectable; whereas poor Carry was not married, and certainly not
+respectable. Something of her past history had been known. She had
+been called names which she could not repudiate, and the truth of
+which even her brother on her behalf could not deny; and then she had
+been turned into the street. So much Mr. Fenwick learned from the
+drunken woman, and nothing more he could learn. When he asked after
+Carry's present address the woman jeered at him, and accused him of
+base purposes in coming after such a one. She stood with arms akimbo
+in the passage, and said she would raise the neighbourhood on him.
+She was drunk, and dirty, as foul a thing as the eye could look upon;
+every other word was an oath, and no phrase used by the lowest of
+men in their lowest moments was too hot or too bad for her woman's
+tongue; and yet there was the indignation of outraged virtue in her
+demeanour and in her language, because this stranger had come to her
+door asking after a girl who had been led astray. Our Vicar cared
+nothing for the neighbourhood, and, indeed, cared very little for
+the woman at all,--except in so far as she disgusted him; but he did
+care much at finding that he could obtain no clue to her whom he was
+seeking. The woman would not even tell him when the girl had left
+her house, or give him any assistance towards finding her. He had at
+first endeavoured to mollify the virago by offering to pay the amount
+of any expenses which might have been left unsettled; but even on
+this score he could obtain no consideration. She continued to revile
+him, and he was obliged to leave her,--which he did, at last, with a
+hurried step to avoid a quart pot which the woman had taken up to
+hurl at his head, upon some comparison which he most indiscreetly
+made between herself and poor Carry Brattle.
+
+What should he do now? The only chance of finding the girl was, as he
+thought, to go to the police-office. He was still in the lane, making
+his way back to the street which would take him into the city,
+when he was accosted by a little child. "You be the parson," said
+the child. Mr. Fenwick owned that he was a parson. "Parson from
+Bull'umpton?" said the child, inquiringly. Mr. Fenwick acknowledged
+the fact. "Then you be to come with me." Whereupon Mr. Fenwick
+followed the child, and was led into a miserable little court in
+which population was squalid, thick, and juvenile. "She be here, at
+Mrs. Stiggs's," said the child. Then the Vicar understood that he had
+been watched, and that he was being taken to the place where she whom
+he was seeking had found shelter.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XL.
+
+TROTTER'S BUILDINGS.
+
+
+In the back room up-stairs of Mr. Stiggs's house in Trotter's
+Buildings the Vicar did find Carry Brattle, and he found also that
+since her coming thither on the preceding evening,--for only on the
+preceding evening had she been turned away from the Three Honest
+Men,--one of Mrs. Stiggs's children had been on the look-out in the
+lane.
+
+"I thought that you would come to me, sir," said Carry Brattle.
+
+"Of course I should come. Did I not promise that I would come? And
+where is your brother?"
+
+But Sam had left her as soon as he had placed her in Mrs. Stiggs's
+house, and Carry could not say whither he had gone. He had brought
+her to Salisbury, and had remained with her two days at the Three
+Honest Men, during which time the remainder of their four pounds
+had been spent; and then there had been a row. Some visitors to the
+house recognised poor Carry, or knew something of her tale, and evil
+words were spoken. There had been a fight and Sam had thrashed some
+man,--or some half-dozen men, if all that Carry said was true. She
+had fled from the house in sad tears, and after a while her brother
+had joined her,--bloody, with his lip cut and a black eye. It seemed
+that he had had some previous knowledge of this woman who lived in
+Trotter's Buildings,--had known her or her husband,--and there he had
+found shelter for his sister, having explained that a clergyman would
+call for her and pay for her modest wants, and then take her away.
+She supposed that Sam had gone back to London; but he had been so
+bruised and mauled in the fight that he had determined that Mr.
+Fenwick should not see him. This was the story as Carry told it; and
+Mr. Fenwick did not for a moment doubt its truth.
+
+"And now, Carry," said he, "what is it that you would do?"
+
+She looked up into his face, and yet not wholly into his face,--as
+though she were afraid to raise her eyes so high,--and was silent.
+His were intently fixed upon her, as he stood over her, and he
+thought that he had never seen a sight more sad to look at. And yet
+she was very pretty,--prettier, perhaps, than she had been in the
+days when she would come up the aisle of his church, to take her
+place among the singers, with red cheeks and bright flowing clusters
+of hair. She was pale now, and he could see that her cheeks were
+rough,--from paint, perhaps, and late hours, and an ill-life; but
+the girl had become a woman, and the lines of her countenance were
+fixed, and were very lovely, and there was a pleading eloquence about
+her mouth for which there had been no need in her happy days at
+Bullhampton. He had asked her what she would do! But had she not come
+there, at her brother's instigation, that he might tell her what she
+should do? Had he not promised that he would find her a home if she
+would leave her evil ways? How was it possible that she should have a
+plan for her future life? She answered him not a word; but tried to
+look into his face and failed.
+
+Nor had he any formed plan. That idea, indeed, of going to Startup
+had come across his brain,--of going to Startup, and of asking
+assistance from the prosperous elder brother. But so diffident was he
+of success that he hardly dared to mention it to the poor girl.
+
+"It is hard to say what you should do," he said.
+
+"Very hard, sir."
+
+His heart was so tender towards her that he could not bring himself
+to propose to her the cold and unpleasant safety of a Reformatory. He
+knew, as a clergyman and as a man of common sense, that to place her
+in such an establishment would, in truth, be the greatest kindness
+that he could do her. But he could not do it. He satisfied his own
+conscience by telling himself that he knew that she would accept no
+such refuge. He thought that he had half promised not to ask her to
+go to any such place. At any rate, he had not meant that when he had
+made his rash promise to her brother; and though that promise was
+rash, he was not the less bound to keep it. She was very pretty, and
+still soft, and he had loved her well. Was it a fault in him that he
+was tender to her because of her prettiness, and because he had loved
+her as a child? We must own that it was a fault. The crooked places
+of the world, if they are to be made straight at all, must be made
+straight after a sterner and a juster fashion.
+
+"Perhaps you could stay here for a day or two?" he said.
+
+"Only that I've got no money."
+
+"I will see to that,--for a few days, you know. And I was thinking
+that I would go to your brother George."
+
+"My brother George?"
+
+"Yes;--why not? Was he not always good to you?"
+
+"He was never bad, sir; only--"
+
+"Only what?"
+
+"I've been so bad, sir, that I don't think he'd speak to me, or
+notice me, or do anything for me. And he has got a wife, too."
+
+"But a woman doesn't always become hard-hearted as soon as she is
+married. There must be some of them that will take pity on you,
+Carry." She only shook her head. "I shall tell him that it is his
+duty, and if he be an honest, God-fearing man, he will do it."
+
+"And should I have to go there?"
+
+"If he will take you--certainly. What better could you wish? Your
+father is hard, and though he loves you still, he cannot bring
+himself to forget."
+
+"How can any of them forget, Mr. Fenwick?"
+
+"I will go out at once to Startup, and as I return through Salisbury
+I will let you know what your brother says." She again shook her
+head. "At any rate, we must try, Carry. When things are difficult,
+they cannot be mended by people sitting down and crying. I will
+ask your brother; and if he refuses, I will endeavour to think of
+something else. Next to your father and mother, he is certainly the
+first that should be asked to look to you." Then he said much to her
+as to her condition, preached to her the little sermon with which he
+had come prepared; was as stern to her as his nature and love would
+allow,--though, indeed, his words were tender enough. He strove to
+make her understand that she could have no escape from the dirt and
+vileness and depth of misery into which she had fallen, without the
+penalty of a hard, laborious life, in which she must submit to be
+regarded as one whose place in the world was very low. He asked her
+whether she did not hate the disgrace and the ignominy and the vile
+wickedness of her late condition. "Yes, indeed, sir," she answered,
+with her eyes still only half-raised towards him. What other answer
+could she make? He would fain have drawn from her some deep and
+passionate expression of repentance, some fervid promise of future
+rectitude, some eager offer to bear all other hardships, so that
+she might be saved from a renewal of the past misery. But he knew
+that no such eloquence, no such energy, no such ecstacy, would be
+forthcoming. And he knew, also, that humble, contrite, and wretched
+as was the girl now, the nature within her bosom was not changed.
+Were he to place her in a reformatory, she would not stay there. Were
+he to make arrangements with Mrs. Stiggs, who in her way seemed to
+be a decent, hard-working woman,--to make arrangements for her board
+and lodging, with some collateral regulations as to occupation,
+needle-work, and the like,--she would not adhere to them. The change
+from a life of fevered, though most miserable, excitement, to one of
+dull, pleasureless, and utterly uninteresting propriety, is one that
+can hardly be made without the assistance of binding control. Could
+she have been sent to the mill, and made subject to her mother's
+softness as well as to her mother's care, there might have been room
+for confident hope. And then, too,--but let not the reader read this
+amiss,--because she was pretty and might be made bright again, and
+because he was young, and because he loved her, he longed, were it
+possible, to make her paths pleasant for her. Her fall, her first
+fall had been piteous to him, rather than odious. He, too, would have
+liked to get hold of the man and to have left him without a sound
+limb within his skin,--to have left him pretty nearly without a skin
+at all; but that work had fallen into the miller's hands, who had
+done it fairly well. And, moreover, it would hardly have fitted the
+Vicar. But, as regarded Carry herself, when he thought of her in his
+solitary rambles, he would build little castles in the air on her
+behalf, in which her life should be anything but one of sackcloth and
+ashes. He would find for her some loving husband, who should know
+and should have forgiven the sin which had hardly been a sin, and
+she should be a loving wife with loving children. Perhaps, too, he
+would add to this, as he built his castles, the sweet smiles of
+affectionate gratitude with which he himself would be received when
+he visited her happy hearth. But he knew that these were castles
+in the air, and he endeavoured to throw them all behind him as he
+preached his sermon. Nevertheless, he was very tender with her,
+and treated her not at all as he would have done an ugly young
+parishioner who had turned thief upon his hands.
+
+"And now, Carry," he said, as he left her, "I will get a gig in the
+town, and will drive over to your brother. We can but try it. I am
+clear as to this, that the best thing for you will be to be among
+your own people."
+
+"I suppose it would, sir; but I don't think she'll ever be brought to
+have me."
+
+"We will try, at any rate. And if she will have you, you must
+remember that you must not eat the bread of idleness. You must be
+prepared to work for your living."
+
+"I don't want to be idle, sir." Then he took her by the hand, and
+pressed it, and bade God bless her, and gave her a little money in
+order that she might make some first payment to Mrs. Stiggs. "I'm
+sure I don't know why you should do all this for the likes of me,
+sir," said the girl, bursting into tears. The Vicar did not tell her
+that he did it because she was gracious in his eyes, and perhaps was
+not aware of the fact himself.
+
+He went to the Dragon of Wantley, and there procured a gig. He had
+a contest in the inn-yard before they would let him have the gig
+without a man to drive him; but he managed it at last, fearing that
+the driver might learn something of his errand. He had never been at
+Startup Farm before; and knew very little of the man he was going
+to see on so very delicate a mission; but he did know that George
+Brattle was prosperous, and that in early life he had been a good
+son. His last interview with the farmer had had reference to the
+matter of bail required for Sam, and on that occasion the brother
+had, with some persuasion, done as he was asked. George Brattle had
+contrived to win for himself a wife from the Fordingbridge side of
+the country, who had had a little money; and as he, too, had carried
+away from the mill a little money in his father's prosperous days,
+he had done very well. He paid his rent to the day, owed no man
+anything, and went to church every other Sunday, eschewing the bad
+example set to him by his father in matters of religion. He was
+hard-fisted, ignorant, and self-confident, knowing much about corn
+and the grinding of it, knowing something of sheep and the shearing
+of them, knowing also how to get the worth of his ten or eleven
+shillings a week out of the bones of the rural labourers;--but
+knowing very little else. Of all this Fenwick was aware; and, in
+spite of that church-going twice a month, rated the son as inferior
+to the father; for about the old miller there was a stubborn
+constancy which almost amounted to heroism. With such a man as was
+this George Brattle, how was he to preach a doctrine of true human
+charity with any chance of success? But the man was one who was
+pervious to ideas of duty, and might be probably pervious to feelings
+of family respect. And he had been good to his father and mother,
+regarding with something of true veneration the nest from which he
+had sprung. The Vicar did not like the task before him, dreading the
+disappointment which failure would produce; but he was not the man to
+shrink from any work which he had resolved to undertake, and drove
+gallantly into the farmyard, though he saw both the farmer and his
+wife standing at the back-door of the house.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLI.
+
+STARTUP FARM.
+
+
+Farmer Brattle, who was a stout man about thirty-eight years of age
+but looking as though he were nearly ten years older, came up to the
+Vicar, touching his hat, and then putting his hand out in greeting.
+
+"This be a pleasure something like, Muster Fenwick, to see thee
+here at Startup. This be my wife. Molly, thou has never seen Muster
+Fenwick from Bull'umpton. This be our Vicar, as mother and Fanny says
+is the pick of all the parsons in Wiltshire."
+
+Then Mr. Fenwick got down, and walked into the spacious kitchen,
+where he was cordially welcomed by the stout mistress of Startup
+Farm.
+
+He was very anxious to begin his story to the brother alone. Indeed,
+as to that, his mind was quite made up; but Mrs. Brattle, who within
+the doors of that house held a position at any rate equal to that
+of her husband, did not seem disposed to give him the opportunity.
+She understood well enough that Mr. Fenwick had not come over from
+Bullhampton to shake hands with her husband, and to say a few civil
+words. He must have business, and that business must be about the
+Brattle family. Old Brattle was supposed to be in money difficulties,
+and was not this an embassy in search of money? Now Mrs. George
+Brattle, who had been born a Huggins, was very desirous that none
+of the Huggins money should be sent into the parish of Bullhampton.
+When, therefore, Mr. Fenwick asked the farmer to step out with him
+for a moment, Mrs. George Brattle looked very grave, and took her
+husband apart and whispered a word of caution into his ear.
+
+"It's about the mill, George; and don't you do nothing till you've
+spoke to me."
+
+Then there came a solid look, almost of grief, upon George's face.
+There had been a word or two before this between him and the wife of
+his bosom as to the affairs of the mill.
+
+"I've just been seeing somebody at Salisbury," began the Vicar,
+abruptly, as soon as they had crossed from the yard behind the house
+into the enclosure around the ricks.
+
+"Some one at Salisbury, Muster Fenwick? Is it any one as I knows?"
+
+"One that you did know well, Mr. Brattle. I've seen your sister
+Carry." Again there came upon the farmer's face that heavy look,
+which was almost a look of grief; but he did not at once utter a
+word. "Poor young thing!" continued the Vicar. "Poor, dear,
+unfortunate girl!"
+
+"She brought it on herself, and on all of us," said the farmer.
+
+"Yes, indeed, my friend. The light, unguarded folly of a moment has
+ruined her, and brought dreadful sorrow upon you all. But something
+should be done for her;--eh?"
+
+Still the brother said nothing.
+
+"You will help, I'm sure, to rescue her from the infamy into which
+she must fall if none help her?"
+
+"If there's money wanted to get her into any of them places--," begun
+the farmer.
+
+"It isn't that;--it isn't that, at any rate, as yet."
+
+"What be it, then?"
+
+"The personal countenance and friendship of some friend that loves
+her. You love your sister, Mr. Brattle?"
+
+"I don't know as I does, Muster Fenwick."
+
+"You used to, and you must still pity her."
+
+"She's been and well-nigh broke the hearts of all on us. There wasn't
+one of us as wasn't respectable, till she come up;--and now there's
+Sam. But a boy as is bad ain't never so bad as a girl."
+
+It must be understood that in the expression of this opinion Mr.
+Brattle was alluding, not to the personal wickedness of the wicked
+of the two sexes, but to the effect of their wickedness on those
+belonging to them.
+
+"And therefore more should be done to help a girl."
+
+"I'll stand the money, Muster Fenwick,--if it ain't much."
+
+"What is wanted is a home in your own house."
+
+"Here--at Startup?"
+
+"Yes; here, at Startup. Your father will not take her."
+
+"Neither won't I. But it ain't me in such a matter as this. You ask
+my missus, and see what she'll say. Besides, Muster Fenwick, it's
+clean out of all reason."
+
+"Out of all reason to help a sister?"
+
+"So it be. Sister, indeed! Why did she go and make--. I won't say
+what she's made of herself. Ain't she brought trouble and sorrow
+enough upon us? Have her here! Why, I'm that angry with her, I
+shouldn't be keeping my hands off her. Why didn't she keep herself to
+herself, and not disgrace the whole family?"
+
+Nevertheless, in spite of these strong expressions of opinion, Mr.
+Fenwick, by the dint of the bitter words which he spoke in reference
+to the brother's duty as a Christian, did get leave from the farmer
+to make the proposition to Mrs. George Brattle,--such permission as
+would have bound the brother to accept Carry, providing that Mrs.
+George would also consent to accept her. But even this permission
+was accompanied by an assurance that it would not have been given had
+he not felt perfectly convinced that his wife would not listen for
+a moment to the scheme. He spoke of his wife almost with awe, when
+Mr. Fenwick left him to make this second attack. "She has never had
+nothing to say to none sich as that," said the farmer, shaking his
+head, as he alluded both to his wife and to his sister; "and I ain't
+sure as she'll be first-rate civil to any one as mentions sich in her
+hearing."
+
+But Mr. Fenwick persevered, in spite even of this caution. When
+the Vicar re-entered the house, Mrs. George Brattle had retired to
+her parlour, and the kitchen was in the hands of the maid-servant.
+He followed the lady, however, and found that she had been at the
+trouble, since he had seen her last, of putting on a clean cap on his
+behalf. He began at once, jumping again into the middle of things by
+a reference to her husband.
+
+"Mrs. Brattle," he said, "your husband and I have been talking about
+his poor sister Carry."
+
+"The least said the soonest mended about that one, I'm afeared," said
+the dame.
+
+"Indeed, I agree with you. Were she once placed in safe and kind
+hands, the less then said the better. She has left the life she was
+leading--"
+
+"They never leaves it," said the dame.
+
+"It is so seldom that an opportunity is given them. Poor Carry is
+at the present moment most anxious to be placed somewhere out of
+danger."
+
+"Mr. Fenwick, if you ask me, I'd rather not talk about her;--I would
+indeed. She's been and brought a slur upon us all, the vile thing! If
+you ask me, Mr. Fenwick, there ain't nothing too bad for her."
+
+Fenwick, who, on the other hand, thought that there could be hardly
+anything too good for his poor penitent, was beginning to be angry
+with the woman. Of course, he made in his own mind those comparisons
+which are common to us all on such occasions. What was the great
+virtue of this fat, well-fed, selfish, ignorant woman before
+him, that she should turn up her nose at a sister who had been
+unfortunate? Was it not an abominable case of the Pharisee thanking
+the Lord that he was not such a one as the Publican;--whereas the
+Publican was in a fair way to heaven?
+
+"Surely you would have her saved, if it be possible to save her?"
+said the Vicar.
+
+"I don't know about saving. If such as them is to be made all's one
+as others as have always been decent, I'm sure I don't know who it is
+as isn't to be saved."
+
+"Have you never read of Mary Magdalen, Mrs. Brattle?"
+
+"Yes, I have, Mr. Fenwick. Perhaps she hadn't got no father, nor
+brothers, and sisters, and sisters-in-law, as would be pretty well
+broken-hearted when her vileness would be cast up again' 'em. Perhaps
+she hadn't got no decent house over her head afore she begun. I don't
+know how that was."
+
+"Our Saviour's tender mercy, then, would not have been wide enough
+for such sin as that." This the Vicar said with intended irony; but
+irony was thrown away on Mrs. George Brattle.
+
+"Them days and ours isn't the same, Mr. Fenwick, and you can't make
+'em the same. And Our Saviour isn't here now to say who is to be a
+Mary Magdalen and who isn't. As for Carry Brattle, she has made her
+bed and she must lie upon it. We shan't interfere."
+
+Fenwick was determined, however, that he would make his proposition.
+It was almost certain now that he could do no good to Carry by making
+it; but he felt that it would be a pleasure to him to make this
+self-righteous woman know what he conceived to be her duty in the
+matter. "My idea was this--that you should take her in here, and
+endeavour to preserve her from future evil courses."
+
+"Take her in here?" shrieked the woman.
+
+"Yes; here. Who is nearer to her than a brother?"
+
+"Not if I know it, Mr. Fenwick; and if that is what you have been
+saying to Brattle, I must tell you that you've come on a very bad
+errand. People, Mr. Fenwick, knows how to manage things such as that
+for themselves in their own houses. Strangers don't usually talk
+about such things, Mr. Fenwick. Perhaps, Mr. Fenwick, you didn't know
+as how we have got girls of our own coming up. Have her in here--at
+Startup? I think I see her here!"
+
+"But, Mrs. Brattle--"
+
+"Don't Mrs. Brattle me, Mr. Fenwick, for I won't be so treated. And I
+must tell you that I don't think it over decent of you,--a clergyman,
+and a young man, too, in a way,--to come talking of such a one in a
+house like this."
+
+"Would you have her starve, or die in a ditch?"
+
+"There ain't no question of starving. Such as her don't starve. As
+long as it lasts, they've the best of eating and drinking,--only
+too much of it. There's prisons; let 'em go there if they means
+repentance. But they never does,--never, till there ain't nobody to
+notice 'em any longer; and by that time they're mostly thieves and
+pickpockets."
+
+"And you would do nothing to save your own husband's sister from such
+a fate?"
+
+"What business had she to be sister to any honest man? Think of
+what she's been and done to my children, who wouldn't else have had
+nobody to be ashamed of. There never wasn't one of the Hugginses who
+didn't behave herself;--that is of the women," added Mrs. George,
+remembering the misdeeds of a certain drunken uncle of her own, who
+had come to great trouble in a matter of horseflesh. "And now, Mr.
+Fenwick, let me beg that there mayn't be another word about her. I
+don't know nothing of such women, nor what is their ways, and I don't
+want. I never didn't speak a word to such a one in my life, and I
+certainly won't begin under my own roof. People knows well enough
+what's good for them to do and what isn't without being dictated to
+by a clergyman. You'll excuse me, Mr. Fenwick; but I'll just make
+bold to say as much as that. Good morning, Mr. Fenwick."
+
+In the yard, standing close by the gig, he met the farmer again.
+
+"You didn't find she'd be of your way of thinking, Muster Fenwick?"
+
+"Not exactly, Mr. Brattle."
+
+"I know'd she wouldn't. The truth is, Muster Fenwick, that young
+women as goes astray after that fashion is just like any sick animal,
+as all the animals as ain't comes and sets upon immediately. It's
+just as well, too. They knows it beforehand, and it keeps 'em
+straight."
+
+"It didn't keep poor Carry straight."
+
+"And, by the same token, she must suffer, and so must we all. But,
+Muster Fenwick, as far as ten or fifteen pounds goes, if it can be of
+use--"
+
+But the Vicar, in his indignation, repudiated the offer of money, and
+drove himself back to Salisbury with his heart full of sorrow at the
+hardness of the world. What this woman had been saying to him was
+only what the world had said to her,--the world that knows so much
+better how to treat an erring sinner than did Our Saviour when on
+earth.
+
+He went with his sad news to Mrs. Stiggs's house, and then made terms
+for Carry's board and lodging, at any rate, for a fortnight. And he
+said much to the girl as to the disposition of her time. He would
+send her books, and she was to be diligent in needle-work on behalf
+of the Stiggs family. And then he begged her to go to the daily
+service in the cathedral,--not so much because he thought that the
+public worship was necessary for her, as that thus she would be
+provided with a salutary employment for a portion of her day. Carry,
+as she bade him farewell, said very little. Yes; she would stay with
+Mrs. Stiggs. That was all that she did say.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLII.
+
+MR. QUICKENHAM, Q.C.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+On the Thursday in Passion week, which fell on the 6th of April, Mr.
+and Mrs. Quickenham came to Bullhampton Vicarage. The lawyer intended
+to take a long holiday,--four entire days,--and to return to London
+on the following Tuesday; and Mrs. Quickenham meant to be very happy
+with her sister.
+
+"It is such a comfort to get him out of town, if it's only for two
+days," said Mrs. Quickenham; "and I do believe he has run away this
+time without any papers in his portmanteau."
+
+Mrs. Fenwick, with something of apology in her tone, explained to her
+sister that she was especially desirous of getting a legal opinion on
+this occasion from her brother-in-law.
+
+"That's mere holiday work," said the barrister's anxious wife.
+"There's nothing he likes so much as that; but it is the reading of
+those horrible long papers by gaslight. I wouldn't mind how much he
+had to talk, nor yet how much he had to write, if it wasn't for all
+that weary reading. Of course he does have juniors with him now,
+but I don't find that it makes much difference. He's at it every
+night, sheet after sheet; and though he always says he's coming up
+immediately, it's two or three before he's in bed."
+
+Mrs. Quickenham was three or four years older than her sister, and
+Mr. Quickenham was twelve years older than his wife. The lawyer
+therefore was considerably senior to the clergyman. He was at the
+Chancery bar, and after the usual years of hard and almost profitless
+struggling, had worked himself up into a position in which his income
+was very large, and his labours never ending. Since the days in which
+he had begun to have before his eyes some idea of a future career
+for himself, he had always been struggling hard for a certain goal,
+struggling successfully, and yet never getting nearer to the thing
+he desired. A scholarship had been all in all to him when he left
+school; and, as he got it, a distant fellowship already loomed before
+his eyes. That attained was only a step towards his life in London.
+His first brief, anxiously as it had been desired, had given no real
+satisfaction. As soon as it came to him it was a rung of the ladder
+already out of sight. And so it had been all through his life, as he
+advanced upwards, making a business, taking a wife to himself, and
+becoming the father of many children. There was always something
+before him which was to make him happy when he reached it. His gown
+was of silk, and his income almost greater than his desires; but he
+would fain sit upon the Bench, and have at any rate his evenings for
+his own enjoyment. He firmly believed now, that that had been the
+object of his constant ambition; though could he retrace his thoughts
+as a young man, he would find that in the early days of his forensic
+toils, the silent, heavy, unillumined solemnity of the judge had
+appeared to him to be nothing in comparison with the glittering
+audacity of the successful advocate. He had tried the one, and might
+probably soon try the other. And when that time shall have come,
+and Mr. Quickenham shall sit upon his seat of honour in the new
+Law Courts, passing long, long hours in the tedious labours of
+conscientious painful listening; then he will look forward again
+to the happy ease of dignified retirement, to the coming time in
+which all his hours will be his own. And then, again, when those
+unfurnished hours are there, and with them shall have come the
+infirmities which years and toil shall have brought, his mind will
+run on once more to that eternal rest in which fees and salary,
+honours and dignity, wife and children, with all the joys of
+satisfied success, shall be brought together for him in one perfect
+amalgam which he will call by the name of Heaven. In the meantime, he
+has now come down to Bullhampton to enjoy himself for four days,--if
+he can find enjoyment without his law papers.
+
+Mr. Quickenham was a tall, thin man, with eager gray eyes, and a long
+projecting nose, on which, his enemies in the courts of law were wont
+to say, his wife would hang a kettle, in order that the unnecessary
+heat coming from his mouth might not be wasted. His hair was already
+grizzled, and, in the matter of whiskers, his heavy impatient hand
+had nearly altogether cut away the only intended ornament to his
+face. He was a man who allowed himself time for nothing but his law
+work, eating all his meals as though the saving of a few minutes
+in that operation were matter of vital importance, dressing and
+undressing at railroad speed, moving ever with a quick, impetuous
+step, as though the whole world around him went too slowly. He was
+short-sighted, too, and would tumble about in his unnecessary hurry,
+barking his shins, bruising his knuckles, and breaking most things
+that were breakable,--but caring nothing for his sufferings either in
+body or in purse so that he was not reminded of his awkwardness by
+his wife. An untidy man he was, who spilt his soup on his waistcoat
+and slobbered with his tea, whose fingers were apt to be ink-stained,
+and who had a grievous habit of mislaying papers that were most
+material to him. He would bellow to the servants to have his things
+found for him, and would then scold them for looking. But when alone
+he would be ever scolding himself because of the faults which he
+thus committed. A conscientious, hard-working, friendly man he was,
+but one difficult to deal with; hot in his temper, impatient of all
+stupidities, impatient often of that which he wrongly thought to be
+stupidity, never owning himself to be wrong, anxious always for the
+truth, but often missing to see it, a man who would fret grievously
+for the merest trifle, and think nothing of the greatest success when
+it had once been gained. Such a one was Mr. Quickenham; and he was
+a man of whom all his enemies and most of his friends were a little
+afraid. Mrs. Fenwick would declare herself to be much in awe of him;
+and our Vicar, though he would not admit as much, was always a little
+on his guard when the great barrister was with him.
+
+How it had come to pass that Mr. Chamberlaine had not been called
+upon to take a part in the Cathedral services during Passion
+week cannot here be explained; but it was the fact, that when Mr.
+Quickenham arrived at Bullhampton, the Canon was staying at The
+Privets. He had come over there early in the week,--as it was
+supposed by Mr. Fenwick with some hope of talking his nephew into a
+more reasonable state of mind respecting Miss Lowther; but, according
+to Mrs. Fenwick's uncharitable views, with the distinct object of
+escaping the long church services of the Holy week,--and was to
+return to Salisbury on the Saturday. He was, therefore, invited to
+meet Mr. Quickenham at dinner on the Thursday. In his own city and
+among his own neighbours he would have thought it indiscreet to dine
+out in Passion week; but, as he explained to Mr. Fenwick, these
+things were very different in a rural parish.
+
+Mr. Quickenham arrived an hour or two before dinner, and was
+immediately taken out to see the obnoxious building; while Mrs.
+Fenwick, who never would go to see it, described all its horrors to
+her sister within the guarded precincts of her own drawing-room.
+
+"It used to be a bit of common land, didn't it?" said Mr. Quickenham.
+
+"I hardly know what is common land," replied the Vicar. "The children
+used to play here, and when there was a bit of grass on it some of
+the neighbours' cows would get it."
+
+"It was never advertised--to be let on building lease?"
+
+"Oh dear no! Lord Trowbridge never did anything of that sort."
+
+"I dare say not," said the lawyer. "I dare say not." Then he walked
+round the plot of ground, pacing it, as though something might be
+learned in that way. Then he looked up at the building with his hands
+in his pockets, and his head on one side. "Has there been a deed of
+gift,--perhaps a peppercorn rent, or something of that kind?" The
+Vicar declared that he was altogether ignorant of what had been done
+between the agent for the Marquis and the trustees to whom had been
+committed the building of the chapel. "I dare say nothing," said Mr.
+Quickenham. "They've been in such a hurry to punish you, that they've
+gone on a mere verbal permission. What's the extent of the glebe?"
+
+"They call it forty-two acres."
+
+"Did you ever have it measured?"
+
+"Never. It would make no difference to me whether it is forty-one or
+forty-three."
+
+"That's as may be," said the lawyer. "It's as nasty a thing as I've
+looked at for many a day, but it wouldn't do to call it a nuisance."
+
+"Of course not. Janet is very hot about it; but, as for me, I've made
+up my mind to swallow it. After all, what harm will it do me?"
+
+"It's an insult,--that's all."
+
+"But if I can show that I don't take it as an insult, the insult will
+be nothing. Of course the people know that their landlord is trying
+to spite me."
+
+"That's just it."
+
+"And for awhile they'll spite me too, because he does. Of course it's
+a bore. It cripples one's influence, and to a certain degree spreads
+dissent at the cost of the Church. Men and women will go to that
+place merely because Lord Trowbridge favours the building. I know all
+that, and it irks me; but still it will be better to swallow it."
+
+"Who's the oldest man in the parish?" asked Mr. Quickenham; "the
+oldest with his senses still about him." The parson reflected for
+awhile, and then said that he thought Brattle, the miller, was as
+old a man as there was there, with the capability left to him of
+remembering and of stating what he remembered. "And what's his
+age,--about?" Fenwick said that the miller was between sixty and
+seventy, and had lived in Bullhampton all his life. "A church-going
+man?" asked the lawyer. To this the Vicar was obliged to reply that,
+to his very great regret, old Brattle never entered a church. "Then
+I'll step over and see him during morning service to-morrow," said
+the lawyer. The Vicar raised his eyebrows, but said nothing as to
+the propriety of Mr. Quickenham's personal attendance at a place of
+worship on Good Friday.
+
+"Can anything be done, Richard?" said Mrs. Fenwick, appealing to her
+brother-in-law.
+
+"Yes;--undoubtedly something can be done."
+
+"Can there, indeed? I am so glad. What can be done?"
+
+"You can make the best of it."
+
+"That's just what I'm determined I won't do. It's mean-spirited, and
+so I tell Frank. I never would have hurt them as long as they treated
+us well; but now they are enemies, and as enemies I will regard them.
+I should think myself disgraced if I were to sit down in the presence
+of the Marquis of Trowbridge; I should, indeed."
+
+"You can easily manage that by standing up when you meet him," said
+Mr. Quickenham. Mr. Quickenham could be very funny at times, but
+those who knew him would remark that whenever he was funny he had
+something to hide. His wife as she heard his wit was quite sure that
+he had some plan in his head about the chapel.
+
+At half-past six there came Mr. Chamberlaine and his nephew. The
+conversation about the chapel was still continued, and the canon from
+Salisbury was very eloquent, and learned also, upon the subject. His
+eloquence was brightest while the ladies were still in the room,
+but his learning was brought forth most manifestly after they had
+retired. He was very clear in his opinion that the Marquis had the
+law on his side in giving the land for the purpose in question, even
+if it could be shown that he was simply the lord of the manor, and
+not so possessed of the spot as to do what he liked in it for his own
+purposes. Mr. Chamberlaine expressed his opinion that, although he
+himself might think otherwise, it would be held to be for the benefit
+of the community that the chapel should be built, and in no court
+could an injunction against the building be obtained.
+
+"But he couldn't give leave to have it put on another man's ground,"
+said the Queen's Counsel.
+
+"There is no question of another man's ground here," said the member
+of the Chapter.
+
+"I'm not so sure of that," continued Mr. Quickenham. "It may not
+be the ground of any one man, but if it's the ground of any ten or
+twenty it's the same thing."
+
+"But then there would be a lawsuit," said the Vicar.
+
+"It might come to that," said the Queen's Counsel.
+
+"I'm sure you wouldn't have a leg to stand upon," said the member of
+the Chapter.
+
+"I don't see that at all," said Gilmore. "If the land is common to
+the parish, the Marquis of Trowbridge cannot give it to a part of the
+parishioners because he is Lord of the Manor."
+
+"For such a purpose I should think he can," said Mr. Chamberlaine.
+
+"And I'm quite sure he can't," said Mr. Quickenham. "All the same, it
+may be very difficult to prove that he hasn't the right; and in the
+meantime there stands the chapel, a fact accomplished. If the ground
+had been bought and the purchasers had wanted a title, I think it
+probable the Marquis would never have got his money."
+
+"There can be no doubt that it is very ungentlemanlike," said Mr.
+Chamberlaine.
+
+"There I'm afraid I can't help you," said Mr. Quickenham. "Good law
+is not defined very clearly here in England; but good manners have
+never been defined at all."
+
+"I don't want anyone to help me on such a matter as that," said Mr.
+Chamberlaine, who did not altogether like Mr. Quickenham.
+
+"I dare say not," said Mr. Quickenham; "and yet the question may be
+open to argument. A man may do what he likes with his own, and can
+hardly be called ungentlemanlike because he gives it away to a person
+you don't happen to like."
+
+
+[Illustration: "I dare say not," said Mr. Quickenham.]
+
+
+"I know what we all think about it in Salisbury," said Mr.
+Chamberlaine.
+
+"It's just possible that you may be a little hypercritical in
+Salisbury," said Quickenham.
+
+There was nothing else discussed and nothing else thought of in
+the Vicarage. The first of June had been the day now fixed for the
+opening of the new chapel, and here they were already in April. Mr.
+Fenwick was quite of opinion that if the services of Mr. Puddleham's
+congregation were once commenced in the building they must
+be continued there. As long as the thing was a thing not yet
+accomplished it might be practicable to stop it; but there could be
+no stopping it when the full tide of Methodist eloquence should have
+begun to pour itself from the new pulpit. It would then have been
+made the House of God,--even though not consecrated,--and as such
+it must remain. And now he was becoming sick of the grievance, and
+wished that it was over. As to going to law with the Marquis on a
+question of Common-right, it was a thing that he would not think
+of doing. The living had come to him from his college, and he had
+thought it right to let the Bursar of Saint John's know what was
+being done; but it was quite clear that the college could not
+interfere or spend their money on a matter which, though it was
+parochial, had no reference to their property in the parish. It was
+not for the college, as patron of the living, to inquire whether
+certain lands belonged to the Marquis of Trowbridge or to the parish
+at large, though the Vicar no doubt, as one of the inhabitants of the
+place, might raise the question at law if he chose to find the money
+and could find the ground on which to raise it. His old friend the
+Bursar wrote him back a joking letter, recommending him to put more
+fire into his sermons and thus to preach his enemy down.
+
+"I have become so sick of this chapel," the Vicar said to his wife
+that night, "that I wish the subject might never be mentioned again
+in the house."
+
+"You can't be more sick of it than I am," said his wife.
+
+"What I mean is, that I'm sick of it as a subject of conversation.
+There it is, and let us make the best of it, as Quickenham says."
+
+"You can't expect anything like sympathy from Richard, you know."
+
+"I don't want any sympathy. I want simply silence. If you'll only
+make up your mind to take it for granted, and to put up with it--as
+you had to do with the frost when the shrubs were killed, or with
+anything that is disagreeable but unavoidable, the feeling of
+unhappiness about it would die away at once. One does not grieve at
+the inevitable."
+
+"But one must be quite sure that it is inevitable."
+
+"There it stands, and nothing that we can do can stop it."
+
+"Charlotte says that she is sure Richard has got something in his
+head. Though he will not sympathise, he will think and contrive and
+fight."
+
+"And half ruin us by his fighting," said the husband. "He fancies the
+land may be common land, and not private property."
+
+"Then of course the chapel has no right to be there."
+
+"But who is to have it removed? And if I could succeed in doing so,
+what would be said to me for putting down a place of worship after
+such a fashion as that?"
+
+"Who could say anything against you, Frank?"
+
+"The truth is, it is Lord Trowbridge who is my enemy here, and not
+the chapel or Mr. Puddleham. I'd have given the spot for the chapel,
+had they wanted it, and had I had the power to give it. I'm annoyed
+because Lord Trowbridge should know that he had got the better of
+me. If I can only bring myself to feel,--and you too,--that there is
+no better in it, and no worse, I shall be annoyed no longer. Lord
+Trowbridge cannot really touch me; and could he, I do not know that
+he would."
+
+"I know he would."
+
+"No, my dear. If he suddenly had the power to turn me out of the
+living I don't believe he'd do it,--any more than I would him out of
+his estate. Men indulge in little injuries who can't afford to be
+wicked enough for great injustice. My dear, you will do me a great
+favour,--the greatest possible kindness,--if you'll give up all
+outer, and, as far as possible, all inner hostility to the chapel."
+
+"Oh, Frank!"
+
+"I ask it as a great favour,--for my peace of mind."
+
+"Of course I will."
+
+"There's my darling! It shan't make me unhappy any longer. What!--a
+stupid lot of bricks and mortar, that, after all, are intended for a
+good purpose,--to think that I should become a miserable wretch just
+because this good purpose is carried on outside my own gate. Were it
+in my dining-room, I ought to bear it without misery."
+
+"I will strive to forget it," said his wife. And on the next morning,
+which was Good Friday, she walked to church, round by the outside
+gate, in order that she might give proof of her intention to keep her
+promise to her husband. Her husband walked before her; and as she
+went she looked round at her sister and shuddered and turned up her
+nose. But this was involuntary.
+
+In the mean time Mr. Quickenham was getting himself ready for his
+walk to the mill. Any such investigation as this which he had on hand
+was much more compatible with his idea of a holiday than attendance
+for two hours at the Church Service. On Easter Sunday he would make
+the sacrifice,--unless a headache, or pressing letters from London,
+or Apollo in some other beneficent shape, might interfere and save
+him from the necessity. Mr. Quickenham, when at home, would go to
+church as seldom as was possible, so that he might save himself from
+being put down as one who neglected public worship. Perhaps he was
+about equal to Mr. George Brattle in his religious zeal. Mr. George
+Brattle made a clear compromise with his own conscience. One good
+Sunday against a Sunday that was not good left him, as he thought,
+properly poised in his intended condition of human infirmity. It may
+be doubted whether Mr. Quickenham's mind was equally philosophic on
+the matter. He could hardly tell why he went to church, or why he
+stayed away. But he was aware when he went of the presence of some
+unsatisfactory feelings of imposture on his own part, and he was
+equally alive, when he did not go, to a sting of conscience in that
+he was neglecting a duty. But George Brattle had arranged it all in a
+manner that was perfectly satisfactory to himself.
+
+Mr. Quickenham had inquired the way, and took the path to the mill
+along the river. He walked rapidly, with his nose in the air, as
+though it was a manifest duty, now that he found himself in the
+country, to get over as much ground as possible, and to refresh his
+lungs thoroughly. He did not look much as he went at the running
+river, or at the opening buds on the trees and hedges. When he met
+a rustic loitering on the path, he examined the man unconsciously,
+and could afterwards have described, with tolerable accuracy, how
+he was dressed; and he had smiled as he had observed the amatory
+pleasantness of a young couple, who had not thought it at all
+necessary to increase the distance between them because of his
+presence. These things he had seen, but the stream, and the hedges,
+and the twittering of the birds, were as nothing to him.
+
+As he went he met old Mrs. Brattle making her weary way to church. He
+had not known Mrs. Brattle, and did not speak to her, but he had felt
+quite sure that she was the miller's wife. Standing with his hands in
+his pockets on the bridge which divided the house from the mill, with
+his pipe in his mouth, was old Brattle, engaged for the moment in
+saying some word to his daughter, Fanny, who was behind him. But she
+retreated as soon as she saw the stranger, and the miller stood his
+ground, waiting to be accosted, suspicion keeping his hands deep
+down in his pockets, as though resolved that he would not be tempted
+to put them forth for the purpose of any friendly greeting. The
+lawyer saluted him by name, and then the miller touched his hat,
+thrusting his hand back into his pocket as soon as the ceremony
+was accomplished. Mr. Quickenham explained that he had come from
+the Vicarage, that he was brother-in-law to Mr. Fenwick, and a
+lawyer,--at each of which statements old Brattle made a slight
+projecting motion with his chin, as being a mode of accepting the
+information slightly better than absolute discourtesy. At the present
+moment Mr. Fenwick was out of favour with him, and he was not
+disposed to open his heart to visitors from the Vicarage. Then Mr.
+Quickenham plunged at once into the affair of the day.
+
+"You know that chapel they are building, Mr. Brattle, just opposite
+to the parson's gate?"
+
+Mr. Brattle replied that he had heard of the chapel, but had never,
+as yet, been up to see it.
+
+"Indeed; but you remember the bit of ground?"
+
+Yes;--the miller remembered the ground very well. Man and boy he had
+known it for sixty years. As far as his mind went he thought it a
+very good thing that the piece of ground should be put to some useful
+purpose at last.
+
+"I'm not sure but what you may be right there," said the lawyer.
+
+"It's not been of use,--not to nobody,--for more than forty year,"
+said the miller.
+
+"And before that what did they do with it?"
+
+"Parson, as we had then in Bull'umpton, kep' a few sheep."
+
+"Ah!--just so. And he would get a bit of feeding off the ground?" The
+miller nodded his head. "Was that the Vicar just before Mr. Fenwick?"
+asked the lawyer.
+
+"Not by no means. There was Muster Brandon, who never come here at
+all, but had a curate who lived away to Hinton. He come after Parson
+Smallbones."
+
+"It was Parson Smallbones who kept the sheep?"
+
+"And then there was Muster Threepaway, who was parson well nigh
+thirty years afore Muster Fenwick come. He died up at Parsonage
+House, did Muster Threepaway."
+
+"He didn't keep sheep?"
+
+"No; he kep' no sheep as ever I heard tell on. He didn't keep much
+barring hisself,--didn't Muster Threepaway. He had never no child,
+nor yet no wife, nor nothing at all, hadn't Muster Threepaway. But he
+was a good man as didn't go meddling with folk."
+
+"But Parson Smallbones was a bit of a farmer?"
+
+"Ay, ay. Parsons in them days warn't above a bit of farming. I warn't
+much more than a scrap of a boy, but I remember him. He wore a wig,
+and old black gaiters; and knew as well what was his'n and what
+wasn't as any parson in Wiltshire. Tithes was tithes then; and parson
+was cute enough in taking on 'em."
+
+"But these sheep of his were his own, I suppose?"
+
+"Whose else would they be, sir?"
+
+"And did he fence them in on that bit of ground?"
+
+"There'd be a boy with 'em, I'm thinking, sir. There wasn't so much
+fencing of sheep then as there be now. Boys was cheaper in them
+days."
+
+"Just so; and the parson wouldn't allow other sheep there?"
+
+"Muster Smallbones mostly took all he could get, sir."
+
+"Exactly. The parsons generally did, I believe. It was the way in
+which they followed most accurately the excellent examples set them
+by the bishops. But, Mr. Brattle, it wasn't in the way of tithes that
+he had this grass for his sheep?"
+
+"I can't say how he had it, nor yet how Muster Fenwick has the
+meadows t'other side of the river, which he lets to farmer Pierce;
+but he do have 'em, and farmer Pierce do pay him the rent."
+
+"Glebe land, you know," said Mr. Quickenham.
+
+"That's what they calls it," said the miller.
+
+"And none of the vicars that came after old Smallbones have ever done
+anything with that bit of ground?"
+
+"Ne'er a one on'em. Mr. Brandon, as I tell 'ee, never come nigh the
+place. I don't know as ever I see'd him. It was him as they made
+bishop afterwards, some'eres away in Ireland. He had a lord to his
+uncle. Then Muster Threepaway, he was here ever so long."
+
+"But he didn't mind such things."
+
+"He never owned no sheep; and the old 'oomen's cows was let to go on
+the land, as was best, and then the boys took to playing hopskotch
+there, with a horse or two over it at times, and now Mr. Puddleham
+has it for his preaching. Maybe, sir, the lawyers might have a turn
+at it yet;" and the miller laughed at his own wit.
+
+"And get more out of it than any former occupant," said Mr.
+Quickenham, who would indeed have been very loth to allow his wife's
+brother-in-law to go into a law suit, but still felt that a very
+pretty piece of litigation was about to be thrown away in this matter
+of Mr. Puddleham's chapel.
+
+Mr. Quickenham bade farewell to the miller, and thought that he saw
+a way to a case. But he was a man very strongly given to accuracy,
+and on his return to the Vicarage said no word of his conversation
+with the miller. It would have been natural that Fenwick should
+have interrogated him as to his morning's work; but the Vicar had
+determined to trouble himself no further about his grievance, to
+say nothing further respecting it to any man, not even to allow the
+remembrance of Mr. Puddleham and his chapel to dwell in his mind; and
+consequently held his peace. Mrs. Fenwick was curious enough on the
+subject, but she had made a promise to her husband, and would at
+least endeavour to keep it. If her sister should tell her anything
+unasked, that would not be her fault.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIII.
+
+EASTER AT TURNOVER CASTLE.
+
+
+It was not only at Bullhampton that this affair of the Methodist
+chapel demanded and received attention. At Turnover also a good deal
+was being said about it, and the mind of the Marquis was not easy. As
+has been already told, the bishop had written to him on the subject,
+remonstrating with him as to the injury he was doing to the present
+vicar, and to future vicars, of the parish which he, as landlord,
+was bound to treat with beneficent consideration. The Marquis had
+replied to the bishop with a tone of stern resolve. The Vicar of
+Bullhampton had treated him with scorn, nay, as he thought, with most
+unpardonable insolence, and he would not spare the Vicar. It was
+proper that the dissenters at Bullhampton should have a chapel, and
+he had a right to do what he liked with his own. So arguing with
+himself, he had written to the bishop very firmly; but his own mind
+had not been firm within him as he did so. There were misgivings
+at his heart. He was a Churchman himself, and he was pricked with
+remorse as he remembered that he was spiting the Church which was
+connected with the state, of which he was so eminent a supporter. His
+own chief agent, too, had hesitated, and had suggested that perhaps
+the matter might be postponed. His august daughters, though they
+had learned to hold the name of Fenwick in proper abhorrence,
+nevertheless were grieved about the chapel. Men and women were
+talking about it, and the words of the common people found their way
+to the august daughters of the house of Stowte.
+
+"Papa," said Lady Carolina; "wouldn't it, perhaps, be better to build
+the Bullhampton chapel a little farther off from the Vicarage?"
+
+"The next vicar might be a different sort of person," said the Lady
+Sophie.
+
+"No; it wouldn't," said the Earl, who was apt to be very imperious
+with his own daughters, although he was of opinion that they should
+be held in great awe by all the world--excepting only himself and
+their eldest brother.
+
+That eldest brother, Lord Saint George, was in truth regarded at
+Turnover as being, of all persons in the world, the most august.
+The Marquis himself was afraid of his son, and held him in extreme
+veneration. To the mind of the Marquis the heir expectant of all the
+dignities of the House of Stowte was almost a greater man than the
+owner of them; and this feeling came not only from a consciousness
+on the part of the father that his son was a bigger man than himself,
+cleverer, better versed in the affairs of the world, and more thought
+of by those around them, but also to a certain extent from an idea
+that he who would have all these grand things thirty or perhaps even
+fifty years hence, must be more powerful than one with whom their
+possession would come to an end probably after the lapse of eight
+or ten years. His heir was to him almost divine. When things at
+the castle were in any way uncomfortable, he could put up with the
+discomfort for himself and his daughters; but it was not to be
+endured that Saint George should be incommoded. Old carriage-horses
+must be changed if he were coming; the glazing of the new greenhouse
+must be got out of the way, lest he should smell the paint; the game
+must not be touched till he should come to shoot it. And yet Lord
+Saint George himself was a man who never gave himself any airs; and
+who in his personal intercourse with the world around him demanded
+much less acknowledgment of his magnificence than did his father.
+
+And now, during this Easter week, Lord Saint George came down to
+the castle, intending to kill two birds with one stone, to take his
+parliamentary holiday, and to do a little business with his father.
+It not unfrequently came to pass that he found it necessary to
+repress the energy of his father's august magnificence. He would go
+so far as to remind his father that in these days marquises were not
+very different from other people, except in this, that they perhaps
+might have more money. The Marquis would fret in silence, not daring
+to commit himself to an argument with his son, and would in secret
+lament over the altered ideas of the age. It was his theory of
+politics that the old distances should be maintained, and that the
+head of a great family should be a patriarch, entitled to obedience
+from those around him. It was his son's idea that every man was
+entitled to as much obedience as his money would buy, and to no more.
+This was very lamentable to the Marquis; but nevertheless, his son
+was the coming man, and even this must be borne.
+
+"I'm sorry about this chapel at Bullhampton," said the son to the
+father after dinner.
+
+"Why sorry, Saint George? I thought you would have been of opinion
+that the dissenters should have a chapel."
+
+"Certainly they should, if they're fools enough to want to build
+a place to pray in, when they have got one already built for them.
+There's no reason on earth why they shouldn't have a chapel, seeing
+that nothing that we can do will save them from schism."
+
+"We can't prevent dissent, Saint George."
+
+"We can't prevent it, because, in religion as in everything else, men
+like to manage themselves. This farmer or that tradesman becomes a
+dissenter because he can be somebody in the management of his chapel,
+and would be nobody in regard to the parish church."
+
+"That is very dreadful."
+
+"Not worse than our own people, who remain with us because it sounds
+the most respectable. Not one in fifty really believes that this or
+that form of worship is more likely to send him to heaven than any
+other."
+
+"I certainly claim to myself to be one of the few," said the Marquis.
+
+"No doubt; and so you ought, my lord, as every advantage has been
+given you. But, to come back to the Bullhampton chapel,--don't you
+think we could move it away from the parson's gate?"
+
+"They have built it now, Saint George."
+
+"They can't have finished it yet."
+
+"You wouldn't have me ask them to pull it down? Packer was here
+yesterday, and said that the framework of the roof was up."
+
+"What made them hurry it in that way? Spite against the Vicar, I
+suppose."
+
+"He is a most objectionable man, Saint George; most insolent,
+overbearing, and unlike a clergyman. They say that he is little
+better than an infidel himself."
+
+"We had better leave that to the bishop, my lord."
+
+"We must feel about it, connected as we are with the parish," said
+the Marquis.
+
+"But I don't think we shall do any good by going into a parochial
+quarrel."
+
+"It was the very best bit of land for the purpose in all
+Bullhampton," said the Marquis. "I made particular inquiry, and there
+can be no doubt of that. Though I particularly dislike that Mr.
+Fenwick, it was not done to injure him."
+
+"It does injure him damnably, my lord."
+
+"That's only an accident."
+
+"And I'm not at all sure that we shan't find that we have made a
+mistake."
+
+"How a mistake?"
+
+"That we have given away land that doesn't belong to us."
+
+"Who says it doesn't belong to us?" said the Marquis, angrily. A
+suggestion so hostile, so unjust, so cruel as this, almost overcame
+the feeling of veneration which he entertained for his son. "That is
+really nonsense, Saint George."
+
+"Have you looked at the title deeds?"
+
+"The title deeds are of course with Mr. Boothby. But Packer knows
+every foot of the ground,--even if I didn't know it myself."
+
+"I wouldn't give a straw for Packer's knowledge."
+
+"I haven't heard that they have even raised the question themselves."
+
+"I'm told that they will do so,--that they say it is common land.
+It's quite clear that it has never been either let or enclosed."
+
+"You might say the same of the bit of green that lies outside the
+park gate,--where the great oak stands; but I don't suppose that that
+is common."
+
+"I don't say that this is--but I do say that there may be difficulty
+of proof; and that to be driven to the proof in such a matter would
+be disagreeable."
+
+"What would you do, then?"
+
+"Take the bull by the horns, and move the chapel at our own expense
+to some site that shall be altogether unobjectionable."
+
+"We should be owning ourselves wrong, Augustus."
+
+"And why not? I cannot see what disgrace there is in coming forward
+handsomely and telling the truth. When the land was given we thought
+it was our own. There has come up a shadow of a doubt, and sooner
+than be in the wrong, we give another site and take all the expense.
+I think that would be the right sort of thing to do."
+
+Lord Saint George returned to town two days afterwards, and the
+Marquis was left with the dilemma on his mind. Lord Saint George,
+though he would frequently interfere in matters connected with the
+property in the manner described, would never dictate and seldom
+insist. He had said what he had got to say, and the Marquis was left
+to act for himself. But the old lord had learned to feel that he was
+sure to fall into some pit whenever he declined to follow his son's
+advice. His son had a painful way of being right that was a great
+trouble to him. And this was a question which touched him very
+nearly. It was not only that he must yield to Mr. Fenwick before the
+eyes of Mr. Puddleham and all the people of Bullhampton; but that he
+must confess his own ignorance as to the borders of his own property,
+and must abandon a bit of land which he believed to belong to the
+Stowte estate. Now, if there was a point in his religion as to which
+Lord Trowbridge was more staunch than another, it was as to the
+removal of landmarks. He did not covet his neighbour's land; but he
+was most resolute that no stranger should, during his reign, ever
+possess a rood of his own.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIV.
+
+THE MARRABLES OF DUNRIPPLE.
+
+
+"If I were to go, there would be nobody left but you. You should
+remember that, Walter, when you talk of going to India." This was
+said to Walter Marrable at Dunripple, by his cousin Gregory, Sir
+Gregory's only son.
+
+"And if I were to die in India, as I probably shall, who will come
+next?"
+
+"There is nobody to come next for the title."
+
+"But for the property?"
+
+"As it stands at present, if you and I were to die before your father
+and uncle John, the survivor of them would be the last in the entail.
+If they, too, died, and the survivor of us all left no will, the
+property would go to Mary Lowther. But that is hardly probable. When
+my grandfather made the settlement, on my father's marriage, he had
+four sons living."
+
+"Should my father have the handling of it I would not give much for
+anybody's chance after him," said Walter.
+
+"If you were to marry there would, of course, be a new settlement
+as to your rights. Your father could do no harm except as your
+heir,--unless, indeed, he were heir to us all. My uncle John will
+outlive him, probably."
+
+"My uncle John will live for ever, I should think," said Walter
+Marrable.
+
+This conversation took place between the two cousins when Walter
+had been already two or three weeks at Dunripple. He had come there
+intending to stay over two or three days, and he had already accepted
+an invitation to make the house his home as long as he should remain
+in England. He had known but little of his uncle and nothing of his
+cousin, before this visit was made. He had conceived them to be
+unfriendly to him, having known them to be always unfriendly to his
+father. He was, of course, aware,--very well aware now, since he had
+himself suffered so grievously from his father's dishonesty,--that
+the enmity which had reached them from Dunripple had been well
+deserved. Colonel Marrable had, as a younger brother, never been
+content with what he was able to extract from the head of the family,
+who was, in his eyes, a milch cow that never ought to run dry. With
+Walter Marrable there had remained a feeling adverse to his uncle and
+cousin, even after he had been forced to admit to himself how many
+and how grievous were the sins of his own father. He had believed
+that the Dunripple people were stupid, and prejudiced, and selfish;
+and it had only been at the instance of his uncle, the parson, that
+he had consented to make the visit. He had gone there, and had been
+treated, at any rate, with affectionate consideration. And he had
+found the house to be not unpleasant, though very quiet. Living at
+Dunripple there was a Mrs. Brownlow, a widowed sister of the late
+Lady Marrable, with her daughter, Edith Brownlow. Previous to this
+time Walter Marrable had never even heard of the Brownlows, so little
+had he known about Dunripple; and when he arrived there it had been
+necessary to explain to him who these people were.
+
+He had found his uncle, Sir Gregory, to be much such a man as he had
+expected in outward appearance and mode of life. The baronet was old
+and disposed to regard himself as entitled to all the indulgences
+of infirmity. He rose late, took but little exercise, was very
+particular about what he ate, and got through his day with the
+assistance of his steward, his novel, and occasionally of his doctor.
+He slept a great deal, and was never tired of talking of himself.
+Occupation in life he had none, but he was a charitable, honourable
+man, who had high ideas of what was due to others. His son, however,
+had astonished Walter considerably. Gregory Marrable the younger
+was a man somewhat over forty, but he looked as though he were
+sixty. He was very tall and thin, narrow in the chest, and so round
+in the shoulders as to appear to be almost humpbacked. He was so
+short-sighted as to be nearly blind, and was quite bald. He carried
+his head so forward that it looked as though it were going to fall
+off. He shambled with his legs, which seemed never to be strong
+enough to carry him from one room to another; and he tried them by no
+other exercise, for he never went outside the house except when, on
+Sundays and some other very rare occasions, he would trust himself to
+be driven in a low pony-phaeton. But in one respect he was altogether
+unlike his father. His whole time was spent among his books, and he
+was at this moment engaged in revising and editing a very long and
+altogether unreadable old English chronicle in rhyme, for publication
+by one of those learned societies which are rife in London. Of Robert
+of Gloucester, and William Langland, of Andrew of Wyntown and the
+Lady Juliana Berners, he could discourse, if not with eloquence, at
+least with enthusiasm. Chaucer was his favourite poet, and he was
+supposed to have read the works of Gower in English, French, and
+Latin. But he was himself apparently as old as one of his own
+black-letter volumes, and as unfit for general use. Walter could
+hardly regard him as a cousin, declaring to himself that his uncle
+the parson, and his own father were, in effect, younger men than the
+younger Gregory Marrable. He was never without a cough, never well,
+never without various ailments and troubles of the flesh,--of which,
+however, he himself made but slight account, taking them quite as a
+matter of course. With such inmates the house no doubt would have
+been dull, had there not been women there to enliven it.
+
+By degrees, too, and not by slow degrees, the new comer found that
+he was treated as one of the family,--found that, after a certain
+fashion, he was treated as the heir to the family. Between him and
+the title and the estate there were but the lives of four old men.
+Why had he not known that this was so before he had allowed himself
+to be separated from Mary Lowther? But he had known nothing of
+it,--had thought not at all about it. There had been another
+Marrable, of the same generation with himself, between him and
+the succession, who might marry and have children, and he had not
+regarded his heirship as being likely to have any effect, at any rate
+upon his early life. It had never occurred to him that he need not go
+to India, because he would probably outlive four old gentlemen and
+become Sir Walter Marrable and owner of Dunripple.
+
+Nor would he have looked at the matter in that light now had not his
+cousin forced the matter upon him. Not a word was said to him at
+Dunripple about Mary Lowther, but very many words were said about his
+own condition. Gregory Marrable strongly advised him against going to
+India,--so strongly that Walter was surprised to find that such a man
+would have so much to say on such a subject. The young captain, in
+such circumstances, could not very well explain that he was driven
+to follow his profession in a fashion so disagreeable to him because,
+although he was heir to Dunripple, he was not near enough to it to be
+entitled to any allowance from its owner; but he felt that that would
+have been the only true answer when it was proposed to him to stay
+in England because he would some day become Sir Walter Marrable. But
+he did plead the great loss which he had encountered by means of his
+father's ill-treatment of him, and endeavoured to prove to his cousin
+that there was no alternative before him but to serve in some quarter
+of the globe in which his pay would be sufficient for his wants.
+
+"Why should you not sell out, or go on half-pay, and remain here and
+marry Edith Brownlow?" said his cousin.
+
+"I don't think I could do that," said Walter, slowly.
+
+"Why not? There is nothing my father would like so much." Then he
+was silent for awhile, but, as his cousin made no further immediate
+reply, Gregory Marrable went on with his plan. "Ten years ago, when
+she was not much more than a little girl, and when it was first
+arranged that she should come here, my father proposed--that I should
+marry her."
+
+"And why didn't you?"
+
+The elder cousin smiled and shook his head, and coughed aloud as
+he smiled. "Why not, indeed? Well; I suppose you can see why not.
+I was an old man almost before she was a young woman. She is just
+twenty-four now, and I shall be dead, probably, in two years' time."
+
+"Nonsense."
+
+"Twice since that time I have been within an inch of dying. At any
+rate, even my father does not look to that any longer."
+
+"Is he fond of Miss Brownlow?"
+
+"There is no one in the world whom he loves so well. Of course an old
+man loves a young woman best. It is natural that he should do so. He
+never had a daughter; but Edith is the same to him as his own child.
+Nothing would please him so much as that she should be the mistress
+of Dunripple."
+
+"I'm afraid that it cannot be so," said Walter.
+
+"But why not? There need be no India for you then. If you would do
+that you would be to my father exactly as though you were his son.
+Your father might, of course, outlive my father, and no doubt will
+outlive me, and then for his life he will have the place, but some
+arrangement could be made so that you should continue here."
+
+"I'm afraid it cannot be so," said Walter. Many thoughts were passing
+through his mind. Why had he not known that these good things were so
+near to him before he had allowed Mary Lowther to go off from him?
+And, had it chanced that he had visited Dunripple before he had gone
+to Loring, how might it have been between him and this other girl?
+Edith Brownlow was not beautiful, not grand in her beauty as was
+Mary Lowther; but she was pretty, soft, lady-like, with a sweet dash
+of quiet pleasant humour,--a girl who certainly need not be left
+begging about the world for a husband. And this life at Dunripple was
+pleasant enough. Though the two elder Marrables were old and infirm,
+Walter was allowed to do just as he pleased in the house. He was
+encouraged to hunt. There was shooting for him if he wished it. Even
+the servants about the place, the gamekeeper, the groom, and the old
+butler, seemed to have recognised him as the heir. There would have
+been so comfortable an escape from the dilemma into which his father
+had brought him,--had he not made his visit to Loring.
+
+"Why not?" demanded Gregory Marrable.
+
+"A man cannot become attached to a girl by order, and what right have
+I to suppose that she would accept me?"
+
+"Of course she would accept you. Why not? Everybody around her would
+be in your favour. And as to not falling in love with her, I declare
+I do not know a sweeter human being in the world than Edith
+Brownlow."
+
+Before the hunting season was over Captain Marrable had abandoned
+his intention of going to India, and had made arrangements for
+serving for awhile with his regiment in England. This he did after a
+discussion of some length with his uncle, Sir Gregory. During that
+discussion nothing was said about Edith Brownlow, and of course, not
+a word was said about Mary Lowther. Captain Marrable did not even
+know whether his uncle or his cousin was aware that that engagement
+had ever existed. Between him and his uncle there had never been an
+allusion to his marriage, but the old man had spoken of his nearness
+to the property, and had expressed his regret that the last heir,
+the only heir likely to perpetuate the name and title, should take
+himself to India in the pride of his life. He made no offer as to
+money, but he told his nephew that there was a home for him if he
+would give up his profession, or a retreat whenever his professional
+duties might allow him to visit it. Horses should be kept for him,
+and he should be treated in every way as a son of the family.
+
+"Take my father at his word," said Gregory Marrable. "He will never
+let you be short of money."
+
+After much consideration Walter Marrable did take Sir Gregory at his
+word, and abandoned for ever all idea of a further career in India.
+
+As soon as he had done this he wrote to Mary Lowther to inform her of
+his decision. "It does seem hard," he said in his letter, "that an
+arrangement which is in so many respects desirable, should not have
+been compatible with one which is so much more desirable." But he
+made no renewed offer. Indeed he felt that he could not do so at the
+present moment, in honesty either to his cousin or to his uncle, as
+he had accepted their hospitality and acceded to the arrangements
+which they had proposed without any word on his part of such
+intention. A home had been offered to him at Dunripple,--to him in
+his present condition, but certainly not a home to any wife whom
+he might bring there, nor a home to the family which might come
+afterwards. He thought that he was doing the best that he could with
+himself by remaining in England, and the best also towards a possible
+future renewal of his engagement with Mary Lowther. But of that he
+said nothing in his letter to her. He merely told her the fact as it
+regarded himself, and told that somewhat coldly. Of Edith Brownlow,
+and of the proposition in regard to her, of course he said nothing.
+
+It was the intention both of Sir Gregory and his son that the new
+inmate of the house should marry Edith. The old man, who, up to a
+late date had with weak persistency urged the match upon his son,
+had taken up the idea from the very first arrival of his nephew
+at Dunripple. Such an arrangement would solve all the family
+difficulties, and would enable him to provide for Edith as though she
+were indeed his daughter. He loved Edith dearly, but he could not
+bear that she should leave Dunripple, and it had grieved him sorely
+when he reflected that in coming years Dunripple must belong to
+relatives of whom he knew nothing that was good, and that Edith
+Brownlow must be banished from the house. If his son would have
+married Edith, all might have been well, but even Sir Gregory was at
+last aware that no such marriage as that could take place. Then had
+come the quarrel between the Colonel and the Captain, and the latter
+had been taken into favour. Colonel Marrable would not have been
+allowed to put his foot inside Dunripple House, so great was the
+horror which he had created. And the son had been feared too as long
+as the father and son were one. But now the father, who had treated
+the whole family vilely, had treated his own son most vilely, and
+therefore the son had been received with open arms. If only he could
+be trusted with Edith,--and if Edith and he might be made to trust
+each other,--all might be well. Of the engagement between Walter and
+Mary Lowther no word had ever reached Dunripple. Twice or thrice
+in the year a letter would pass between Parson John and his nephew,
+Gregory Marrable, but such letters were very short, and the parson
+was the last man in the world to spread the tittle-tattle of a
+love-story. He had always known that that affair would lead to
+nothing, and that the less said about it the better.
+
+Walter Marrable was to join his regiment at Windsor before the end
+of April. When he wrote to Mary Lowther to tell her of his plans he
+had only a fortnight longer for remaining in idleness at Dunripple.
+The hunting was over, and his life was simply idle. He perceived, or
+thought that he perceived, that all the inmates of the house, and
+especially his uncle, expected that he would soon return to them,
+and that they spoke of his work of soldiering as of a thing that
+was temporary. Mrs. Brownlow, who was a quiet woman, very reticent,
+and by no means inclined to interfere with things not belonging to
+her, had suggested that he would soon be with them again, and the
+housekeeper had given him to understand that his room was not to be
+touched. And then, too, he thought that he saw that Edith Brownlow
+was specially left in his way. If that were so it was necessary that
+the eyes of some one of the Dunripple party should be opened to the
+truth.
+
+He was walking home with Miss Brownlow across the park from church
+one Sunday morning. Sir Gregory never went to church; his age was
+supposed to be too great, or his infirmities too many. Mrs. Brownlow
+was in the pony carriage driving her nephew, and Walter Marrable was
+alone with Edith. There had been some talk of cousinship,--of the
+various relationships of the family, and the like,--and of the way
+in which the Marrables were connected. They two, Walter and Edith,
+were not cousins. She was related to the family only by her aunt's
+marriage, and yet, as she said, she had always heard more of the
+Marrables than of the Brownlows.
+
+
+[Illustration: Sunday Morning at Dunripple.]
+
+
+"You never saw Mary Lowther?" Walter asked.
+
+"Never."
+
+"But you have heard of her?"
+
+"I just know her name,--hardly more. The last time your uncle was
+here,--Parson John, we were talking of her. He made her out to be
+wonderfully beautiful."
+
+"That was as long ago as last summer," said the Captain, reflecting
+that his uncle's account had been given before he and Mary Lowther
+had seen each other.
+
+"Oh, yes;--ever so long ago."
+
+"She is wonderfully beautiful."
+
+"You know her, then, Captain Marrable?"
+
+"I know her very well. In the first place, she is my cousin."
+
+"But ever so distant?"
+
+"We are not first cousins. Her mother was a daughter of General
+Marrable, who was a brother of Sir Gregory's father."
+
+"It is so hard to understand, is it not? She is wonderfully
+beautiful, is she?"
+
+"Indeed, she is."
+
+"And she is your cousin--in the first place. What is she in the
+second place?"
+
+He was not quite sure whether he wished to tell the story or not.
+The engagement was broken, and it might be a question whether, as
+regarded Mary, he had a right to tell it; and, then, if he did
+tell it, would not his reason for doing so be apparent? Was it not
+palpable that he was expected to marry this girl, and that she would
+understand that he was explaining to her that he did not intend to
+carry out the general expectation of the family? And, then, was he
+sure that it might not be possible for him at some future time to do
+as he was desired?
+
+"I meant to say that, as I was staying at Loring, of course I met her
+frequently. She is living with a certain old Miss Marrable, whom you
+will meet some day."
+
+"I have heard of her, but I don't suppose I ever shall meet her. I
+never go anywhere. I don't suppose there are such stay-at-home people
+in the world as we are."
+
+"Why don't you get Sir Gregory to ask them here?"
+
+"Both he and my cousin are so afraid of having strange women in
+the house; you know, we never have anybody here; your coming has
+been quite an event. Old Mrs. Potter seems to think that an era of
+dissipation is to be commenced because she has been called upon to
+open so many pots of jam to make pies for you."
+
+"I'm afraid I have been very troublesome."
+
+"Awfully troublesome. You can't think of all that had to be said and
+done about the stables! Do you have your oats bruised? Even I was
+consulted about that. Most of the people in the parish are quite
+disappointed because you don't go about in your full armour."
+
+"I'm afraid it's too late now."
+
+"I own I was a little disappointed myself when you came down to
+dinner without a sword. You can have no idea in what a state of rural
+simplicity we live here. Would you believe it?--for ten years I have
+never seen the sea, and have never been into any town bigger than
+Worcester,--unless Hereford be bigger. We did go once to the festival
+at Hereford. We have not managed Gloucester yet."
+
+"You've never seen London?"
+
+"Not since I was twelve years old. Papa died when I was fourteen,
+and I came here almost immediately afterwards. Fancy, ten years at
+Dunripple! There is not a tree or a stone I don't know, and of course
+not a face in the parish."
+
+She was very nice; but it was out of the question that she should
+ever become his wife. He had thought that he might explain this to
+herself by letting her know that he had within the last few months
+become engaged to, and had broken his engagement with, his cousin,
+Mary Lowther. But he found that he could not do it. In the first
+place, she would understand more than he meant her to understand if
+he made the attempt. She would know that he was putting her on her
+guard, and would take it as an insult. And then he could not bring
+himself to talk about Mary Lowther, and to tell their joint secrets.
+He was discontented with himself and with Dunripple, and he repented
+that he had yielded in respect to his Indian service. Everything had
+gone wrong with him. Had he refused to accede to Mary's proposition
+for a separation, and had he come to Dunripple as an engaged man, he
+might, he thought, have reconciled his uncle,--or at least his Cousin
+Gregory,--to his marriage with Mary. But he did not see his way back
+to that position now, having been entertained at his uncle's house as
+his uncle's heir for so long a time without having mentioned it.
+
+At last he went off to Windsor, sad at heart, having received from
+Mary an answer to his letter, which he felt to be very cold, very
+discreet, and very unsatisfactory. She had merely expressed a fervent
+wish that whether he went to India or whether he remained in England,
+he might be prosperous and happy. The writer evidently intended that
+the correspondence should not be continued.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLV.
+
+WHAT SHALL I DO WITH MYSELF?
+
+
+Parson John Marrable, though he said nothing in his letters to
+Dunripple about the doings of his nephew at Loring, was by no
+means equally reticent in his speech at Loring as to the doings at
+Dunripple. How he came by his news he did not say, but he had ever so
+much to tell. And Miss Marrable, who knew him well, was aware that
+his news was not simple gossip, but was told with an object. In
+his way, Parson John was a crafty man, who was always doing a turn
+of business. To his mind it was clearly inexpedient, and almost
+impracticable, that his nephew and Mary Lowther should ever become
+man and wife. He knew that they were separated; but he knew, also,
+that they had agreed to separate on terms which would easily admit
+of being reconsidered. He, too, had heard of Edith Brownlow, and had
+heard that if a marriage could be arranged between Walter and Edith,
+the family troubles would be in a fair way of settlement. No good
+could come to anybody from that other marriage. As for Mary Lowther,
+it was manifestly her duty to become Mrs. Gilmore. He therefore took
+some trouble to let the ladies at Uphill know that Captain Marrable
+had been received very graciously at Dunripple; that he was making
+himself very happy there, hunting, shooting, and forgetting his old
+troubles; that it was understood that he was to be recognised as the
+heir;--and that there was a young lady in the case, the favourite of
+Sir Gregory.
+
+He understood the world too well to say a word to Mary Lowther
+herself about her rival. Mary would have perceived his drift. But
+he expressed his ideas about Edith confidentially to Miss Marrable,
+fully alive to the fact that Miss Marrable would know how to deal
+with her niece. "It is by far the best thing that could have happened
+to him," said the parson. "As for going out to India again, for a man
+with his prospects it was very bad."
+
+"But his cousin isn't much older than he is," suggested Miss
+Marrable.
+
+"Yes he is,--a great deal older. And Gregory's health is so bad that
+his life is not worth a year's purchase. Poor fellow! they tell me he
+only cares to live till he has got his book out. The truth is that
+if Walter could make a match of it with Edith Brownlow, they might
+arrange something about the property which would enable him to live
+there just as though the place were his own. The Colonel would be the
+only stumbling-block, and after what he has done, he could hardly
+refuse to agree to anything."
+
+"They'd have to pay him," said Miss Marrable.
+
+"Then he must be paid, that's all. My brother Gregory is wrapped up
+in that girl, and he would do anything for her welfare. I'm told that
+she and Walter have taken very kindly to each other already."
+
+It would be better for Mary Lowther that Walter Marrable should marry
+Edith Brownlow. Such, at least, was Miss Marrable's belief. She could
+see that Mary, though she bore herself bravely, still did so as one
+who had received a wound for which there was no remedy;--as a man
+who has lost a leg and who nevertheless intends to enjoy life though
+he knows that he never can walk again. But in this case, the real
+bar to walking was the hope in Mary's breast,--a hope that was
+still present, though it was not nourished,--that the leg was not
+irremediably lost. If Captain Marrable would finish all that by
+marrying Edith, then,--so thought Miss Marrable,--in process of time
+the cure would be made good, and there might be another leg. She did
+not believe much in the Captain's constancy, and was quite ready to
+listen to the story about another love. And so from day to day words
+were dropped into Mary's ear which had their effect.
+
+"I must say that I am glad that he is not to go to India," said Miss
+Marrable to her niece.
+
+"So, indeed, am I," answered Mary.
+
+"In the first place it is such an excellent thing that he should be
+on good terms at Dunripple. He must inherit the property some day,
+and the title too."
+
+To this Mary made no reply. It seemed to her to have been hard that
+the real state of things should not have been explained to her before
+she gave up her lover. She had then regarded any hope of relief
+from Dunripple as being beyond measure distant. There had been a
+possibility, and that was all,--a chance to which no prudent man or
+woman would have looked in making their preparations for the life
+before them. That had been her idea as to the Dunripple prospects;
+and now it seemed that on a sudden Walter was to be regarded as
+almost the immediate heir. She did not blame him; but it did appear
+to be hard upon her.
+
+"I don't see the slightest reason why he shouldn't live at
+Dunripple," continued Miss Marrable.
+
+"Only that he would be dependent. I suppose he does not mean to sell
+out of the army altogether."
+
+"At any rate, he may be backwards and forwards. You see, there is no
+chance of Sir Gregory's own son marrying."
+
+"So they say."
+
+"And his position would be really that of a younger brother in
+similar circumstances."
+
+Mary paused a moment before she replied, and then she spoke out.
+
+"Dear Aunt Sarah, what does all this mean? I know you are speaking at
+me, and yet I don't quite understand it. Everything between me and
+Captain Marrable is over. I have no possible means of influencing
+his life. If I were told to-morrow that he had given up the army and
+taken to living altogether at Dunripple, I should have no means of
+judging whether he had done well or ill. Indeed, I should have no
+right to judge."
+
+"You must be glad that the family should be united."
+
+"I am glad. Now, is that all?"
+
+"I want you to bring yourself to think without regret of his probable
+marriage with this young lady."
+
+"You don't suppose I shall blame him if he marries her."
+
+"But I want you to see it in such a light that it shall not make you
+unhappy."
+
+"I think, dear aunt, that we had better not talk of it. I can assure
+you of this, that if I could prevent him from marrying by holding up
+my little finger, I would not do it."
+
+"It would be ten thousand pities," urged the old lady, "that either
+his life or yours should be a sacrifice to a little episode, which,
+after all, only took a week or two in the acting."
+
+"I can only answer for myself," said Mary. "I don't mean to be a
+sacrifice."
+
+There were many such conversations, and by degrees they did have an
+effect upon Mary Lowther. She learned to believe that it was probable
+that Captain Marrable should marry Miss Brownlow, and, of course,
+asked herself questions as to the effect such a marriage would have
+upon herself, which she answered more fully than she did those which
+were put to her by her aunt. Then there came to Parson John some
+papers, which required his signature, in reference to the disposal
+of a small sum of money, he having been one of the trustees to his
+brother's marriage settlement. This was needed in regard to some
+provision which the baronet was making for his niece, and which, if
+read aright, would rather have afforded evidence against than in
+favour of the chance of her immediate marriage; but it was taken
+at Loring to signify that the thing was to be done, and that the
+courtship was at any rate in progress. Mary did not believe all
+that she heard; but there was left upon her mind an idea that
+Walter Marrable was preparing himself for the sudden change of his
+affections. Then she determined that, should he do so, she would not
+judge him to have done wrong. If he could settle himself comfortably
+in this way, why should he not do so? She was told that Edith
+Brownlow was pretty, and gentle, and good, and would undoubtedly
+receive from Sir Gregory's hands all that Sir Gregory could give
+her. It was expedient, for the sake of the whole family, that such
+a marriage should be arranged. She would not stand in the way of
+it; and, indeed, how could she stand in the way of it? Had not her
+engagement with Captain Marrable been dissolved at her own instance
+in the most solemn manner possible? Let him marry whom he might, she
+could have no ground of complaint on that score.
+
+She was in this state of mind when she received Captain Marrable's
+letter from Dunripple. When she opened it, for a moment she thought
+that it would convey to her tidings respecting Miss Brownlow. When
+she had read it, she told herself how impossible it was that he
+should have told her of his new matrimonial intentions, even if he
+entertained them. The letter gave no evidence either one way or the
+other; but it confirmed to her the news which had reached her through
+Parson John, that her former lover intended to abandon that special
+career, his choice of which had made it necessary that they two
+should abandon their engagement. When at Loring he had determined
+that he must go to India. He had found it to be impossible that he
+should live without going to India. He had now been staying a few
+weeks at Dunripple with his uncle, and with Edith Brownlow, and it
+turned out that he need not go to India at all. Then she sat down,
+and wrote to him that guarded, civil, but unenthusiastic letter, of
+which the reader has already heard. She had allowed herself to be
+wounded and made sore by what they had told her of Edith Brownlow.
+
+It was still early in the spring, just in the middle of April, when
+Mary received another letter from her friend at Bullhampton, a letter
+which made her turn all these things in her mind very seriously. If
+Walter Marrable were to marry Edith Brownlow, what sort of future
+life should she, Mary Lowther, propose to herself? She was firmly
+resolved upon one thing, that it behoved her to look rather to what
+was right than to what might simply be pleasant. But would it be
+right that she should consider herself to be, as it were, widowed by
+the frustration of an unfortunate passion? Life would still be left
+to her,--such a life as that which her aunt lived,--such a life, with
+this exception, that whereas her aunt was a single lady with moderate
+means, she would be a single lady with very small means indeed. But
+that question of means did not go far with her; there was something
+so much more important that she could put that out of sight. She had
+told herself very plainly that it was a good thing for a woman to be
+married; that she would live and die unsuccessfully if she lived and
+died a single woman; that she had desired to do better with herself
+than that. Was it proper that she should now give up all such
+ambition because she had made a mistake? If it were proper, she would
+do so; and then the question resolved itself into this;--Could she be
+right if she married a man without loving him? To marry a man without
+esteeming him, without the possibility of loving him hereafter, she
+knew would be wrong.
+
+Mrs. Fenwick's letter was as follows;--
+
+
+   Vicarage, Tuesday.
+
+   MY DEAR MARY,
+
+   My brother-in-law left us yesterday, and has put us all
+   into a twitter. He said, just as he was going away, that
+   he didn't believe that Lord Trowbridge had any right to
+   give away the ground, because it had not been in his
+   possession or his family's for a great many years, or
+   something of that sort. We don't clearly understand all
+   about it, nor does he; but he is to find out something
+   which he says he can find out, and then let us know.
+   But in the middle of all this, Frank declares that he
+   won't stir in the matter, and that if he could put the
+   abominable thing down by holding up his finger, he would
+   not do it. And he has made me promise not to talk about
+   it, and, therefore, all I can do is to be in a twitter.
+   If that spiteful old man has really given away land
+   that doesn't belong to him, simply to annoy us,--and it
+   certainly has been done with no other object,--I think
+   that he ought to be told of it. Frank, however, has got to
+   be quite serious about it, and you know how very serious
+   he can be when he is serious.
+
+   But I did not sit down to write specially about that
+   horrid chapel. I want to know what you mean to do in
+   the summer. It is always better to make these little
+   arrangements beforehand; and when I speak of the summer,
+   I mean the early summer. The long and the short of it is,
+   will you come to us about the end of May?
+
+   Of course, I know which way your thoughts will go when you
+   get this, and, of course, you will know what I am thinking
+   of when I write it; but I will promise that not a word
+   shall be said to you to urge you in any way. I do not
+   suppose you will think it right that you should stay away
+   from friends whom you love, and who love you dearly, for
+   fear of a man who wants you to marry him. You are not
+   afraid of Mr. Gilmore, and I don't suppose that you are
+   going to shut yourself up all your life because Captain
+   Marrable has not a fortune of his own. Come at any rate.
+   If you find it unpleasant you shall go back just when you
+   please, and I will pledge myself that you shall not be
+   harassed by persuasions.
+
+   Yours most affectionately,
+
+   JANET FENWICK.
+
+   Frank has read this. He says that all I have said about
+   his being serious is a tarradiddle; but that nothing can
+   be more true than what I have said about your friends
+   loving you, and wishing to have you here again. If you
+   were here we might talk him over yet about the chapel.
+
+
+To which, in the Vicar's handwriting, was added the word, "Never!"
+
+It was two days before she showed this letter to her aunt--two days
+in which she had thought much upon the subject. She knew well that
+her aunt would counsel her to go to Bullhampton, and, therefore, she
+would not mention the letter till she had made up her own mind.
+
+"What will you do?" said her aunt.
+
+"I will go, if you do not object."
+
+"I certainly shall not object," said Miss Marrable.
+
+Then Mary wrote a very short letter to her friend, which may as well,
+also, be communicated to the reader:--
+
+
+   Loring, Thursday.
+
+   DEAR JANET,
+
+   I will go to you about the end of May; and yet, though I
+   have made up my mind to do so, I almost doubt that I am
+   not wise. If one could only ordain that things should
+   be as though they had never been! That, however, is
+   impossible, and one can only endeavour to live so as to
+   come as nearly as possible to such a state. I know that I
+   am confused; but I think you will understand what I mean.
+
+   I intend to be very full of energy about the chapel, and
+   I do hope that your brother-in-law will be able to prove
+   that Lord Trowbridge has been misbehaving himself. I never
+   loved Mr. Puddleham, who always seemed to look upon me
+   with wrath because I belonged to the Vicarage; and I
+   certainly should take delight in seeing him banished from
+   the Vicarage gate.
+
+   Always affectionately yours,
+
+   MARY LOWTHER.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVI.
+
+MR. JAY OF WARMINSTER.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+The Vicar had undertaken to maintain Carry Brattle at Mrs. Stiggs's
+house, in Trotter's Buildings, for a fortnight, but he found at the
+end of the fortnight that his responsibility on the poor girl's
+behalf was by no means over. The reader knows with what success
+he had made his visit to Startup, and how far he was from ridding
+himself of his burden by the aid of the charity and affections of
+the poor girl's relatives there. He had shaken the Startup dust, as
+it were, from his gig-wheels as he drove out of George Brattle's
+farmyard, and had declined even the offer of money which had been
+made. Ten or fifteen pounds! He would make up the amount of that
+offer out of his own pocket rather than let the brother think that
+he had bought off his duty to a sister at so cheap a rate. Then he
+convinced himself that in this way he owed Carry Brattle fifteen
+pounds, and comforted himself by reflecting that these fifteen pounds
+would carry the girl on a good deal beyond the fortnight; if only she
+would submit herself to the tedium of such a life as would be hers
+if she remained at Mrs. Stiggs's house. He named a fortnight both to
+Carry and to Mrs. Stiggs, saying that he himself would either come or
+send before the end of that time. Then he returned home, and told the
+whole story to his wife. All this took place before Mr. Quickenham's
+arrival at the vicarage.
+
+"My dear Frank," said his wife to him, "you will get into trouble."
+
+"What sort of trouble?"
+
+"In the first place, the expense of maintaining this poor girl,--for
+life, as far as we can see,--will fall upon you."
+
+"What if it does? But, as a matter of course, she will earn her bread
+sooner or later. How am I to throw her over? And what am I to do with
+her?"
+
+"But that is not the worst of it, Frank."
+
+"Then what is the worst of it? Let us have it at once."
+
+"People will say that you, a clergyman and a married man, go to see a
+pretty young woman at Salisbury."
+
+"You believe that people will say that?"
+
+"I think you should guard against it, for the sake of the parish."
+
+"What sort of people will say it?"
+
+"Lord Trowbridge, and his set."
+
+"On my honour, Janet, I think that you wrong Lord Trowbridge. He is a
+fool, and to a certain extent a vindictive fool; and I grant you that
+he has taken it into his silly old head to hate me unmercifully; but
+I believe him to be a gentleman, and I do not think that he would
+condescend to spread a damnably malicious report of which he did not
+believe a word himself."
+
+"But, my dear, he will believe it."
+
+"Why? How? On what evidence? He couldn't believe it. Let a man be
+ever such a fool, he can't believe a thing without some reason.
+I dislike Lord Trowbridge very much; and you might just as well
+say that because I dislike him I shall believe that he is a hard
+landlord. He is not a hard landlord; and were he to stick dissenting
+chapels all about the county, I should be a liar and a slanderer were
+I to say that he was."
+
+"But then, you see, you are not a fool, Frank."
+
+This brought the conversation to an end. The Vicar was willing enough
+to turn upon his heel and say nothing more on a matter as to which
+he was by no means sure that he was in the right; and his wife felt
+a certain amount of reluctance in urging any arguments upon such a
+subject. Whatever Lord Trowbridge might say or think, her Frank must
+not be led to suppose that any unworthy suspicion troubled her own
+mind. Nevertheless, she was sure that he was imprudent.
+
+When the fortnight was near at an end, and nothing had been done, he
+went again over to Salisbury. It was quite true that he had business
+there, as a gentleman almost always does have business in the county
+town where his banker lives, whence tradesmen supply him, and in
+which he belongs to some club. And our Vicar, too, was a man fond of
+seeing his bishop, and one who loved to move about in the precincts
+of the cathedral, to shake hands with the dean, and to have a
+little subrisive fling at Mr. Chamberlaine, or such another as Mr.
+Chamberlaine, if the opportunity came in his way. He was by no means
+indisposed to go into Salisbury in the ordinary course of things; and
+on this occasion absolutely did see Mr. Chamberlaine, the dean, his
+saddler, and the clerk at the Fire Insurance Office,--as well as Mrs.
+Stiggs and Carry Brattle. If, therefore, anyone had said that on this
+day he had gone into Salisbury simply to see Carry Brattle, such
+person would have maligned him. He reduced the premium on his Fire
+Insurance by 5_s._ 6_d._ a year, and he engaged Mr. Chamberlaine to
+meet Mr. Quickenham, and he borrowed from the dean an old book about
+falconry; so that in fact the few minutes which he spent at Mrs.
+Stiggs's house were barely squeezed in among the various affairs of
+business which he had to transact at Salisbury.
+
+All that he could say to Carry Brattle was this,--that hitherto he
+had settled nothing. She must stay in Trotter's Buildings for another
+week or so. He had been so busy, in consequence of the time of the
+year, preparing for Easter and the like, that he had not been able
+to look about him. He had a plan; but would say nothing about it till
+he had seen whether it could be carried out. When Carry murmured
+something about the cost of her living the Vicar boldly declared that
+she need not fret herself about that, as he had money of hers in
+hand. He would some day explain all about that, but not now. Then he
+interrogated Mrs. Stiggs as to Carry's life. Mrs. Stiggs expressed
+her belief that Carry wouldn't stand it much longer. The hours had
+been inexpressibly long, and she had declared more than once that the
+best thing she could do was to go out and kill herself. Nevertheless,
+Mrs. Stiggs's report as to her conduct was favourable. Of Sam
+Brattle, the Vicar, though he inquired, could learn nothing. Carry
+declared that she had not heard from him since he left her all
+bruised and bleeding after his fight at the Three Honest Men.
+
+The Vicar had told Carry Brattle that he had a plan,--but, in truth,
+he had no plan. He had an idea that he might overcome the miller by
+taking his daughter straight into his house, and placing the two face
+to face together; but it was one in which he himself put so little
+trust, that he could form no plan out of it. In the first place,
+would he be justified in taking such a step? Mrs. George Brattle
+had told him that people knew what was good for them without being
+dictated to by clergymen; and the rebuke had come home to him.
+He was the last man in the world to adopt a system of sacerdotal
+interference. "I could do it so much better if I was not a
+clergyman," he would say to himself. And then, if old Brattle chose
+to turn his daughter out of the house, on such provocation as the
+daughter had given him, what was that to him, Fenwick, whether priest
+or layman? The old man knew what he was about, and had shown his
+determination very vigorously.
+
+"I'll try the ironmonger at Warminster," he said, to his wife.
+
+"I'm afraid it will be of no use."
+
+"I don't think it will. Ironmongers are probably harder than millers
+or farmers,--and farmers are very hard. That fellow, Jay, would not
+even consent to be bail for Sam Brattle. But something must be done."
+
+"She should be put into a reformatory."
+
+"It would be too late now. That should have been done at once. At any
+rate, I'll go to Warminster. I want to call on old Dr. Dickleburg,
+and I can do that at the same time."
+
+He did go to Warminster. He did call on the Doctor, who was not at
+home;--and he did call also upon Mr. Jay, who was at home.
+
+With Mr. Jay himself his chance was naturally much less than it
+would be with George Brattle. The ironmonger was connected with the
+unfortunate young woman only by marriage; and what brother-in-law
+would take such a sister-in-law to his bosom? And of Mrs. Jay he
+thought that he knew that she was puritanical, stiff, and severe.
+Mr. Jay he found in his shop along with an apprentice, but he had no
+difficulty in leading the master ironmonger along with him through
+a vista of pots, grates and frying pans, into a small recess at the
+back of the establishment, in which requests for prolonged credit
+were usually made, and urgent appeals for speedy payment as often put
+forth.
+
+"Know the story of Caroline Brattle? Oh yes! I know it, sir," said
+Mr. Jay. "We had to know it." And as he spoke he shook his head, and
+rubbed his hands together, and looked down upon the ground. There
+was, however, a humility about the man, a confession on his part,
+that in talking to an undoubted gentleman he was talking to a
+superior being, which gave to Fenwick an authority which he had felt
+himself to want in his intercourse with the farmer.
+
+"I am sure, Mr. Jay, you will agree with me in that she should be
+saved if possible."
+
+"As to her soul, sir?" asked the ironmonger.
+
+"Of course, as to her soul. But we must get at that by saving her in
+this world first."
+
+Mr. Jay was a slight man, of middle height, with very respectable
+iron-grey hair that stood almost upright upon his head, but with a
+poor, inexpressive, thin face below it. He was given to bowing a good
+deal, rubbing his hands together, smiling courteously, and to the
+making of many civil little speeches; but his strength as a leading
+man in Warminster lay in his hair, and in the suit of orderly
+well-brushed black clothes which he wore on all occasions. He was,
+too, a man fairly prosperous, who went always to church, paid his
+way, attended sedulously to his business, and hung his bells, and
+sold his pots in such a manner as not actually to drive his old
+customers away by default of work. "Jay is respectable, and I don't
+like to leave him," men would say, when their wives declared that the
+backs of his grates fell out, and that his nails never would stand
+hammering. So he prospered; but, perhaps, he owed his prosperity
+mainly to his hair. He rubbed his hands, and smiled, and bowed his
+head about, as he thought what answer he might best make. He was
+quite willing that poor Carry's soul should be saved. That would
+naturally be Mr. Fenwick's affair. But as to saving her body, with
+any co-operation from himself or Mrs. Jay,--he did not see his way at
+all through such a job as that.
+
+"I'm afraid she is a bad 'un, Mr. Fenwick; I'm afraid she is," said
+Mr. Jay.
+
+"The thing is, whether we can't put our heads together and make her
+less bad," said the Vicar. "She must live somewhere, Mr. Jay."
+
+"I don't know whether almost the best thing for 'em isn't to die,--of
+course after they have repented, Mr. Fenwick. You see, sir, it is so
+very low, and so shameful, and they do bring such disgrace on their
+poor families. There isn't anything a young man can do that is nearly
+so bad,--is there, Mr. Fenwick?"
+
+"I'm not at all sure of that, Mr. Jay."
+
+"Ain't you now?"
+
+"I'm not going to defend Carry Brattle;--but if you will think how
+very small an amount of sin may bring a woman to this wretched
+condition, your heart will be softened. Poor Carry;--she was so
+bright, and so good and so clever!"
+
+"Clever she was, Mr. Fenwick;--and bright, too, as you call it.
+But--"
+
+"Of course we know all that. The question now is, what can we do to
+help her? She is living now at this present moment, an orderly, sober
+life; but without occupation, or means, or friends. Will your wife
+let her come to her,--for a month or so, just to try her?"
+
+"Come and live here!" exclaimed the ironmonger.
+
+"That is what I would suggest. Who is to give her the shelter of a
+roof, if a sister will not?"
+
+"I don't think that Mrs. Jay would undertake that," said the
+ironmonger, who had ceased to rub his hands and to bow, and whose
+face had now become singularly long and lugubrious.
+
+"May I ask her?"
+
+"It wouldn't do any good, Mr. Fenwick;--it wouldn't indeed."
+
+"It ought to do good. May I try?"
+
+"If you ask me, Mr. Fenwick, I should say no; indeed I should. Mrs.
+Jay isn't any way strong, and the bare mention of that disreputable
+connexion produces a sickness internally;--it does, indeed, Mr.
+Fenwick."
+
+"You will do nothing, then, to save from perdition the sister of your
+own wife;--and will let your wife do nothing?"
+
+"Now, Mr. Fenwick, don't be hard on me;--pray don't be hard on me. I
+have been respectable, and have always had respectable people about
+me. If my wife's family are turning wrong, isn't that bad enough on
+me without your coming to say such things as this to me? Really, Mr.
+Fenwick, if you'd think of it, you wouldn't be so hard."
+
+"She may die in a ditch, then, for you?" said the Vicar, whose
+feeling against the ironmonger was much stronger than it had been
+against the farmer. He could say nothing further, so he turned
+upon his heel and marched down the length of the shop, while the
+obsequious tradesman followed him,--again bowing and rubbing his
+hands, and attending him to his carriage. The Vicar didn't speak
+another word, or make any parting salutation to Mr. Jay. "Their
+hearts are like the nether millstone," he said to himself, as he
+drove away, flogging his horse. "Of what use are all the sermons?
+Nothing touches them. Do unto others as you think they would do unto
+you. That's their doctrine." As he went home he made up his mind that
+he would, as a last effort, carry out that scheme of taking Carry
+with him to the mill;--he would do so, that is, if he could induce
+Carry to accompany him. In the meantime, there was nothing left to
+him but to leave her with Mrs. Stiggs, and to pay ten shillings a
+week for her board and lodging. There was one point on which he could
+not quite make up his mind;--whether he would or would not first
+acquaint old Mrs. Brattle with his intention.
+
+He had left home early, and when he returned his wife had received
+Mary Lowther's reply to her letter.
+
+"She will come?" asked Frank.
+
+"She just says that and nothing more."
+
+"Then she'll be Mrs. Gilmore."
+
+"I hope so, with all my heart," said Mrs. Fenwick.
+
+"I look upon it as tantamount to accepting him. She wouldn't come
+unless she had made up her mind to take him. You mark my words.
+They'll be married before the chapel is finished."
+
+"You say it as if you thought she oughtn't to come."
+
+"No;--I don't mean that. I was only thinking how quickly a woman may
+recover from such a hurt."
+
+"Frank, don't be ill-natured. She will be doing what all her friends
+advise."
+
+"If I were to die, your friends would advise you not to grieve; but
+they would think you very unfeeling if you did not."
+
+"Are you going to turn against her?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Then why do you say such things? Is it not better that she should
+make the effort than lie there helpless and motionless, throwing her
+whole life away? Will it not be much better for Harry Gilmore?"
+
+"Very much better for him, because he'll go crazy if she don't."
+
+"And for her too. We can't tell what is going on inside her breast.
+I believe that she is making a great effort because she thinks it is
+right. You will be kind to her when she comes?"
+
+"Certainly I will,--for Harry's sake--and her own."
+
+But in truth the Vicar at this moment was not in a good humour.
+He was becoming almost tired of his efforts to set other people
+straight, so great were the difficulties that came in his way. As he
+had driven into his own gate he had met Mr. Puddleham, standing in
+the road just in front of the new chapel. He had made up his mind to
+accept the chapel, and now he said a pleasant word to the minister.
+Mr. Puddleham turned up his eyes and his nose, bowed very stiffly,
+and then twisted himself round, without answering a word. How was
+it possible for a man to live among such people in good humour and
+Christian charity?
+
+In the evening he was sitting with his wife in the drawing-room
+discussing all these troubles, when the maid came in to say that
+Constable Toffy was at the door.
+
+Constable Toffy was shown into his study, and then the Vicar followed
+him. He had not spoken to the constable now for some months,--not
+since the time at which Sam had been liberated; but he had not a
+moment's doubt when he was thus summoned, that something was to be
+said as to the murder of Mr. Trumbull. The constable put his hand up
+to his head, and sat down at the Vicar's invitation, before he began
+to speak.
+
+"What is it, Toffy?" said the Vicar.
+
+"We've got 'em at last, I think," said Mr. Toffy, in a very low, soft
+voice.
+
+"Got whom;--the murderers?"
+
+"Just so, Mr. Fenwick; all except Sam Brattle,--whom we want."
+
+"And who are the men?"
+
+"Them as we supposed all along,--Jack Burrows, as they call the
+Grinder, and Lawrence Acorn as was along with him. He's a Birmingham
+chap, is Acorn. He's know'd very well at Birmingham. And then, Mr.
+Fenwick, there's Sam. That's all as seems to have been in it. We
+shall want Sam, Mr. Fenwick."
+
+"You don't mean to tell me that he was one of the murderers?"
+
+"We shall want him, Mr. Fenwick."
+
+"Where did you find the other men?"
+
+"They did get as far as San Francisco,--did the others. They haven't
+had a bad game of it,--have they, Mr. Fenwick? They've had more than
+seven months of a run. It was the 31st of August as Mr. Trumbull was
+murdered, and here's the 15th of April, Mr. Fenwick. There ain't a
+many runs as long as that. You'll have Sam Brattle for us all right,
+no doubt, Mr. Fenwick?" The Vicar told the constable that he would
+see to it, and get Sam Brattle to come forward as soon as he could.
+"I told you all through, Mr. Fenwick, as Sam was one of them as was
+in it, but you wouldn't believe me."
+
+"I don't believe it now," said the Vicar.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVII.
+
+SAM BRATTLE IS WANTED.
+
+
+The next week was one of considerable perturbation, trouble, and
+excitement at Bullhampton, and in the neighbourhood of Warminster
+and Heytesbury. It soon became known generally that Jack the Grinder
+and Lawrence Acorn were in Salisbury gaol, and that Sam Brattle--was
+wanted. The perturbation and excitement at Bullhampton were, of
+course, greater than elsewhere. It was necessary that the old miller
+should be told,--necessary also that the people at the mill should be
+asked as to Sam's present whereabouts. If they did not know it, they
+might assist the Vicar in discovering it. Fenwick went to the mill,
+taking the Squire with him; but they could obtain no information. The
+miller was very silent, and betrayed hardly any emotion when he was
+told that the police again wanted his son.
+
+"They can come and search," he said. "They can come and search."
+And then he walked slowly away into the mill. There was a scene, of
+course, with Mrs. Brattle and Fanny, and the two women were in a sad
+way.
+
+"Poor boy,--wretched boy!" said the unfortunate mother, who sat
+sobbing with her apron over her face.
+
+"We know nothing of him, Mr. Gilmore, or we would tell at once," said
+Fanny.
+
+"I'm sure you would," said the Vicar. "And you may remember this,
+Mrs. Brattle; I do not for one moment believe that Sam had any more
+to do with the murder than you or I. You may tell his father that I
+say so, if you please."
+
+For saying this the Squire rebuked him as soon as they had left the
+mill. "I think you go too far in giving such assurance as that," he
+said.
+
+"Surely you would have me say what I think?"
+
+"Not on such a matter as this, in which any false encouragement may
+produce so much increased suffering. You, yourself, are so prone to
+take your own views in opposition to those of others that you should
+be specially on your guard when you may do so much harm."
+
+"I feel quite sure that he had nothing to do with it."
+
+"You see that you have the police against you after a most minute and
+prolonged investigation."
+
+"The police are asses," insisted the Vicar.
+
+"Just so. That is, you prefer your own opinion to theirs in regard to
+a murder. I should prefer yours to theirs on a question of scriptural
+evidence, but not in such an affair as this. I don't want to talk you
+over, but I wish to make you careful with other people who are so
+closely concerned. In dealing with others you have no right to throw
+over the ordinary rules of evidence."
+
+The Vicar accepted the rebuke and promised to be more
+careful,--repeating, however, his own opinion about Sam, to which he
+declared his intention of adhering in regard to his own conduct, let
+the police and magistrates say what they might. He almost went so far
+as to declare that he should do so even in opposition to the verdict
+of a jury; but Gilmore understood that this was simply the natural
+obstinacy of the man, showing itself in its natural form.
+
+At this moment, which was certainly one of gloom to the parish at
+large, and of great sorrow at the Vicarage, the Squire moved about
+with a new life which was evident to all who saw him. He went about
+his farm, and talked about his trees, and looked at his horses and
+had come to life again. No doubt many guesses as to the cause of this
+were made throughout his establishment, and some of them, probably,
+very near the truth. But, for the Fenwicks there was no need of
+guessing. Gilmore had been told that Mary Lowther was coming to
+Bullhampton in the early summer, and had at once thrown off the cloak
+of his sadness. He had asked no further questions; Mrs. Fenwick had
+found herself unable to express a caution; but the extent of her
+friend's elation almost frightened her.
+
+"I don't look at it," she said to her husband, "quite as he does."
+
+"She'll have him now," he answered, and then Mrs. Fenwick said
+nothing further.
+
+To Fenwick himself, this change was one of infinite comfort. The
+Squire was his old friend and almost his only near neighbour. In all
+his troubles, whether inside or outside of the parish, he naturally
+went to Gilmore; and, although he was a man not very prone to walk by
+the advice of friends, still it had been a great thing to him to have
+a friend who would give an opinion, and perhaps the more so, as the
+friend was one who did not insist on having his opinion taken. During
+the past winter Gilmore had been of no use whatever to his friend.
+His opinions on all matters had gone so vitally astray, that they had
+not been worth having. And he had become so morose, that the Vicar
+had found it to be almost absolutely necessary to leave him alone as
+far as ordinary life was concerned. But now the Squire was himself
+again, and on this exciting topic of Trumbull's murder, the prisoners
+in Salisbury gaol, and the necessity for Sam's reappearance, could
+talk sensibly and usefully.
+
+It was certainly very expedient that Sam should be made to reappear
+as soon as possible. The idea was general in the parish that the
+Vicar knew all about him. George Brattle, who had become bail for his
+brother's reappearance, had given his name on the clear understanding
+that the Vicar would be responsible. Some half-sustained tidings of
+Carry's presence in Salisbury and of the Vicar's various visits to
+the city were current in Bullhampton, and with these were mingled an
+idea that Carry and Sam were in league together. That Fenwick was
+chivalrous, perhaps Quixotic, in his friendships for those whom he
+regarded, had long been felt, and this feeling was now stronger than
+ever. He certainly could bring up Sam Brattle if he pleased;--or, if
+he pleased, as might, some said, not improbably be the case, he could
+keep him away. There would be £400 to pay for the bail-bond, but the
+Vicar was known to be rich as well as Quixotic, and,--so said the
+Puddlehamites,--would care very little about that, if he might thus
+secure for himself his own way.
+
+He was constrained to go over again to Salisbury in order that he
+might, if possible, learn from Carry how to find some trace to
+her brother, and of this visit the Puddlehamites also informed
+themselves. There were men and women in Bullhampton who knew exactly
+how often the Vicar had visited the young woman at Salisbury, how
+long he had been with her on each occasion, and how much he paid Mrs.
+Stiggs for the accommodation. Gentlemen who are Quixotic in their
+kindness to young women are liable to have their goings and comings
+chronicled with much exactitude, if not always with accuracy.
+
+His interview with Carry on this occasion was very sad. He could not
+save himself from telling her in part the cause of his inquiries.
+"They haven't taken the two men, have they?" she asked, with an
+eagerness that seemed to imply that she possessed knowledge on the
+matter which could hardly not be guilty.
+
+"What two men?" he asked, looking full into her face. Then she was
+silent and he was unwilling to catch her in a trap, to cross-examine
+her as a lawyer would do, or to press out of her any communication
+which she would not make willingly and of her own free action. "I am
+told," he said, "that two men have been taken for the murder."
+
+"Where did they find 'em, sir?"
+
+"They had escaped to America, and the police have brought them back.
+Did you know them, Carry?" She was again silent. The men had not been
+named, and it was not for her to betray them. Hitherto, in their
+interviews, she had hardly ever looked him in the face, but now she
+turned her blue eyes full upon him. "You told me before at the old
+woman's cottage," he said, "that you knew them both,--had known one
+too well."
+
+"If you please, sir, I won't say nothing about 'em."
+
+"I will not ask you, Carry. But you would tell me about your brother,
+if you knew?"
+
+"Indeed I would, sir;--anything. He hadn't no more to do with Farmer
+Trumbull's murder nor you had. They can't touch a hair of his head
+along of that."
+
+"Such is my belief;--but who can prove it?" Again she was silent.
+"Can you prove it? If speaking could save your brother, surely you
+would speak out. Would you hesitate, Carry, in doing anything for
+your brother's sake? Whatever may be his faults, he has not been hard
+to you like the others."
+
+"Oh, sir, I wish I was dead."
+
+"You must not wish that, Carry. And if you know ought of this you
+will be bound to speak. If you could bring yourself to tell me what
+you know, I think it might be good for both of you."
+
+"It was they who had the money. Sam never seed a shilling of it."
+
+"Who is 'they'?"
+
+"Jack Burrows and Larry Acorn. And it wasn't Larry Acorn neither,
+sir. I know very well who did it. It was Jack Burrows who did it."
+
+"That is he they call the Grinder?"
+
+"But Larry was with him then," said the girl, sobbing.
+
+"You are sure of that?"
+
+"I ain't sure of nothing, Mr. Fenwick, only that Sam wasn't there
+at all. Of that I am quite, quite, quite sure. But when you asks me,
+what am I to say?"
+
+Then he left her without speaking to her on this occasion a word
+about herself. He had nothing to say that would give her any comfort.
+He had almost made up his mind that he would take her over with him
+to the mill, and try what might be done by the meeting between the
+father, mother, and daughter, but all this new matter about the
+police and the arrest, and Sam's absence, made it almost impossible
+for him to take such a step at present. As he went, he again
+interrogated Mrs. Stiggs, and was warned by her that words fell daily
+from her lodger which made her think that the young woman would not
+remain much longer with her. In the meantime there was nothing of
+which she could complain. Carry insisted on her liberty to go out and
+about the city alone; but the woman was of opinion that she did this
+simply with the object of asserting her independence. After that the
+necessary payment was made, and the Vicar returned to the Railway
+Station. Of Sam he had learned nothing, and now he did not know where
+to go for tidings. He still believed that the young man would come of
+his own accord, if the demand for his appearance were made so public
+as to reach his ear.
+
+On that same day there was a meeting of the magistrates at
+Heytesbury, and the two men who had been so cruelly fetched back from
+San Francisco were brought before it. Mr. Gilmore was on the bench,
+along with Sir Thomas Charleys, who was the chairman, and three other
+gentlemen. Lord Trowbridge was in the court house, and sat upon the
+bench, but gave it out that he was not sitting there as a magistrate.
+Samuel Brattle was called upon to answer to his bail, and Jones, the
+attorney appearing for him, explained that he had gone from home
+to seek work elsewhere, alluded to the length of time that had
+elapsed, and to the injustice of presuming that a man against whom no
+evidence had been adduced, should be bound to remain always in one
+parish,--and expressed himself without any doubt that Mr. Fenwick
+and Mr. George Brattle, who were his bailsmen, would cause him to be
+found and brought forward. As neither the clergyman nor the farmer
+were in court, nothing further could be done at once; and the
+magistrates were quite ready to admit that time must be allowed. Nor
+was the case at all ready against the two men who were in custody.
+Indeed, against them the evidence was so little substantial that a
+lawyer from Devizes, who attended on their behalf, expressed his
+amazement that the American authorities should have given them
+up, and suggested that it must have been done with some view to a
+settlement of the Alabama claims. Evidence, however, was brought
+up to show that the two men had been convicted before, the one for
+burglary, and the other for horse-stealing; that the former, John
+Burrows, known as the Grinder, was a man from Devizes with whom the
+police about that town, and at Chippenham, Bath, and Wells, were
+well acquainted; that the other, Acorn, was a young man who had been
+respectable, as a partner in a livery stable at Birmingham, but who
+had taken to betting, and had for a year past been living by evil
+courses, having previously undergone two years of imprisonment
+with hard labour. It was proved that they had been seen in the
+neighbourhood both before and after the murder; that boots found in
+the cottage at Pycroft Common fitted certain footmarks in the mud
+of the farmer's yard; that Burrows had been supplied with a certain
+poison at a county chemist's at Lavington, and that the dog Bone'm
+had been poisoned with the like. Many other matters were proved,
+all of which were declared by the lawyer from Devizes to amount to
+nothing, and by the police authorities, who were prosecutors, to be
+very much. The magistrates of course ordered a remand, and ordered
+also that on the day named Sam Brattle should appear. It was
+understood that that day week was only named pro formâ, the
+constables having explained that at least a fortnight would be
+required for the collection of further evidence. This took place on
+Tuesday, the 25th of April, and it was understood that time up to the
+8th of May would be given to the police to complete their case.
+
+So far all went on quietly at Heytesbury; but before the magistrates
+left the little town there was a row. Sir Thomas Charleys, in
+speaking to his brother magistrate, Mr. Gilmore, about the whole
+affair and about the Brattles in particular, had alluded to "Mr.
+Fenwick's unfortunate connexion with Carry Brattle" at Salisbury.
+Gilmore fired up at once, and demanded to know the meaning of this.
+Sir Thomas, who was not the wisest man in the world, but who had
+ideas of justice, and as to whom, in giving him his due, it must
+be owned that he was afraid of no one, after some hesitation,
+acknowledged that what he had heard respecting Mr. Fenwick had fallen
+from Lord Trowbridge. He had heard from Lord Trowbridge that the
+Vicar of Bullhampton was  *  *  *. Gilmore on the occasion became
+full of energy, and pressed the baronet very hard. Sir Thomas hoped
+that Mr. Gilmore was not going to make mischief. Mr. Gilmore declared
+that he would not submit to the injury done to his friend, and that
+he would question Lord Trowbridge on the subject. He did question
+Lord Trowbridge, whom he found waiting for his carriage, in the
+parlour of the Bull Inn, Sir Thomas having accompanied him in the
+search. The Marquis was quite outspoken. He had heard, he said, from
+what he did not doubt to be good authority, that Mr. Fenwick was
+in the habit of visiting alone a young woman who had lived in his
+parish, but whom he now maintained in lodgings in a low alley in the
+suburbs of Salisbury. He had said so much as that. In so saying, had
+he spoken truth or falsehood? If he had said anything untrue, he
+would be the first to acknowledge his own error.
+
+Then there had come to be very hot words. "My lord," said Mr.
+Gilmore, "your insinuation is untrue. Whatever your words may have
+been, in the impression which they have made, they are slanderous."
+
+"Who are you, sir," said the Marquis, looking at him from head to
+foot, "to talk to me of the impression of my words?"
+
+But Mr. Gilmore's blood was up. "You intended to convey to Sir Thomas
+Charleys, my lord, that Mr. Fenwick's visits were of a disgraceful
+nature. If your words did not convey that, they conveyed nothing."
+
+"Who are you, sir, that you should interpret my words? I did no more
+than my duty in conveying to Sir Thomas Charleys my conviction,--my
+well-grounded conviction,--as to the gentleman's conduct. What I said
+to him I will say aloud to the whole county. It is notorious that the
+Vicar of Bullhampton is in the habit of visiting a profligate young
+woman in a low part of the city. That I say is disgraceful to him,
+to his cloth, and to the parish, and I shall give my opinion to the
+bishop to that effect. Who are you, sir, that you should question
+my words?" And again the Marquis eyed the Squire from head to foot,
+leaving the room with a majestic strut as Gilmore went on to assert
+that the allegation made, with the sense implied by it, contained
+a wicked and a malicious slander. Then there were some words, much
+quieter than those preceding them, between Mr. Gilmore and Sir
+Thomas, in which the Squire pledged himself to,--he hardly knew what,
+and Sir Thomas promised to hold his tongue,--for the present. But,
+as a matter of course, the quarrel flew all over the little town. It
+was out of the question that such a man as the Marquis of Trowbridge
+should keep his wrath confined. Before he had left the inn-yard he
+had expressed his opinion very plainly to half-a-dozen persons, both
+as to the immorality of the Vicar and the impudence of the Squire;
+and as he was taken home his hand was itching for pen and paper in
+order that he might write to the bishop. Sir Thomas shrugged his
+shoulders, and did not tell the story to more than three or four
+confidential friends, to all of whom he remarked that on the matter
+of the visits made to the girl, there never was smoke without fire.
+Gilmore's voice, too, had been loud, and all the servants about the
+inn had heard him. He knew that the quarrel was already public, and
+felt that he had no alternative but to tell his friend what had
+passed.
+
+
+[Illustration: "Who are you, sir, that you should interpret
+my words?"]
+
+
+On that same evening he saw the Vicar. Fenwick had returned from
+Salisbury, tired, dispirited, and ill at ease, and was just going in
+to dress for dinner, when Gilmore met him at his own stable-door, and
+told him what had occurred.
+
+"Then, after all, my wife was right and I was wrong," said Fenwick.
+
+"Right about what?" Gilmore asked.
+
+"She said that Lord Trowbridge would spread these very lies. I
+confess that I made the mistake of believing him to be a gentleman.
+Of course I may use your information?"
+
+"Use it just as you please," said Gilmore. Then they parted, and
+Gilmore, who was on horseback, rode home.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVIII.
+
+MARY LOWTHER RETURNS TO BULLHAMPTON.
+
+
+A month went by after the scenes described in the last chapter, and
+summer had come at Bullhampton. It was now the end of May, and, with
+the summer, Mary Lowther had arrived. During the month very little
+progress had been made with the case at Heytesbury. There had been
+two or three remands, and now there was yet another. The police
+declared that this was rendered necessary by the absence of Sam
+Brattle,--that the magistrates were anxious to give all reasonable
+time for the production of the man who was out upon bail,--and that,
+as he was undoubtedly concerned in the murder, they were determined
+to have him. But they who professed to understand the case, among
+whom were the lawyer from Devizes and Mr. Jones of Heytesbury,
+declared that no real search had been made for Brattle because
+the evidence in regard to the other men was hitherto inefficient.
+The remand now stood again till Tuesday, June the 5th, and it was
+understood that if Brattle did not then appear the bail would be
+declared to have been forfeited.
+
+Fenwick had written a very angry letter to Lord Trowbridge, to which
+he had got no answer, and Lord Trowbridge had written a very silly
+letter to the bishop, in replying to which the bishop had snubbed
+him. "I am informed by my friend, Mr. Gilmore," said the Vicar to
+the Marquis, "that your lordship has stated openly that I have made
+visits to a young woman in Salisbury which are disgraceful to me, to
+my cloth, and to the parish of which I am the incumbent. I do not
+believe that your lordship will deny that you have done so, and I,
+therefore, call upon you at once to apologise to me for the calumny,
+which, in its nature, is as injurious and wicked as calumny can
+be, and to promise that you will not repeat the offence." The
+Marquis, when he received this, had not as yet written that letter
+to the bishop on which he had resolved after his interview with
+Gilmore,--feeling, perhaps, some qualms of conscience, thinking that
+it might be well that he should consult his son,--though with a
+full conviction that, if he did so, his son would not allow him to
+write to the bishop at all,--possibly with some feeling that he had
+been too hard upon his enemy, the Vicar. But, when the letter from
+Bullhampton reached him, all feelings of doubt, caution, and mercy,
+were thrown to the winds. The tone of the letter was essentially
+aggressive and impudent. It was the word calumny that offended him
+most, that, and the idea that he, the Marquis of Trowbridge, should
+be called upon to promise not to commit an offence! The pestilent
+infidel at Bullhampton, as he called our friend, had not attempted to
+deny the visits to the young woman at Salisbury. And the Marquis had
+made fresh inquiry which had completely corroborated his previous
+information. He had learned Mrs. Stiggs's address, and the name of
+Trotter's Buildings, which details were to his mind circumstantial,
+corroborative, and damnatory. Some dim account of the battle at the
+Three Honest Men had reached him, and the undoubted fact that Carry
+Brattle was maintained by the Vicar. Then he remembered all Fenwick's
+old anxiety on behalf of the brother, whom the Marquis had taught
+himself to regard as the very man who had murdered his tenant.
+He reminded himself, too, of the murderer's present escape from
+justice by aid of this pestilent clergyman; and thus became
+convinced that in dealing with Mr. Fenwick, as it was his undoubted
+duty to do, he had to deal with one of the very worst of the human
+race. His lordship's mind was one utterly incapable of sifting
+evidence,--unable even to understand evidence when it came to him.
+He was not a bad man. He desired nothing that was not his own, and
+remitted much that was. He feared God, honoured the Queen, and loved
+his country. He was not self-indulgent. He did his duties as he knew
+them. But he was an arrogant old fool, who could not keep himself
+from mischief,--who could only be kept from mischief by the aid of
+some such master as his son. As soon as he received the Vicar's
+letter he at once sat down and wrote to the bishop. He was so sure
+that he was right, that he sent Fenwick's letter to the bishop,
+acknowledging what he himself had said at Heytesbury, and justifying
+it altogether by an elaborate account of the Vicar's wickedness. "And
+now, my lord, let me ask you," said he, in conclusion, "whether you
+deem this a proper man to have the care of souls in the large and
+important parish of Bullhampton."
+
+The bishop felt himself to be very much bullied. He had no doubt
+whatsoever about his parson. He knew that Fenwick was too strong a
+man to be acted upon beneficially by such advice as to his private
+conduct as a bishop might give, and too good a man to need any
+caution as to his conduct. "My Lord Marquis," he said, in reply, "in
+returning the endorsed letter from Mr. Fenwick to your lordship, I
+can only say that nothing has been brought before me by your lordship
+which seems to me to require my interference. I should be wrong if I
+did not add to this the expression of my opinion that Mr. Fenwick is
+a moral man, doing his duty in his parish well, and an example in my
+diocese to be followed, rather than a stumbling block."
+
+When this letter reached the Castle Lord St. George was there. The
+poor old Marquis was cut to the quick. He immediately perceived,--so
+he told himself,--that the bishop was an old woman, who understood
+nothing; but he was sure that St. George would not look at the matter
+in the same light. And yet it was impossible not to tell St. George.
+Much as he dreaded his son, he did honestly tell everything to his
+Mentor. He had already told St. George of Fenwick's letter to him
+and of his letter to the bishop, and St. George had whistled. Now he
+showed the bishop's letter to his son. St. George read the letter,
+refolded it slowly, shrugged his shoulders, and said, as he returned
+it to his father,--
+
+"Well, my lord, I suppose you like a hornet's nest."
+
+This was the uncomfortable position of things at Bullhampton about
+the beginning of June, at which time Mary Lowther was again staying
+with her friend Mrs. Fenwick. Carry Brattle was still at Salisbury,
+but had not been seen by the Vicar for more than a fortnight. The
+Marquis's letter, backed as it was in part by his wife's counsel,
+had, much to his own disgust, deterred him from seeing the girl. His
+wife, however, had herself visited Trotter's Buildings, and had seen
+Carry, taking to her a little present from her mother, who did not
+dare to go over to Salisbury to see her child, because of words that
+had passed between her and her husband.
+
+Mrs. Fenwick, on her return home, had reported that Carry was silent,
+sullen, and idle; that her only speech was an expression of a wish
+that she was dead, and that Mrs. Stiggs had said that she could get
+no good of her. In the meantime Sam Brattle had not yet turned up,
+and the 5th of June was at hand.
+
+Mary Lowther was again at the vicarage, and of course it was
+necessary that she and Mr. Gilmore should meet each other. A promise
+had been made to her that no advice should be pressed upon her,--the
+meaning of which, of course, was that nothing should be said to her
+urging her to marry Mr. Gilmore. But it was of course understood by
+all the parties concerned that Mr. Gilmore was to be allowed to come
+to the house; and, indeed, this was understood by the Fenwicks to
+mean almost as plainly that she would at least endeavour to bring
+herself to accept him when he did come. To Mary herself, as she made
+the journey, the same meaning seemed to be almost inevitable; and as
+she perceived this, she told herself that she had been wrong to leave
+home. She knew,--she thought she knew,--that she must refuse him, and
+in doing so would simply be making fresh trouble. Would it not have
+been better for her to have remained at Loring,--to have put herself
+at once on a par with her aunt, and have commenced her life of
+solitary spinsterhood and dull routine? But, then, why should she
+refuse him? She endeavoured to argue it out with herself in the
+railway carriage. She had been told that Walter Marrable would
+certainly marry Edith Brownlow, and she believed it. No doubt it was
+much better that he should do so. At any rate, she and Walter were
+separated for ever. When he wrote to her, declaring his purpose
+of remaining in England, he had said not a word of renewing his
+engagement with her. No doubt she loved him. About that she did not
+for a moment endeavour to deceive herself. No doubt, if that fate in
+life which she most desired might be hers, she would become the wife
+of Walter Marrable. But that fate would not be hers, and then there
+arose the question whether, on that account, she was unfit to be the
+wife of any other man. Of this she was quite certain, that should it
+ever seem to her to be her duty to accept the other man, she would
+first explain to him clearly the position in which she found herself.
+At last the whole matter resolved itself to this;--was it possible
+for her to divest her idea of life of all romance, and to look for
+contentment and satisfaction in the performance of duties to others?
+The prospect of an old maid's life at Loring was not pleasant to her
+eyes; but she would bear that, and worse than that, rather than do
+wrong. It was, however, so hard for her to know what was right and
+what was wrong! Supposing that she were to consent to marry Mr.
+Gilmore, would she be forsworn when at the altar she promised to love
+him? All her care would be henceforth for him, all her heart, as far
+as she could command her heart, and certainly all her truth. There
+should not be a secret of her mind hidden from him. She would force
+herself to love him, and to forget that other man. He should be the
+object of all her idolatry. She would, in that case, do her very
+utmost to reward him for the constancy of the affection with which he
+had regarded her; and yet, as she was driven in at the vicarage gate,
+she told herself that it would have been better for her to remain at
+Loring.
+
+During the first evening Mr. Gilmore's name was not mentioned. There
+were subjects enough for conversation, as the period was one of great
+excitement in Bullhampton.
+
+"What did you think of our chapel?" asked Mrs. Fenwick.
+
+"I had no idea it was so big."
+
+"Why, they are not going to leave us a single soul to go to church.
+Mr. Puddleham means to make a clean sweep of the parish."
+
+"You don't mean to say that any have left you?"
+
+"Well; none as yet," replied Mrs. Fenwick. "But then the chapel isn't
+finished; and the Marquis has not yet sent his order to his tenants
+to become dissenters. We expect that he will do so, unless he can
+persuade the bishop to turn Frank out of the living."
+
+"But the bishop couldn't turn him out."
+
+"Of course, he couldn't,--and wouldn't if he could. The bishop and
+Frank are the best friends in the world. But that has nothing to do
+with it. You mustn't abuse the chapel to Frank; just at this moment
+the subject is tabooed. My belief is that the whole edifice will have
+to come down, and that the confusion of Mr. Puddleham and the Marquis
+will be something more complete than ever was yet seen. In the
+meantime, I put my finger to my lip, and just look at Frank whenever
+the chapel is mentioned."
+
+And then there was the matter of the murder, and the somewhat sad
+consideration of Sam's protracted absence.
+
+"And will you have to pay four hundred pounds, Mr. Fenwick?" Mary
+asked.
+
+"I shall be liable to pay it if he does not appear to-morrow, and no
+doubt must absolutely pay it if he does not turn up soon."
+
+"But you don't think that he was one of them?"
+
+"I am quite sure he was not. But he has had trouble in his family,
+and he got into a quarrel, and I fancy he has left the country. The
+police say that he has been traced to Liverpool."
+
+"And will the other men be convicted?" Mrs. Fenwick asked.
+
+"I believe they will, and most fervently hope so. They have some
+evidence about the wheels of a small cart in which Burrows certainly,
+and, I believe, no doubt Acorn also, were seen to drive across
+Pycroft Common early on the Sunday morning. A part of the tire had
+come off, and another bit, somewhat broader, and an inch or so too
+short, had been substituted. The impress made by this wheel in the
+mud, just round the corner by the farm gate, was measured and copied
+at the time, and they say that this will go far to identify the men.
+That the man's cart was there is certain,--also that he was in the
+same cart at Pycroft Common an hour or two after the murder."
+
+"That does seem clear," said Mary.
+
+"But somebody suggests that Sam had borrowed the cart. I believe,
+however, that it will all come out;--only, if I have to pay four
+hundred pounds I shall think that Farmer Trumbull has cost me very
+dear."
+
+On the next morning Gilmore came to the vicarage. It had been
+arranged that he would drive Fenwick over to Heytesbury, and that he
+would call for him after breakfast. A somewhat late hour,--two in the
+afternoon,--had been fixed for going on with the murder case, as it
+was necessary that a certain constable should come down from London
+on that morning; and, therefore, there would be no need for the two
+men to start very early from Bullhampton. This was explained to Mary
+by Mrs. Fenwick. "He dines here to-day," she had said when they met
+in the morning before prayers, "and you may as well get over the
+first awkwardness at once." Mary had assented to this, and, after
+breakfast, Gilmore made his appearance among them in the garden. He
+was just one moment alone with the girl he loved.
+
+"Miss Lowther," he said, "I cannot be with you for an instant without
+telling you that I am unchanged."
+
+Mary made no reply, and he said nothing further. Mrs. Fenwick was
+with them so quickly that there was no need for a reply,--and then he
+was gone. During the whole day the two friends talked of the murder,
+and of the Brattles, and the chapel,--which was thoroughly inspected
+from the roof to the floor,--but not a word was said about the
+loves of Harry Gilmore or Walter Marrable. Gilmore's name was often
+mentioned as the whole story was told of Lord Trowbridge's new
+quarrel, and of the correspondence with the bishop,--of which Fenwick
+had learned the particulars from the bishop's chaplain. And in the
+telling of this story Mrs. Fenwick did not scruple to express her
+opinion that Harry Gilmore had behaved well, with good spirit, and
+like a true friend. "If the Marquis had been anywhere near his own
+age I believe he would have horsewhipped him," said the Vicar's wife,
+with that partiality for the corporal chastisement of an enemy which
+is certainly not uncommon to the feminine mind. This was all very
+well, and called for no special remark from Mary, and possibly might
+have an effect.
+
+The gentlemen returned late in the evening, and the Squire dressed at
+the vicarage. But the great event of the day had to be told before
+anyone was allowed to dress. Between four and five o'clock, just as
+the magistrates were going to leave the bench, Sam Brattle had walked
+into Court.
+
+"And your money is safe?" said his wife.
+
+"Yes, my money is safe; but, I declare, I think more of Sam's truth.
+He was there, as it seemed, all of a sudden. The police had learned
+nothing of him. He just walked into the court, and we heard his
+voice. 'They tell me I'm wanted,' he said; and so he gave himself
+up."
+
+"And what was done?" asked his wife.
+
+"It was too late to do anything; so they allowed a remand for another
+week, and Sam was walked off to prison."
+
+At dinner time the conversation was still about the murder. It had
+been committed after Mary Lowther had left Bullhampton; but she had
+heard all the details, and was now as able to be interested about
+it as were the others. It was Gilmore's opinion that, instead of
+proceeding against Sam, they would put him into the witness-box and
+make him tell what he knew about the presence of the other two men.
+Fenwick declared that, if they did so, such was Sam's obstinacy that
+he would tell nothing. It was his own idea,--as he had explained
+both to his wife and to Gilmore,--that Carry Brattle could give more
+evidence respecting the murder than her brother. Of this he said
+nothing at present, but he had informed Constable Toffy that if
+Caroline Brattle were wanted for the examination she would be found
+at the house of Mrs. Stiggs.
+
+Thus for an hour or two the peculiar awkwardness of the meeting
+between Harry Gilmore and Mary was removed. He was enabled to
+talk with energy on a matter of interest, and she could join the
+conversation. But when they were round the tea-table it seemed to be
+arranged by common consent that Trumbull's murder and the Brattles
+should, for a while, be laid aside. Then Mary became silent and
+Gilmore became awkward. When inquiries were made as to Miss Marrable,
+he did not know whether to seem to claim, or not to claim, that
+lady's acquaintance. He could not, of course, allude to his visit
+to Loring, and yet he could hardly save himself from having to
+acknowledge that he had been there. However, the hour wore itself
+away, and he was allowed to take his departure.
+
+During the next two days he did not see Mary Lowther. On the Friday
+he met her with Mrs. Fenwick as the two were returning from the mill.
+They had gone to visit Mrs. Brattle and Fanny, and to administer such
+comfort as was possible in the present circumstances. The poor woman
+told them that the father was now as silent about his son as about
+his daughter, but that he had himself gone over to Heytesbury to
+secure legal advice for the lad, and to learn from Mr. Jones, the
+attorney, what might be the true aspect of the case. Of what he had
+learned he had told nothing to the women at the mill, but the two
+ladies had expressed their strong opinion of Sam's innocence. All
+this was narrated by Mrs. Fenwick to Gilmore, and Mary Lowther was
+enabled to take her part in the narrative. The Squire was walking
+between the two, and it seemed to him as he walked that Mary at least
+had no desire to avoid him. He became high in hope, and began to wish
+that even now, at this moment, he might be left alone with her and
+might learn his fate. He parted from them when they were near the
+village, and as he went he held Mary's hand within his own for a few
+moments. There was no return of his pressure, but it seemed to him
+that her hand was left with him almost willingly.
+
+"What do you think of him?" her friend said to her, as soon as he had
+parted from them.
+
+"What do I think of him? I have always thought well of him."
+
+"I know you have; to think otherwise of one who is positively so good
+would be impossible. But do you feel more kindly to him than you
+used?"
+
+"Janet," said Mary, after pausing awhile, "you had better leave me
+alone. Don't be angry with me; but really it will be better that you
+should leave me alone."
+
+"I won't be angry with you, and I will leave you alone," said Mrs.
+Fenwick. And, as she considered this request afterwards, it seemed to
+her that the very making of such a request implied a determination on
+the girl's part to bring herself to accept the man's offer,--if it
+might be possible.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIX.
+
+MARY LOWTHER'S DOOM.
+
+
+The police were so very tedious in managing their business, and
+the whole affair of the second magisterial investigation was so
+protracted, that people in the neighbourhood became almost tired of
+it, in spite of that appetite for excitement which the ordinary quiet
+life of a rural district produces. On the first Tuesday in June Sam
+had surrendered himself at Heytesbury, and on the second Tuesday it
+was understood that the production of the prisoners was only formal.
+The final examination, and committal, if the evidence should be
+sufficient, was to take place on the third Tuesday in the month.
+Against this Mr. Jones had remonstrated very loudly on Sam's behalf,
+protesting that the magistrates were going beyond their power in
+locking up a man against whom there was no more evidence now than
+there had been when before they had found themselves compelled to
+release him on bail. But this was of no avail. Sam had been released
+before because the men who were supposed to have been his accomplices
+were not in custody; and now that they were in custody the police
+declared it to be out of the question that he should be left at
+large. The magistrates of course agreed with the police, in spite of
+the indignation of Mr. Jones. In the meantime a subpoena was served
+upon Carry Brattle to appear on that final Tuesday,--Tuesday the
+nineteenth of June. The policeman, when he served her with the paper,
+told her that on the morning in question he would come and fetch her.
+The poor girl said not a word as she took into her hand the dreadful
+document. Mrs. Stiggs asked a question or two of the man, but
+got from him no information. But it was well known in Trotter's
+Buildings, and round about the Three Honest Men, that Sam Brattle was
+to be tried for the murder of Mr. Trumbull, and public opinion in
+that part of Salisbury was adverse to Sam. Public opinion was averse,
+also, to poor Carry; and Mrs. Stiggs was becoming almost tired of her
+lodger, although the payment made for her was not ungenerous and was
+as punctual as the sun. In truth, the tongue of the landlady of the
+Three Honest Men was potential in those parts, and was very bitter
+against Sam and his sister.
+
+In the meantime there was a matter of interest which, to our friends
+at Bullhampton, exceeded even that of the Heytesbury examinations.
+Mr. Gilmore was now daily at the vicarage on some new or old lover's
+pretence. It might be that he stood but for a minute or two on the
+terrace outside the drawing-room windows, or that he would sit with
+the ladies during half the afternoon, or that he would come down to
+dinner,--some excuse having arisen for an invitation to that effect
+during the morning. Very little was said on the subject between Mrs.
+Fenwick and Mary Lowther, and not a word between the Vicar and his
+guest; but between Mr. and Mrs. Fenwick many words were spoken, and
+before the first week was over they were sure that she would yield.
+
+"I think she will," said Mrs. Fenwick;--"but she will do it in
+agony."
+
+"Then if I were Harry I would leave her alone," said the Vicar.
+
+"But you are not Harry; and if you were, you would be wrong. She will
+not be happy when she accepts him; but by the time the day fixed for
+the wedding comes round, she will have reconciled herself to it, and
+then she will be as loving a wife as ever a man had." But the Vicar
+shook his head and said that, so far as he was concerned, love of
+that sort would not have sufficed for him.
+
+"Of course," said his wife, "it is very pleasant for a man to be told
+that the woman he loves is dying for him; but men can't always have
+everything that they want."
+
+Mary Lowther at this time became subject to a feeling of shame which
+almost overwhelmed her. There grew upon her a consciousness that she
+had allowed herself to come to Bullhampton on purpose that she might
+receive a renewed offer of marriage from her old lover, and that
+she had done so because her new and favoured lover had left her. Of
+course she must accept Mr. Gilmore. Of that she had now become quite
+sure. She had come to Bullhampton,--so she now told herself,--because
+she had been taught to believe that it would not be right for her to
+abandon herself to a mode of life which was not to her taste. All the
+friends in whose judgment she could confide expressed to her in every
+possible way their desire that she should marry this man; and now she
+had made this journey with the view of following their counsel. So
+she thought of herself and her doings; but such was not in truth the
+case. When she first determined to visit Bullhampton, she was very
+far from thinking that she would accept the man. Mrs. Fenwick's
+argument that she should not be kept away from Bullhampton by fear of
+Mr. Gilmore, had prevailed with her,--and she had come. And now that
+she was there, and that this man was daily with her, it was no longer
+possible that she should refuse him. And, after all, what did it
+matter? She was becoming sick of the importance which she imputed to
+herself in thinking of herself. If she could make the man happy why
+should she not do so? The romance of her life had become to her a
+rhodomontade of which she was ashamed. What was her love, that she
+should think so much about it? What did it mean? Could she not do her
+duty in the position in life in which her friends wished to place
+her, without hankering after a something which was not to be bestowed
+on her? After all, what did it all matter? She would tell the man the
+exact truth as well as she knew how to tell it, and then let him take
+her or leave her as he listed.
+
+And she did tell him the truth, after the following fashion. It
+came to pass at last that a day and an hour was fixed in which Mr.
+Gilmore might come to the vicarage and find Mary alone. There were no
+absolute words arranging this to which she was a party, but it was
+understood. She did not even pretend an unwillingness to receive him,
+and had assented by silence when Mrs. Fenwick had said that the man
+should be put out of his suspense. Mary, when she was silent, knew
+well that it was no longer within her power to refuse him.
+
+He came and found her alone. He knew, too, or fancied that he knew,
+what would be the result of the interview. She would accept him,
+without protestations of violent love for himself, acknowledging what
+had passed between her and her cousin, and proffering to him the
+offer of future affection. He had pictured it all to himself, and
+knew that he intended to accept what would be tendered. There were
+drawbacks in the happiness which was in store for him, but still
+he would take what he could get. As each so nearly understood the
+purpose of the other it was almost a pity that the arrangement could
+not be made without any words between them,--words which could hardly
+be pleasant either in the speaking or in the hearing.
+
+He had determined that he would disembarrass himself of all
+preliminary flourishes in addressing her, and had his speech ready as
+he took her by the hand. "Mary," he said, "you know why I am here."
+Of course she made no reply. "I told you when I first saw you again
+that I was unchanged." Then he paused, as though he expected that she
+would answer him, but still she said nothing. "Indeed I am unchanged.
+When you were here before I told you that I could look forward to no
+happiness unless you would consent to be my wife. That was nearly a
+year ago, and I have come again now to tell you the same thing. I do
+not think but what you will believe me to be in earnest."
+
+"I know that you are in earnest," she said.
+
+"No man was ever more so. My constancy has been tried during the time
+that you have been away. I do not say so as a reproach to you. Of
+course there can be no reproach. I have nothing to complain of in
+your conduct to me. But I think I may say that if my regard for you
+has outlived the pain of those months there is some evidence that it
+is sincere."
+
+"I have never doubted your sincerity."
+
+"Nor can you doubt my constancy."
+
+"Except in this, that it is so often that we want that which we have
+not, and find it so little worthy of having when we get it."
+
+"You do not say that from your heart, Mary. If you mean to refuse me
+again, it is not because you doubt the reality of my love."
+
+"I do not mean to refuse you again, Mr. Gilmore." Then he attempted
+to put his arm round her waist, but she recoiled from him, not in
+anger, but very quietly, and with a womanly grace that was perfect.
+"But you must hear me first, before I can allow you to take me in the
+only way in which I can bestow myself. I have been steeling myself to
+this, and I must tell you all that has occurred since we were last
+together."
+
+"I know it all," said he, anxious that she should be spared;--anxious
+also that he himself should be spared the pain of hearing that which
+she was about to say to him.
+
+But it was necessary for her that she should say it. She would not go
+to him as his accepted mistress upon other terms than those she had
+already proposed to herself. "Though you know it, I must speak of
+it," she said. "I should not, otherwise, be dealing honestly either
+with you or with myself. Since I saw you last, I have met my cousin,
+Captain Marrable. I became attached to him with a quickness which
+I cannot even myself understand. I loved him dearly, and we were
+engaged to be married."
+
+"You wrote to me, Mary, and told me all that." This he said, striving
+to hide the impatience which he felt; but striving in vain.
+
+"I did so, and now I have to tell you that that engagement is at
+an end. Circumstances occurred,--a sad loss of income that he had
+expected,--which made it imperative on him, and also on me in his
+behalf, that we should abandon our hopes. He would have been ruined
+by such a marriage,--and it is all over." Then she paused, and he
+thought that she had done; but there was more to be said, words
+heavier to be borne than any which she had yet uttered. "And I love
+him still. I should lie if I said that it was not so. If he were free
+to marry me this moment I should go to him." As she said this, there
+came a black cloud across his brow; but he stood silent to hear it
+all to the last. "My respect and esteem for you are boundless," she
+continued,--"but he has my heart. It is only because I know that I
+cannot be his wife that I have allowed myself to think whether it is
+my duty to become the wife of another man. After what I now say to
+you, I do not expect that you will persevere. Should you do so, you
+must give me time." Then she paused, as though it were now his turn
+to speak; but there was something further that she felt herself
+bound to say, and, as he was still silent, she continued. "My
+friends,--those whom I most trust in the world, my aunt and Janet
+Fenwick, all tell me that it will be best for me to accept your
+offer. I have made no promise to either of them. I would tell my
+mind to no one till I told it to you. I believe I owe as much to
+you,--almost as much as a woman can owe to a man; but still, were my
+cousin so placed that he could afford to marry a poor wife, I should
+leave you and go to him at once. I have told you everything now; and
+if, after this, you can think me worth having, I can only promise
+that I will endeavour, at some future time, to do my duty to you as
+your wife." Then she had finished, and she stood before him--waiting
+her doom.
+
+His brow had become black and still blacker as she continued her
+speech. He had kept his eyes upon her without quailing for a moment,
+and had hoped for some moment of tenderness, some sparkle of feeling,
+at seeing which he might have taken her in his arms and have stopped
+the sternness of her speech. But she had been at least as strong as
+he was, and had not allowed herself to show the slightest sign of
+weakness.
+
+"You do not love me, then?" he said.
+
+"I esteem you as we esteem our dearest friends."
+
+"And you will never love me?"
+
+"How shall I answer you? I do love you,--but not as I love him. I
+shall never again have that feeling."
+
+"Except for him?"
+
+"Except for him. If it is to be conquered, I will conquer it. I know,
+Mr. Gilmore, that what I have told you will drive you from me. It
+ought to do so."
+
+"It is for me to judge of that," he said, turning upon her quickly.
+
+"In judging for myself I have thought it right to tell you the exact
+truth, and to let you know what it is that you would possess if you
+should choose to take me." Then again she was silent, and waited for
+her doom.
+
+There was a pause of, perhaps, a couple of minutes, during which he
+made no reply. He walked the length of the room twice, slowly, before
+he uttered a word, and during that time he did not look at her. Had
+he chosen to take an hour, she would not have interrupted him again.
+She had told him everything, and it was for him now to decide. After
+what she had said he could not but recall his offer. How was it
+possible that he should desire to make a woman his wife after such a
+declaration as that which she had made to him?
+
+"And now," he said, "it is for me to decide."
+
+"Yes, Mr. Gilmore, it is for you to decide."
+
+"Then," said he, coming up to her and putting out his hand, "you are
+my betrothed. May God in his mercy soften your heart to me, and
+enable you to give me some return for all the love that I bear you."
+She took his hand and raised it to her lips and kissed it, and then
+had left the room before he was able to stop her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER L.
+
+MARY LOWTHER INSPECTS HER FUTURE HOME.
+
+
+Of course it was soon known in the vicarage that Mary Lowther
+had accepted the Squire's hand. She had left him standing in
+the drawing-room;--had left him very abruptly, though she had
+condescended to kiss his hand. Perhaps in no way could she have made
+a kinder reply to his petition for mercy. In ordinary cases it is
+probably common for a lady, when she has yielded to a gentleman's
+entreaties for the gift of herself, to yield also something further
+for his immediate gratification, and to submit herself to his
+embrace. In this instance it was impossible that the lady should do
+so. After the very definite manner in which she had explained to him
+her feelings, it was out of the question that she should stay and toy
+with him;--that she should bear the pressure of his arm, or return
+his caresses. But there had come upon her a sharp desire to show her
+gratitude before she left him,--to show her gratitude, and to prove,
+by some personal action towards him, that though she had been forced
+to tell him that she did not love him,--that she did not love him
+after the fashion in which his love was given to her,--that yet he
+was dear to her, as our dearest friends are dear. And therefore, when
+he had stretched out his hand to her in sign of the offer which he
+was making her, she had raised it to her lips and kissed it.
+
+Very shortly after she had left the room Mrs. Fenwick came to him.
+"Well, Harry," she said, coming up close to him, and looking into his
+eyes to see how it had fared with him, "tell me that I may wish you
+joy."
+
+"She has promised that she will be my wife," he said.
+
+"And is not that what you have so long wished?"
+
+"Yes, indeed."
+
+"Then why are you not elated?"
+
+"I have no doubt she will tell you all. But do not suppose, Mrs.
+Fenwick, that I am not thankful. She has behaved very well,--and she
+has accepted me. She has explained to me in what way her acceptance
+has been given, and I have submitted to it."
+
+"Now, Harry, you are going to make yourself wretched about some
+romantic trifle."
+
+"I am not going to make myself miserable at all. I am much less
+miserable than I could have believed to be possible six months ago.
+She has told me that she will be my wife, and I do not for a moment
+think that she will go back from her word."
+
+"Then what is it?"
+
+"I have not won her as other men do. Never mind;--I do not mean to
+complain. Mrs. Fenwick, I shall trust you to let me know when she
+will be glad to see me here."
+
+"Of course you will come when you like and how you like. You must be
+quite at home here."
+
+"As far as you and Frank are concerned, that would be a
+matter-of-course to me. But it cannot be so--yet--in regard to Mary.
+At any rate, I will not intrude upon her till I know that my coming
+will not be a trouble to her." After this it was not necessary that
+Mrs. Fenwick should be told much more of the manner in which these
+new betrothals had been made.
+
+Mary was, of course, congratulated both by the Vicar and his wife,
+and she received their congratulations with a dignity of deportment
+which, even from her, almost surprised them. She said scarcely a
+word, but smiled as she was kissed by each of them and did whisper
+something as to her hope that she might be able to make Mr. Gilmore
+happy. There was certainly no triumph; and there was no visible sign
+of regret. When she was asked whether she would not wish that he
+should come to the vicarage, she declared that she would have him
+come just as he pleased. If she only knew of his coming beforehand
+she would take care that she would be within to receive him. Whatever
+might be his wishes, she would obey them. Mrs. Fenwick suggested that
+Gilmore would like her to go up to the Privets, and look at the house
+which was to be her future home. She promised that she would go with
+him at any hour that he might appoint. Then there was something said
+as to fixing the day of the wedding. "It is not to be immediately,"
+she replied; "he promised me that he would give me time." "She speaks
+of it as though she was going to be hung," the Vicar said afterwards
+to his wife.
+
+On the day after her engagement she saw Gilmore, and then she wrote
+to her aunt to tell her the tidings. Her letter was very short, and
+had not Miss Marrable thoroughly understood the character of her
+niece, and the agony of the struggle to which Mary was now subjected,
+it would have seemed to be cold and ungrateful. "My dear Aunt," said
+the letter, "Yesterday I accepted Mr. Gilmore's offer. I know you
+will be glad to hear this, as you have always thought that I ought
+to do so. No time has been fixed for the wedding, but it will not be
+very soon. I hope I may do my duty to him and make him happy; but I
+do not know whether I should not have been more useful in remaining
+with my affectionate aunt." That was the whole letter, and there
+was no other friend to whom she herself communicated the tidings.
+It occurred to her for a moment that she would write to Walter
+Marrable;--but Walter Marrable had told her nothing of Edith
+Brownlow. Walter Marrable would learn the news fast enough. And then,
+the writing of such a letter would not have been very easy to her.
+
+On the Sunday afternoon, after church, she walked up to the Privets
+with her lover. The engagement had been made on the previous
+Thursday, and this was the first occasion on which she had been
+alone with him for more than a minute or two at a time since she had
+then parted from him. They started immediately from the churchyard,
+passing out through the gate which led into Mr. Trumbull's field, and
+it was understood that they were to return for an early dinner at the
+vicarage. Mary had made many resolutions as to this walk. She would
+talk much, so that it might not be tedious and melancholy to him; she
+would praise everything, and show the interest which she took in the
+house and grounds; she would ask questions, and display no hesitation
+as to claiming her own future share of possession in all that
+belonged to him. She went off at once as soon as she was through the
+wicket gate, asking questions as to the division of the property of
+the parish between the two owners, as to this field and that field,
+and the little wood which they passed, till her sharp intelligence
+told her that she was over-acting her part. He was no actor,
+but unconsciously he perceived her effort; and he resented it,
+unconsciously also, by short answers and an uninterested tone. She
+was aware of it all, and felt that there had been a mistake. It
+would be better for her to leave the play in his hands, and to adapt
+herself to his moods.
+
+"We had better go straight up to the house," he said, as soon as the
+pathway had led them off Lord Trowbridge's land into his own domain.
+
+"I think we had," said she.
+
+"If we go round by the stables it will make us late for Fenwick's
+dinner."
+
+"We ought to be back by half-past two," she said. They had left the
+church exactly at half-past twelve, and were therefore to be together
+for two hours.
+
+He took her over the house. The showing of a house in such
+circumstances is very trying, both to the man and to the woman. He is
+weighted by a mixed load of pride in his possession and of assumed
+humility. She, to whom every detail of the future nest is so vitally
+important, is almost bound to praise, though every encomium she
+pronounces will be a difficulty in the way of those changes which
+she contemplates. But on the present occasion Mary contemplated
+no change. Marrying this man, as she was about to do, professedly
+without loving him, she was bound to take everything else as she
+found it. The dwelling rooms of the house she had known before; the
+dining-room, the drawing-room, and the library. She was now taken
+into his private chamber, where he sat as a magistrate, and paid his
+men, and kept his guns and fishing-rods. Here she sat down for a
+moment, and when he had told her this and that,--how he was always
+here for so long in the morning, and how he hoped that she would come
+to him sometimes when he was thus busy, he came and stood over her,
+putting his hand upon her shoulder. "Mary," he said, "will you not
+kiss me?"
+
+"Certainly I will," she said, jumping up, and offering her face to
+his salute. A month or two ago he would have given the world for
+permission to kiss her; and now it seemed as though the thing itself
+were a matter but of little joy. A kiss to be joyful should be
+stolen, with a conviction on the part of the offender that she who
+has suffered the loss will never prosecute the thief. She had meant
+to be good to him, but the favour would have gone further with him
+had she made more of it.
+
+Then they went up stairs. Who does not know the questions that were
+asked and that were answered? On this occasion they were asked and
+answered with matter-of-fact useful earnestness. The papers on the
+walls were perhaps old and ugly; but she did not mind it if they
+were so. If he liked to have the rooms new papered, of course it
+would be nice. Would she like new furniture? Did she object to the
+old-fashioned four-post bedsteads? Had she any special taste about
+hangings and colours? Of course she had, but she could not bring
+herself to indulge them by giving orders as to this or that. She
+praised everything; was satisfied with everything; was interested in
+everything; but would propose no changes. What right had she, seeing
+that she was to give him so little, to ask him to do this or that
+for her? She meant on this occasion to do all that she could for his
+happiness, but had she ordered new furniture for the whole house,
+begged that every room might be fresh papered, and pointed out that
+the panelling was old and must be altered, and the entire edifice
+re-painted inside and out, he would have been a happier man. "I hope
+you will find it comfortable," he said, in a tone of voice that was
+beyond measure lugubrious.
+
+"I am sure that I shall," she replied. "What more can any woman want
+than there is here? And then there are so many comforts to which I
+have never been used."
+
+This passed between them as they stood on the steps of the house,
+looking down upon green paddocks in front of the house; "I think we
+will come and see the gardens another day," he said.
+
+"Whenever you like," she answered. "Perhaps if we stay now we shall
+be keeping them waiting." Then, as they returned by the road, she
+remembered an account that Janet Fenwick had given her of a certain
+visit which Janet had made to the vicarage as Miss Balfour, and
+of all the joys of that inspection. But what right had she, Mary
+Lowther, to suppose that she could have any of the same pleasure?
+Janet Balfour, in her first visit to the vicarage, had been to see
+the home in which she was to live with the man to whom her whole
+heart had been given without reserve.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LI.
+
+THE GRINDER AND HIS COMRADE.
+
+
+As the day drew near for the final examination at Heytesbury of the
+suspected murderers,--the day on which it was expected that either
+all the three prisoners, or at least two of them, would be committed
+to take their trial at the summer assizes, the Vicar became anxious
+as to the appearance of Carry Brattle in the Court. At first he
+entertained an idea that he would go over to Salisbury and fetch her;
+but his wife declared that this was imprudent and Quixotic,--and
+that he shouldn't do it. Fenwick's argument in support of his own
+idea amounted to little more than this,--that he would go for the
+girl because the Marquis of Trowbridge would be sure to condemn
+him for taking such a step. "It is intolerable to me," he said,
+"that I should be impeded in my free action by the interference and
+accusations of such an ass as that." But the question was one on
+which his wife felt herself to be so strong that she would not yield,
+either to his logic or to his anger. "It can't be fit for you to go
+about and fetch witnesses; and it won't make it more fit because
+she is a pretty young woman who has lost her character." "Honi soit
+qui mal y pense," said the Vicar. But his wife was resolute, and he
+gave up the plan. He wrote, however, to the constable at Salisbury,
+begging the man to look to the young woman's comfort, and offering to
+pay for any special privilege or accommodation that might be accorded
+to her. This occurred on the Saturday before the day on which Mary
+Lowther was taken up to look at her new home.
+
+The Sunday passed by, with more or less of conversation respecting
+the murder; and so also the Monday morning. The Vicar had himself
+been summoned to give his evidence as to having found Sam Brattle
+in his own garden, in company with another man with whom he had
+wrestled, and whom he was able to substantiate as the Grinder; and,
+indeed, the terrible bruise made by the Vicar's life-preserver on
+the Grinder's back, would be proved by evidence from Lavington. On
+the Monday evening he was sitting, after dinner, with Gilmore, who
+had dined at the vicarage, when he was told that a constable from
+Salisbury wished to see him. The constable was called into the room,
+and soon told his story. He had gone up to Trotter's Buildings that
+day after dinner, and was told that the bird had flown. She had gone
+out that morning, and Mrs. Stiggs knew nothing of her departure. When
+they examined the room in which she slept, they found that she had
+taken what little money she possessed and her best clothes. She had
+changed her frock and put on a pair of strong boots, and taken her
+cloak with her. Mrs. Stiggs acknowledged that had she seen the girl
+going forth thus provided, her suspicions would have been aroused;
+but Carry had managed to leave the house without being observed. Then
+the constable went on to say that Mrs. Stiggs had told him that she
+had been sure that Carry would go. "I've been a waiting for it all
+along," she had said; "but when there came the law rumpus atop of the
+other, I knew as how she'd hop the twig." And now Carry Brattle had
+hopped the twig, and no one knew whither she had gone. There was much
+sorrow at the vicarage; for Mrs. Fenwick, though she had been obliged
+to restrain her husband's impetuosity in the matter, had nevertheless
+wished well for the poor girl;--and who could not believe aught of
+her now but that she would return to misery and degradation? When the
+constable was interrogated as to the need for her attendance on the
+morrow, he declared that nothing could now be done towards finding
+her and bringing her to Heytesbury in time for the magistrates'
+session. He supposed there would be another remand, and that then
+she, too, would be--wanted.
+
+But there had been so many remands that on the Tuesday the
+magistrates were determined to commit the men, and did commit two of
+them. Against Sam there was no tittle of evidence, except as to that
+fact that he had been seen with these men in Mr. Fenwick's garden;
+and it was at once proposed to put him into the witness-box, instead
+of proceeding against him as one of the murderers. As a witness he
+was adjudged to have behaved badly; but the assumed independence of
+his demeanour was probably the worst of his misbehaviour. He would
+tell them nothing of the circumstances of the murder, except that
+having previously become acquainted with the two men, Burrows and
+Acorn, and having, as he thought, a spite against the Vicar at the
+time, he had determined to make free with some of the vicarage fruit.
+He had, he said, met the men in the village that afternoon, and
+had no knowledge of their business there. He had known Acorn more
+intimately than the other man, and confessed at last that his
+acquaintance with that man had arisen from a belief that Acorn was
+about to marry his sister. He acknowledged that he knew that Burrows
+had been a convicted thief, and that Acorn had been punished for
+horse stealing. When he was asked how it had come to pass that he was
+desirous of seeing his sister married to a horse-stealer, he declined
+to answer, and, looking round the Court, said that he hoped there was
+no man there who would be coward enough to say anything against his
+sister. They who heard him declared that there was more of a threat
+than a request expressed in his words and manner.
+
+A question was put to him as to his knowledge of Farmer Trumbull's
+money. "There was them as knew; but I knew nothing," he said. He was
+pressed on this point by the magistrates, but would say not a word
+further. As to this, however, the police were indifferent, as they
+believed that they would be able to prove at the trial, from other
+sources, that the mother of the man called the Grinder had certainly
+received tidings of the farmer's wealth. There were many small
+matters of evidence to which the magistrates trusted. One of the men
+had bought poison, and the dog had been poisoned. The presence of the
+cart at the farmer's gate was proved, and the subsequent presence
+of the two men in the same cart at Pycroft Common. The size of the
+footprints, the characters and subsequent flight of the men, and
+certain damaging denials and admissions which they themselves had
+made, all went to make up the case against them, and they were
+committed to be tried for the murder. Sam, however, was allowed to go
+free, being served, however, with a subpoena to attend at the trial
+as a witness. "I will," said he, "if you send me down money enough
+to bring me up from South Shields, and take me back again. I ain't a
+coming on my own hook as I did this time;--and wouldn't now, only for
+Muster Fenwick." Our friends left the police to settle this question
+with Sam, and then drove home to Bullhampton.
+
+The Vicar was triumphant, though his triumph was somewhat quelled
+by the disappearance of Carry Brattle. There could, however, be no
+longer any doubt that Sam Brattle's innocence as to the murder was
+established. Head-Constable Toffy had himself acknowledged to him
+that Sam could have had no hand in it. "I told you so from the
+beginning," said the Vicar. "We 'as got the right uns, at any rate,"
+said the constable; "and it wasn't none of our fault that we hadn't
+'em before." But though Constable Toffy was thus honest, there were
+one or two in Heytesbury on that day who still persisted in declaring
+that Sam was one of the murderers. Sir Thomas Charleys stuck to that
+opinion to the last; and Lord Trowbridge, who had again sat upon the
+bench, was quite convinced that justice was being shamefully robbed
+of her due.
+
+When the Vicar reached Bullhampton, instead of turning into his own
+place at once, he drove himself on to the mill. He dropped Gilmore at
+the gate, but he could not bear that the father and mother should not
+know immediately, from a source which they would trust, that Sam had
+been declared innocent of that great offence. Driving round by the
+road, Fenwick met the miller about a quarter of a mile from his own
+house. "Mr. Brattle," he said, "they have committed the two men."
+
+"Have they, sir?" said the miller, not condescending to ask a
+question about his own son.
+
+"As I have said all along, Sam had no more to do with it than you or
+I."
+
+"You have been very good, Muster Fenwick."
+
+"Come, Mr. Brattle, do not pretend that this is not a comfort to
+you."
+
+"A comfort as my son ain't proved a murderer! If they'd a hanged 'im,
+Muster Fenwick, that'd a been bad, for certain. It ain't much of
+comfort we has; but there may be a better and a worser in everything,
+no doubt. I'm obleeged to you, all as one, Muster Fenwick--very much
+obleeged; and it will take a heavy load off his mother's heart." Then
+the Vicar turned his gig round, and drove himself home.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LII.
+
+CARRY BRATTLE'S JOURNEY.
+
+
+Mrs. Stiggs had been right in her surmise about Carry Brattle. The
+confinement in Trotter's Buildings and want of interest in her life
+was more than the girl could bear, and she had been thinking of
+escape almost from the first day that she had been there. Had it
+not been for the mingled fear and love with which she regarded Mr.
+Fenwick, had she not dreaded that he should think her ungrateful, she
+would have flown even before the summons came to her which told her
+that she must appear before the magistrates and lawyers, and among a
+crowd of people, in the neighbourhood of her old home. That she could
+not endure, and therefore she had flown. When it had been suggested
+to her that she should go and live with her brother's wife as
+her servant, that idea had been hard to bear. But there had been
+uncertainty, and an opinion of her own which proved to be right,
+that her sister-in-law would not receive her. Now about this paper
+that the policeman had handed to her, and the threatened journey to
+Heytesbury, there was no uncertainty,--unless she might possibly
+escape the evil by running away. Therefore she ran away.
+
+The straight-going people of the world, in dealing with those who go
+crooked, are almost always unreasonable. "Because you have been bad,"
+say they who are not bad to those who are bad, "because you have
+hitherto indulged yourself with all pleasures within your reach,
+because you have never worked steadily or submitted yourself to
+restraint, because you have been a drunkard, and a gambler, and have
+lived in foul company, therefore now,--now that I have got a hold of
+you and can manipulate you in reference to your repentance and future
+conduct,--I will require from you a mode of life that, in its general
+attractions, shall be about equal to that of a hermit in the desert.
+If you flinch you are not only a monster of ingratitude towards me,
+who am taking all this trouble to save you, but you are also a poor
+wretch for whom no possible hope of grace can remain." When it is
+found that a young man is neglecting his duties, doing nothing,
+spending his nights in billiard rooms and worse places, and getting
+up at two o'clock in the day, the usual prescription of his friends
+is that he should lock himself up in his own dingy room, drink tea,
+and spend his hours in reading good books. It is hardly recognised
+that a sudden change from billiards to good books requires a strength
+of character which, if possessed, would probably have kept the young
+man altogether from falling into bad habits. If we left the doors of
+our prisons open, and then expressed disgust because the prisoners
+walked out, we should hardly be less rational. The hours at Mrs.
+Stiggs's house had been frightfully heavy to poor Carry Brattle, and
+at last she escaped.
+
+It was half-past ten on the Monday morning when she went out. It was
+her custom to go out at that hour. Mr. Fenwick had desired her to
+attend the morning services at the Cathedral. She had done so for a
+day or two, and had then neglected them. But she had still left the
+house always at that time; and once, when Mrs. Stiggs had asked some
+question on the subject, she had replied almost in anger that she was
+not a prisoner. On this occasion she made changes in her dress which
+were not usual, and therefore she was careful to avoid being seen as
+she went; but had she been interrogated she would have persevered.
+Who had a right to stop her?
+
+But where should she go? The reader may perhaps remember that once
+when Mr. Fenwick first found this poor girl, after her flight from
+home and her great disgrace, she had expressed a desire to go to the
+mill and just look at it,--even if she might do no more than that.
+The same idea was now in her mind, but as she left the city she had
+no concerted plan. There were two things between which she must
+choose at once,--either to go to London, or not to go to London. She
+had money enough for her fare, and perhaps a few shillings over. In
+a dim way she did understand that the choice was between going to
+the devil at once,--and not going quite at once; and then, weakly,
+wistfully, with uncertain step, almost without an operation of her
+mind, she did not take the turn which, from the end of Trotter's
+Buildings, would have brought her to the Railway Station, but did
+take that which led her by the Three Honest Men out on to the Devizes
+road,--the road which passes across Salisbury Plain, and leads from
+the city to many Wiltshire villages,--of which Bullhampton is one.
+
+She walked slowly, but she walked nearly the whole day. Nothing could
+be more truly tragical than the utterly purposeless tenour of her
+day,--and of her whole life. She had no plan,--nothing before her;
+no object even for the evening and night of that very day in which
+she was wasting her strength on the Devizes road. It is the lack of
+object, of all aim, in the lives of the houseless wanderers that
+gives to them the most terrible element of their misery. Think of it!
+To walk forth with, say, ten shillings in your pocket,--so that there
+need be no instant suffering from want of bread or shelter,--and
+have no work to do, no friend to see, no place to expect you, no
+duty to accomplish, no hope to follow, no bourn to which you can
+draw nigher,--except that bourn which, in such circumstances, the
+traveller must surely regard as simply the end of his weariness! But
+there is nothing to which humanity cannot attune itself. Men can
+live upon poison, can learn to endure absolute solitude, can bear
+contumely, scorn, and shame, and never show it. Carry Brattle had
+already become accustomed to misery, and as she walked she thought
+more of the wretchedness of the present hour, of her weary feet, of
+her hunger, and of the nature of the rest which she might purchase
+for herself at some poor wayside inn, than she did of her future
+life.
+
+
+[Illustration: Carry Brattle.]
+
+
+She got a lump of bread and a glass of beer in the middle of the day,
+and then she walked on and on till the evening came. She went very
+slowly, stopping often and sitting down when the road side would
+afford her some spot of green shade. At eight o'clock she had walked
+fifteen miles, straight along the road, and, as she knew well, had
+passed the turn which would have taken her by the nearest way from
+Salisbury to Bullhampton. She had formed no plan, but entertained a
+hope that if she continued to walk they would not catch her so as to
+take her to Heytesbury on the morrow. She knew that if she went on
+she might get to Pycroft Common by this road; and though there was no
+one in the whole world whom she hated worse than Mrs. Burrows, still
+at Pycroft Common she might probably be taken in and sheltered. At
+eight she reached a small village which she remembered to have seen
+before, of which she saw the name written up on a board, and which
+she knew to be six miles from Bullhampton. She was so tired and weary
+that she could go no further, and here she asked for a bed. She told
+them that she was walking from Salisbury to the house of a friend who
+lived near Devizes, and that she had thought she could do it in one
+day and save her railway fare. She was simply asked to pay for her
+bed and supper beforehand, and then she was taken in and fed and
+sheltered. On the next morning she got up very late and was unwilling
+to leave the house. She paid for her breakfast, and, as she was
+not told to go her way, she sat on the chair in which she had been
+placed, without speaking, almost without moving, till late in the
+afternoon. At three o'clock she roused herself, asked for some bread
+and cheese which she put in her pocket, and started again upon her
+journey. She thought that she would be safe, at any rate for that
+day, from the magistrates and the policemen, from the sight of her
+brother, and from the presence of that other man at Heytesbury. But
+whither she would go when she left the house,--whether on to the
+hated cottage at Pycroft Common, or to her father's house, she had
+not made up her mind when she tied on her hat. She went on along
+the road towards Devizes, and about two miles from the village she
+came to a lane turning to the left, with a finger-post. On this was
+written a direction,--To Bullhampton and Imber; and here she turned
+short off towards the parish in which she had been born. It was then
+four o'clock, and when she had travelled a mile further she found
+a nook under the wall of a little bridge, and there she seated
+herself, and ate her dinner of bread and cheese. While she was there
+a policeman on foot passed along the road. The man did not see her,
+and had he seen her would have taken no more than a policeman's
+ordinary notice of her; but she saw him, and in consequence did not
+leave her hiding-place for hours.
+
+About nine o'clock she crept on again, but even then her mind was not
+made up. She did not even yet know where she would bestow herself for
+that night. It seemed to her that there would be an inexpressible
+pleasure to her, even in her misery, in walking round the precincts
+of the mill, in gazing at the windows of the house, in standing on
+the bridge where she had so often loitered, and in looking once more
+on the scene of her childhood. But, as she thought of this, she
+remembered the darkness of the stream, and the softly-gurgling but
+rapid flow with which it hurried itself on beneath the black abyss of
+the building. She had often shuddered as she watched it, indulging
+herself in the luxury of causeless trepidation. But now, were she
+there, she would surely take that plunge into the blackness, which
+would bring her to the end of all her misery!
+
+And yet, as she went on towards her old home, through the twilight,
+she had no more definite idea than that of looking once more on
+the place which had been cherished in her memory through all her
+sufferings. As to her rest for the night she had no plan,--unless,
+indeed, she might find her rest in the hidden mill-pool of that dark,
+softly-gurgling stream.
+
+On that same day, between six and seven in the evening, the miller
+was told by Mr. Fenwick that his son was no longer accused of the
+murder. He had not received the information in the most gracious
+manner; but not the less quick was he in making it known at the mill.
+"Them dunderheads over at He'tsbry has found out at last as our
+Sam had now't to do with it." This he said, addressing no one in
+particular, but in the hearing of his wife and Fanny Brattle. Then
+there came upon him a torrent of questions and a torrent also of
+tears. Mrs. Brattle and Fanny had both made up their minds that Sam
+was innocent; but the mother had still feared that he would be made
+to suffer in spite of his innocence. Fanny, however, had always
+persisted that the goodness of the Lord would save him and them from
+such injustice. To the old man himself they had hardly dared to talk
+about it, but now they strove to win him to some softness. Might not
+a struggle be made to bring Sam back to the mill? But it was very
+hard to soften the miller. "After what's come and gone, the lad is
+better away," he said, at last. "I didn't think as he'd ever raised
+his hand again an old man," he said, shortly afterwards; "but he's
+kep' company with them as did. It's a'most as bad." Beyond this
+the miller would not go; but, when they separated for the night,
+the mother took herself for awhile into the daughter's chamber in
+order that they might weep and rejoice together. It was now all but
+midsummer, and the evenings were long and sultry. The window of
+Fanny's bedroom looked out on to the garden of the mill, and was but
+a foot or two above the ground. This ground had once been pleasant to
+them all, and profitable withal. Of late, since the miller had become
+old, and Sam had grown to be too restive and self-willed to act
+as desired for the general welfare of the family, but little of
+pleasure, or profit either, had been forthcoming from the patch
+of ground. There were a few cabbages there, and rows of untended
+gooseberry and currant bushes, and down towards the orchard there was
+a patch of potatoes; but no one took pride now in the garden. As for
+Fanny, if she could provide that there should always be a sufficient
+meal on the table for her father and mother, it was as much as she
+could do. The days were clean gone by in which she had had time and
+spirits to tend her roses, pinks, and pansies. Now she sat at the
+open window with her mother, and with bated breath they spoke of the
+daughter and sister that was lost to them.
+
+"He wouldn't take it amiss, mother, if I was to go over to
+Salisbury?"
+
+"If you was to ask him, Fan, he'd bid you not," said the mother.
+
+"But I wouldn't ask him. I wouldn't tell him till I was back. She
+was to be before the magistrates to-day. Mr. Fenwick told me so on
+Sunday."
+
+"It will about be the death of her."
+
+"I don't know, mother. She's bolder now, mother, I fear, than what
+she was in old days. And she was always sprightly,--speaking up to
+the quality, with no fear like. Maybe it was what she said that got
+them to let Sam go. She was never a coward, such as me."
+
+"Oh, Fan, if she'd only a taken after thee!"
+
+"The Lord, mother, makes us different for purposes of his own. Of all
+the lasses I ever see, to my eyes she was the comeliest." The old
+woman couldn't speak now, but rubbed her moist cheeks with her raised
+apron. "I'll ask Mr. Toffy to-morrow, mother," continued Fanny, "and
+if she be still at that place in Salisbury where Mr. Fenwick put her,
+I'll just go to her. Father won't turn me out of the house along of
+it."
+
+"Turn thee out, Fan! He'll never turn thee out. What 'd a do, or what
+'d I do if thee was to go away from us? If thou dost go, Fan, take
+her a few bits of things that are lying there in the big press, and
+'ll never be used other gait. I warrant the poor child 'll be but
+badly off for under-clothing."
+
+And then they planned how the journey on the morrow should be
+made,--after the constable should have been questioned, and the Vicar
+should have been consulted. Fanny would leave home immediately after
+breakfast, and when the miller should ask after her at dinner his
+wife should tell him that his daughter had gone to Salisbury. If
+further question should be asked,--and it was thought possible that
+no further question would be asked, as the father would then guess
+the errand on which his daughter would have gone,--but if the subject
+were further mooted, Mrs. Brattle, with such courage as she might be
+able to assume, should acknowledge the business that had taken Fanny
+to Salisbury. Then there arose questions about money. Mr. Fenwick had
+owned, thinking that he might thereby ease the mother's heart, that
+for the present Carry was maintained by him. To take this task upon
+themselves the mother and daughter were unable. The money which they
+had in hand, very small in amount, was, they knew, the property of
+the head of the family. That they could do no permanent good to Carry
+was a great grief. But it might be something if they could comfort
+her for awhile.
+
+"I don't think but what her heart 'll still be soft to thee, Fan; and
+who knows but what it may bring her round to see thy face, and hear
+thy voice."
+
+At that moment Fanny heard a sound in the garden, and stretched her
+head and shoulders quickly out of the window. They had been late at
+the mill that evening, and it was now eleven o'clock. It had been
+still daylight when the miller had left them at tea; but the night
+had crept on them as they had sat there. There was no moon, but there
+was still something left of the reflection of the last colours of
+the setting sun, and the night was by no means dark. Fanny saw at
+once the figure of a woman, though she did not at once recognise the
+person of her sister. "Oh, mother! oh, mother! oh, mother!" said a
+voice from the night; and in a moment Carry Brattle had stretched
+herself so far within the window that she had grasped her mother by
+the arm.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LIII.
+
+THE FATTED CALF.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Mrs. Brattle, when she heard her daughter's voice, was so confounded,
+dismayed, and frightened, that for awhile she could give no direction
+as to what should be done. She had screamed at first, having some dim
+idea in her mind that the form she saw was not of living flesh and
+blood. And Carry herself had been hardly more composed or mistress of
+herself than her mother. She had strayed thither, never having quite
+made up her mind to any settled purpose. From the spot in which she
+had hidden herself under the bridge when the policeman passed her she
+had started when the evening sun was setting, and had wandered on
+slowly till the old familiar landmarks of the parish were reached.
+And then she came to the river, and looking across could just see
+the eaves of the mill through the willows by the last gloaming of
+the sunlight. Then she stood and paused, and every now and again had
+crept on a few feet as her courage came to her, and at last, by the
+well known little path, she had crept down behind the mill, crossing
+the stream by the board which had once been so accustomed to her
+feet, and had made her way into the garden and had heard her mother
+and sister as they talked together at the open window. Any idea which
+she had hitherto entertained of not making herself known to them at
+the mill,--of not making herself known at any rate to her mother and
+sister,--left her at once at that moment. There had been upon her
+a waking dream, a horrid dream, that the waters of the mill-stream
+might flow over her head, and hide her wickedness and her misery
+from the eyes of men; and she had stood and shuddered as she saw the
+river; but she had never really thought that her own strength would
+suffice for that termination to her sorrows. It was more probable
+that she would be doomed to lie during the night beneath a hedge, and
+then perish of the morning cold! But now, as she heard the voices at
+the window, there could be no choice for her but that she should make
+herself known,--not though her father should kill her.
+
+Even Fanny was driven beyond the strength of her composure by the
+strangeness of this advent. "Carry! Carry!" she exclaimed over and
+over again, not aloud,--and indeed her voice was never loud,--but
+with bated wonder. The two sisters held each other by the hand, and
+Carry's other hand still grasped her mother's arm. "Oh, mother, I am
+so tired," said the girl. "Oh, mother, I think that I shall die."
+
+"My child;--my poor child. What shall we do, Fan?"
+
+"Bring her in, of course," said Fanny.
+
+"But your father--"
+
+"We couldn't turn her away from the very window, and she like that,
+mother."
+
+"Don't turn me away, Fanny. Dear Fanny, do not turn me away," said
+Carry, striving to take her sister by the other hand.
+
+"No, Carry, we will not," said Fanny, trying to settle her mind to
+some plan of action. Any idea of keeping the thing long secret from
+her father she knew that she could not entertain; but for this night
+she resolved at last that shelter should be given to the discarded
+daughter without the father's knowledge. But even in doing this there
+would be difficulty. Carry must be brought in through the window, as
+any disturbance at the front of the house would arouse the miller.
+And then Mrs. Brattle must be made to go to her own room, or her
+absence would create suspicion and confusion. Fanny, too, had
+terrible doubts as to her mother's powers of going to her bed and
+lying there without revealing to her husband that some cause of great
+excitement had arisen. And then it might be that the miller would
+come to his daughter's room, and insist that the outcast should be
+made an outcast again, even in the middle of the night. He was a man
+so stern, so obstinate, so unforgiving, so masterful, that Fanny,
+though she would face any danger as regarded herself, knew that
+terrible things might happen. It seemed to her that Carry was very
+weak. If their father came to them in his wrath, might she not die in
+her despair? Nevertheless it was necessary that something should be
+done. "We must let her get in at the window, mother," she said. "It
+won't do, nohow, to unbar the door."
+
+"But what if he was to kill her outright! Oh, Carry; oh, my child. I
+dunna know as she can get in along of her weakness." But Carry was
+not so tired as that. She had been in and out of that window scores
+of times; and now, when she heard that the permission was accorded
+to her, she was not long before she was in her mother's arms. "My
+own Carry, my own bairn;--my girl, my darling." And the poor mother
+satisfied the longings of her heart with infinite caresses.
+
+Fanny in the meantime had crept out to the kitchen, and now returned
+with food in a plate and cold tea. "My girl," she said, "you must eat
+a bit, and then we will have you to bed. When the morn comes, we must
+think about it."
+
+"Fanny, you was always the best that there ever was," said Carry,
+speaking from her mother's bosom.
+
+"And now, mother," continued Fanny, "you must creep off. Indeed you
+must, or of course father'll wake up. And mother, don't say a word
+to-morrow when he rises. I'll go to him in the mill myself. That'll
+be best." Then, with longings that could hardly be repressed, with
+warm, thick, clinging kisses, with a hot, rapid, repeated assurance
+that everything,--everything had been forgiven, that her own Carry
+was once more her own, own Carry, the poor mother allowed herself
+to be banished. There seemed to her to be such a world of cruelty
+in the fact that Fanny might remain for the whole of that night
+with the dear one who had returned to them, while she must be sent
+away,--perhaps not to see her again if the storm in the morning
+should rise too loudly! Fanny, with great craft, accompanied her
+mother to her room, so that if the old man should speak she might
+be there to answer;--but the miller slept soundly after his day of
+labour, and never stirred.
+
+"What will he do to me, Fan?" the wanderer asked as soon as her
+sister returned.
+
+"Don't think of it now, my pet," said Fanny, softened almost as her
+mother was softened by the sight of her sister.
+
+"Will he kill me, Fan?"
+
+"No, dear; he will not lay a hand upon you. It is his words that are
+so rough! Carry, Carry, will you be good?"
+
+"I will, dear; indeed I will. I have not been bad since Mr. Fenwick
+came."
+
+"My sister,--if you will be good, I will never leave you. My heart's
+darling, my beauty, my pretty one! Carry, you shall be the same to
+me as always, if you'll be good. I'll never cast it up again you, if
+you'll be good." Then she, too, filled herself full, and satisfied
+the hungry craving of her love with the warmth of her caresses. "But
+thee'll be famished, lass. I'll see thee eat a bit, and then I'll put
+thee comfortable to bed."
+
+Poor Carry Brattle was famished, and ate the bread and bacon which
+were set before her, and drank the cold tea, with an appetite which
+was perhaps unbecoming the romance of her position. Her sister stood
+over her, cutting a slice now and then from the loaf, telling her
+that she had taken nothing, smoothing her hair, and wishing for her
+sake that the fire were better. "I'm afeard of father, Fan,--awfully;
+but for all that, it's the sweetest meal as I've had since I left the
+mill." Then Fanny was on her knees beside the returned profligate,
+covering even the dear one's garments with her kisses.
+
+It was late before Fanny laid herself down by her sister's side that
+night. "Carry," she whispered when her sister was undressed, "will
+you kneel here and say your prayers as you used to?" Carry, without a
+word, did as she was bidden, and hid her face upon her hands in her
+sister's lap. No word was spoken out loud, but Fanny was satisfied
+that her sister had been in earnest. "Now sleep, my darling;--and
+when I've just tidied your things for the morning, I will be with
+you." The wanderer again obeyed, and in a few moments the work of the
+past two days befriended her, and she was asleep. Then the sister
+went to her task with the soiled frock and the soiled shoes, and
+looked up things clean and decent for the morrow. It would be at any
+rate well that Carry should appear before her father without the
+stain of the road upon her.
+
+As the lost one lay asleep there, with her soft ringlets all loose
+upon the pillow, still beautiful, still soft, lovely though an
+outcast from the dearest rights of womanhood, with so much of
+innocence on her brow, with so much left of the grace of childhood
+though the glory of the flower had been destroyed by the unworthy
+hand that had ravished its sweetness, Fanny, sitting in the corner
+of the room over her work, with her eye from moment to moment turned
+upon the sleeper, could not keep her mind from wandering away in
+thoughts on the strange destiny of woman. She knew that there had
+been moments in her life in which her great love for her sister had
+been tinged with envy. No young lad had ever waited in the dusk to
+hear the sound of her footfall; no half-impudent but half-bashful
+glances had ever been thrown after her as she went through the
+village on her business. To be a homely, household thing, useful
+indeed in this world, and with high hopes for the future,--but still
+to be a drudge; that had been her destiny. There was never a woman
+to whom the idea of being loved was not the sweetest thought that
+her mind could produce. Fate had made her plain, and no man had
+loved her. The same chance had made Carry pretty,--the belle of the
+village, the acknowledged beauty of Bullhampton. And there she lay,
+a thing said to be so foul that even a father could not endure to
+have her name mentioned in his ears! And yet, how small had been
+her fault compared with other crimes for which men and women are
+forgiven speedily, even if it has been held that pardon has ever been
+required.
+
+She came over, and knelt down and kissed her sister on her brow; and
+as she did so she swore to herself that by her, even in the inmost
+recesses of her bosom, Carry should never be held to be evil, to be a
+castaway, to be one of whom, as her sister, it would behove her to be
+ashamed. She had told Carry that she would "never cast it up against
+her." She now resolved that there should be no such casting up even
+in her own judgment. Had she, too, been fair, might not she also have
+fallen?
+
+At five o'clock on the following morning the miller went out from the
+house to his mill, according to his daily practice. Fanny heard his
+heavy step, heard the bar withdrawn, heard the shutters removed from
+the kitchen window, and knew that her father was as yet in ignorance
+of the inmate who had been harboured. Fanny at once arose from her
+bed, careful not to disturb her companion. She had thought it all
+out, whether she would have Carry ready dressed for an escape, should
+it be that her father would demand imperiously that she should be
+sent adrift from the mill, or whether it might not be better that she
+should be able to plead at the first moment that her sister was in
+bed, tired, asleep,--at any rate undressed,--and that some little
+time must be allowed. Might it not be that even in that hour her
+father's heart might be softened? But she must lose no time in going
+to him. The hired man who now tended the mill with her father came
+always at six, and that which she had to say to him must be said with
+no ear to hear her but his own. It would have been impossible even
+for her to remind him of his daughter before a stranger. She slipped
+her clothes on, therefore, and within ten minutes of her father's
+departure followed him into the mill.
+
+The old man had gone aloft, and she heard his slow, heavy feet as he
+was moving the sacks which were above her head. She considered for a
+moment, and thinking it better that she should not herself ascend the
+little ladder,--knowing that it might be well that she should have
+the power of instant retreat to the house,--she called to him from
+below. "What's wanted now?" demanded the old man as soon as he heard
+her. "Father, I must speak to you," she said. "Father, you must come
+down to me." Then he came down slowly, without a word, and stood
+before her waiting to hear her tidings. "Father," she said, "there is
+some one in the house, and I have come to tell you."
+
+"Sam has come, then?" said he; and she could see that there was a
+sparkle of joy in his eye as he spoke. Oh, if she could only make the
+return of that other child as grateful to him as would have been the
+return of his son!
+
+"No, father; it isn't Sam."
+
+"Who be it, then?" The tone of his voice, and the colour and bearing
+of his face were changed as he asked the question. She saw at once
+that he had guessed the truth. "It isn't--it isn't--?"
+
+"Yes, father; it is Carry." As she spoke she came close to him,
+and strove to take his hand; but he thrust both his hands into his
+pockets and turned himself half away from her. "Father, she is our
+flesh and blood; you will not turn against her now that she has come
+back to us, and is sorry for her faults."
+
+"She is a--" But his other daughter had stopped his mouth with her
+hand before the word had been uttered.
+
+"Father, who among us has not done wrong at times?"
+
+"She has disgraced my gray hairs, and made me a reproach and a shame.
+I will not see her. Bid her begone. I will not speak to her or look
+at her. How came she there? When did she come?"
+
+Then Fanny told her father the whole story,--everything as it
+occurred, and did not forget to add her own conviction that Carry's
+life had been decent in all respects since the Vicar had found a home
+for her in Salisbury. "You would not have it go on like that, father.
+She is naught to our parson."
+
+"I will pay. As long as there is a shilling left, I will pay for her.
+She shall not live on the charity of any man, whether parson or no
+parson. But I will not see her. While she be here you may just send
+me my vittels to the mill. If she be not gone afore night, I will
+sleep here among the sacks."
+
+She stayed with him till the labourer came, and then she returned to
+the house, having failed as yet to touch his heart. She went back and
+told her story to her mother, and then a part of it to Carry who was
+still in bed. Indeed, she had found her mother by Carry's bedside,
+and had to wait till she could separate them before she could tell
+any story to either. "What does he say of me, Fan?" asked the poor
+sinner. "Does he say that I must go? Will he never speak to me again?
+I will just throw myself into the mill-race and have done with it."
+Her sister bade her to rise and dress herself, but to remain where
+she was. It could not be expected, she said, but that their father
+would be hard to persuade. "I know that he will kill me when he sees
+me," said Carry.
+
+At eight o'clock Fanny took the old man his breakfast to the mill,
+while Mrs. Brattle waited on Carry, as though she had deserved all
+the good things which a mother could do for a child. The miller sat
+upon a sack at the back of the building, while the hired man took his
+meal of bread and cheese in the front, and Fanny remained close at
+his elbow. While the old man was eating she said nothing to him. He
+was very slow, and sat with his eyes fixed upon the morsel of sky
+which was visible through the small aperture, thinking evidently of
+anything but the food that he was swallowing. Presently he returned
+the empty bowl and plate to his daughter, as though he were about at
+once to resume his work. Hitherto he had not uttered a single word
+since she had come to him.
+
+"Father," she said, "think of it. Is it not good to have mercy and to
+forgive? Would you drive your girl out again upon the streets?"
+
+The miller still did not speak, but turned his face round upon his
+daughter with a gaze of such agony that she threw herself on the sack
+beside him, and clung to him with her arms round his neck.
+
+"If she were such as thee, Fan," he said. "Oh, if she were such as
+thee!" Then again he turned away his face that she might not see the
+tear that was forcing itself into the corner of his eye.
+
+She remained with him an hour before he moved. His companion in the
+mill did not come near them, knowing, as the poor do know on such
+occasions, there was something going on which would lead them to
+prefer that he should be absent. The words that were said between
+them were not very many; but at the end of the hour Fanny returned to
+the house.
+
+"Carry," she said, "father is coming in."
+
+"If he looks at me, it will kill me," said Carry.
+
+Mrs. Brattle was so lost in her hopes and fears that she knew not
+what to do, or how to bestow herself. A minute had hardly passed
+when the miller's step was heard, and Carry knew that she was in the
+presence of her father. She had been sitting, but now she rose, and
+went to him and knelt at his feet.
+
+"Father," she said, "if I may bide with you,--if I may bide with
+you--." But her voice was lost in sobbing, and she could make no
+promise as to her future conduct.
+
+
+[Illustration: "If I may bide with you,--if I may bide
+with you."]
+
+
+"She may stay with us," the father said, turning to his eldest
+daughter; "but I shall never be able to show my face again about the
+parish."
+
+He had uttered no words of forgiveness to his daughter, nor had he
+bestowed upon her any kiss. Fanny had raised her when she was on the
+ground at his feet, and had made her seat herself apart.
+
+"In all the whole warld," he said, looking round upon his wife and
+his elder child, raising his hand as he uttered the words, and
+speaking with an emphasis that was terrible to the hearers, "there
+is no thing so vile as a harlot." All the dreaded fierceness of his
+manner had then come back to him, and neither of them had dared to
+answer him. After that he at once went back to the mill, and to Fanny
+who followed him he vouchsafed to repeat the permission that his
+daughter should be allowed to remain beneath his roof.
+
+Between twelve and one she again went to fetch him to his dinner. At
+first he declared that he would not come, that he was busy, and that
+he would eat a morsel, where he was, in the mill. But Fanny argued
+the matter with him.
+
+"Is it always to be so, father?"
+
+"I do not know. What matters it, so as I have strength to do a turn
+of work?"
+
+"It must not be that her presence should drive you from the house.
+Think of mother, and what she will suffer. Father, you must come."
+
+Then he allowed himself to be led into the house, and he sat in his
+accustomed chair, and ate his dinner in gloomy silence. But after
+dinner he would not smoke.
+
+"I tell 'ee, lass, I do not want the pipe to-day. Now't has got
+itself done. D'ye think as grist 'll grind itself without hands?"
+
+When Carry said that it would be better than this that she should go
+again, Fanny told her to remember that evil things could not be cured
+in a day. With the mother that afternoon was, on the whole, a happy
+time, for she sat with her lost child's hand within her own. Late in
+the evening, when the miller returned to his rest, Carry moved about
+the house softly, resuming some old task to which in former days she
+had been accustomed; and as she did so the miller's eyes would wander
+round the room after her; but he did not speak to her on that day,
+nor did he pronounce her name.
+
+Two other circumstances which bear upon our story occurred at the
+mill that afternoon. After their tea, at which the miller did not
+make his appearance, Fanny Brattle put on her bonnet and ran across
+the fields to the vicarage. After all the trouble that Mr. Fenwick
+had taken, it was, she thought, necessary that he should be told what
+had happened.
+
+"That is the best news," said he, "that I have heard this many a
+day."
+
+"I knew that you would be glad to hear that the poor child has found
+her home again." Then Fanny told the whole story,--how Carry had
+escaped from Salisbury, being driven to do so by fear of the law
+proceedings at which she had been summoned to attend, how her father
+had sworn that he would not yield, and how at length he had yielded.
+When Fanny told the Vicar and Mrs. Fenwick that the old man had as
+yet not spoken to his daughter, they both desired her to be of good
+cheer.
+
+"That will come, Fanny," said Mrs. Fenwick, "if she once be allowed
+to sit at table with him."
+
+"Of course it will come," said the Vicar. "In a week or two you will
+find that she is his favourite."
+
+"She was the favourite with us all, sir, once," said Fanny, "and may
+God send that it shall be so again. A winsome thing like her is made
+to be loved. You'll come and see her, Mr. Fenwick, some day?" Mr.
+Fenwick promised that he would, and Fanny returned to the mill.
+
+The other circumstance was the arrival of Constable Toffy at the mill
+during Fanny's absence. In the course of the day news had travelled
+into the village that Carry Brattle was again at the mill;--and
+Constable Toffy, who in regard to the Brattle family, was somewhat
+discomfited by the transactions of the previous day at Heytesbury,
+heard the news. He was aware,--being in that respect more capable
+than Lord Trowbridge of receiving enlightenment,--that the result
+of all the inquiries made, in regard to the murder, did, in truth,
+contain no tittle of evidence against Sam. As constables go,
+Constable Toffy was a good man, and he would be wronged if it were to
+be said of him that he regretted Sam's escape; but his nature was as
+is the nature of constables, and he could not rid himself of that
+feeling of disappointment which always attends baffled efforts. And
+though he saw that there was no evidence against Sam, he did not,
+therefore, necessarily think that the young man was innocent. It may
+be doubted whether, to the normal policeman's mind, any man is ever
+altogether absolved of any crime with which that man's name has
+been once connected. He felt, therefore, somewhat sore against the
+Brattles;--and then there was the fact that Carry Brattle, who had
+been regularly "subpoenaed," had kept herself out of the way,--most
+flagitiously, illegally and damnably. She had run off from Salisbury,
+just as though she were a free person to do as she pleased with
+herself, and not subject to police orders! When, therefore, he heard
+that Carry was at the mill,--she having made herself liable to some
+terribly heavy fine by her contumacy,--it was manifestly his duty to
+see after her and let her know that she was wanted.
+
+At the mill he saw only the miller himself, and his visit was not
+altogether satisfactory. Old Brattle, who understood very little of
+the case, but who did understand that his own son had been made clear
+in reference to that accusation, had no idea that his daughter had
+any concern with that matter, other than what had fallen to her lot
+in reference to her brother. When, therefore, Toffy inquired after
+Caroline Brattle, and desired to know whether she was at the mill,
+and also was anxious to be informed why she had not attended at
+Heytesbury in accordance with the requirements of the law, the miller
+turned upon him and declared that if anybody said a word against Sam
+Brattle in reference to the murder,--the magistrates having settled
+that matter,--he, Jacob Brattle, old as he was, would "see it out"
+with that malignant slanderer. Constable Toffy did his best to make
+the matter clear to the miller, but failed utterly. Had he a warrant
+to search for anybody? Toffy had no warrant. Toffy only desired to
+know whether Caroline Brattle was or was not beneath her father's
+roof. The old miller, declaring to himself that, though his child had
+shamed him, he would not deny her now that she was again one of the
+family, acknowledged so much, but refused the constable admittance to
+the house.
+
+"But, Mr. Brattle," said the constable, "she was subpoenaed."
+
+"I know now't o' that," answered the miller, not deigning to turn his
+face round to his antagonist.
+
+"But you know, Mr. Brattle, the law must have its course."
+
+"No, I don't. And it ain't law as you should come here a hindering o'
+me; and it ain't law as you should walk that unfortunate young woman
+off with you to prison."
+
+"But she's wanted, Mr. Brattle;--not in the way of going to prison,
+but before the magistrates."
+
+"There's a deal of things is wanted as ain't to be had. Anyways, you
+ain't no call to my house now, and as them as is there is in trouble,
+I'll ax you to be so kind as--as just to leave us alone."
+
+Toffy, pretending that he was satisfied with the information
+received, and merely adding that Caroline Brattle must certainly,
+at some future time, be made to appear before the magistrates at
+Heytesbury, took his departure with more good-humour than the miller
+deserved from him, and returned to the village.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LIV.
+
+MR. GILMORE'S RUBIES.
+
+
+Mary Lowther struggled hard for a week to reconcile herself to her
+new fate, and at the end of the week had very nearly given way. The
+gloom which had fallen upon her acted upon her lover and then reacted
+upon herself. Could he have been light in hand, could he have talked
+to her about ordinary subjects, could he have behaved towards her
+with any even of the light courtesies of the every-day lover, she
+would have been better able to fight her battle. But when he was
+with her there was a something in his manner which always seemed to
+accuse her in that she, to whom he was giving so much, would give him
+nothing in return. He did not complain in words. He did not wilfully
+resent her coldness to him. But he looked, and walked, and spoke,
+and seemed to imply by every deed that he was conscious of being an
+injured man. At the end of the week he made her a handsome present,
+and in receiving it she had to assume some pleasure. But the failure
+was complete, and each of the two knew how great was the failure. Of
+course, there would be other presents. And he had already,--already,
+though no allusion to the day for the marriage had yet been
+made,--begun to press on for those changes in his house for which she
+would not ask, but which he was determined to effect for her comfort.
+There had been another visit to the house and gardens, and he had
+told her that this should be done,--unless she objected; and that
+that other change should be made, if it were not opposed to her
+wishes. She made an attempt to be enthusiastic,--enthusiastic on the
+wrong side, to be zealous to save him money, and the whole morning
+was beyond measure sad and gloomy. Then she asked herself whether she
+meant to go through with it. If not, the sooner that she retreated
+and hid herself and her disgrace for the rest of her life the better.
+She had accepted him at last, because she had been made to believe
+that by doing so she would benefit him, and because she had taught
+herself to think that it was her duty to disregard herself. She had
+thought of herself till she was sick of the subject. What did it
+matter,--about herself,--as long as she could be of some service to
+some one? And so thinking, she had accepted him. But now she had
+begun to fear that were she to marry this man she could not be of
+service to him. And when the thing should be done,--if ever it were
+done,--there would be no undoing it. Would not her life be a life
+of sin if she were to live as the wife of a man whom she did not
+love,--while, perhaps, she would be unable not to love another man?
+
+Nothing of all this was told to the Vicar, but Mrs. Fenwick knew what
+was going on in her friend's mind, and spoke her own very freely.
+"Hitherto," she said, "I have given you credit all through for good
+conduct and good feeling; but I shall be driven to condemn you if
+you now allow a foolish, morbid, sickly idea to interfere with his
+happiness and your own."
+
+"But what if I can do nothing for his happiness?"
+
+"That is nonsense. He is not a man whom you despise or dislike.
+If you will only meet him half-way you will soon find that your
+sympathies will grow."
+
+"There never will be a spark of sympathy between us."
+
+"Mary, that is most horribly wicked. What you mean is this, that
+he is not light and gay as a lover. Of course he remembers the
+occurrences of the last six months. Of course he cannot be so happy
+as he might have been had Walter Marrable never been at Loring. There
+must be something to be conquered, something to be got over, after
+such an episode. But you may set your face against doing that, or you
+may strive to do it. For his sake, if not for your own, the struggle
+should be made."
+
+"A man may struggle to draw a loaded wagon, but he won't move it."
+
+"The load in this case is of your own laying on. One hour of frank
+kindness on your part would dispel his gloom. He is not gloomy by
+nature."
+
+Then Mary Lowther tried to achieve that hour of frank kindness and
+again failed. She failed and was conscious of her failure, and there
+came a time,--and that within three weeks of her engagement,--in
+which she had all but made up her mind to return the ring which he
+had given her, and to leave Bullhampton for ever. Could it be right
+that she should marry a man that she did not love?
+
+That was her argument with herself, and yet she was deterred from
+doing as she contemplated by a circumstance which could have had no
+effect on that argument. She received from her Aunt Marrable the
+following letter, in which was certainly no word capable of making
+her think that now, at last, she could love the man whom she had
+promised to marry. And yet this letter so affected her, that she told
+herself that she would go on and become the wife of Harry Gilmore.
+She would struggle yet again, and force herself to succeed. The
+wagon, no doubt, was heavily laden, but still, with sufficient
+labour, it might perhaps be moved.
+
+Miss Marrable had been asked to go over to Dunripple, when Mary
+Lowther went to Bullhampton. It had been long since she had been
+there, and she had not thought ever to make such a visit. But there
+came letters, and there were rejoinders,--which were going on before
+Mary's departure,--and at last it was determined that Miss Marrable
+should go to Dunripple, and pay a visit to her cousin. But she did
+not do this till long after Walter Marrable had left the place. She
+had written to Mary soon after her arrival, and in this first letter
+there had been no word about Walter; but in her second letter she
+spoke very freely of Walter Marrable,--as the reader shall see.
+
+
+   Dunripple, 2nd July, 1868.
+
+   DEAR MARY,
+
+   I got your letter on Saturday, and cannot help wishing
+   that it had been written in better spirits. However, I do
+   not doubt but that it will all come right soon. I am quite
+   sure that the best thing you can do is to let Mr. Gilmore
+   name an early day. Of course you never intended that there
+   should be a long engagement. Such a thing, where there is
+   no possible reason for it, must be out of the question.
+   And it will be much better to take advantage of the fine
+   weather than to put it off till the winter has nearly
+   come. Fix some day in August or early in September. I am
+   sure you will be much happier married than you are single;
+   and he will be gratified, which is, I suppose, to count
+   for something.
+
+   I am very happy here, but yet I long to get home. At my
+   time of life, one must always be strange among strangers.
+   Nothing can be kinder than Sir Gregory, in his sort of
+   fashion. Gregory Marrable, the son, is, I fear, in a
+   bad way. He is unlike his father, and laughs at his own
+   ailments, but everybody in the house,--except perhaps Sir
+   Gregory,--knows that he is very ill. He never comes down
+   at all now, but lives in two rooms, which he has together
+   up-stairs. We go and see him every day, but he is hardly
+   able to talk to any one. Sir Gregory never mentions the
+   subject to me, but Mrs. Brownlow is quite confident that
+   if anything were to happen to Gregory Marrable, Walter
+   would be asked to come to Dunripple as the heir, and to
+   give up the army altogether.
+
+   I get on very well with Mrs. Brownlow, but of course we
+   cannot be like old friends. Edith is a very nice girl,
+   but rather shy. She never talks about herself, and is too
+   silent to be questioned. I do not, however, doubt for a
+   moment but that she will be Walter Marrable's wife. I
+   think it likely that they are not engaged as yet, as in
+   that case I think Mrs. Brownlow would tell me; but many
+   things have been said which leave on my mind a conviction
+   that it will be so. He is to be here again in August, and
+   from the way in which Mrs. Brownlow speaks of his coming,
+   there is no doubt that she expects it. That he paid great
+   attention to Edith when he was here before, I am quite
+   sure; and I take it he is only waiting till--
+
+
+In writing so far, Miss Marrable had intended to signify that Captain
+Marrable had been slow to ask Edith Brownlow to be his wife while he
+was at Dunripple, because he could not bring himself so soon to show
+himself indifferent to his former love; but that now he would not
+hesitate, knowing as he would know, that his former love had bestowed
+herself elsewhere; but in this there would have been a grievous
+accusation against Mary, and she was therefore compelled to fill up
+her sentence in some other form;--
+
+
+   till things should have arranged themselves a little.
+
+   And it will be all for the best. She is a very nice,
+   quiet, lady-like girl, and so great a favourite with her
+   uncle, that should his son die before him, his great
+   object in life will be her welfare. Walter Marrable, as
+   her husband, would live at Dunripple, just as though the
+   place were his own. And indeed there would be no one
+   between him and the property except his own father. Some
+   arrangement could be made as to buying out his life
+   interest,--for which indeed he has taken the money
+   beforehand with a vengeance,--and then Walter would be
+   settled for life. Would not this be all for the best?
+
+   I shall go home about the 14th. They want me to stay,
+   but I shall have been away quite long enough. I don't
+   know whether people ought to go from home at all after a
+   certain age. I get cross because I can't have the sort of
+   chair I like to sit on; and then they don't put any green
+   tea into the pot, and I don't like to ask to have any
+   made, as I doubt whether they have any green tea in the
+   house. And I find it bad to be among invalids with whom,
+   indeed, I can sympathise, but for whom I cannot pretend
+   that I feel any great affection. As we grow old we become
+   incapable of new tenderness, and rather resent the calls
+   that are made upon us for pity. The luxury of devotion to
+   misery is as much the privilege of the young as is that of
+   devotion to love.
+
+   Write soon, dearest; and remember that the best news
+   I can have, will be tidings as to the day fixed for
+   your marriage. And remember, too, that I won't have any
+   question about your being married at Bullhampton. It would
+   be quite improper. He must come to Loring; and I needn't
+   say how glad I shall be to see the Fenwicks. Parson John
+   will expect to marry you, but Mr. Fenwick might come and
+   assist.
+
+   Your most affectionate aunt,
+
+   SARAH MARRABLE.
+
+
+It was not the entreaty made by her aunt that an early day should
+be fixed for the marriage which made Mary Lowther determine that
+she would yet once more attempt to drag the wagon. She could have
+withstood such entreaty as that, and, had the letter gone no further,
+would probably have replied to it by saying that no day could be
+fixed at all. But, with the letter there came an assurance that
+Walter Marrable had forgotten her, was about to marry Edith Brownlow,
+and that therefore all ideas of love and truth and sympathy and joint
+beating of mutual hearts, with the rest of it, might be thrown to the
+winds. She would marry Harry Gilmore, and take care that he had good
+dinners, and would give her mind to flannel petticoats and coal for
+the poor of Bullhampton, and would altogether come down from the
+pedestal which she had once striven to erect for herself. From that
+high but tottering pedestal, propped up on shafts of romance and
+poetry, she would come down; but there would remain for her the
+lower, firmer standing block, of which duty was the sole support. It
+was no doubt most unreasonable that any such change should come upon
+her in consequence of her aunt's letter. She had never for a moment
+told herself that Walter Marrable could ever be anything to her,
+since that day on which she had by her own deed liberated him from
+his troth; and, indeed, had done more than that, had forced him to
+accept that liberation. Why then should his engagement with another
+woman have any effect with her either in one direction or in the
+other? She herself had submitted to a new engagement,--had done so
+before he had shown any sign of being fickle. She could not therefore
+be angry with him. And yet, because he could be fickle, because he
+could do that very thing which she had openly declared her purpose of
+doing, she persuaded herself,--for a week or two,--that any sacrifice
+made to him would be a sacrifice to folly, and a neglect of duty.
+
+At this time, during this week or two, there came to her direct from
+the jewellers in London, a magnificent set of rubies,--ear-rings,
+brooch, bracelets, and necklace. The rubies she had seen before, and
+knew that they had belonged to Mr. Gilmore's mother. Mrs. Fenwick had
+told him that the setting was so old that no lady could wear them
+now, and there had been a presentiment that they would be forthcoming
+in a new form. Mary had said that, of course, such ornaments as these
+would come into her hands only when she became Mrs. Gilmore. Mrs.
+Fenwick had laughed and told her that she did not understand the
+romantic generosity of her lover. And now the jewellery had come to
+her at the parsonage without a word from Gilmore, and was spread out
+in its pretty cases on the vicarage drawing-room table. Now, if ever,
+must she say that she could not do as she had promised.
+
+"Mary," said Mrs. Fenwick, "you must go up to him to-morrow, and tell
+him how noble he is."
+
+Mary waited, perhaps, for a whole minute before she answered. She
+would willingly have given the jewels away for ever and ever, so that
+they might not have been there now to trouble her. But she did answer
+at last, knowing, as she did so, that her last chance was gone.
+
+"He is noble," she said, slowly; "and I will go and tell him so. I'll
+go now, if it is not too late."
+
+"Do, do. You'll be sure to find him." And Mrs. Fenwick, in her
+enthusiasm, embraced her friend and kissed her.
+
+Mary put on her hat and walked off at once through the garden and
+across the fields, and into the Privets; and close to the house she
+met her lover. He did not see her till he heard her step, and then
+turned short round, almost as though fearing something.
+
+"Harry," she said, "those jewels have come. Oh, dear. They are not
+mine yet. Why did you have them sent to me?"
+
+There was something in the word yet, or in her tone as she spoke it,
+which made his heart leap as it had never leaped before.
+
+"If they're not yours, I don't know whom they belong to," he said.
+And his eye was bright, and his voice almost shook with emotion.
+
+"Are you doing anything?" she asked.
+
+"Nothing on earth."
+
+"Then come and see them."
+
+So they walked off, and he, at any rate, on that occasion was a happy
+lover. For a few minutes,--perhaps for an hour,--he did allow himself
+to believe that he was destined to enjoy that rapture of requited
+affection, in longing for which his very soul had become sick. As she
+walked back with him to the vicarage her hand rested heavily on his
+arm, and when she asked him some question about his land, she was
+able so to modulate her voice as to make him believe that she was
+learning to regard his interests as her own. He stopped her at the
+gate leading into the vicarage garden, and once more made to her an
+assurance of his regard.
+
+"Mary," he said, "if love will beget love, I think that you must love
+me at last."
+
+"I will love you," she said, pressing his arm still more closely. But
+even then she could not bring herself to tell him that she did love
+him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LV.
+
+GLEBE LAND.
+
+
+The fifteenth of July was a Sunday, and it had been settled for some
+time past that on this day Mr. Puddleham would preach for the first
+time in his new chapel. The building had been hurried on through the
+early summer in order that this might be achieved; and although the
+fittings were not completed, and the outward signs of the masons and
+labourers had not been removed,--although the heaps of mortar were
+still there, and time had not yet sufficed to have the chips cleared
+away,--on Sunday the fifteenth of July the chapel was opened. Great
+efforts were made to have it filled on the occasion. The builder
+from Salisbury came over with all his family, not deterred by the
+consideration that whereas the Puddlehamites of Bullhampton were
+Primitive Methodists, he was a regular Wesleyan. And many in the
+parish were got to visit the chapel on this the day of its glory, who
+had less business there than even the builder from Salisbury. In most
+parishes there are some who think it well to let the parson know that
+they are independent and do not care for him, though they profess
+to be of his flock; and then, too, the novelty of the thing had its
+attraction, and the well-known fact that the site chosen for the
+building had been as gall and wormwood to the parson and his family.
+These causes together brought a crowd to the vicarage-gate on that
+Sunday morning, and it was quite clear that the new chapel would be
+full, and that Mr. Puddleham's first Sunday would be a success. And
+the chapel, of course, had a bell,--a bell which was declared by Mrs.
+Fenwick to be the hoarsest, loudest, most unmusical, and ill-founded
+miscreant of a bell that was ever suspended over a building for the
+torture of delicate ears. It certainly was a loud and brazen bell;
+but Mr. Fenwick expressed his opinion that there was nothing amiss
+with it. When his wife declared that it sounded as though it came
+from the midst of the shrubs at their own front gate, he reminded
+her that their own church bells sounded as though they came from the
+lower garden. That one sound should be held by them to be musical
+and the other abominable, he declared to be a prejudice. Then there
+was a great argument about the bells, in which Mrs. Fenwick, and
+Mary Lowther, and Harry Gilmore were all against the Vicar. And,
+throughout the discussion, it was known to them all that there were
+no ears in the parish to which the bells were so really odious as
+they were to the ears of the Vicar himself. In his heart of hearts
+he hated the chapel, and, in spite of all his endeavours to the
+contrary, his feelings towards Mr. Puddleham were not those which
+the Christian religion requires one neighbour to bear to another.
+But he made the struggle, and for some weeks past had not said a
+word against Mr. Puddleham. In regard to the Marquis the thing was
+different. The Marquis should have known better, and against the
+Marquis he did say a great many words.
+
+They began to ring the bell on that Sunday morning before ten
+o'clock. Mrs. Fenwick was still sitting at the breakfast-table, with
+the windows open, when the sound was first heard,--first heard, that
+is, on that morning. She looked at Mary, groaned, and put her hands
+to her ears. The Vicar laughed, and walked about the room.
+
+"At what time do they begin?" said Mary.
+
+"Not till eleven," said Mrs. Fenwick. "There, it wants a quarter to
+ten now, and they mean to go on with that music for an hour and a
+quarter."
+
+"We shall be keeping them company by-and-by," said the Vicar.
+
+"The poor old church bells won't be heard through it," said Mrs.
+Fenwick.
+
+Mrs. Fenwick was in the habit of going to the village school for half
+an hour before the service on Sunday mornings, and on this morning
+she started from the house according to her custom at a little after
+ten. Mary Lowther went with her, and as the school was in the village
+and could be reached much more shortly by the front gate than by the
+path round by the church, the two ladies walked out boldly before the
+new chapel. The reader may perhaps remember that Mrs. Fenwick had
+promised her husband to withdraw that outward animosity to the chapel
+which she had evinced by not using the vicarage entrance. As they
+went there was a crowd collected, and they found that after the
+manner of the Primitive Methodists in their more enthusiastic days,
+a procession of worshippers had been formed in the village, which at
+this very moment was making its way to the chapel. Mrs. Fenwick, as
+she stood aside to make way for them, declared that the bell sounded
+as though it were within her bonnet. When they reached the school
+they found that many a child was absent who should have been there,
+and Mrs. Fenwick knew that the truant urchins were amusing themselves
+at the new building. And with those who were not truant the clang of
+the new bell distracted terribly that attention which was due to the
+collect. Mrs. Fenwick herself confessed afterwards that she hardly
+knew what she was teaching.
+
+Mr. Fenwick, according to his habit, went into his own study when the
+ladies went to the school, and there, according to custom also on
+Sunday mornings, his letters were brought to him, some few minutes
+before he started on his walk through the garden to the church. On
+this morning there were a couple of letters for himself, and he
+opened them both. One was from a tradesman in Salisbury, and the
+other was from his wife's brother-in-law, Mr. Quickenham. Before he
+started he read Mr. Quickenham's letter, and then did his best to
+forget it and put it out of his mind till the morning service should
+be over. The letter was as follows:--
+
+
+   Pump Court, June 30, 1868.
+
+   DEAR FENWICK,
+
+   I have found, as I thought I should, that Lord Trowbridge
+   has no property in, or right whatever to, the bit of
+   ground on which your enemies have been building their new
+   Ebenezer. The spot is a part of the glebe, and as such
+   seems to have been first abandoned by a certain parson
+   named Brandon, who was your predecessor's predecessor.
+   There can, however, be no doubt that the ground is glebe,
+   and that you are bound to protect it as such, on behalf of
+   your successors, and of the patrons of the living.
+
+   I found some difficulty in getting at the terrier of the
+   parish,--which you, who consider yourself to be a model
+   parson, I dare say, have never seen. I have, however,
+   found it in duplicate. The clerk of the Board of
+   Guardians, who should, I believe, have a copy of it, knew
+   nothing about it; and had never heard of such a document.
+   Your bishop's registrar was not much more learned,--but I
+   did find it in the bishop's chancery; and there is a copy
+   of it also at Saint John's, which seems to imply that
+   great attention has been paid by the college as patron to
+   the interests of the parish priest. This is more than has
+   been done by the incumbent, who seems to be an ignorant
+   fellow in such matters. I wonder how many parsons there
+   are in the Church who would let a Marquis and a Methodist
+   minister between them build a chapel on the parish glebe?
+
+   Yours ever,
+
+   RICHARD QUICKENHAM.
+
+   If I were to charge you through an attorney for my trouble
+   you'd have to mortgage your life interest in the bit of
+   land to pay me. I enclose a draft from the terrier as far
+   as the plot of ground and the vicarage-gate are concerned.
+
+
+Here was information! This detestable combination of dissenting
+and tyrannically territorial influences had been used to build a
+Methodist Chapel upon land of which he, during his incumbency in the
+parish, was the freehold possessor! What an ass he must have been
+not to know his own possessions! How ridiculous would he appear when
+he should come forward to claim as a part of the glebe a morsel of
+land to which he had paid no special attention whatever since he had
+been in the parish! And then, what would it be his duty to do? Mr.
+Quickenham had clearly stated that on behalf of the college, which
+was the patron of the living, and on behalf of his successors, it was
+his duty to claim the land. And was it possible that he should not
+do so after such usage as he had received from Lord Trowbridge? So
+meditating,--but grieving that he should be driven at such a moment
+to have his mind forcibly filled with such matters,--still hearing
+the chapel bell, which in his ears drowned the sound from his own
+modest belfry, and altogether doubtful as to what step he would take,
+he entered his own church. It was manifest to him that of the poorer
+part of his usual audience, and of the smaller farmers, one half were
+in attendance upon Mr. Puddleham's triumph.
+
+During the whole of that afternoon he said not a word of the
+barrister's letter to any one. He struggled to banish the subject
+from his thoughts. Failing to do that, he did banish it from his
+tongue. The letter was in the pocket of his coat; but he showed it to
+no one. Gilmore dined at the vicarage; but even to him he was silent.
+Of course the conversation at dinner turned upon the chapel. It was
+impossible that on such a day they should speak of anything else.
+Even as they sat at their early dinner Mr. Puddleham's bell was
+ringing, and no doubt there was a vigour in the pulling of it which
+would not be maintained when the pulling of it should have become a
+thing of every week. There had been a compact made, in accordance
+with which the Vicar's wife was to be debarred from saying anything
+against the chapel, and, no doubt, when the compact was made, the
+understanding was that she should give over hating the chapel. This
+had, of course, been found to be impossible, but in a certain way she
+had complied with the compact. The noise of the bell however, was
+considered to be beyond the compact, and on this occasion she was
+almost violent in the expression of her wrath. Her husband listened
+to her, and sat without rebuking her, silent, with the lawyer's
+letter in his pocket. This bell had been put up on his own land, and
+he could pull it down to-morrow. It had been put up by the express
+agency of Lord Trowbridge, and with the direct view of annoying him;
+and Lord Trowbridge had behaved to him in a manner which set all
+Christian charity at defiance. He told himself plainly that he had no
+desire to forgive Lord Trowbridge,--that life in this world, as it is
+constituted, would not be compatible with such forgiveness,--that he
+would not, indeed, desire to injure Lord Trowbridge otherwise than by
+exacting such penalty as would force him and such as he to restrain
+their tyranny; but that to forgive him, till he should have been so
+forced, would be weak and injurious to the community. As to that, he
+had quite made up his mind, in spite of all doctrine to the contrary.
+Men in this world would have to go naked if they gave their coats
+to the robbers who took their cloaks; and going naked is manifestly
+inexpedient. His office of parish priest would be lowered in the
+world if he forgave, out of hand, such offences as these which had
+been committed against him by Lord Trowbridge. This he understood
+clearly. And now he might put down, not only the bell, but with the
+bell the ill-conditioned peer who had caused it to be put up--on
+glebe land. All this went through his mind again and again, as he
+determined that on that day, being Sunday, he would think no more
+about it.
+
+When the Monday came it was necessary that he should show the letter
+to his wife,--to his wife, and to the Squire, and to Mary Lowther. He
+had no idea of keeping the matter secret from his near friends and
+advisers; but he had an idea that it would be well that he should
+make up his mind as to what he would do before he asked their advice.
+He started, therefore, for a turn through the parish before breakfast
+on Monday morning,--and resolved as to his course of action. On no
+consideration whatever would he have the chapel pulled down. It was
+necessary for his purpose that he should have his triumph over the
+Marquis,--and he would have it. But the chapel had been built for a
+good purpose which it would adequately serve, and let what might be
+said to him by his wife or others, he would not have a brick of it
+disturbed. No doubt he had no more power to give the land for its
+present or any other purpose than had the Marquis. It might very
+probably be his duty to take care that the land was not appropriated
+to wrong purposes. It might be that he had already neglected his
+duty, in not knowing, or in not having taken care to learn the
+precise limits of the glebe which had been given over to him for
+his use during his incumbency. Nevertheless, there was the chapel,
+and there it should stand, as far as he was concerned. If the
+churchwardens, or the archdeacon, or the college, or the bishop had
+power to interfere, as to which he was altogether ignorant, and chose
+to exercise that power, he could not help it. He was nearly sure that
+his own churchwardens would be guided altogether by himself,--and as
+far as he was concerned the chapel should remain unmolested. Having
+thus resolved he came back to breakfast and read Mr. Quickenham's
+letter aloud to his wife and Mary Lowther.
+
+"Glebe!" said the Vicar's wife.
+
+"Do you mean that it is part of your own land?" asked Mary.
+
+"Exactly that," said the Vicar.
+
+"And that old thief of a Marquis has given away what belongs to us?"
+said Mrs. Fenwick.
+
+"He has given away what did not belong to himself," said the Vicar.
+"But I can't admit that he's a thief."
+
+"Surely he ought to have known," said Mary.
+
+"As for that, so ought I to have known, I suppose. The whole thing
+is one of the most ridiculous mistakes that ever was made. It has
+absolutely come to pass that here, in the middle of Wiltshire, with
+all our maps, and surveys, and parish records, no one concerned has
+known to whom belonged a quarter of an acre of land in the centre
+of the village. It is just a thing to write an article about in a
+newspaper; but I can't say that one party is more to blame than the
+other; that is, in regard to the ignorance displayed."
+
+"And what will you do, Frank?"
+
+"Nothing."
+
+"You will do nothing, Frank?"
+
+"I will do nothing; but I will take care to let the Marquis know the
+nature of his generosity. I fancy that I am bound to take on myself
+that labour, and I must say that it won't trouble me much to have to
+write the letter."
+
+"You won't pull it down, Frank?"
+
+"No, my dear."
+
+"I would, before a week was over."
+
+"So would I," said Mary. "I don't think it ought to be there."
+
+"Of course it ought not to be there," said Mrs. Fenwick.
+
+"They might as well have it here in the garden," said Mary.
+
+"Just the same," said Mrs. Fenwick.
+
+"It is not in the garden; and, as it has been built, it shall
+remain,--as far as I am concerned. I shall rather like it, now that
+I know I am the landlord. I think I shall claim a sitting." This was
+the Vicar's decision on the Monday morning, and from that decision
+the two ladies were quite unable to move him.
+
+This occurred a day or two after the affair of the rubies, and at
+a time when Mary was being very hard pressed to name a day for her
+wedding. Of course such pressure had been the result of Mr. Gilmore's
+success on that occasion. She had then resolutely gone to work to
+overcome her own, and his, melancholy gloom, and, having in a great
+degree succeeded, it was only natural that he should bring up that
+question of his marriage day. She, when she had accepted him, had
+done so with a stipulation that she should not be hurried; but we all
+know what such stipulations are worth. Who is to define what is and
+what is not hurry? They had now been engaged a month, and the Squire
+was clearly of opinion that there had been no hurry. "September was
+the nicest month in the year," he said, "for getting married and
+going abroad. September in Switzerland, October among the Italian
+lakes, November in Florence and Rome. So that they might get home
+before Christmas after a short visit to Naples." That was the
+Squire's programme, and his whole manner was altered as he made it.
+He thought he knew the nature of the girl well enough to be sure
+that, though she would profess no passionate love for him before
+starting on such a journey, she would change her tone before she
+returned. It should be no fault of his if she did not change it. Mary
+had at first declined to fix any day, had talked of next year, had
+declared that she would not be hurried. She had carried on the fight
+even after the affair of the rubies, but she had fought in opposition
+to strong and well-disciplined forces on the other side, and she had
+begun to admit to herself that it might be expedient that she should
+yield. The thing was to be done, and why not have it done at once?
+She had not as yet yielded, but she had begun to think that she would
+yield.
+
+At such a period it was of course natural that the Squire should
+be daily at the vicarage, and on this Monday morning he came down
+while the minds of all his friends there were intent on the strange
+information received from Mr. Quickenham. The Vicar was not by when
+Mr. Gilmore was told, and he was thus easily induced to join in
+the opinion that the chapel should be made to disappear. He had a
+landlord's idea about land, and was thoroughly well-disposed to stop
+any encroachment on the part of the Marquis.
+
+"Lord Trowbridge must pull it down himself, and put it up again
+elsewhere," said the Squire.
+
+"But Frank says that he won't let the Marquis pull it down," said
+Mrs. Fenwick, almost moved to tears by the tragedy of the occasion.
+
+
+[Illustration: Mr. Quickenham's letter discussed.]
+
+
+Then the Vicar joined them, and the matter was earnestly debated;--so
+earnestly that, on that occasion, not a word was said as to the day
+of the wedding.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LVI.
+
+THE VICAR'S VENGEANCE.
+
+
+No eloquence on the part of the two ladies at the vicarage, or of the
+Squire, could turn Mr. Fenwick from his purpose, but he did consent
+at last to go over with the Squire to Salisbury, and to consult Mr.
+Chamberlaine. A proposition was made to him as to consulting the
+bishop, for whom personally he always expressed a liking, and whose
+office he declared that he held in the highest veneration; but he
+explained that this was not a matter in which the bishop should be
+invited to exercise authority.
+
+"The bishop has nothing to do with my freehold," he said.
+
+"But if you want an opinion," said the Squire, "why not go to a man
+whose opinion will be worth having?"
+
+Then the Vicar explained again. His respect for the bishop was so
+great, that any opinion coming from his lordship would, to him,
+be more than advice; it would be law. So great was his mingled
+admiration of the man and respect for the office!
+
+"What he means," said Mrs. Fenwick, "is, that he won't go to the
+bishop, because he has made up his mind already. You are, both of
+you, throwing away your time and money in going to Salisbury at all."
+
+"I'm not sure but what she's right there," said the Vicar.
+Nevertheless they went to Salisbury.
+
+The Rev. Henry Fitzackerly Chamberlaine was very eloquent, clear, and
+argumentative on the subject, and perhaps a little overbearing. He
+insisted that the chapel should be removed without a moment's delay;
+and that notice as to its removal should be served upon all the
+persons concerned,--upon Mr. Puddleham, upon the builder, upon
+the chapel trustees, the elders of the congregation,--"if there
+be any elders," said Mr. Chamberlaine, with a delightful touch
+of irony,--and upon the Marquis and the Marquis's agent. He was
+eloquent, authoritative and loud. When the Vicar remarked that after
+all the chapel had been built for a good purpose, Mr. Chamberlaine
+became quite excited in his eloquence.
+
+"The glebe of Bullhampton, Mr. Fenwick," said he, "has not been
+confided to your care for the propagation of dissent."
+
+"Nor has the vicarage house been confided to me for the reading of
+novels; but that is what goes on there."
+
+"The house is for your private comfort," said the prebendary.
+
+"And so is the glebe," said the Vicar; "and I shall not be
+comfortable if I make these people put down a house of prayer."
+
+And there was another argument against the Vicar's views, very
+strong. This glebe was only given to him in trust. He was bound
+so to use it, that it should fall into the hands of his successor
+unimpaired and with full capability for fruition. "You have no right
+to leave to another the demolition of a building, the erection of
+which you should have prevented." This argument was more difficult of
+answer than the other, but Mr. Fenwick did answer it.
+
+"I feel all that," said he; "and I think it likely that my estate may
+be liable for the expense of removal. The chapel may be brought in
+as a dilapidation. But that which I can answer with my purse, need
+not lie upon my conscience. I could let the bit of land, I have no
+doubt,--though not on a building lease."
+
+"But they have built on it," said Mr. Chamberlaine.
+
+"No doubt, they have; and I can see that my estate may be called upon
+to restore the bit of ground to its former position. What I can't see
+is, that I am bound to enforce the removal now."
+
+Mr. Chamberlaine took up the matter with great spirit, and gave a
+couple of hours to the discussion, but the Vicar was not shaken.
+
+The Vicar was not shaken, but his manner as he went out from the
+prebendary's presence, left some doubt as to his firmness in the mind
+both of that dignitary and of the Squire. He thanked Mr. Chamberlaine
+very courteously, and acknowledged that there was a great deal in the
+arguments which had been used.
+
+"I am sure you will find it best to clear your ground of the nuisance
+at once," said Mr. Chamberlaine, with that high tone which he knew so
+well how to assume; and these were the last words spoken.
+
+"Well?" said the Squire, as soon as they were out in the Close,
+asking his friend as to his decision.
+
+"It's a very knotty point," said Fenwick.
+
+"I don't much like my uncle's tone," said the Squire; "I never do.
+But I think he is right."
+
+"I won't say but what he may be."
+
+"It'll have to come down, Frank," said the Squire.
+
+"No doubt, some day. But I am quite sure as to this, Harry; that when
+you have a doubt as to your duty, you can't be wrong in delaying
+that, the doing of which would gratify your own ill will. Don't you
+go and tell this to the women; but to my eyes that conventicle at
+Bullhampton is the most hideous, abominable, and disagreeable object
+that ever was placed upon the earth!"
+
+"So it is to mine," said the Squire.
+
+"And therefore I won't touch a brick of it. It shall be my hair
+shirt, my fast day, my sacrifice of a broken heart, my little pet
+good work. It will enable me to take all the good things of the world
+that come in my way, and flatter myself that I am not self-indulgent.
+There is not a dissenter in Bullhampton will get so much out of the
+chapel as I will."
+
+"I fancy they can make you have it pulled down."
+
+"Then their making me shall be my hair shirt, and I shall be fitted
+just as well." Upon that they went back to Bullhampton, and the
+Squire told the two ladies what had passed; as to the hair shirt and
+all.
+
+Mr. Fenwick in making for himself his hair shirt did not think it
+necessary to abstain from writing to the Marquis of Trowbridge.
+This he did on that same day after his return from Salisbury. In
+the middle of the winter he had written a letter to the Marquis,
+remonstrating against the building of the chapel opposite to his own
+gate. He now took out his copy of that letter, and the answer to
+it, in which the agent of the Marquis had told him that the Marquis
+considered that the spot in question was the most eligible site which
+his lordship could bestow for the purpose in question. Our Vicar was
+very anxious not to disturb the chapel now that it was built; but he
+was quite as anxious to disturb the Marquis. In the formation of that
+hair shirt which he was minded to wear, he did not intend to weave
+in any mercy towards the Marquis. It behoved him to punish the
+Marquis,--for the good of society in general. As a trespasser he
+forgave the Marquis, in a Christian point of view; but as a pestilent
+wasp on the earth, stinging folks right and left with an arrogance,
+the ignorance of which was the only excuse to be made for his
+cruelty, he thought it to be his duty to set his heel upon the
+Marquis; which he did by writing the following letter.
+
+
+   Bullhampton Vicarage, July 18, 186--.
+
+   MY LORD MARQUIS,
+
+   On the 3rd of January last I ventured to write to your
+   lordship with the object of saving myself and my family
+   from a great annoyance, and of saving you also from the
+   disgrace of subjecting me to it. I then submitted to you
+   the expediency of giving in the parish some other site for
+   the erection of a dissenting chapel than the small patch
+   of ground immediately opposite to the vicarage gate,
+   which, as I explained to you, I had always regarded as
+   belonging to the vicarage. I did not for a moment question
+   your lordship's right to give the land in question, but
+   appealed simply to your good-feeling. I confess that I
+   took it for granted that even your lordship, in so very
+   high-handed a proceeding, would take care to have right
+   on your side. In answer to this I received a letter from
+   your man of business, of which, as coming from him, I do
+   not complain, but which, as a reply to my letter to your
+   lordship, was an insult. The chapel has been built, and on
+   last Sunday was opened for worship.
+
+   I have now learned that the land which you have given
+   away did not belong to your lordship, and never formed a
+   portion of the Stowte estate in this parish. It was, and
+   is, glebe land; and formed, at the time of your bestowal,
+   a portion of my freehold as Vicar. I acknowledge that I
+   was remiss in presuming that you as a landlord knew the
+   limits of your own rights, and that you would not trespass
+   beyond them. I should have made my inquiry more urgently.
+   I have made it now, and your lordship may satisfy yourself
+   by referring to the maps of the parish lands, which are to
+   be found in the bishop's chancery, and also at St. John's,
+   Oxford, if you cannot do so by any survey of the estate in
+   your own possession. I enclose a sketch showing the exact
+   limits of the glebe in respect to the vicarage entrance
+   and the patch of ground in question. The fact is, that the
+   chapel in question has been built on the glebe land by
+   authority--illegally and unjustly given by your lordship.
+
+   The chapel is there, and though it is a pity that it
+   should have been built, it would be a greater pity that it
+   should be pulled down. It is my purpose to offer to the
+   persons concerned a lease of the ground for the term of my
+   incumbency at a nominal rent. I presume that a lease may
+   be so framed as to protect the rights of my successor.
+
+   I will not conclude this letter without expressing my
+   opinion that gross as has been your lordship's ignorance
+   in giving away land which did not belong to you, your
+   fault in that respect has been very trifling in comparison
+   with the malice you have shown to a clergyman of your own
+   church, settled in a parish partly belonging to yourself,
+   in having caused the erection of this chapel on the
+   special spot selected with no other object than that of
+   destroying my personal comfort and that of my wife.
+
+   I have the honour to be
+   Your lordship's most obedient servant,
+
+   FRANCIS FENWICK.
+
+
+When he had finished his epistle he read it over more than once, and
+was satisfied that it would be vexatious to the Marquis. It was his
+direct object to vex the Marquis, and he had set about it with all
+his vigour. "I would skin him if I knew how," he had said to Gilmore.
+"He has done that to me which no man should forgive. He has spoken
+ill of me, and calumniated me, not because he has thought ill of me,
+but because he has had a spite against me. They may keep their chapel
+as far as I am concerned. But as for his lordship, I should think ill
+of myself if I spared him." He had his lordship on the hip, and he
+did not spare him. He showed the letter to his wife.
+
+"Isn't malice a very strong word?" she said.
+
+"I hope so," answered the Vicar.
+
+"What I mean is, might you not soften it without hurting your cause?"
+
+"I think not. I conscientiously believe the accusation to be true.
+I endeavour so to live among my neighbours that I may not disgrace
+them, or you, or myself. This man has dared to accuse me openly of
+the grossest immorality and hypocrisy, when I am only doing my duty
+as I best know how to do it; and I do now believe in my heart that in
+making these charges he did not himself credit them. At any rate, no
+man can be justified in making such charges without evidence."
+
+"But all that had nothing to do with the bit of ground, Frank."
+
+"It is part and parcel of the same thing. He has chosen to treat me
+as an enemy, and has used all the influence of his wealth and rank to
+injure me. Now he must look to himself. I will not say a word of him,
+or to him, that is untrue; but as he has said evil of me behind my
+back which he did not believe, so will I say the evil of him, which I
+do believe, to his face." The letter was sent, and before the day was
+over the Vicar had recovered his good humour.
+
+And before the day was over the news was all through the parish.
+There was a certain ancient shoemaker in the village who had carried
+on business in Devizes, and had now retired to spend the evening of
+his life in his native place. Mr. Bolt was a quiet, inoffensive old
+man, but he was a dissenter, and was one of the elders and trustees
+who had been concerned in raising money for the chapel. To him the
+Vicar had told the whole story, declaring at the same time that, as
+far as he was concerned, Mr. Puddleham and his congregation should,
+at any rate for the present, be made welcome to their chapel. This
+he had done immediately on his return from Salisbury, and before the
+letter to the Marquis was written. Mr. Bolt, not unnaturally, saw
+his minister the same evening, and the thing was discussed in full
+conclave by the Puddlehamites. At the end of that discussion, Mr.
+Puddleham expressed his conviction that the story was a mare's nest
+from beginning to end. He didn't believe a word of it. The Marquis
+was not the man to give away anything that did not belong to him.
+Somebody had hoaxed the Vicar, or the Vicar had hoaxed Mr. Bolt; or
+else,--which Mr. Puddleham thought to be most likely,--the Vicar
+had gone mad with vexation at the glory and the triumph of the new
+chapel.
+
+"He was uncommon civil," said Mr. Bolt, who at this moment was
+somewhat inclined to favour the Vicar.
+
+"No doubt, Mr. Bolt; no doubt," said Mr. Puddleham, who had quite
+recovered from his first dismay, and had worked himself up to a state
+of eloquent enthusiasm. "I dare say he was civil. Why not? In old
+days when we hardly dared to talk of having a decent house of prayer
+of our own in which to worship our God, he was always civil. No one
+has ever heard me accuse Mr. Fenwick of incivility. But will any one
+tell me that he is a friend to our mode of worship? Gentlemen, we
+must look to ourselves, and I for one tell you that that chapel is
+ours. You won't find that his ban will keep me out of my pulpit.
+Glebe, indeed! why should the Vicar have glebe on the other side of
+the road from his house? Or, for the matter of that, why should he
+have glebe at all?" This was so decisive that no one at the meeting
+had a word to say after Mr. Puddleham had finished his speech.
+
+When the Marquis received his letter he was up in London. Lord
+Trowbridge was not much given to London life, but was usually
+compelled by circumstances,--the circumstances being the custom of
+society as pleaded by his two daughters,--to spend the months of May,
+June, and July at the family mansion in Grosvenor Square. Moreover,
+though the Marquis never opened his mouth in the House of Lords, it
+was, as he thought, imperative on him to give to the leader of his
+party the occasional support of his personal presence. Our Vicar,
+knowing this, had addressed his letter to Grosvenor Square, and
+it had thus reached its destination without loss of time. Lord
+Trowbridge by this time knew the handwriting of his enemy; and, as he
+broke the envelope, there came upon him an idea that it might be wise
+to refuse the letter, and to let it go back to its writer unopened.
+It was beneath his dignity to correspond with a man, or to receive
+letters from a man who would probably insult him. But before he could
+make up his mind, the envelope had been opened, and the letter had
+been read. His wrath, when he had read it, no writer of a simple
+prose narration should attempt to describe. "Disgrace," "insult,"
+"ignorance," and "malice,"--these were the words with which the
+Marquis found himself pelted by this pestilent, abominable, and most
+improper clergyman. As to the gist of the letter itself, it was some
+time before he understood it. And when he did begin to understand
+it, he did not as yet begin to believe it. His intelligence worked
+slowly, whereas his wrath worked quickly. But at last he began to ask
+himself whether the accusation made against him could possibly be
+based on truth. When the question of giving the land had been under
+consideration, it had never occurred to any one concerned that it
+could belong to the glebe. There had been some momentary suspicion
+that the spot might possibly have been so long used as common land as
+to give room for a question on that side; but no one had dreamed that
+any other claimant could arise. That the whole village of Bullhampton
+belonged to the Marquis was notorious. Of course there was the glebe.
+But who could think that the morsel of neglected land lying on the
+other side of the road belonged to the vicarage? The Marquis did not
+believe it now. This was some piece of wickedness concocted by the
+venomous brain of the iniquitous Vicar, more abominable than all his
+other wickednesses. The Marquis did not believe it; but he walked up
+and down his room all the morning thinking of it. The Marquis was
+sure that it was not true, and yet he could not for a moment get the
+idea out of his mind. Of course he must tell St. George. The language
+of the letter which had been sent to him was so wicked, that St.
+George must at least agree with him now in his anger against this
+man. And could nothing be done to punish the man? Prosecutions in
+regard to anonymous letters, threatening letters, begging letters,
+passed through his mind. He knew that punishment had been inflicted
+on the writers of insolent letters to royalty. And letters had been
+proved to be criminal as being libellous,--only then they must be
+published; and letters were sometimes held to form a conspiracy;--but
+he could not quite see his way to that. He knew that he was not
+royal; and he knew that the Vicar neither threatened him or begged
+aught from him. What if St. George should tell him again that this
+Vicar had right on his side! He cast the matter about in his mind all
+the day; and then, late in the afternoon, he got into his carriage,
+and had himself driven to the chambers of Messrs. Boothby, the family
+lawyers.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LVII.
+
+OIL IS TO BE THROWN UPON THE WATERS.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Messrs. Boothby in Lincoln's Inn had for very many years been the
+lawyers of the Stowte family, and probably knew as much about
+the property as any of the Stowtes themselves. They had not been
+consulted about the giving away of the bit of land for the chapel
+purposes, nor had they been instructed to draw up any deed of gift.
+The whole thing had been done irregularly. The land had been only
+promised, and not in truth as yet given, and the Puddlehamites, in
+their hurry, had gone to work and had built upon a promise. The
+Marquis, when, after the receipt of Mr. Fenwick's letter, his first
+rage was over, went at once to the chambers of Messrs. Boothby, and
+was forced to explain all the circumstances of the case to the senior
+partner before he could show the clergyman's wicked epistle. Old Mr.
+Boothby was a man of the same age as the Marquis, and, in his way,
+quite as great. Only the lawyer was a clever old man, whereas the
+Marquis was a stupid old man. Mr. Boothby sat, bowing his head, as
+the Marquis told his story. The story was rather confused, and for
+awhile Mr. Boothby could only understand that a dissenting chapel had
+been built upon his client's land.
+
+"We shall have to set it right by some scrap of a conveyance," said
+the lawyer.
+
+"But the Vicar of the parish claims it," said the Marquis.
+
+"Claims the chapel, my lord!"
+
+"He is a most pestilent, abominable man, Mr. Boothby. I have brought
+his letter here." Mr. Boothby held out his hand to receive the
+letter. From almost any client he would prefer a document to an oral
+explanation, but he would do so especially from his lordship. "But
+you must understand," continued the Marquis, "that he is quite unlike
+any ordinary clergyman. I have the greatest respect for the church,
+and am always happy to see clergymen at my own house. But this is a
+litigious, quarrelsome fellow. They tell me he's an infidel, and he
+keeps--! Altogether, Mr. Boothby, nothing can be worse."
+
+"Indeed!" said the lawyer, still holding out his hand for the letter.
+
+"He has taken the trouble to insult me continually. You heard how a
+tenant of mine was murdered? He was murdered by a young man whom this
+clergyman screens, because,--because,--he is the brother of,--of,--of
+the young woman."
+
+"That would be very bad, my lord."
+
+"It is very bad. He knows all about the murder;--I am convinced he
+does. He went bail for the young man. He used to associate with him
+on most intimate terms. As to the sister;--there's no doubt about
+that. They live on the land of a person who owns a small estate in
+the parish."
+
+"Mr. Gilmore, my lord?"
+
+"Exactly so. This Mr. Fenwick has got Mr. Gilmore in his pocket.
+You can have no idea of such a state of things as this. And now he
+writes me this letter! I know his handwriting now, and any further
+communication I shall return." The Marquis ceased to speak, and the
+lawyer at once buried himself in the letter.
+
+"It is meant to be offensive," said the lawyer.
+
+"Most insolent, most offensive, most improper! And yet the bishop
+upholds him!"
+
+"But if he is right about the bit of land, my lord, it will be rather
+awkward." And as he spoke, the lawyer examined the sketch of the
+vicarage entrance. "He gives this as copied from the terrier of the
+parish, my lord."
+
+"I don't believe a word of it," said the Marquis.
+
+"You didn't look at the plan of the estate, my lord?"
+
+"I don't think we did; but Packer had no doubt. No one knows the
+property in Bullhampton so well as Packer, and Packer said--"
+
+But while the Marquis was still speaking the lawyer rose, and begging
+his client's pardon, went to the clerk in the outer room. Nor did
+he return till the clerk had descended to an iron chamber in the
+basement, and returned from thence with a certain large tin box.
+Into this a search was made, and presently Mr. Boothby came back
+with a weighty lump of dusty vellum documents, and a manuscript map,
+or sketch of a survey of the Bullhampton estate, which he had had
+opened. While the search was being made he had retired to another
+room, and had had a little conversation with his partner about
+the weather. "I am afraid the parson is right, my lord," said Mr.
+Boothby, as he closed the door.
+
+"Right!"
+
+"Right in his facts, my lord. It is glebe, and is marked so here very
+plainly. There should have been a reference to us,--there should,
+indeed, my lord. Packer, and men like him, really know nothing. The
+truth is, in such matters nobody knows anything. You should always
+have documentary evidence."
+
+"And it is glebe?"
+
+"Not a doubt of it, my lord."
+
+Then the Marquis knew that his enemy had him on the hip, and he laid
+his old head down upon his folded arms and wept. In his weeping it
+is probable that no tears rolled down his cheeks, but he wept inward
+tears,--tears of hatred, remorse, and self-commiseration. His enemy
+had struck him with scourges, and, as far as he could see at present,
+he could not return a blow. And he must submit himself,--must restore
+the bit of land, and build those nasty dissenters a chapel elsewhere
+on his own property. He had not a doubt as to that for a moment.
+Could he have escaped the shame of it,--as far as the expense was
+concerned he would have been willing to build them ten chapels. And
+in doing this he would give a triumph, an unalloyed triumph, to a
+man whom he believed to be thoroughly bad. The Vicar had accused the
+Marquis of spreading reports which he, the Marquis, did not himself
+believe; but the Marquis believed them all. At this moment there was
+no evil that he could not have believed of Mr. Fenwick. While sitting
+there an idea, almost amounting to a conviction, had come upon
+him, that Mr. Fenwick had himself been privy to the murder of old
+Trumbull. What would not a parson do who would take delight in
+insulting and humiliating the nobleman who owned the parish in which
+he lived? To Lord Trowbridge the very fact that the parson of the
+parish which he regarded as his own was opposed to him, proved
+sufficiently that that parson was,--scum, dregs, riff-raff, a low
+radical, and everything that a parson ought not to be. The Vicar had
+been wrong there. The Marquis did believe it all religiously.
+
+"What must I do?" said the Marquis.
+
+"As to the chapel itself, my lord, the Vicar, bad as he is, does not
+want to move it."
+
+"It must come down," said the Marquis, getting up from his chair.
+"It shall come down. Do you think that I would allow it to stand
+when it has been erected on his ground,--through my error? Not for a
+day!--not for an hour! I'll tell you what, Mr. Boothby,--that man has
+known it all through;--has known it as well as you do now; but he has
+waited till the building was complete before he would tell me. I see
+it all as plain as the nose on your face, Mr. Boothby."
+
+The lawyer was meditating how best he might explain to his
+angry client that he had no power whatsoever to pull down the
+building,--that if the Vicar and the dissenting minister chose
+to agree about it the new building must stand, in spite of the
+Marquis,--must stand, unless the churchwardens, patron, or
+ecclesiastical authorities generally should force the Vicar to
+have it removed,--when a clerk came in and whispered a word to the
+attorney. "My lord," said Mr. Boothby, "Lord St. George is here.
+Shall he come in?"
+
+The Marquis did not wish to see his son exactly at this minute;
+but Lord St. George was, of course, admitted. This meeting at the
+lawyer's chambers was altogether fortuitous, and father and son were
+equally surprised. But so great was the anger and dismay and general
+perturbation of the Marquis at the time, that he could not stop to
+ask any question. St. George must, of course, know what had happened,
+and it was quite as well that he should be told at once.
+
+"That bit of ground they've built the chapel on at Bullhampton, turns
+out to be--glebe," said the Marquis. Lord St. George whistled. "Of
+course, Mr. Fenwick knew it all along," said the Marquis.
+
+"I should hardly think that," said his son.
+
+"You read his letter. Mr. Boothby, will you be so good as to show
+Lord St. George the letter? You never read such a production.
+Impudent scoundrel! Of course he knew it all the time."
+
+Lord St. George read the letter. "He is very impudent, whether he be
+a scoundrel or not."
+
+"Impudent is no word for it."
+
+"Perhaps he has had some provocation, my lord."
+
+"Not from me, St. George;--not from me. I have done nothing to him.
+Of course the chapel must be--removed."
+
+"Don't you think the question might stand over for a while?"
+suggested Mr. Boothby. "Matters would become smoother in a month or
+two."
+
+"Not for an hour," said the Marquis.
+
+Lord St. George walked about the room with the letter in his hand,
+meditating. "The truth is," he said, at last, "we have made a
+mistake, and we must get out of it as best we can. I think my father
+is a little wrong about this clergyman's character."
+
+"St. George! Have you read his letter? Is that a proper letter to
+come from a clergyman of the Church of England to--to--to--" the
+Marquis longed to say to the Marquis of Trowbridge; but he did not
+dare so to express himself before his son,--"to the landlord of his
+parish?"
+
+"A red-brick chapel, just close to your lodge, isn't nice, you know."
+
+"He has got no lodge," said the Marquis.
+
+"And so we thought we'd build him one. Let me manage this. I'll see
+him, and I'll see the minister, and I'll endeavour to throw some oil
+upon the waters."
+
+"I don't want to throw oil upon the waters."
+
+"Lord St. George is in the right, my lord," said the attorney; "he
+really is. It is a case in which we must throw a little oil upon the
+waters. We've made a mistake, and when we've done that we should
+always throw oil upon the waters. I've no doubt Lord St. George
+will find a way out of it." Then the father and the son went away
+together, and before they had reached the Houses of Parliament Lord
+St. George had persuaded his father to place the matter of the
+Bullhampton chapel in his hands. "And as for the letter," said St.
+George, "do not you notice it."
+
+"I have not the slightest intention of noticing it," said the
+Marquis, haughtily.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LVIII.
+
+EDITH BROWNLOW'S DREAM.
+
+
+"My dear, sit down; I want to speak to you. Do you know I should like
+to see you--married." This speech was made at Dunripple to Edith
+Brownlow by her uncle, Sir Gregory, one morning in July, as she was
+attending him with his breakfast. His breakfast consisted always of
+a cup of chocolate, made after a peculiar fashion, and Edith was in
+the habit of standing by the old man's bedside while he took it. She
+would never sit down, because she knew that were she to do so she
+would be pretty nearly hidden out of sight in the old arm-chair that
+stood at the bed-head; but now she was specially invited to do so,
+and that in a manner which almost made her think that it would be
+well that she should hide herself for a space. But she did not sit
+down. There was the empty cup to be taken from Sir Gregory's hands,
+and, after the first moment of surprise, Edith was not quite sure
+that it would be good that she should hide herself. She took the cup
+and put it on the table, and then returned, without making any reply.
+"I should like very much to see you married, my dear," said Sir
+Gregory, in the mildest of voices.
+
+"Do you want to get rid of me, uncle?"
+
+"No, my dear; that is just what I don't want. Of course you'll marry
+somebody."
+
+"I don't see any of course, Uncle Gregory."
+
+"But why shouldn't you? I suppose you have thought about it."
+
+"Only in a general way, Uncle Gregory."
+
+Sir Gregory Marrable was not a wise man. His folly was of an order
+very different from that of Lord Trowbridge,--very much less likely
+to do harm to himself or others, much more innocent, and, folly
+though it was, a great deal more compatible with certain intellectual
+gifts. Lord Trowbridge, not to put too fine a point upon it, was
+a fool all round. He was much too great a fool to have an idea of
+his own folly. Now Sir Gregory distrusted himself in everything,
+conceived himself to be a poor creature, would submit himself to a
+child on any question of literature, and had no opinion of his own
+on any matter outside his own property,--and even as to that his
+opinion was no more than lukewarm. Yet he read a great deal, had much
+information stored away somewhere in his memory, and had learned at
+any rate to know how small a fly he was himself on the wheel of the
+world. But, alas, when he did meddle with anything he was apt to
+make a mess of it. There had been some conversation between him
+and his sister-in-law, Edith's mother, about Walter Marrable; some
+also between him and his son, and between him and Miss Marrable,
+his cousin. But as yet no one had spoken to Edith, and as Captain
+Marrable himself had not spoken, it would have been as well, perhaps,
+if Sir Gregory had held his tongue. After Edith's last answer the old
+man was silent for awhile, and then he returned to the subject with a
+downright question,--
+
+"How did you like Walter when he was here?"
+
+"Captain Marrable?"
+
+"Yes,--Captain Marrable."
+
+"I liked him well enough,--in a way, Uncle Gregory."
+
+"Nothing would please me so much, Edith, as that you should become
+his wife. You know that Dunripple will belong to him some day."
+
+"If Gregory does not marry." Edith had hardly known whether to say
+this or to leave it unsaid. She was well aware that her cousin
+Gregory would never marry,--that he was a confirmed invalid, a man
+already worn out, old before his time, and with one foot in the
+grave. But had she not said it, she would have seemed to herself to
+have put him aside as a person altogether out of the way.
+
+"Gregory will never marry. Of course while he lives Dunripple will be
+his; but if Walter were to marry he would make arrangements. I dare
+say you can't understand all about that, my dear; but it would be a
+very good thing. I should be so happy if I thought that you were to
+live at Dunripple always."
+
+Edith kissed him and escaped without giving any other answer. Ten
+days after that Walter Marrable was to be again at Dunripple,--only
+for a few days; but still in a few days the thing might be settled.
+Edith had heard something of Mary Lowther, but not much. There had
+been some idea of a match between Walter and his cousin Mary, but the
+idea had been blown away. So much Edith had heard. To herself Walter
+Marrable had been very friendly, and, in truth, she had liked him
+much. They two were not cousins, but they were so connected, and had
+for some weeks been so thrown together, as to be almost as good as
+cousins. His presence at Dunripple had been very pleasant to her, but
+she had never thought of him as a lover. And she had an idea of her
+own, that girls ought not to think of men as lovers without a good
+deal of provocation.
+
+Sir Gregory spoke to Mrs. Brownlow on the same subject, and as he
+told her what had taken place between him and Edith, she felt herself
+compelled to speak to her daughter.
+
+"If it should take place, my dear, it would be very well; but I would
+rather your uncle had not mentioned it."
+
+"It won't do any harm, mamma. I mean, that I shan't break my heart."
+
+"I believe him to be a very excellent young man,--not at all like his
+father, who has been as bad as he can be."
+
+"Wasn't he in love with Mary Lowther last winter?"
+
+"I don't know, my dear. I never believe stories of this kind. When I
+hear that a young man is going to be married to a young lady, then I
+believe that they are in love with each other."
+
+"It is to be hoped so then, mamma?"
+
+"But I never believe any thing before. And I think you may take it
+for granted that there is nothing in that."
+
+"It would be nothing to me, mamma."
+
+"It might be something. But I will say nothing more about it. You've
+so much good sense that I am quite sure you won't get into trouble. I
+wish Sir Gregory had not spoken to you; but as he has, it may be as
+well that you should know that the family arrangement would be very
+agreeable to your uncle and to cousin Gregory. The title and the
+property must go to Captain Marrable at last, and Sir Gregory would
+make immediate sacrifices for you, which perhaps he would not make
+for him."
+
+Edith understood all about it very clearly, and would have understood
+all about it with half the words. She would have little or no fortune
+of her own, and in money her uncle would have very little to give to
+her. Indeed, there was no reason why he should give her anything. She
+was not connected with any of the Marrables by blood, though chance
+had caused her to live at Dunripple almost all her life. She had
+become half a Marrable already, and it might be very well that she
+should become a Marrable altogether. Walter was a remarkably handsome
+man, would be a baronet, and would have an estate, and might,
+perhaps, have the enjoyment of the estate by marrying her earlier
+than he would were he to marry any one else. Edith Brownlow
+understood it all with sufficient clearness. But then she understood
+also that young women shouldn't give away their hearts before they
+are asked for them; and she was quite sure that Walter Marrable had
+made no sign of asking for hers. Nevertheless, within her own bosom
+she did become a little anxious about Mary Lowther, and she wished
+that she knew that story.
+
+On the fourth of August Walter Marrable reached Dunripple, and found
+the house given up almost entirely to the doctor. Both his uncle and
+his cousin were very ill. When he was able to obtain from the doctor
+information on which he could rely, he learned that Mr. Marrable was
+in real danger, but that Sir Gregory's ailment was no more than his
+usual infirmity heightened by anxiety on behalf of his son. "Your
+uncle may live for the next ten years," said the doctor; "but I do
+not know what to say about Mr. Marrable." All this time the care
+and time of the two ladies were divided between the invalids.
+Mrs. Brownlow tended her nephew, and Edith, as usual, waited
+upon Sir Gregory. In such circumstances it was not extraordinary
+that Edith Brownlow and Walter Marrable should be thrown much
+together,--especially as it was the desire of all concerned with them
+that they should become man and wife. Poor Edith was subject to a
+feeling that everybody knew that she was expected to fall in love
+with the man. She thought it probable, too, that the man himself had
+been instructed to fall in love with her. This no doubt created a
+great difficulty for her, a difficulty which she felt to be heavy and
+inconvenient;--but it was lessened by the present condition of the
+household. When there is illness in a house, the feminine genius and
+spirit predominates the male. If the illness be so severe as to cause
+a sense of danger, this is so strongly the case that the natural
+position of the two is changed. Edith, quite unconscious of the
+reason, was much less afraid of her proposed lover than she would
+have been had there been no going about on tiptoe, no questions asked
+with bated breath, no great need for womanly aid.
+
+Walter had been there four days, and was sitting with Edith one
+evening out on the lawn among the rhododendrons. When he had found
+what was the condition of the household, he had offered to go back at
+once to his regiment at Birmingham. But Sir Gregory would not hear of
+it. Sir Gregory hated the regiment, and had got an idea in his head
+that his nephew ought not to be there at all. He was too weak and
+diffident to do it himself; but if any one would have arranged it for
+him, he would have been glad to fix an income for Walter Marrable
+on condition that Walter should live at home, and look after the
+property, and be unto him as a son. But nothing had been fixed,
+nothing had been said, and on the day but one following, the captain
+was to return to Birmingham. Mrs. Brownlow was with her nephew, and
+Walter was sitting with Edith among the rhododendrons, the two having
+come out of the house together after such a dinner as is served in a
+house of invalids. They had become very intimate, but Edith Brownlow
+had almost determined that Walter Marrable did not intend to fall in
+love with her. She had quite determined that she would not fall in
+love with him till he did. What she might do in that case she had not
+told herself. She was not quite sure. He was very nice,--but she was
+not quite sure. One ought to be very fond of a young man, she said
+to herself, before one falls in love with him. Nevertheless her mind
+was by no means set against him. If one can oblige one's friends one
+ought, she said, again to herself.
+
+She had brought him out a cup of coffee, and he was sitting in a
+garden chair with a cigar in his mouth. They were Walter and Edith
+to each other, just as though they were cousins. Indeed, it was
+necessary that they should be cousins to each other, for the rest of
+their lives, if no more.
+
+
+[Illustration: She had brought him out a cup of coffee.]
+
+
+"Let us drop the Captain and the Miss," he had said himself; "the
+mischief is in it if you and I can't suppose ourselves to be
+related." She had assented cordially, and had called him Walter
+without a moment's hesitation. "Edith," he said to her now, after he
+had sat for a minute or two with the coffee in his hand; "did you
+ever hear of a certain cousin of ours, called Mary Lowther?"
+
+"Oh, dear, yes; she lives with Aunt Sarah at Loring; only Aunt Sarah
+isn't my aunt, and Miss Lowther isn't my cousin."
+
+"Just so. She lives at Loring. Edith, I love you so much that I
+wonder whether I may tell you the great secret of my life?"
+
+"Of course you may. I love secrets; and I specially love the secrets
+of those who love me." She said this with a voice perfectly clear,
+and a face without a sign of disappointment; but her little dream had
+already been dissipated. She knew the secret as well as though it had
+been told.
+
+"I was engaged to marry her."
+
+"And you will marry her?"
+
+"It was broken off,--when I thought that I should be forced to go to
+India. The story is very long, and very sad. It is my own father who
+has ruined me. But I will tell it you some day." Then he told it all,
+as he was sitting there with his cigar in his hand. Stories may seem
+to be very long, and yet be told very quickly.
+
+"But you will go back to her now?" said Edith.
+
+"She has not waited for me."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"They tell me that she is to be married to a--to a--certain Mr.
+Gilmore."
+
+"Already!"
+
+"He had offered to her twenty times before I ever saw her. She never
+loved him, and does not now."
+
+"Who has told you this, Captain Marrable?" She had not intended to
+alter her form of speech, and when she had done so would have given
+anything to have called him then by his Christian name.
+
+"My Uncle John."
+
+"I would ask herself."
+
+"I mean to do so. But somehow, treated as I am here, I am bound to
+tell my uncle of it first. And I cannot do that while Gregory is so
+ill."
+
+"I must go up to my uncle now, Walter. And I do so hope she may be
+true to you. And I do so hope I may like her. Don't believe anything
+till she has told you herself." Saying this, Edith Brownlow returned
+to the house, and at once put her dream quietly out of her sight. She
+said nothing to her mother about it then. It was not necessary that
+she should tell her mother as yet.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LIX.
+
+NEWS FROM DUNRIPPLE.
+
+
+At the end of the first week in August news reached the vicarage at
+Bullhampton that was not indeed very important to the family of Mr.
+Fenwick, but which still seemed to have an immediate effect on their
+lives and comfort. The Vicar for some days past had been, as regarded
+himself, in a high good humour, in consequence of a communication
+which he had received from Lord St. George. Further mention of this
+communication must be made, but it may be deferred to the next
+chapter, as other matters, more momentous, require our immediate
+attention. Mr. Gilmore had pleaded very hard that a day might be
+fixed, and had almost succeeded. Mary Lowther, driven into a corner,
+had been able to give no reason why she should not fix a day, other
+than this,--that Mr. Gilmore had promised her that she should not be
+hurried. "What do you mean?" Mrs. Fenwick had said, angrily. "You
+speak of the man who is to be your husband as though your greatest
+happiness in life were to keep away from him." Mary Lowther had not
+dared to answer that such would be her greatest happiness. Then news
+had reached the vicarage of the illness of Gregory Marrable, and of
+Walter Marrable's presence at Dunripple. This had come of course from
+Aunt Sarah, at Loring; but it had come in such a manner as to seem to
+justify, for a time, Mary's silence in reference to that question of
+naming the day. The Marrables of Dunripple were not nearly related
+to her. She had no personal remembrance of either Sir Gregory or his
+son. But there was an importance attached to the tidings, which, if
+analysed, would have been found to attach itself to Captain Marrable,
+rather than to the two men who were ill; and this was tacitly allowed
+to have an influence. Aunt Sarah had expressed her belief that
+Gregory Marrable was dying; and had gone on to say,--trusting to the
+known fact that Mary had engaged herself to Mr. Gilmore, and to the
+fact, as believed to be a fact, that Walter was engaged to Edith
+Brownlow,--had gone on to say that Captain Marrable would probably
+remain at Dunripple, and would take immediate charge of the estate.
+"I think there is no doubt," said Aunt Sarah, "that Captain Marrable
+and Edith Brownlow will be married." Mary was engaged to Mr. Gilmore,
+and why should not Aunt Sarah tell her news?
+
+The Squire, who had become elated and happy at the period of the
+rubies, had, in three days, again fallen away into a state of angry
+gloom, rather than of melancholy. He said very little just now either
+to Fenwick or to Mrs. Fenwick about his marriage; and, indeed, he did
+not say very much to Mary herself. Men were already at work about
+the gardens at the Privets, and he would report to her what was done,
+and would tell her that the masons and painters would begin in a few
+days. Now and again he would ask for her company up to the place; and
+she had been there twice at his instance since the day on which she
+had gone after him of her own accord, and had fetched him down to
+look at the jewels. But there was little or no sympathy between them.
+Mary could not bring herself to care about the house or the gardens,
+though she told herself again and again that there was she to live
+for the remainder of her life.
+
+Two letters she received from her aunt at Loring within an interval
+of three days, and these letters were both filled with details as to
+the illness of Sir Gregory and his son, at Dunripple. Walter Marrable
+sent accounts to his uncle, the parson, and Mrs. Brownlow sent
+accounts to Miss Marrable herself. And then, on the day following the
+receipt of the last of these two letters, there came one from Walter
+Marrable himself, addressed to Mary Lowther. Gregory Marrable was
+dead, and the letter announcing the death of the baronet's only son
+was as follows:--
+
+
+   Dunripple, August 12, 1868.
+
+   MY DEAR MARY,
+
+   I hardly know whether you will have expected that the news
+   which I have to tell you should reach you direct from me;
+   but I think, upon the whole, that it is better that I
+   should write. My cousin, Gregory Marrable, Sir Gregory's
+   only son, died this morning. I do not doubt but that you
+   know that he has been long ill. He has come to the end of
+   all his troubles, and the old baronet is now childless. He
+   also has been, and is still, unwell, though I do not know
+   that he is much worse than usual. He has been an invalid
+   for years and years. Of course he feels his son's death
+   acutely; for he is a father who has ever been good to his
+   son. But it always seems to me that old people become so
+   used to death, that they do not think of it as do we who
+   are younger. I have seen him twice to-day since the news
+   was told to him, and though he spoke of his son with
+   infinite sorrow, he was able to talk of other things.
+
+   I write to you myself, especially, instead of getting one
+   of the ladies here to do so, because I think it proper
+   to tell you how things stand with myself. Everything is
+   changed with me since you and I parted because it was
+   necessary that I should seek my fortune in India. You
+   already know that I have abandoned that idea; and I now
+   find that I shall leave the army altogether. My uncle has
+   wished it since I first came here, and he now proposes
+   that I shall live here permanently. Of course the meaning
+   is that I should assume the position of his heir. My
+   father, with whom I personally will have no dealing in
+   the matter, stands between us. But I do suppose that the
+   family affairs will be so arranged that I may feel secure
+   that I shall not be turned altogether adrift upon the
+   world.
+
+   Dear Mary,--I do not know how to tell you, that as regards
+   my future everything now depends on you. They have told me
+   that you have accepted an offer from Mr. Gilmore. I know
+   no more than this,--that they have told me so. If you will
+   tell me also that you mean to be his wife, I will say no
+   more. But until you tell me so, I will not believe it. I
+   do not think that you can ever love him as you certainly
+   once loved me;--and when I think of it, how short a time
+   ago that was! I know that I have no right to complain.
+   Our separation was my doing as much as yours. But I will
+   settle nothing as to my future life till I hear from
+   yourself whether or no you will come back to me.
+
+   I shall remain here till after the funeral, which will
+   take place on Friday. On Monday I shall go back to
+   Birmingham. This is Sunday, and I shall expect to hear
+   from you before the week is over. If you bid me, I will be
+   with you early next week. If you tell me that my coming
+   will be useless,--why, then, I shall care very little what
+   happens.
+
+   Yours, with all the love of my heart,
+
+   WALTER MARRABLE.
+
+
+Luckily for Mary she was alone when she read the letter. Her first
+idea on reading it was to think of the words which she had used
+when she had most ungraciously consented to become the wife of
+Harry Gilmore. "Were he so placed that he could afford to marry a
+poor wife, I should leave you and go to him." She remembered them
+accurately. She had made up her mind at the time that she would say
+them, thinking that thus he would be driven from her, and that she
+would be at rest from his solicitation, from those of her friends,
+and from the qualms of her own conscience. He had chosen to claim
+her in spite of those words,--and now the thing had happened to
+the possibility of which she had referred. Poor as she was, Walter
+Marrable was able to make her his wife. She held in her hand his
+letter telling her that it was so. All her heart was his,--as much
+now as it had ever been; and it was impossible that she should not go
+to him. She had told Mr. Gilmore herself that she could never love
+again as she loved Walter Marrable. She had been driven to believe
+that she could never be his wife, and she had separated herself from
+him. She had separated herself from him, and persuaded herself that
+it would be expedient for her to become the wife of this other man.
+But up to this very moment she had never been able to overcome her
+horror at the prospect. From day to day she had thought that she must
+give it up, even when they were dinning into her ears the tidings
+that Walter Marrable was to marry that girl at Dunripple. But that
+had been a falsehood,--an absolute falsehood. There had been no such
+thought in his bosom. He had never been untrue to her. Ah! how much
+the nobler of the two had he been!
+
+And yet she had struggled hard to do right,--to think of others more
+than of herself;--so to dispose of herself that she might be of some
+use in the world. And it had come to this! It was quite impossible
+now that she should marry Harry Gilmore. There had hitherto been
+at any rate an attempt on her part to reconcile herself to that
+marriage; but now the attempt was impossible. What right could she
+have to refuse the man she loved when he told her that all his
+happiness depended on her love! She could see it now. With all her
+desire to do right, she had done foul wrong in accepting Mr. Gilmore.
+She had done foul wrong, though she had complied with the advice of
+all her friends. It could not but have been wrong, as it had brought
+her to this,--her and him. But for the future, she might yet be
+right,--if she only knew how. That it would be wrong to marry Harry
+Gilmore,--to think of marrying him when her heart was so stirred by
+the letter which she held in her hand,--of that she was quite sure.
+She had done the man an injury for which she could never atone. Of
+that she was well aware. But the injury was done and could not now be
+undone. And had she not told him when he came to her, that she would
+even yet return to Walter Marrable if Walter Marrable were able to
+take her?
+
+She went down stairs, slowly, just before the hour for the children's
+dinner, and found her friend, with one or two of the bairns, in the
+garden. "Janet," she said, "I have had a letter from Dunripple."
+
+Mrs. Fenwick looked into her face, and saw that it was sad and
+sorrowful. "What news, Mary?"
+
+"My cousin, Gregory Marrable, is--no more; he died on Sunday
+morning." This was on the Tuesday.
+
+"You expected it, I suppose, from your aunt's letter?"
+
+"Oh, yes;--it has been sudden at last, it seems."
+
+"And Sir Gregory?"
+
+"He is pretty well. He is getting better."
+
+"I pity him the loss of his son;--poor old man!" Mrs. Fenwick was far
+too clever not to see that the serious, solemn aspect of Mary's face
+was not due altogether to the death of a distant cousin, whom she
+herself did not even remember;--but she was too wise, also, to refer
+to what she presumed to be Mary's special grief at the moment. Mary
+was doubtless thinking of the altered circumstances of her cousin
+Walter; but it was as well now that she should speak as little as
+possible about that cousin. Mrs. Fenwick could not turn altogether to
+another subject, but she would, if possible, divert her friend from
+her present thoughts. "Shall you go into mourning?" she asked; "he
+was only your second cousin; but people have ideas so different about
+those things."
+
+"I do not know," said Mary, listlessly.
+
+"If I were you, I would consult Mr. Gilmore. He has a right to be
+consulted. If you do, it should be very slight."
+
+"I shall go into mourning," said Mary, suddenly,--remembering at the
+moment what was Walter's position in the household at Dunripple. Then
+the tears came up into her eyes, she knew not why; and she walked off
+by herself amidst the garden shrubs. Mrs. Fenwick watched her as she
+went, but could not quite understand it. Those tears had not been for
+a second cousin who had never been known. And then, during the last
+few weeks, Mary, in regard to herself, had been prone to do anything
+that Mr. Gilmore would advise, as though she could make up by
+obedience for the want of that affection which she owed to him. Now,
+when she was told that she ought to consult Mr. Gilmore, she flatly
+refused to do so.
+
+Mary came up the garden a few minutes afterwards, and as she passed
+towards the house, she begged to be excused from going into lunch
+that day. Lord St. George was coming up to lunch at the vicarage, as
+will be explained in the next chapter.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LX.
+
+LORD ST. GEORGE IS VERY CUNNING.
+
+
+Lord St. George began to throw his oil upon the waters in reference
+to that unfortunate chapel at Bullhampton a day or two after his
+interview with his father in the lawyer's chambers. His father had
+found himself compelled to yield; had been driven, as it were, by the
+Fates, to accord to his son permission to do as his son should think
+best. There came to be so serious a trouble in consequence of that
+terrible mistake of Packer's, that the poor old Marquis was unable to
+defend himself from the necessity of yielding. On that day, before he
+left his son at Westminster, when their roads lay into the different
+council-chambers of the state, he had prayed hard that the oil might
+not be very oily. But his son would not bate him an inch of his
+surrender.
+
+"He is so utterly worthless," the Marquis had said, pleading hard as
+he spoke of his enemy.
+
+"I'm not quite sure, my lord, that you understand the man," St.
+George had said. "You hate him, and no doubt he hates you."
+
+"Horribly!" ejaculated the Marquis.
+
+"You intend to be as good as you know how to be to all those people
+at Bullhampton?"
+
+"Indeed I do, St. George," said the Marquis, almost with tears in his
+eyes.
+
+"And I shouldn't wonder if he did, too."
+
+"But look at his life," said the Marquis.
+
+"It isn't always easy to look at a man's life. We are always looking
+at men's lives, and always making mistakes. The bishop thinks he
+is a good sort of fellow, and the bishop isn't the man to like a
+debauched, unbelieving, reckless parson, who, according to your
+ideas, must be leading a life of open shame and profligacy. I'm
+inclined to think there must be a mistake."
+
+The unfortunate Marquis groaned deeply as he walked away to the
+august chamber of the Lords.
+
+These and such like are the troubles that sit heavy on a man's heart.
+If search for bread, and meat, and raiment, be set aside, then,
+beyond that, our happiness or misery here depends chiefly on success
+or failure in small things. Though a man when he turns into bed may
+be sure that he has unlimited thousands at his command, though
+all society be open to him, though he know himself to be esteemed
+handsome, clever, and fashionable, even though his digestion be good,
+and he have no doctor to deny him tobacco, champagne, or made dishes,
+still, if he be conscious of failure there where he has striven to
+succeed, even though it be in the humbling of an already humble
+adversary, he will stretch, and roll, and pine,--a wretched being.
+How happy is he who can get his fretting done for him by deputy!
+
+Lord St. George wrote to the parson a few days after his interview
+with his father. He and Lord Trowbridge occupied the same house in
+London, and always met at breakfast; but nothing further was said
+between them during the remaining days in town upon the subject. Lord
+St. George wrote to the parson, and his father had left London for
+Turnover before Mr. Fenwick's answer was received.
+
+
+   MY DEAR SIR,--(Lord St. George had said,)--My father
+   has put into my hands your letter about the dissenting
+   chapel at Bullhampton. It seems to me, that he has made a
+   mistake, and that you are very angry. Couldn't we arrange
+   this little matter without fighting? There is not a
+   landlord in England more desirous of doing good to his
+   tenants than my father; and I am quite willing to believe
+   that there is not an incumbent in England more desirous of
+   doing good to his parishioners than you. I leave London
+   for Wiltshire on Saturday the 11th. If you will meet me I
+   will drive over to Bullhampton on Monday the 13th.
+
+   Yours truly,
+
+   ST. GEORGE.
+
+   No doubt you'll agree with me in thinking that internecine
+   fighting in a parish between the landlord and the
+   clergyman cannot be for the good of the people.
+
+
+Thus it was that Lord St. George began to throw his oil upon the
+waters.
+
+It may be a doubt whether it should be ascribed to Mr. Fenwick as a
+weakness or a strength that, though he was very susceptible of anger,
+and though he could maintain his anger at glowing heat as long as
+fighting continued, it would all evaporate and leave him harmless
+as a dove at the first glimpse of an olive-branch. He knew this so
+well of himself, that it would sometimes be a regret to him in the
+culmination of his wrath that he would not be able to maintain it
+till the hour of his revenge should come. On receiving Lord St.
+George's letter, he at once sat down and wrote to that nobleman,
+telling him that he would be happy to see him at lunch on the Monday
+at two o'clock. Then there came a rejoinder from Lord St. George,
+saying that he would be at the vicarage at the hour named.
+
+Mrs. Fenwick was of course there to entertain the nobleman, whom she
+had never seen before, and during the lunch very little was said
+about the chapel, and not a word was said about other causes of
+complaint.
+
+"That is a terrible building, Mrs. Fenwick," Lord St. George had
+remarked.
+
+"We're getting used to it now," Mrs. Fenwick had replied; "and Mr.
+Fenwick thinks it good for purposes of mortification."
+
+"We must see and move the sackcloth and ashes a little further off,"
+said his lordship.
+
+Then they ate their lunch, and talked about the parish, and expressed
+a joint hope that the Grinder would be hung at Salisbury.
+
+"Now let us go and see the corpus delicti," said the Vicar as soon as
+they had drawn their chairs from the table.
+
+The two men went out and walked round the chapel, and, finding it
+open, walked into it. Of course there were remarks made by both of
+them. It was acknowledged that it was ugly, misplaced, uncomfortable,
+detestable to the eye, and ear, and general feeling,--except in so
+far as it might suit the wants of people who were not sufficiently
+educated to enjoy the higher tone, and more elaborate language of
+the Church of England services. It was thus that they spoke to each
+other, quite in an æsthetic manner.
+
+Lord St. George had said as he entered the chapel, that it must come
+down as a matter of course; and the Vicar had suggested that there
+need be no hurry.
+
+"They tell me that it must be removed some day," said the Vicar, "but
+as I am not likely to leave the parish, nobody need start the matter
+for a year or two." Lord St. George was declaring that advantage
+could not be taken of such a concession on Mr. Fenwick's part, when
+a third person entered the building, and walked towards them with a
+quick step.
+
+"Here is Mr. Puddleham, the minister," said Mr. Fenwick; and the
+future lord of Bullhampton was introduced to the present owner of the
+pulpit under which they were standing.
+
+"My lord," said the minister, "I am proud, indeed, to have the honour
+of meeting your lordship in our new chapel, and of expressing to your
+lordship the high sense entertained by me and my congregation of
+your noble father's munificent liberality to us in the matter of the
+land."
+
+In saying this Mr. Puddleham never once turned his face upon the
+Vicar. He presumed himself at the present moment to be at feud with
+the Vicar in most deadly degree. Though the Vicar would occasionally
+accost him in the village, he always answered the Vicar as though
+they two were enemies. He had bowed when he came up the chapel, but
+he had bowed to the stranger. If the Vicar took any of that courtesy
+to himself, that was not his fault.
+
+"I'm afraid we were a little too quick there," said Lord St. George.
+
+"I hope not, my lord; I hope not. I have heard a rumour; but I have
+inquired. I have inquired, and--"
+
+"The truth is, Mr. Puddleham, that we are standing on Mr. Fenwick's
+private ground this moment."
+
+"You are quite welcome to the use of it, Mr. Puddleham," said the
+Vicar. Mr. Puddleham assumed a look of dignity, and frowned. He could
+not even yet believe that his friend the Marquis had made so fatal a
+mistake.
+
+"We must build you another chapel,--that will be about the long and
+short of it, Mr. Puddleham."
+
+"My lord, I should think there must be some--mistake. Some error must
+have crept in somewhere, my lord. I have made inquiry--"
+
+"It has been a very big error," said Lord St. George, "and it has
+crept into Mr. Fenwick's glebe in a very palpable form. There is no
+use in discussing it, Mr. Puddleham."
+
+"And why didn't the reverend gentleman claim the ground when the
+works were commenced?" demanded the indignant minister, turning now
+for the first time to the Vicar, and doing so with a visage full of
+wrath, and a graceful uplifting of his right hand.
+
+"The reverend gentleman was very ignorant of matters with which he
+ought to have been better acquainted," said Mr. Fenwick himself.
+
+"Very ignorant, indeed," said Mr. Puddleham. "My lord, I am inclined
+to think that we can assert our right to this chapel and maintain it.
+My lord, I am of opinion that the whole hierarchy of the Episcopal
+Established Church in England cannot expel us. My lord, who will be
+the man to move the first brick from this sacred edifice?" And Mr.
+Puddleham pointed up to the pulpit as though he knew well where that
+brick was ever to be found when duty required its presence. "My lord,
+I would propose that nothing should be done; and then let us see who
+will attempt to close this chapel door against the lambs of the Lord
+who come here for pasture in their need."
+
+"The lambs shall have pasture and shall have their pastor," said St.
+George, laughing. "We'll move this chapel to ground that is our own,
+and make everything as right as a trivet for you. You don't want to
+intrude, I'm sure."
+
+Mr. Puddleham's eloquence was by no means exhausted; but at last,
+when they had left the chapel, and the ground immediately around the
+chapel which Mr. Puddleham would insist upon regarding as his own,
+they did manage to shake him off.
+
+"And now, Mr. Fenwick," said Lord St. George, in his determined
+purpose to throw oil upon the waters, "what is this unfortunate
+quarrel between you and my father?"
+
+"You had better ask him that, my lord."
+
+"I have asked him, of course,--and of course he has no answer to
+make. No doubt you intended to enrage him when you wrote him that
+letter which he showed me."
+
+"Certainly I did."
+
+"I hardly see how good is to be done by angering an old man who
+stands high in the world's esteem."
+
+"Had he not stood high, my lord, I should probably have passed him
+by."
+
+"I can understand all that,--that one man should be a mark for
+another's scorn because he is a Marquis, and wealthy. But what I
+can't understand is, that such a one as you should think that good
+can come from it."
+
+"Do you know what your father has said of me?"
+
+"I've no doubt you both say very hard things of each other."
+
+"I never said an evil thing of him behind his back that I have
+not said as strongly to his face," said Mr. Fenwick, with much of
+indignation in his tone.
+
+"Do you really think that that mitigates the injury done to my
+father?" said Lord St. George.
+
+"Do you know that he has complained of me to the bishop?"
+
+"Yes,--and the bishop took your part."
+
+"No thanks to your father, Lord St. George. Do you know that he has
+accused me publicly of the grossest vices; that he has,--that he
+has,--that he has--. There is nothing so bad that he hasn't said it
+of me."
+
+"Upon my word, I think you are even with him, Mr. Fenwick, I do
+indeed."
+
+"What I have said, I have said to his face. I have made no accusation
+against him. Come, my lord, I am willing enough to let bygones be
+bygones. If Lord Trowbridge will condescend to say that he will drop
+all animosity to me, I will forgive him the injuries he has done me.
+But I cannot admit myself to have been wrong."
+
+"I never knew any man who would," said Lord St. George.
+
+"If the Marquis will put out his hand to me, I will accept it," said
+the Vicar.
+
+"Allow me to do so on his behalf," said the son.
+
+And thus the quarrel was presumed to be healed. Lord St. George went
+to the inn for his horse, and the Vicar, as he walked across to the
+vicarage, felt that he had been--done. This young lord had been very
+clever,--and had treated the quarrel as though on even terms, as if
+the offences on each side had been equal. And yet the Vicar knew very
+well that he had been right,--right without a single slip,--right
+from the beginning to the end. "He has been clever," he said to
+himself, "and he shall have the advantage of his cleverness." Then he
+resolved that as far as he was concerned the quarrel should in truth
+be over.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXI.
+
+MARY LOWTHER'S TREACHERY.
+
+
+While the Vicar was listening to the eloquence of Mr. Puddleham in
+the chapel, and was being cozened out of his just indignation by Lord
+St. George, a terrible scene was going on in the drawing-room of
+the vicarage. Mary Lowther, as the reader knows, had declared that
+she would wear mourning for her distant cousin, and had declined to
+appear at lunch before Lord St. George. Mrs. Fenwick, putting these
+things together, knew that much was the matter, but she did not know
+how much. She did not as yet anticipate the terrible state of things
+which was to be made known to her that afternoon.
+
+Mary was quite aware that the thing must be settled. In the first
+place she must answer Captain Marrable's letter. And then it was her
+bounden duty to let Mr. Gilmore know her mind as soon as she knew it
+herself. It might be easy enough for her to write to Walter Marrable.
+That which she had to say to him would be pleasant enough in the
+saying. But that could not be said till the other thing should be
+unsaid. And how was that unsaying to be accomplished? Nothing could
+be done without the aid of Mrs. Fenwick; and now she was afraid of
+Mrs. Fenwick,--as the guilty are always afraid of those who will have
+to judge their guilt. While the children were at dinner, and while
+the lord was sitting at lunch, she remained up in her own room. From
+her window she could see the two men walking across the vicarage
+grounds towards the chapel, and she knew that her friend would be
+alone. Her story must be told to Mrs. Fenwick, and to Mrs. Fenwick
+only. It would be impossible for her to speak of her determination
+before the Vicar till he should have received a first notice of it
+from his wife. And there certainly must be no delay. The men were
+hardly out of sight before she had resolved to go down at once. She
+looked at herself in the glass, and spunged the mark of tears from
+her eyes, and smoothed her hair, and then descended. She never before
+had felt so much in fear of her friend; and yet it was her friend
+who was mainly the cause of this mischief which surrounded her, and
+who had persuaded her to evil. At Janet Fenwick's instance she had
+undertaken to marry a man whom she did not love; and yet she feared
+to go to Janet Fenwick with the story of her repentance. Why not
+indignantly demand of her friend assistance in extricating herself
+from the injury which that friend had brought upon her?
+
+She found Mrs. Fenwick with the children in the little breakfast
+parlour to which they had been banished by the coming of Lord St.
+George. "Janet," she said, "come and take a turn with me in the
+garden." It was now the middle of August, and life at the vicarage
+was spent almost as much out of doors as within. The ladies went
+about with parasols, and would carry their hats hanging in their
+hands. There was no delay therefore, and the two were on the
+gravel-path almost as soon as Mary's request was made. "I did not
+show you my letter from Dunripple," she said, putting her hand into
+her pocket; "but I might as well do so now. You will have to read
+it."
+
+She took out the document, but did not at once hand it to her
+companion. "Is there anything wrong, Mary?" said Mrs. Fenwick.
+
+"Wrong. Yes;--very, very wrong. Janet, it is no use your talking to
+me. I have quite made up my mind. I cannot and I will not marry Mr.
+Gilmore."
+
+"Mary, this is insanity."
+
+"You may say what you please, but I am determined. I cannot and I
+will not. Will you help me out of my difficulty?"
+
+"Certainly not in the way you mean;--certainly not. It cannot be
+either for your good or for his. After what has passed, how on earth
+could you bring yourself to make such a proposition to him?"
+
+"I do not know; that is what I feel the most. I do not know how
+I shall tell him. But he must be told. I thought that perhaps Mr.
+Fenwick would do it."
+
+"I am quite sure he will do nothing of the kind. Think of it, Mary.
+How can you bring yourself to be so false to a man?"
+
+"I have not been false to him. I have been false to myself, but never
+to him. I told him how it was. When you drove me on--"
+
+"Drove you on, Mary?"
+
+"I do not mean to be ungrateful, or to say hard things; but when
+you made me feel that if he were satisfied I also might put up with
+it, I told him that I could never love him. I told him that I did
+love, and ever should love, Walter Marrable. I told him that I had
+nothing--nothing--nothing to give him. But he would take no answer
+but the one; and I did--I did give it him. I know I did; and I have
+never had a moment of happiness since. And now has come this letter.
+Janet, do not be cruel to me. Do not speak to me as though everything
+must be stern and hard and cruel." Then she handed up the letter, and
+Mrs. Fenwick read it as they walked.
+
+"And is he to be made a tool, because the other man has changed his
+mind?" said Mrs. Fenwick.
+
+"Walter has never changed his mind."
+
+"His plans, then. It comes to the same thing. Do you know that you
+will have to answer for his life, or for his reason? Have you not
+learned yet to understand the constancy of his nature?"
+
+"Is it my fault that he should be constant? I told him when he
+offered to me that if Walter were to come back to me and ask me
+again, I should go to him in spite of any promise that I had made. I
+said so as plain as I am saying this to you."
+
+"I am quite sure that he did not understand it so."
+
+"Janet, indeed he did."
+
+"No man would have submitted himself to an engagement with such a
+condition. It is quite impossible. What! Mr. Gilmore knew when you
+took him that if this gentleman should choose to change his mind at
+any moment before you were actually married, you would walk off and
+go back to him!"
+
+"I told him so, Janet. He will not deny that I told him so. When
+I told him so, I was sure that he would have declined such an
+engagement. But he did not, and I had no way of escape. Janet, if you
+could know what I have been suffering, you would not be cruel to me.
+Think what it would have been to you to have to marry a man you did
+not love, and to break the heart of one you did love. Of course Mr.
+Gilmore is your friend."
+
+"He is our friend!"
+
+"And, of course, you do not care for Captain Marrable?"
+
+"I never even saw him."
+
+"But you might put yourself in my place, and judge fairly between us.
+There has not been a thought or a feeling in my heart concealed from
+you since first all this began. You have known that I have never
+loved your friend."
+
+"I know that, after full consideration, you have accepted him; and
+I know also, that he is a man who will devote his whole life to make
+you happy."
+
+"It can never be. You may as well believe me. If you will not help
+me, nor Mr. Fenwick, I must tell him myself;--or I must write to him
+and leave the place suddenly. I know that I have behaved badly. I
+have tried to do right, but I have done wrong. When I came here I was
+very unhappy. How could I help being unhappy when I had lost all that
+I cared for in the world? Then you told me that I might at any rate
+be of some use to some one, by marrying your friend. You do not know
+how I strove to make myself fond of him! And then, at last, when
+the time came that I had to answer him, I thought that I would tell
+him everything. I thought that if I told him the truth he would see
+that we had better be apart. But when I told him, leaving him, as
+I imagined, no choice but to reject me,--he chose to take me. Well,
+Janet; at any rate, then, as I was taught to believe, there was no
+one to be ruined by this,--no one to be broken on the wheel,--but
+myself: and I thought that if I struggled, I might so do my duty that
+he might be satisfied. I see that I was wrong, but you should not
+rebuke me for it. I had tried to do as you bade me. But I did tell
+him that if ever this thing happened I should leave him. It has
+happened, and I must leave him." Mrs. Fenwick had let her speak on
+without interrupting her, intending when she had finished, to say
+definitely, that they at the vicarage could not make themselves
+parties to any treason towards Mr. Gilmore; but when Mary had come to
+the end of her story her friend's heart was softened towards her. She
+walked silently along the path, refraining at any rate from those
+bitter arguments with which she had at first thought to confound Mary
+in her treachery. "I do think you love me," said Mary.
+
+"Indeed I love you."
+
+"Then help me; do help me. I will go on my knees to him to beg his
+pardon."
+
+"I do not know what to say to it. Begging his pardon will be of no
+avail. As for myself, I should not dare to tell him. We used to
+think, when he was hopeless before, that dwelling on it all would
+drive him to some absolute madness. And it will be worse now. Of
+course it will be worse."
+
+"What am I to do?" Mary paused a moment, and then added,
+sharply,--"There is one thing I will not do; I will not go to the
+altar and become his wife."
+
+"I suppose I had better tell Frank," said Mrs. Fenwick, after another
+pause.
+
+This was, of course, what Mary Lowther desired, but she begged for
+and obtained permission not to see the Vicar herself that evening.
+She would keep her own room that night, and meet him the next morning
+before prayers as best she might.
+
+When the Vicar came back to the house, his mind was so full of the
+chapel, and Lord St. George, and the admirable manner in which he had
+been cajoled out of his wrath without the slightest admission on the
+part of the lord that his father had ever been wrong,--his thoughts
+were so occupied with all this, and with Mr. Puddleham's oratory,
+that he did not at first give his wife an opportunity of telling Mary
+Lowther's story.
+
+"We shall all of us have to go over to Turnover next week," he said.
+
+"You may go. I won't."
+
+"And I shouldn't wonder if the Marquis were to offer me a better
+living, so that I might be close to him. We are to be the lamb and
+the wolf sitting down together."
+
+"And which is to be the lamb?"
+
+"That does not matter. But the worst of it is, Puddleham won't come
+and be a lamb too. Here am I, who have suffered pretty nearly as
+much as St. Paul, have forgiven all my enemies all round, and shaken
+hands with the Marquis by proxy, while Puddleham has been man enough
+to maintain the dignity of his indignation. The truth is, that the
+possession of a grievance is the one state of human blessedness. As
+long as the chapel was there, malgré moi, I could revel in my wrong.
+It turns out now that I can send poor Puddleham adrift to-morrow,
+and he immediately becomes the hero of the hour. I wish your
+brother-in-law had not been so officious in finding it all out."
+
+Mrs. Fenwick postponed her story till the evening.
+
+"Where is Mary?" Fenwick asked, when dinner was announced.
+
+"She is not quite well, and will not come down. Wait awhile, and you
+shall be told." He did wait; but the moment that they were alone
+again he asked his question. Then Mrs. Fenwick told the whole story,
+hardly expressing an opinion herself as she told it. "I don't think
+she is to be shaken," she said at last.
+
+"She is behaving very badly,--very badly,--very badly."
+
+"I am not quite sure, Frank, whether we have behaved wisely," said
+his wife.
+
+"If it must be told him, it will drive him mad," said Fenwick.
+
+"I think it must be told."
+
+"And I am to tell it?"
+
+"That is what she asks."
+
+"I can't say that I have made up my mind; but, as far as I can see at
+present, I will do nothing of the kind. She has no right to expect
+it."
+
+Before they went to bed, however, he also had been somewhat softened.
+When his wife declared, with tears in her eyes, that she would never
+interfere at match-making again, he began to perceive that he also
+had endeavoured to be a match-maker and had failed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXII.
+
+UP AT THE PRIVETS.
+
+
+The whole of the next day was passed in wretchedness by the party at
+the vicarage. The Vicar, as he greeted Miss Lowther in the morning,
+had not meant to be severe, having been specially cautioned against
+severity by his wife; but he had been unable not to be silent and
+stern. Not a word was spoken about Mr. Gilmore till after breakfast,
+and then it was no more than a word.
+
+"I would think better of this, Mary," said the Vicar.
+
+"I cannot think better of it," she replied.
+
+He refused, however, to go to Mr. Gilmore that day, demanding that
+she should have another day in which to revolve the matter in her
+mind. It was understood, however, that if she persisted he would
+break the matter to her lover. Then this trouble was aggravated by
+the coming of Mr. Gilmore to the vicarage, though it may be that the
+visit was of use by preparing him in some degree for the blow. When
+he came Mary was not to be seen. Fancying that he might call, she
+remained up-stairs all day, and Mrs. Fenwick was obliged to say that
+she was unwell. "Is she really ill?" the poor man had asked. Mrs.
+Fenwick, driven hard by the difficulty of her position, had said
+that she did not believe Mary to be very ill, but that she was so
+discomposed by news from Dunripple that she could not come down. "I
+should have thought that I might have seen her," said Mr. Gilmore,
+with that black frown upon his brow which now they all knew so well.
+Mrs. Fenwick made no reply, and then the unhappy man went away. He
+wanted no further informant to tell him that the woman to whom he was
+pledged regarded her engagement to him with aversion.
+
+"I must see her again before I go," Fenwick said to his wife the next
+morning. And he did see her. But Mary was absolutely firm. When he
+remarked that she was pale and worn and ill, she acknowledged that
+she had not closed her eyes during those two nights.
+
+"And it must be so?" he asked, holding her hand tenderly.
+
+"I am so grieved that you should have such a mission," she replied.
+
+Then he explained to her that he was not thinking of himself, sad as
+the occasion would be to him. But if this great sorrow could have
+been spared to his friend! It could not, however, be spared. Mary was
+quite firm, at any rate as to that. No consideration should induce
+her now to marry Mr. Gilmore. Mr. Fenwick, on her behalf, might
+express his regret for the grief she had caused in any terms that
+he might think fit to use,--might humiliate her to the ground if he
+thought it proper. And yet, had not Mr. Gilmore sinned more against
+her than had she against him? Had not the manner in which he had
+grasped at her hand been unmanly and unworthy? But of this, though
+she thought much of it, she said nothing now to Mr. Fenwick. This
+commission to the Vicar was that he should make her free; and in
+doing this he might use what language, and make what confessions he
+pleased. He must, however, make her free.
+
+After breakfast he started upon his errand with a very heavy heart.
+He loved his friend dearly. Between these two there had grown up now
+during a period of many years, that undemonstrative, unexpressed,
+almost unconscious affection which, with men, will often make the
+greatest charm of their lives, but which is held by women to be quite
+unsatisfactory and almost nugatory. It may be doubted whether either
+of them had ever told the other of his regard. "Yours always," in
+writing, was the warmest term that was ever used. Neither ever
+dreamed of suggesting that the absence of the other would be a cause
+of grief or even of discomfort. They would bicker with each other,
+and not unfrequently abuse each other. Chance threw them much
+together, but they never did anything to assist chance. Women, who
+love each other as well, will always be expressing their love, always
+making plans to be together, always doing little things each for the
+gratification of the other, constantly making presents backwards and
+forwards. These two men had never given any thing, one to the other,
+beyond a worn-out walking-stick, or a cigar. They were rough to each
+other, caustic, and almost ill-mannered. But they thoroughly trusted
+each other; and the happiness, prosperity, and, above all, the honour
+of the one were, to the other, matters of keenest moment. The bigger
+man of the two, the one who felt rather than knew himself to be the
+bigger, had to say that which would go nigh to break his friend's
+heart, and the task which he had in hand made him sick at his own
+heart. He walked slowly across the fields, turning over in his own
+mind the words he would use. His misery for his friend was infinitely
+greater than any that he had suffered on his own account, either in
+regard to Mr. Puddleham's chapel or the calumny of the Marquis.
+
+He found Gilmore sauntering about the stable yard. "Old fellow," he
+said, "come along, I have got something to say to you."
+
+"It is about Mary, I suppose?"
+
+"Well, yes; it is about Mary. You mustn't be a woman, Harry, or let a
+woman make you seriously wretched."
+
+"I know it all. That will do. You need not say anything more." Then
+he put his hands into the pockets of his shooting coat, and walked
+off as though all had been said that was necessary. Fenwick had told
+his message and might now go away. As for himself, in the sharpness
+of his agony he had as yet made no scheme for a future purpose. Only
+this he had determined. He would see that false woman once again, and
+tell her what he thought of her conduct.
+
+But Fenwick knew that his task was not yet done. Gilmore might walk
+off, but he was bound to follow the unhappy man.
+
+"Harry," he said, "you had better let me come with you for awhile.
+You had better hear what I have to say."
+
+"I want to hear nothing more. What good can it be? Like a fool, I
+had set my fortune on one cast of the die, and I have lost it. Why
+she should have added on the misery and disgrace of the last few
+weeks to the rest, I cannot imagine. I suppose it has been her way of
+punishing me for my persistency."
+
+"It has not been that, Harry."
+
+"God knows what it has been. I do not understand it." He had turned
+from the stables towards the house, and had now come to a part of
+the grounds in which workmen were converting a little paddock in
+front of the house into a garden. The gardener was there with four or
+five labourers, and planks, and barrows, and mattocks, and heaps of
+undistributed earth and gravel were spread about. "Give over with
+this," he said to the gardener, angrily. The man touched his hat, and
+stood amazed. "Leave it, I say, and send these men away. Pay them for
+the work, and let them go."
+
+"You don't mean as we are to leave it all like this, sir?"
+
+"I do mean that you are to leave it just as it is." There was a man
+standing with a shovel in his hand levelling some loose earth, and
+the Squire, going up to him, took the shovel from him and threw it
+upon the ground. "When I say a thing, I mean it. Ambrose, take these
+men away. I will not have another stroke of work done here." The
+Vicar came up to him and whispered into his ear a prayer that he
+would not expose himself before the men; but the Squire cared nothing
+for his friend's whisper. He shook off the Vicar's hand from his arm
+and stalked away into the house.
+
+Two rooms, the two drawing-rooms as they were called, on the ground
+floor had been stripped of the old paper, and were now in that state
+of apparent ruin which always comes upon such rooms when workmen
+enter them with their tools. There were tressels with a board across
+them, on which a man was standing at this moment, whose business it
+was to decorate the ceiling.
+
+"That will do," said the Squire. "You may get down, and leave the
+place." The man stood still on his board with his eyes open and his
+brush in his hand. "I have changed my mind, and you may come down,"
+said Mr. Gilmore. "Tell Mr. Cross to send me his bill for what he has
+done, and it shall be paid. Come down, when I tell you. I will have
+nothing further touched in the house." He went from room to room and
+gave the same orders, and, after a while, succeeded in turning the
+paper-hangers and painters out of the house. Fenwick had followed
+him from room to room, making every now and then an attempt at
+remonstrance; but the Squire had paid no attention either to his
+words or to his presence.
+
+At last they were alone together in Gilmore's own study or office,
+and then the Vicar spoke. "Harry," he said, "I am, indeed, surprised
+that such a one as you should not have more manhood at his command."
+
+"Were you ever tried as I am?"
+
+"What matters that? You are responsible for your own conduct, and I
+tell you that your conduct is unmanly."
+
+"Why should I have the rooms done up? I shall never live here.
+What is it to me how they are left? The sooner I stop a useless
+expenditure the better. It was being done for her, not for me."
+
+"Of course you will live here."
+
+"You know nothing about it. You cannot know anything about it. Why
+has she treated me in this way? To send up to a man and simply tell
+him that she has changed her mind! God in heaven!--that you should
+bring me such a message!"
+
+"You have not allowed me to give my message yet."
+
+"Give it me, then, and have done with it. Has she not sent you to
+tell me that she has changed her mind?"
+
+Now that opportunity was given to him, the Vicar did not know how
+to tell his message. "Perhaps it would have been better that Janet
+should have come to you."
+
+"It don't make much difference who comes. She'll never come again. I
+don't suppose, Frank, you can understand the sort of love I have had
+for her. You have never been driven by failure to such longing as
+mine has been. And then I thought it had come at last!"
+
+"Will you be patient while I speak to you, Harry?" said the Vicar,
+again taking him by the arm. They had now left the house, and were
+out alone among the shrubs.
+
+"Patient! yes; I think I am patient. Nothing further can hurt me
+now;--that's one comfort."
+
+"Mary bids me remind you,"--Gilmore shuddered and shook himself when
+Mary Lowther's name was mentioned, but he did not attempt to stop the
+Vicar,--"she bids me remind you that when the other day she consented
+to be your wife, she did so--." He tried to tell it all, but he could
+not. How could he tell the man the story which Mary had told to him?
+
+"I understand," said Gilmore. "It's all of no use, and you are
+troubling yourself for nothing. She told me that she did not care a
+straw for me;--but she accepted me."
+
+"If that was the case, you were both wrong."
+
+"It was the case. I don't say who was wrong, but the punishment has
+come upon me only. Look here, Frank; I will not take this message
+from you. I will not even give her up yet. I have a right, at least,
+to see her, and see her I will. I don't suppose you will try to
+prevent me?"
+
+"She must do as she pleases, Harry, as long as she is in my house."
+
+"She shall see me. She is self-willed enough, but she shall not
+refuse me that. Be so good as to tell her with my compliments, that I
+expect her to see me. A man is not going to be treated like this, and
+then not speak his own mind. Be good enough to tell her that from me.
+I demand an interview." So saying he turned upon his heel, and walked
+quickly away through the shrubbery.
+
+The Vicar stood for awhile to think, and then slowly returned to the
+vicarage by himself. What Gilmore had said to him was true enough. He
+had, indeed, never been tried after that fashion. It did seem to him
+that his friend was in fact broken-hearted. Harry Gilmore might live
+on,--as is the way with men and women who are broken-hearted;--but
+life for the present, life for some years to come, could be to him
+only a burden.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXIII.
+
+THE MILLER TELLS HIS TROUBLES.
+
+
+When the Vicar went on his unhappy mission to the Squire's house
+Carry Brattle had been nearly two months at the mill. During that
+time both Mr. and Mrs. Fenwick had seen her more than once, and at
+last she had been persuaded to go to church with her sister. On the
+previous Sunday she had crept through the village at Fanny's side,
+and had taken a place provided for her in the dark corner of a dark
+pew under the protection of a thick veil. Fanny walked with her
+boldly across the village street, as though she were not in any
+slightest degree ashamed of her companion, and sat by her side, and
+then conveyed her home. On the next Sunday the sacrament would be
+given, and this was done in preparation for that day.
+
+Things had not gone very pleasantly at the mill. Up to this moment
+old Brattle had expressed no forgiveness towards his daughter, had
+uttered no word of affection to her, had made no sign that he had
+again taken her to his bosom as his own child. He had spoken to her,
+because in the narrow confines of their home it was almost impossible
+that he should live in the house with her without doing so. Carry had
+gradually fallen into the way of doing her share of the daily work.
+She cooked, and baked, and strove hard that her presence in the house
+should be found to be a comfort. She was useful, and the very fact of
+her utility brought her father into a certain state of communion with
+her; but he never addressed her specially, never called her by her
+name, and had not yet even acknowledged to his wife or to Fanny that
+he recognised her as one of the family. They had chosen to bring her
+in against his will, and he would not turn their guest from the door.
+It was thus that he seemed to regard his daughter's presence in the
+mill-house.
+
+Under this treatment Carry was becoming restive and impatient. On
+such an occasion as that of going to church and exposing herself to
+the eyes of those who had known her as an innocent, laughing, saucy
+girl, she could not but be humble, quiet, and awestruck; but at home
+she was beginning again gradually to assert her own character. "If
+father won't speak to me, I'd better go," she said to Fanny.
+
+"And where will you go to, Carry?"
+
+"I dun' know;--into the mill-pond would be best for them as belongs
+to me. I suppose there ain't anybody as 'd have me?"
+
+"Nobody can have you as will love you as we do, Carry."
+
+"Why won't father come round and speak to me? You can't tell what
+it is to have him looking at one that way. I sometimes feels like
+getting up and telling him to turn me out if he won't speak a word to
+me." But Fanny had softened her, and encouraged her, bidding her wait
+still again, explaining the sorrow that weighed upon their father's
+heart as well as she could without saying a single cruel word as to
+Carry's past life. Fanny's task was not easy, and it was made the
+harder by their mother's special tenderness towards Carry. "The less
+she says and the more she does, the better for her," said Fanny to
+her mother. "You shouldn't let her talk about father." Mrs. Brattle
+did not attempt to argue the matter with her elder daughter, but she
+found it to be quite out of her power to restrain Carry's talking.
+
+During these two months old Brattle had not even seen either his
+landlord or the Vicar. They had both been at the mill, but the
+miller had kept himself up among his grist, and had not condescended
+to come down to them. Nor had he even, since Carry's return, been
+seen in Bullhampton, or even up on the high road leading to it. He
+held no communion with men other than was absolutely necessary for
+his business, feeling himself to be degraded, not so much by his
+daughter's fall as by his concession to his fallen daughter. He would
+sit out in the porch of an evening, and smoke his pipe; but if he
+heard a footstep on the lane he would retreat, and cross the plank
+and get among the wheels of his mill, or out into the orchard. Of
+Sam nothing had been heard. He was away, it was believed in Durham,
+working at some colliery engine. He gave no sign of himself to his
+mother or sister; but it was understood that he would appear at
+the assizes, towards the end of the present month, as he had been
+summoned there as a witness at the trial of the two men for the
+murder of Mr. Trumbull.
+
+And Carry, also, was to be a witness at the assizes; and, as it was
+believed, a witness much more material than her brother. Indeed, it
+was beginning to be thought that after all Sam would have no evidence
+to give. If, indeed, he had had nothing to do with the murder, it was
+not probable that any of the circumstances of the murder would have
+been confided to him. He had, it seemed, been on intimate terms with
+the man Acorn,--and, through Acorn, had known Burrows and the old
+woman who lived at Pycroft Common, the mother of Burrows. He had been
+in their company when they first visited Bullhampton, and had, as we
+know, invited them into the Vicar's garden,--much to the damage of
+Mr. Burrows' shoulder-blade; but it was believed that beyond this he
+could say nothing as to the murder. But Carry Brattle was presumed
+to have a closer knowledge of at least one of the men. She had now
+confessed to her sister that, after leaving Bullhampton, she had
+consented to become Acorn's wife. She had known then but little of
+his mode of life or past history; but he was young, good-looking,
+fairly well-dressed, and had promised to marry her. By him she was
+taken to the cottage on Pycroft Common, and by him she had certainly
+been visited on the morning after the murder. He had visited her and
+given her money;--and since that, according to her own story, she had
+neither seen him nor heard from him. She had never cared for him,
+she told her sister; but what was that to one such as her as long as
+he would make her an honest woman? All this was repeated by Fanny
+Brattle to Mrs. Fenwick;--and now the assizes were at hand, and how
+was Carry to demean herself there? Who would take her? Who would
+stand near her and support her, and save her from falling into that
+abyss of self-abasement and almost of self-annihilation which would
+be her doom, unless there were some one there to give her strength
+and aid?
+
+"I would not go to Salisbury at all during the assizes, if I were
+you," Mrs. Fenwick had said to her husband. The Vicar understood
+thoroughly what was meant. Because of the evil things which had
+been said of him by that stupid old Marquis whom he had been
+cheated into forgiving, he was not to be allowed to give a helping
+hand to his parishioner! Nevertheless, he acknowledged his wife's
+wisdom,--tacitly, as is fitting when such acknowledgments have to be
+made; and he contented himself with endeavouring to find for her some
+other escort. It had been hoped from day to day that the miller would
+yield, that he would embrace poor Carry, and promise her that she
+should again be to him as a daughter. If this could be brought about,
+then,--so thought the Vicar and Fanny too,--the old man would steel
+himself to bear the eyes of the whole county, and would accompany the
+girl himself. But now the day was coming on, and Brattle seemed to be
+as far from yielding as ever. Fanny had dropped a word or two in his
+hearing about the assizes, but he had only glowered at her, taking no
+other notice whatever of her hints.
+
+When the Vicar left his friend Gilmore, as has been told in the last
+chapter, he did not return to the vicarage across the fields, but
+took the carriage road down to the lodge, and from thence crossed the
+stile that led into the path down to the mill. This was on the 15th
+of August, a Wednesday, and Carry was summoned to be at Salisbury on
+that day week. As the day drew near she became very nervous. At the
+Vicar's instance Fanny had written to her brother George, asking him
+whether he would be good to his poor sister, and take her under his
+charge. He had written back,--or rather his wife had written for
+him,--sending Carry a note for £20 as a present, but declining, on
+the score of his own children, to be seen with her in Salisbury on
+the occasion. "I shall go with her myself, Mr. Fenwick," Fanny had
+said to the Vicar; "it'll just be better than nobody at all to be
+along with her." The Vicar was now going down to the mill to give his
+assent to this. He could see nothing better. Fanny at any rate would
+be firm; would not be prevented by false shame from being a very
+sister to her sister; and would perhaps be admitted where a brother's
+attendance might be refused. He had promised to see the women at the
+mill as early in the week as he could, and now he went thither intent
+on giving them advice as to their proceedings at Salisbury. It would
+doubtless be necessary that they should sleep there, and he hoped
+that they might be accommodated by Mrs. Stiggs.
+
+As he stepped out from the field path on to the lane, almost
+immediately in front of the mill, he came directly upon the miller.
+It was between twelve and one o'clock, and old Brattle was wandering
+about for a minute or two waiting for his dinner. The two men met
+so that it was impossible that they should not speak; and on this
+occasion the miller did not seem to avoid his visitor. "Muster
+Fenwick," said he, as he took the Vicar's hand, "I am bound to say
+as I'm much obliged to ye for all y' have done for that poor lass in
+there."
+
+"Don't say a word about that, Mr. Brattle."
+
+"But I must say a word. There's money owing as I knows. There was ten
+shilling a week for her keep all that time she was at Salsbry
+yonder."
+
+"I will not hear a word as to any money."
+
+"Her brother George has sent her a gift, Muster Fenwick,--twenty
+pound."
+
+"I am very glad to hear it."
+
+"George is a well-to-do man, they tell me," continued the father,
+"and can afford to part with his money. But he won't come forward to
+help the girl any other gait. I'll thank you just to take what's due,
+Muster Fenwick, and you can give her sister the change. Our Fanny has
+got the note as George sent."
+
+Then there was a dispute about the money, as a matter of course.
+Fenwick swore that nothing was due, and the miller protested that as
+the money was there all his daughter's expenses at Salisbury should
+be repaid. And the miller at last got the best of it. Fenwick
+promised that he would look to his book, see how much he had paid,
+and mention the sum to Fanny at some future time. He positively
+refused to take the note at present, protesting that he had no
+change, and that he would not burden himself with the responsibility
+of carrying so much money about with him in his pocket. Then he asked
+whether, if he went into the house, he would be able to say a word or
+two to the women before dinner. He had made up his mind that he would
+make no further attempt at reconciling the father to his daughter. He
+had often declared to his wife that there could be nothing so hateful
+to a man as the constant interference of a self-constituted adviser.
+"I so often feel that I am making myself odious when I am telling
+them to do this or that; and then I ask myself what I should say
+if anybody were to come and advise me how to manage you and the
+bairns." And he had told his wife more than once how very natural and
+reasonable had been the expression of the lady's wrath at Startup,
+when he had taken upon himself to give her advice. "People know what
+is good for them to do, well enough, without being dictated to by a
+clergyman!" He had repeated the words to himself and to his wife a
+dozen times, and talked of having them put up in big red letters over
+the fire-place in his own study. He had therefore quite determined to
+say never another word to old Brattle in reference to his daughter
+Carry. But now the miller himself began upon the subject.
+
+"You can see 'em, Muster Fenwick, in course. It don't make no odds
+about dinner. But I was wanting just to say a word to you about that
+poor young ooman there." This he said in a slow, half-hesitating
+voice, as though he could hardly bring himself to speak of the
+unfortunate one to whom he alluded. The Vicar muttered some word of
+assent, and then the miller went on. "You knows, of course, as how
+she be back here at the mill?"
+
+"Certainly I do. I've seen her more than once."
+
+"Muster Fenwick, I don't suppose as any one as asn't tried it knows
+what it is. I hopes you mayn't never know it; nor it ain't likely.
+Muster Fenwick, I'd sooner see her dead body stretched afore me,--and
+I loved her a'most as well as any father ever loved his da'ter,--I'd
+sooner a see'd her brought home to the door stiff and stark than know
+her to be the thing she is." His hesitation had now given way to
+emphasis, and he raised his hand as he spoke. The Vicar caught it and
+held it in his own, and strove to find some word to say as the old
+man paused in his speech. But to Jacob Brattle it was hard for a
+clergyman to find any word to say on such an occasion. Of what use
+could it be to preach of repentance to one who believed nothing; or
+to tell of the opportunity which forgiveness by an earthly parent
+might afford to the sinner of obtaining lasting forgiveness
+elsewhere? But let him have said what he might, the miller would not
+have listened. He was full of that which lay upon his own heart. "If
+they only know'd what them as cares for 'em 'd has to bear, maybe
+they'd think a little. But it ain't natural they should know, Muster
+Fenwick, and one's a'most tempted to say that a man 'd better have no
+child at all."
+
+"Think of your son George, Mr. Brattle, and of Mrs. Jay."
+
+"What's them to me? He sends the girl a twenty-pun'-note, and I wish
+he'd a kep' it. As for t'other, she wouldn't let the girl inside her
+door! It's here she has to come."
+
+"What comfort would you have, Mr. Brattle, without Fanny?"
+
+"Fanny! I'm not saying nothing against Fanny. Not but what she hadn't
+no business to let the girl into the house in the middle of the night
+without saying a word to me."
+
+"Would you have had her leave her sister outside in the cold and damp
+all night?"
+
+"Why didn't she come and ax? All the same, I ain't a saying nowt
+again Fanny. But, Muster Fenwick, if you ever come to have one foot
+bad o' the gout, it won't make you right to know that the other
+ain't got it. Y'll have the pain a gnawing of you from the bad foot
+till you clean forget all the rest o' your body. It's so with me, I
+knows."
+
+"What can I say to you, Mr. Brattle? I do feel for you. I do,--I do."
+
+"Not a doubt on it, Muster Fenwick. They all on 'em feels for me.
+They all on 'em knows as how I'm bruised and mangled a'most as though
+I'd fallen through into that water-wheel. There ain't one in all
+Bull'ompton as don't know as Jacob Brattle is a broken man along of
+his da'ter that is a--"
+
+"Silence, Mr. Brattle. You shall not say it. She is not that;--at any
+rate not now. Have you no knowledge that sin may be left behind and
+deserted as well as virtue?"
+
+"It ain't easy to leave disgrace behind, any ways. For ought I
+knows a girl may be made right arter a while; but as for her
+father, nothing 'll ever make him right again. It's in here, Muster
+Fenwick,--in here. There's things as is hard on us; but when they
+comes one can't send 'em away just because they is hardest of all to
+bear. I'd a put up with aught, only this, and defied all Bull'ompton
+to say as it broke me;--but I'm about broke now. If I hadn't more nor
+a crust at home, nor a decent coat to my back, I'd a looked 'em all
+square in the face as ever I did. But I can't look no man square
+in the face now;--and as for other folk's girls, I can't bear 'em
+near me,--no how. They makes me think of my own." Fenwick had now
+turned his back to the miller, in order that he might wipe away his
+tears without showing them. "I'm thinking of her always, Muster
+Fenwick;--day and night. When the mill's agoing, it's all the same.
+It's just as though there warn't nothing else in the whole world as I
+minded to think on. I've been a man all my life, Muster Fenwick; and
+now I ain't a man no more."
+
+
+[Illustration: "It's in here, Muster Fenwick,--in here."]
+
+
+Our friend the Vicar never before felt himself so utterly unable to
+administer comfort in affliction. There was nothing on which he could
+take hold. He could tell the man, no doubt, that beyond all this
+there might be everlasting joy, not only for him, but for him and the
+girl together;--joy which would be sullied by no touch of disgrace.
+But there was a stubborn strength in the infidelity of this old Pagan
+which was utterly impervious to any adjuration on that side. That
+which he saw and knew and felt, he would believe; but he would
+believe nothing else. He knew now that he was wounded and sore and
+wretched, and he understood the cause. He knew that he must bear his
+misery to the last, and he struggled to make his back broad for the
+load. But even the desire for ease, which is natural to all men,
+would not make him flinch in his infidelity. As he would not believe
+when things went well with him, and when the comfort of hope for the
+future was not imperatively needed for his daily solace,--so would he
+not believe now, when his need for such comfort was so pressing.
+
+The upshot of it all was, that the miller thought that he would take
+his own daughter into Salisbury, and was desirous of breaking the
+matter in this way to the friend of his family. The Vicar, of course,
+applauded him much. Indeed, he applauded too much;--for the miller
+turned on him and declared that he was by no means certain that he
+was doing right. And when the Vicar asked him to be gentle with the
+girl, he turned upon him again.
+
+"Why ain't she been gentle along of me? I hates such gentility,
+Muster Fenwick. I'll be honest with her, any way." But he thought
+better of it before he let the Vicar go. "I shan't do her no hurt,
+Muster Fenwick. Bad as she's been, she's my own flesh and blood
+still."
+
+After what he had heard, Mr. Fenwick declined going into the
+mill-house, and returned home without seeing Mrs. Brattle and her
+daughters. The miller's determination should be told by himself; and
+the Vicar felt that he could hardly keep the secret were he now to
+see the women.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXIV.
+
+IF I WERE YOUR SISTER!
+
+
+Mr. Gilmore in his last words to his friend Fenwick, declared that he
+would not accept the message which the Vicar delivered to him as the
+sufficient expression of Mary's decision. He would see Mary Lowther
+herself, and force her to confess her own treachery face to face with
+him,--to confess it or else to deny it. So much she could not refuse
+to grant him. Fenwick had indeed said that as long as the young lady
+was his guest she must be allowed to please herself as to whom she
+would see or not see. Gilmore should not be encouraged to force
+himself upon her at the vicarage. But the Squire was quite sure that
+so much as that must be granted to him. It was impossible that even
+Mary Lowther should refuse to see him after what had passed between
+them. And then, as he walked about his own fields, thinking of
+it all, he allowed himself to feel a certain amount of hope that
+after all she might be made to marry him. His love for her had not
+dwindled,--or rather his desire to call her his own, and to make
+her his wife; but it had taken an altered form out of which all its
+native tenderness had been pressed by the usage to which he had been
+subjected. It was his honour rather than his love that he now desired
+to satisfy. All those who knew him best were aware that he had set
+his heart upon this marriage, and it was necessary to him that he
+should show them that he was not to be disappointed. Mary's conduct
+to him from the day on which she had first engaged herself to him had
+been of such a kind as naturally to mar his tenderness and to banish
+from him all those prettinesses of courtship in which he would have
+indulged as pleasantly as any other man. She had told him in so many
+words that she intended to marry him without loving him, and on these
+terms he had accepted her. But in doing so he had unconsciously
+flattered himself that she would be better than her words,--that
+as she submitted herself to him as his affianced bride she would
+gradually become soft and loving in his hands. She had, if possible,
+been harder to him even than her words. She had made him understand
+thoroughly that his presence was not a joy to her, and that her
+engagement to him was a burden on her which she had taken on her
+shoulders simply because the romance of her life had been nipped
+in the bud in reference to the man whom she did love. Still he had
+persevered. He had set his heart sturdily on marrying this girl,
+and marry her he would, if, after any fashion, such marriage should
+come within his power. Mrs. Fenwick, by whose judgment and affection
+he had been swayed through all this matter, had told him again and
+again, that such a girl as Mary Lowther must love her husband,--if
+her husband loved her and treated her with tenderness. "I think I
+can answer for myself," Gilmore had once replied, and his friend
+had thoroughly believed in him. Trusting to the assurance he had
+persevered; he had persevered even when his trust in that assurance
+had been weakened by the girl's hardness. Anything would be better
+than breaking from an engagement on which he had so long rested all
+his hopes of happiness. She was pledged to be his wife; and, that
+being so, he could reform his gardens and decorate his house, and
+employ himself about his place with some amount of satisfaction. He
+had at least a purpose in his life. Then by degrees there grew upon
+him a fear that she still meant to escape from him, and he swore
+to himself,--without any tenderness,--that this should not be
+so. Let her once be his wife and she should be treated with all
+consideration,--with all affection, if she would accept it; but she
+should not make a fool of him now. Then the Vicar had come with his
+message, and he had been simply told that the engagement between them
+was over!
+
+Of course he would see her,--and that at once. As soon as Fenwick had
+left him, he went with rapid steps over his whole place, and set the
+men again upon their work. This took place on a Wednesday, and the
+men should be continued at their work, at any rate, till Saturday. He
+explained this clearly to Ambrose, his gardener, and to the foreman
+in the house.
+
+"It may be," said he to Ambrose, "that I shall change my mind
+altogether about the place;--but as I am still in doubt, let
+everything go on till Saturday."
+
+Of course they all knew why it was that the conduct of the Squire was
+so like the conduct of a madman.
+
+He sent down a note to Mary Lowther that evening.
+
+
+   DEAR MARY,
+
+   I have seen Fenwick, and of course I must see you. Will
+   you name an hour for to-morrow morning?
+
+   Yours, H. G.
+
+
+When Mary read this, which she did as they were sitting on the lawn
+after dinner, she did not hesitate for a moment. Hardly a word had
+been said to her by Fenwick, or his wife, since his return from the
+Privets. They did not wish to show themselves to be angry with her,
+but they found conversation to be almost impossible. "You have told
+him?" Mary had asked. "Yes, I have told him," the Vicar had replied;
+and that had been nearly all. In the course of the afternoon she
+had hinted to Janet Fenwick that she thought she had better leave
+Bullhampton. "Not quite yet, dear," Mrs. Fenwick had said, and Mary
+had been afraid to urge her request.
+
+"Shall I name eleven to-morrow?" she said, as she handed the Squire's
+note to Mrs. Fenwick. Mrs. Fenwick and the Vicar both assented, and
+then she went in and wrote her answer.
+
+
+   I will be at home at the vicarage at eleven.--M. L.
+
+
+She would have given much to escape what was coming, but she had not
+expected to escape it.
+
+The next morning after breakfast Fenwick himself went away. "I've had
+more than enough of it," he said, to his wife, "and I won't be near
+them."
+
+Mrs. Fenwick was with her friend up to the moment at which the bell
+was heard at the front door. There was no coming up across the lawn
+now.
+
+"Dear Janet," Mary said, when they were alone, "how I wish that I had
+never come to trouble you here at the vicarage!"
+
+Mrs. Fenwick was not without a feeling that much of all this
+unhappiness had come from her own persistency on behalf of her
+husband's friend, and thought that some expression was due from her
+to Mary to that effect. "You are not to suppose that we are angry
+with you," she said, putting her arm round Mary's waist.
+
+"Pray,--pray do not be angry with me."
+
+"The fault has been too much ours for that. We should have left this
+alone, and not have pressed it. We have meant it for the best, dear."
+
+"And I have meant to do right;--but, Janet, it is so hard to do
+right."
+
+When the ring at the door was heard, Mrs. Fenwick met Harry
+Gilmore in the hall, and told him that he would find Mary in the
+drawing-room. She pressed his hand warmly as she looked into his
+face, but he spoke no word as he passed on to the room which she had
+just left. Mary was standing in the middle of the floor, half-way
+between the window and the door, to receive him. When she heard
+the door-bell she put her hand to her heart, and there she held it
+till he was approaching; but then she dropped it and stood without
+support, with her face upraised to meet him. He came up to her very
+quickly and took her by the hand. "Mary," he said, "I am not to
+believe this message that has been sent to me. I do not believe
+it. I will not believe it. I will not accept it. It is out of the
+question;--quite out of the question. It shall be withdrawn, and
+nothing more shall be said about it."
+
+"That cannot be, Mr. Gilmore."
+
+"What cannot be? I say that it must be. You cannot deny, Mary,
+that you are betrothed to me as my wife. Are such betrothals to be
+nothing? Are promises to go for nothing because there has been no
+ceremony? You might as well come and tell me that you would leave me
+even though you were my wife."
+
+"But I am not your wife."
+
+"What does it mean? Have I not been patient with you? Have I been
+hard to you, or cruel? Have you heard anything of me that is to my
+discredit?" She shook her head, eagerly. "Then what does it mean? Are
+you aware that you are proposing to yourself to make an utter wreck
+of me--to send me adrift upon the world without a purpose or a hope?
+What have I done to deserve such treatment?"
+
+He pleaded his cause very well,--better than she had ever heard him
+plead a cause before. He held her still by the hand, not with a grasp
+of love, but with a retention which implied his will that she should
+not pass away from out of his power. He looked her full in the face,
+and she did not quail before his eyes. Nevertheless she would have
+given the world to have been elsewhere, and to have been free from
+the necessity of answering him. She had been fortifying herself
+throughout the morning with self-expressed protests that on no
+account would she yield, whether she had been right before or
+wrong;--of this she was convinced, that she must be right now to save
+herself from a marriage that was so distasteful to her.
+
+"You have deserved nothing but good at my hands," she said.
+
+"And is this good that you are doing to me?"
+
+"Yes,--certainly. It is the best that I know how to do now."
+
+"Why is it to be done now? What is it that has changed you?"
+
+She withdrew her hand from him, and waited a while before she
+answered. It was necessary that she should tell him all the tidings
+that had been conveyed to her in the letter which she had received
+from her cousin Walter; but in order that he should perfectly
+understand them and be made to know their force upon herself she must
+remind him of the stipulation which she had made when she consented
+to her engagement. But how could she speak words which would seem
+to him to be spoken only to remind him of the abjectness of his
+submission to her?
+
+"I was broken-hearted when I came here," she said.
+
+"And therefore you would leave me broken-hearted now."
+
+"You should spare me, Mr. Gilmore. You remember what I told you. I
+loved my cousin Walter entirely. I did not hide it from you. I begged
+you to leave me because it was so. I told you that my heart would not
+change. When I said so, I thought that you would--desist."
+
+"I am to be punished, then, for having been too true to you?"
+
+"I will not defend myself for accepting you at last. But you must
+remember that when I did so I said that I should go--back--to him, if
+he could take me."
+
+"And you are going back to him?"
+
+"If he will have me."
+
+"You can stand there and look me in the face and tell me that you
+are false as that! You can confess to me that you will change like a
+weathercock;--be his one day, and then mine, and his again the next!
+You can own that you give yourself about first to one man, and then
+to another, just as may suit you at the moment! I would not have
+believed it of any woman. When you tell it me of yourself, I begin
+to think that I have been wrong all through in my ideas of a woman's
+character."
+
+The time had now come in which she must indeed speak up. And speech
+seemed to be easier with her now that he had allowed himself to
+express his anger. He had expressed more than his anger. He had dared
+to shower his scorn upon her, and the pelting of the storm gave her
+courage. "You are unjust upon me, Mr. Gilmore,--unjust and cruel. You
+know in your heart that I have not changed."
+
+"Were you not betrothed to me?"
+
+"I was;--but in what way? Have I told you any untruth? Have I
+concealed anything? When I accepted you, did I not explain to
+you how and why it was so,--against my own wish, against my own
+judgment,--because then I had ceased to care what became of me. I do
+care now. I care very much."
+
+"And you think that is justice to me?"
+
+"If you will bandy accusations with me, why did you accept me when
+I told you that I could not love you? But, indeed, indeed, I would
+not say a word to displease you, if you would only spare me. We were
+both wrong; but the wrong must now be put right. You would not wish
+to take me for your wife when I tell you that my heart is full of
+affection for another man. Then, when I yielded, I was struggling to
+cure that as a great evil. Now I welcome it as the sweetest blessing
+of my life. If I were your sister, what would you have me do?"
+
+He stood silent for a moment, and then the colour rose to his
+forehead as he answered her. "If you were my sister, my ears would
+tingle with shame when your name was mentioned in my presence."
+
+The blood rushed also over her face, suffusing her whole countenance,
+forehead and all, and fire flashed from her eyes, and her lips were
+parted, and even her nostrils seemed to swell with anger. She looked
+full into his face for a second, and then she turned and walked
+speechless away from him. When the handle of the door was in her
+hand, she turned again to address him. "Mr. Gilmore," she said, "I
+will never willingly speak to you again." Then the door was opened
+and closed behind her before a word had escaped from his lips.
+
+He knew that he had insulted her. He knew that he had uttered words
+so hard, that it might be doubted whether, under any circumstances,
+they could be justified from a gentleman to a lady. And certainly he
+had not intended to insult her as he was coming down to the vicarage.
+As far as any settled purpose had been formed in his mind, he had
+meant to force her back to her engagement with himself, by showing to
+her how manifest would be her injustice, and how great her treachery,
+if she persisted in leaving him. But he knew her character well
+enough to be aware that any word of insult addressed to her as a
+woman, would create offence which she herself would be unable to
+quell. But his anger had got the better of his judgment, and when
+the suggestion was made to him of a sister of his own, he took the
+opportunity which was offered to him of hitting her with all his
+force. She had felt the blow, and had determined that she would never
+encounter another.
+
+He was left alone, and he must retreat. He waited a while, thinking
+that perhaps Mrs. Fenwick or the Vicar would come to him; but nobody
+came. The window of the room was open, and it was easy for him to
+leave the house by the garden. But as he prepared to do so, his eye
+caught the writing materials on a side table, and he sat down and
+addressed a note to Mrs. Fenwick. "Tell Mary," he said, "that in
+a matter which to me is of life and death, I was forced to speak
+plainly. Tell her, also, that if she will be my wife, I know well
+that I shall never have to blush for a deed of hers,--or for a
+word,--or for a thought.--H. G." Then he went out on to the lawn, and
+returned home by the path at the back of the church farm.
+
+He had left the vicarage, making another offer for the girl's hand,
+as it were, with his last gasp. But as he went, he told himself that
+it was impossible that it should be accepted. Every chance had now
+gone from him, and he must look his condition in the face as best
+he could. It had been bad enough with him before, when no hope had
+ever been held out to him; when the answers of the girl he loved had
+always been adverse to him; when no one had been told that she was to
+be his bride. Even then the gnawing sense of disappointment and of
+failure,--just there, when only he cared for success,--had been more
+than he could endure without derangement of the outer tranquillity of
+his life. Even then he had been unable so to live that men should not
+know that his sorrow had disturbed him. When he had gone to Loring,
+travelling with a forlorn hope into the neighbourhood of the girl
+he loved, he had himself been aware that he had lacked strength to
+control himself in his misfortune. But if his state then had been
+grievous, what must it be now? It had been told to all the world
+around him that he had at last won his bride, and he had proceeded,
+as do jolly thriving bridegrooms, to make his house ready for her
+reception. Doubting nothing he had mingled her wishes, her tastes,
+his thoughts of her, with every action of his life. He had prepared
+jewels for her, and decorated chambers, and laid out pleasure
+gardens. He was a man, simple in his own habits, and not given to
+squandering his means; but now, at this one moment of his life, when
+everything was to be done for the delectation of her who was to be
+his life's companion, he could afford to let prudence go by the
+board. True that his pleasure in doing this had been sorely marred by
+her coldness, by her indifference, even by her self-abnegation; but
+he had continued to buoy himself up with the idea that all would come
+right when she should be his wife. Now she had told him that she
+would never willingly speak to him again,--and he believed her.
+
+He went up to his house, and into his bedroom, and then he sat
+thinking of it all. And as he thought he heard the voices and the
+tools of the men at their work; and knew that things were being
+done which, for him, would never be of avail. He remained there
+for a couple of hours without moving. Then he got up and gave the
+housekeeper instructions to pack up his portmanteau, and the groom
+orders to bring his gig to the door. "He was going away," he said,
+and his letters were to be addressed to his club in London. That
+afternoon he drove himself into Salisbury that he might catch the
+evening express train up, and that night he slept at a hotel in
+London.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXV.
+
+MARY LOWTHER LEAVES BULLHAMPTON.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+It was considerably past one o'clock, and the children's dinner was
+upon the table in the dining parlour before anyone in the vicarage
+had seen Mary Lowther since the departure of the Squire. When she
+left Mr. Gilmore, she had gone to her own room, and no one had
+disturbed her. As the children were being seated, Fenwick returned,
+and his wife put into his hand the note which Gilmore had left for
+her.
+
+"What passed between them?" he asked in a whisper.
+
+His wife shook her head. "I have not seen her," she said, "but he
+talks of speaking plainly, and I suppose it was bitter enough."
+
+"He can be very bitter if he's driven hard," said the Vicar; "and he
+has been driven very hard," he added, after a while.
+
+As soon as the children had eaten their dinner, Mrs. Fenwick went up
+to Mary's room with the Squire's note in her hand. She knocked, and
+was at once admitted, and she found Mary sitting at her writing-desk.
+
+"Will you not come to lunch, Mary?"
+
+"Yes,--if I ought. I suppose I might not have a cup of tea brought up
+here?"
+
+"You shall have whatever you like,--here or anywhere else, as far as
+the vicarage goes. What did he say to you this morning?"
+
+"It is of no use that I should tell you, Janet."
+
+"You did not yield to him, then?"
+
+"Certainly, I did not. Certainly I never shall yield to him. Dear
+Janet, pray take that as a certainty. Let me make you sure at any
+rate of that. He must be sure of it himself."
+
+"Here is his note to me, written, I suppose, after you left him."
+Mary took the scrap of paper from her hand and read it. "He is not
+sure, you see," continued Mrs. Fenwick. "He has written to me, and I
+suppose that I must answer him."
+
+"He shall certainly never have to blush for me as his wife," said
+Mary. But she would not tell her friend of the hard words that had
+been said to her. She understood well the allusion in Mr. Gilmore's
+note, but she would not explain it. She had determined, as she
+thought about it in her solitude, that it would be better that she
+should never repeat to anyone the cruel words which her lover had
+spoken to her. Doubtless he had received provocation. All his anger,
+as well as all his suffering, had come from a constancy in his love
+for her, which was unsurpassed, if not unequalled, in all that
+she had read of among men. He had been willing to accept her on
+conditions most humiliating to himself; and had then been told, that,
+even with those conditions, he was not to have her. She was bound
+to forgive him almost any offence that he could bestow upon her. He
+had spoken to her in his wrath words which she thought to be not
+only cruel but unmanly. She had told him that she would never speak
+willingly to him again; and she would keep her word. But she would
+forgive him. She was bound to forgive him any injury, let it be what
+it might. She would forgive him;--and as a sign to herself of her
+pardon she would say no word of his offence to her friends, the
+Fenwicks. "He shall certainly never have to blush for me as his
+wife," she said, as she returned the note to Mrs. Fenwick.
+
+"You mean, that you never will be his wife?"
+
+"Certainly I mean that."
+
+"Have you quarrelled with him, Mary?"
+
+"Quarrelled? How am I to answer that? It will be better that we
+should not meet again. Of course, our interview could not be pleasant
+for either of us. I do not wish him to think that there has been a
+quarrel."
+
+"No man ever did a woman more honour than he has done to you."
+
+"Dearest Janet, let it be dropped;--pray let it be dropped. I am sure
+you believe me now when I say that it can do no good. I am writing to
+my aunt this moment to tell her that I will return. What day shall I
+name?"
+
+"Have you written to your cousin?"
+
+"No I have not written to my cousin. I have not been able to get
+through it all, Janet, quite so easily as that."
+
+"I suppose you had better go now."
+
+"Yes;--I must go now. I should be a thorn in his side if I were to
+remain here."
+
+"He will not remain, Mary."
+
+"He shall have the choice as far as I am concerned. You must let him
+know at once that I am going. I think I will say Saturday,--the day
+after to-morrow. I could hardly get away to-morrow."
+
+"Certainly not. Why should you?"
+
+"Yet I am bound to hurry myself,--to release him. And, Janet, will
+you give him these? They are all here,--the rubies and all. Ah, me!
+he touched me that day."
+
+"How like a gentleman he has behaved always."
+
+"It was not that I cared for the stupid stones. You know that I care
+nothing for anything of the kind. But there was a sort of trust in
+it,--a desire to show me that everything should be mine,--which would
+have made me love him,--if it had been possible."
+
+"I would give one hand that you had never seen your cousin."
+
+"And I will give one hand because I have," said Mary, stretching
+out her right arm. "Nay, I will give both; I will give all, because,
+having seen him, he is what he is to me. But, Janet, when you return
+to him these things say a gentle word from me. I have cost him money,
+I fear."
+
+"He will think but little of that. He would have given you willingly
+the last acre of his land, had you wanted it."
+
+"But I did not want it. That was the thing. And all these have been
+altered, as they would not have been altered, but for me. I do repent
+that I have brought all this trouble upon him. I cannot do more now
+than ask you to say so when you restore to him his property."
+
+"He will probably pitch them into the cart-ruts. Indeed, I will not
+give them to him. I will simply tell him that they are in my hands,
+and Frank shall have them locked up at the banker's. Well;--I suppose
+I had better go down and write him a line."
+
+"And I will name Saturday to my aunt," said Mary.
+
+Mrs. Fenwick immediately went to her desk, and wrote to her friend.
+
+
+   DEAR HARRY,
+
+   I am sure it is of no use. Knowing how persistent is your
+   constancy, I would not say so were I not quite, quite
+   certain. She goes to Loring on Saturday. Will it not be
+   better that you should come to us for awhile after she has
+   left us. You will be less desolate with Frank than you
+   would be alone.
+
+   Ever yours,
+
+   JANET FENWICK.
+
+   She has left your jewels with me. I merely tell you this
+   for your information;--not to trouble you with the things
+   now.
+
+
+And then she added a second postscript.
+
+
+   She regrets deeply what you have suffered on her account,
+   and bids me beg you to forgive her.
+
+
+Thus it was settled that Mary Lowther should leave Bullhampton, again
+returning to Loring, as she had done before, in order that she might
+escape from her suitor. In writing to her aunt she had thought it
+best to say nothing of Walter Marrable. She had not as yet written
+to her cousin, postponing that work for the following day. She would
+have postponed it longer had it been possible; but she felt herself
+to be bound to let him have her reply before he left Dunripple. She
+would have much preferred to return to Loring, to have put miles
+between herself and Bullhampton, before she wrote a letter which
+must contain words of happy joy. It would have gratified her to have
+postponed for awhile all her future happiness, knowing that it was
+there before her, and that it would come to her at last. But it could
+not be postponed. Her cousin's letter was burning her pocket. She
+already felt that she was treating him badly in keeping it by her
+without sending him the reply that would make him happy. She could
+not bring herself to write the letter till the other matter was
+absolutely settled; and yet, all delay was treachery to him; for,--as
+she repeated to herself again and again,--there could be no answer
+but one. She had, however, settled it all now. On the Saturday
+morning she would start for Loring, and she would write her letter
+on the Friday in time for that day's post. Walter would still be at
+Dunripple on the Sunday, and on the Sunday morning her letter would
+reach him. She had studied the course of post between Bullhampton and
+her lover's future residence, and knew to an hour when her letter
+would be in his hands.
+
+On that afternoon she could hardly maintain the tranquillity of her
+usual demeanour when she met the Vicar before dinner. Not a word,
+however, was said about Gilmore. Fenwick partly understood that he
+and his wife were in some degree responsible for the shipwreck that
+had come, and had determined that Mary was to be forgiven,--at any
+rate by him. He and his wife had taken counsel together, and had
+resolved that, unless circumstances should demand it, they would
+never again mention the Squire's name in Mary Lowther's hearing. The
+attempt had been made and had utterly failed, and now there must be
+an end of it. On the next morning he heard that Gilmore had gone up
+to London, and he went up to the Privets to learn what he could from
+the servants there. No one knew more than that the Squire's letters
+were to be directed to him at his Club. The men were still at work
+about the place; but Ambrose told him that they were all at sea as
+to what they should do, and appealed to him for orders. "If we shut
+off on Saturday, sir, the whole place'll be a muck of mud and nothin'
+else all winter," said the gardener. The Vicar suggested that after
+all a muck of mud outside the house wouldn't do much harm. "But
+master ain't the man to put up with that all'ays, and it'll cost
+twice as much to have 'em about the place again arter a bit." This,
+however, was the least trouble. If Ambrose was disconsolate out of
+doors, the man who was looking after the work indoors was twice more
+so. "If we be to work on up to Saturday night," he said, "and then do
+never a stroke more, we be a doing nothing but mischief. Better leave
+it at once nor that, sir." Then Fenwick was obliged to take upon
+himself to give certain orders. The papering of the rooms should be
+finished where the walls had been already disturbed, and the cornices
+completed, and the wood-work painted. But as for the furniture,
+hangings, and such like, they should be left till further orders
+should be received from the owner. As for the mud and muck in the
+garden, his only care was that the place should not be so left as to
+justify the neighbours in saying that Mr. Gilmore was demented. But
+he would be able to get instructions from his friend, or perhaps to
+see him, in time to save danger in that respect.
+
+In the meantime Mary Lowther had gone up to her room, and seated
+herself with her blotting-book and pens and ink. She had now before
+her the pleasure,--or was it a task?--of answering her cousin's
+letter. She had that letter in her hand, and had already read it
+twice this morning. She had thought that she would so well know how
+to answer it; but, now that the pen was in her hand, she found that
+the thing to be done was not so easy. How much must she tell him, and
+how should she tell it? It was not that there was anything which she
+desired to keep back from him. She was willing,--nay, desirous,--that
+he should know all that she had said, and done, and thought; but it
+would have been a blessing if all could have been told to him by
+other agency than her own. He would not condemn her. Nor, as she
+thought of her own conduct back from one scene to another, did she
+condemn herself. Yet there was that of which she could not write
+without a feeling of shame. And then, how could she be happy, when
+she had caused so much misery? And how could she write her letter
+without expressing her happiness? She wished that her own identity
+might be divided, so that she might rejoice over Walter's love with
+the one moiety, and grieve with the other at all the trouble she had
+brought upon the man whose love to her had been so constant. She sat
+with the open letter in her hand, thinking over all this, till she
+told herself at last that no further thinking could avail her. She
+must bend herself over the table, and take the pen in her hand, and
+write the words, let them come as they would.
+
+Her letter, she thought, must be longer than his. He had a knack of
+writing short letters; and then there had been so little for him to
+say. He had merely a single question to ask; and, although he had
+asked it more than once,--as is the manner of people in asking such
+questions,--still, a sheet of note-paper loosely filled had sufficed.
+Then she read it again. "If you bid me, I will be with you early next
+week." What if she told him nothing, but only bade him come to her?
+After all, would it not be best to write no more than that? Then she
+took her pen, and in three minutes her letter was completed.
+
+
+   The Vicarage, Friday.
+
+   DEAREST, DEAREST WALTER,
+
+   Do come to me,--as soon as you can, and I will never send
+   you away again. I go to Loring to-morrow, and, of course,
+   you must come there. I cannot write it all; but I will
+   tell you everything when we meet. I am very sorry for your
+   cousin Gregory, because he was so good.
+
+   Always your own,
+
+   MARY.
+
+   But do not think that I want to hurry you. I have said
+   come at once; but I do not mean that so as to interfere
+   with you. You must have so many things to do; and if I get
+   one line from you to say that you will come, I can be ever
+   so patient. I have not been happy once since we parted.
+   It is easy for people to say that they will conquer their
+   feelings, but it has seemed to me to be quite impossible
+   to do it. I shall never try again.
+
+
+As soon as the body of her letter was written, she could have
+continued her postscript for ever. It seemed to her then as though
+nothing would be more delightful than to let the words flow on with
+full expressions of all her love and happiness. To write to him was
+pleasant enough, as long as there came on her no need to mention Mr.
+Gilmore's name.
+
+That was to be her last evening at Bullhampton; and though no
+allusion was made to the subject, they were all thinking that she
+could never return to Bullhampton again. She had been almost as much
+at home with them as with her aunt at Loring; and now she must leave
+the place for ever. But they said not a word; and the evening passed
+by almost as had passed all other evenings. The remembrance of what
+had taken place since she had been at Bullhampton made it almost
+impossible to speak of her departure.
+
+In the morning she was to be again driven to the railway-station at
+Westbury. Mr. Fenwick had work in his parish which would keep him
+at home, and she was to be trusted to the driving of the groom. "If
+I were to be away to-morrow," he said, as he parted from her that
+evening, "the churchwardens would have me up to the archdeacon, and
+the archdeacon might tell the Marquis, and where should I be then?"
+Of course she begged him not to give it a second thought. "Dear
+Mary," he said, "I should of all things have liked to have seen the
+last of you,--that you might know that I love you as well as ever."
+Then she burst into tears, and kissed him, and told him that she
+would always look to him as to a brother.
+
+She called Mrs. Fenwick into her own room before she undressed.
+"Janet," she said, "dearest Janet, we are not to part for ever?"
+
+"For ever! No, certainly. Why for ever?"
+
+"I shall never see you, unless you will come to me. Promise me that
+if ever I have a house you will come to me."
+
+"Of course you will have a house, Mary."
+
+"And you will come and see me,--will you not? Promise that you will
+come to me. I can never come back to dear, dear Bullhampton."
+
+"No doubt we shall meet, Mary."
+
+"And you must bring the children--my darling Flos! How else ever
+shall I see her? And you must write to me, Janet."
+
+"I will write,--as often as you do, I don't doubt."
+
+"You must tell me how he is, Janet. You must not suppose that I do
+not care for his welfare because I have not loved him. I know that my
+coming here has been a curse to him. But I could not help it. Could I
+have helped it, Janet?"
+
+"Poor fellow! I wish it had not been so."
+
+"But you do not blame me;--not much? Oh, Janet, say that you do not
+condemn me."
+
+"I can say that with most perfect truth. I do not blame you. It has
+been most unfortunate; but I do not blame you. I am sure that you
+have struggled to do the best that you could."
+
+"God bless you, my dearest, dearest friend! If you could only know
+how anxious I have been not to be wrong. But things have been wrong,
+and I could not put them right."
+
+On the next morning they packed her into the little four-wheeled
+phaeton, and so she left Bullhampton. "I believe her to be as good a
+girl as ever lived," said the Vicar; "but all the same, I wish with
+all my heart that she had never come to Bullhampton."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXVI.
+
+AT THE MILL.
+
+
+The presence of Carry Brattle was required in Salisbury for the trial
+of John Burrows and Lawrence Acorn on Wednesday the 22nd of August.
+Our Vicar, who had learned that the judges would come into the city
+only late on the previous evening, and that the day following their
+entrance would doubtless be so fully occupied with other matters as
+to render it very improbable that the affair of the murder would
+then come up, had endeavoured to get permission to postpone Carry's
+journey; but the little men in authority are always stern on such
+points, and witnesses are usually treated as persons who are not
+entitled to have any views as to their own personal comfort or
+welfare. Lawyers, who are paid for their presence, may plead other
+engagements, and their pleas will be considered; and if a witness be
+a lord, it may perhaps be thought very hard that he should be dragged
+away from his amusements. But the ordinary commonplace witness must
+simply listen and obey--at his peril. It was thus decided that Carry
+must be in Salisbury on the Wednesday, and remain there, hanging
+about the Court, till her services should be wanted. Fenwick, who had
+been in Salisbury, had seen that accommodation should be provided for
+her and for the miller at the house of Mrs. Stiggs.
+
+The miller had decided upon going with his daughter. The Vicar did
+not go down to the mill again; but Mrs. Fenwick had seen Brattle, and
+had learned that such was to be the case. The old man said nothing to
+his own people about it till the Monday afternoon, up to which time
+Fanny was prepared to accompany her sister. He was then told, when he
+came in from the mill for his tea, that word had come down from the
+vicarage that there would be two bed-rooms for them at Mrs. Stiggs'
+house. "I don't know why there should be the cost of a second room,"
+said Fanny; "Carry and I won't want two beds."
+
+Up to this time there had been no reconciliation between the miller
+and his younger daughter. Carry would ask her father whether she
+should do this or that, and the miller would answer her as a surly
+master will answer a servant whom he does not like; but the father,
+as a father, had never spoken to the child; nor, up to this moment,
+had he said a word even to his wife of his intended journey to
+Salisbury. But now he was driven to speak. He had placed himself in
+the arm chair, and was sitting with his hands on his knees gazing
+into the empty fire-grate. Carry was standing at the open window,
+pulling the dead leaves off three or four geraniums which her mother
+kept there in pots. Fanny was passing in and out from the back
+kitchen, in which the water for their tea was being boiled, and Mrs.
+Brattle was in her usual place with her spectacles on, and a darning
+needle in her hand. A minute was allowed to pass by before the miller
+answered his eldest daughter.
+
+"There'll be two beds wanted," he said; "I told Muster Fenwick as I'd
+go with the girl myself;--and so I wull."
+
+Carry started so that she broke the flower which she was touching.
+Mrs. Brattle immediately stopped her needle, and withdrew her
+spectacles from her nose. Fanny, who was that instant bringing the
+tea-pot out of the back kitchen, put it down among the tea cups, and
+stood still to consider what she had heard.
+
+"Dear, dear, dear!" said the mother.
+
+"Father," said Fanny, coming up to him, and just touching him with
+her hand; "'twill be best for you to go, much best. I am heartily
+glad on it, and so will Carry be."
+
+"I knows nowt about that," said the miller; "but I mean to go, and
+that's all about it. I ain't a been to Salsbry these fifteen year and
+more, and I shan't be there never again."
+
+"There's no saying that, father," said Fanny.
+
+"And it ain't for no pleasure as I'm agoing now. Nobody 'll s'pect
+that of me. I'd liever let the millstone come on my foot."
+
+There was nothing more said about it that evening, nothing more at
+least in the miller's hearing. Carry and her sister were discussing
+it nearly the whole night. It was very soon plain to Fanny that Carry
+had heard the tidings with dismay. To be alone with her father for
+two, three, or perhaps four days, seemed to her to be so terrible,
+that she hardly knew how to face the misery and gloom of his
+company,--in addition to the fears she had as to what they would say
+and do to her in the Court. Since she had been home, she had learned
+almost to tremble at the sound of her father's foot; and yet she had
+known that he would not harm her, would hardly notice her, would not
+do more than look at her. But now, for three long frightful days to
+come, she would be subject to his wrath during every moment of her
+life.
+
+"Will he speak to me, Fanny, d'ye think?" she asked.
+
+"Of course he'll speak to you, child."
+
+"But he hasn't, you know,--not since I've been home; not once; not as
+he does to you and mother. I know he hates me, and wishes I was dead.
+And, Fanny, I wishes it myself every day of my life."
+
+"He wishes nothing of the kind, Carry."
+
+"Why don't he say one kind word to me, then? I know I've been bad.
+But I ain't a done a single thing since I've been home as 'd a' made
+him angry if he seed it, or said a word as he mightn't a' heard."
+
+"I don't think you have, dear."
+
+"Then why can't he come round, if it was ever so little? I'd sooner
+he'd beat me; that I would."
+
+"He'll never do that, Carry. I don't know as he ever laid a hand upon
+one of us since we was little things."
+
+"It 'd be better than never speaking to a girl. Only for you and
+mother, Fan, I'd be off again."
+
+"You would not. You know you would not. How dare you say that?"
+
+"But why shouldn't he say a word to one, so that one shouldn't go
+about like a dead body in the house?"
+
+"Carry dear, listen to this. If you'll manage well; if you'll be good
+to him, and patient while you are with him; if you'll bear with him,
+and yet be gentle when he--"
+
+"I am gentle,--always,--now."
+
+"You are, dear; but when he speaks, as he'll have to speak when
+you're all alone like, be very gentle. Maybe, Carry, when you've come
+back, he will be gentle with you."
+
+They had ever so much more to discuss. Would Sam be at the trial?
+And, if so, would he and his father speak to each other? They had
+both been told that Sam had been summoned, and that the police would
+enforce his attendance; but they were neither of them sure whether
+he would be there in custody or as a free man. At last they went to
+sleep, but Carry's slumbers were not very sound. As has been told
+before, it was the miller's custom to be up every morning at five.
+The two girls would afterwards rise at six, and then, an hour after
+that, Mrs. Brattle would be instructed that her time had come. On
+the Tuesday morning, however, the miller was not the first of the
+family to leave his bed. Carry crept out of hers by the earliest
+dawn of daylight, without waking her sister, and put on her clothes
+stealthily. Then she made her way silently to the front door, which
+she opened, and stood there outside waiting till her father should
+come. The morning, though it was in August, was chill, and the time
+seemed to be very long. She had managed to look at the old clock as
+she passed, and had seen that it wanted a quarter to five. She knew
+that her father was never later than five. What, if on this special
+morning he should not come, just because she had resolved, after many
+inward struggles, to make one great effort to obtain his pardon.
+
+At last he was coming. She heard his step in the passage, and then
+she was aware that he had stopped when he found the fastenings of
+the door unloosed. She perceived too that he delayed to examine the
+lock,--as it was natural that he should do; and she had forgotten
+that he would be arrested by the open door. Thinking of this in the
+moment of time that was allowed to her, she hurried forward and
+encountered him.
+
+"Father," she said; "it is I."
+
+He was angry that she should have dared to unbolt the door, or to
+withdraw the bars. What was she, that she should be trusted to open
+or to close the house? And there came upon him some idea of wanton
+and improper conduct. Why was she there at that hour? Must it be that
+he should put her again from the shelter of his roof?
+
+Carry was clever enough to perceive in a moment what was passing in
+the old man's mind. "Father," she said, "it was to see you. And I
+thought,--perhaps,--I might say it out here." He believed her at
+once. In whatever spirit he might accept her present effort, that
+other idea had already vanished. She was there that they two might be
+alone together in the fresh morning air, and he knew that it was so.
+"Father," she said, looking up into his face. Then she fell on the
+ground at his feet, and embraced his knees, and lay there sobbing.
+She had intended to ask him for forgiveness, but she was not able to
+say a word. Nor did he speak for awhile; but he stooped and raised
+her up tenderly; and then, when she was again standing by him, he
+stepped on as though he were going to the mill without a word. But he
+had not rebuked her, and his touch had been very gentle. "Father,"
+she said, following him, "if you could forgive me! I know I have been
+bad, but if you could forgive me!"
+
+He went to the very door of the mill before he turned; and she, when
+she saw that he did not come back to her, paused upon the bridge. She
+had used all her eloquence. She knew no other words with which to
+move him. She felt that she had failed, but she could do no more. But
+he stopped again without entering the mill.
+
+"Child," he said at last, "come here, then." She ran at once to meet
+him. "I will forgive thee. There. I will forgive thee, and trust thou
+may'st be a better girl than thou hast been."
+
+She flew to him and threw her arms round his neck and kissed his face
+and breast. "Oh, father," she said, "I will be good. I will try to be
+good. Only you will speak to me."
+
+
+[Illustration: "Oh, father," she said, "I will be good."]
+
+
+"Get thee into the house now. I have forgiven thee." So saying he
+passed on to his morning's work.
+
+Carry, running into the house, at once roused her sister. "Fanny,"
+she exclaimed, "he has forgiven me at last; he has said that he will
+forgive me."
+
+But to the miller's mind, and to his sense of justice, the
+forgiveness thus spoken did not suffice. When he returned to
+breakfast, Mrs. Brattle had, of course, been told of the morning's
+work, and had rejoiced greatly. It was to her as though the greatest
+burden of her life had now been taken from her weary back. Her girl,
+to her loving motherly heart, now that he who had in all things been
+the lord of her life had vouchsafed his pardon to the poor sinner,
+would be as pure as when she had played about the mill in all her
+girlish innocence. The mother had known that her child was still
+under a cloud, but the cloud to her had consisted in the father's
+wrath rather than in the feeling of any public shame. To her a sin
+repented was a sin no more, and her love for her child made her sure
+of the sincerity of that repentance. But there could be no joy over
+the sinner in this world till the head of the house should again have
+taken her to his heart. When the miller came in to his breakfast the
+three women were standing together, not without some outward marks of
+contentment. Mrs. Brattle's cap was clean, and even Fanny, who was
+ever tidy and never smart, had managed in some way to add something
+bright to her appearance. Where is the woman who, when she has been
+pleased, will not show her pleasure by some sign in her outward
+garniture? But still there was anxiety. "Will he call me Carry?" the
+girl had asked. He had not done so when he pronounced her pardon
+at the mill door. Though they were standing together they had not
+decided on any line of action. The pardon had been spoken and they
+were sure that it would not be revoked; but how it would operate at
+first none of them had even guessed.
+
+The miller, when he had entered the room and come among them, stood
+with his two hands resting on the round table, and thus he addressed
+them: "It was a bad time with us when the girl, whom we had all loved
+a'most too well, forgot herself and us, and brought us to shame,--we
+who had never known shame afore,--and became a thing so vile as I
+won't name it. It was well nigh the death o' me, I know."
+
+"Oh, father!" exclaimed Fanny.
+
+"Hold your peace, Fanny, and let me say my say out. It was very
+bad then; and when she come back to us, and was took in, so that
+she might have her bit to eat under an honest roof, it was bad
+still;--for she was a shame to us as had never been shamed afore. For
+myself I felt so, that though she was allays near me, my heart was
+away from her, and she was not one with me, not as her sister is one,
+and her mother, who never know'd a thought in her heart as wasn't fit
+for a woman to have there." By this time Carry was sobbing on her
+mother's bosom, and it would be difficult to say whose affliction was
+the sharpest. "But them as falls may right themselves, unless they be
+chance killed as they falls. If my child be sorry for her sin--"
+
+"Oh, father, I am sorry."
+
+"I will bring myself to forgive her. That it won't stick here," and
+the miller struck his heart violently with his open palm, "I won't be
+such a liar as to say. For there ain't no good in a lie. But there
+shall be never a word about it more out o' my mouth,--and she may
+come to me again as my child."
+
+There was a solemnity about the old man's speech which struck them
+all with so much awe that none of them for a while knew how to move
+or to speak. Fanny was the first to stir, and she came to him and put
+her arm through his and leaned her head upon his shoulder.
+
+"Get me my breakfast, girl," he said to her. But before he had moved
+Carry had thrown herself weeping on his bosom. "That will do," he
+said. "That will do. Sit down and eat thy victuals." Then there was
+not another word said, and the breakfast passed off in silence.
+
+Though the women talked of what had occurred throughout the day, not
+a word more dropped from the miller's mouth upon the subject. When
+he came in to dinner he took his food from Carry's hand and thanked
+her,--as he would have thanked his elder daughter,--but he did not
+call her by her name. Much had to be done in preparing for the
+morrow's journey, and for the days through which they two might be
+detained at the assizes. The miller had borrowed a cart in which
+he was to drive himself and his daughter to the Bullhampton road
+station, and, when he went to bed, he expressed his determination of
+starting at nine, so as to catch a certain train into Salisbury. They
+had been told that it would be sufficient if they were in the city
+that day at one o'clock.
+
+On the next morning the miller was in his mill as usual in the
+morning. He said nothing about the work, but the women knew that it
+must in the main stand still. Everything could not be trusted to one
+man, and that man a hireling. But nothing was said of this. He went
+into his mill, and the women prepared his breakfast, and the clean
+shirt and the tidy Sunday coat in which he was to travel. And Carry
+was ready dressed for the journey;--so pretty, with her bright curls
+and sweet dimpled cheeks, but still with that look of fear and sorrow
+which the coming ordeal could not but produce. The miller returned,
+dressed himself as he was desired, and took his place at the table in
+the kitchen; when the front door was again opened,--and Sam Brattle
+stood among them!
+
+"Father," said he, "I've turned up just in time."
+
+Of course the consternation among them was great; but no reference
+was made to the quarrel which had divided the father and son when
+last they had parted. Sam explained that he had come across the
+country from the north, travelling chiefly by railway, but that he
+had walked from the Swindon station to Marlborough on the preceding
+evening, and from thence to Bullhampton that morning. He had come by
+Birmingham and Gloucester, and thence to Swindon.
+
+"And now, mother, if you'll give me a mouthful of some'at to eat, you
+won't find that I'm above eating of it."
+
+He had been summoned to Salisbury, he said, for that day, but nothing
+should induce him to go there till the Friday. He surmised that he
+knew a thing or two, and as the trial wouldn't come off before Friday
+at the earliest, he wouldn't show his face in Salisbury before that
+day. He strongly urged Carry to be equally sagacious, and used some
+energetic arguments to the same effect on his father, when he found
+that his father was also to be at the assizes; but the miller did not
+like to be taught by his son, and declared that as the legal document
+said Wednesday, on the Wednesday his daughter should be there.
+
+"And what about the mill?" asked Sam. The miller only shook his head.
+"Then there's only so much more call for me to stay them two days,"
+said Sam. "I'll be at it hammer and tongs, father, till it's time for
+me to start o' Friday. You tell 'em as how I'm coming. I'll be there
+afore they want me. And when they've got me they won't get much out
+of me, I guess."
+
+To all this the miller made no reply, not forbidding his son to work
+the mill, nor thanking him for the offer. But Mrs. Brattle and Fanny,
+who could read every line in his face, knew that he was well-pleased.
+
+And then there was the confusion of the start. Fanny, in her
+solicitude for her father, brought out a little cushion for his
+seat. "I don't want no cushion to sit on," said he; "give it here to
+Carry." It was the first time that he had called her by her name, and
+it was not lost on the poor girl.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXVII.
+
+SIR GREGORY MARRABLE HAS A HEADACHE.
+
+
+Mary Lowther, in her letter to her aunt, had in one line told the
+story of her rupture with Mr. Gilmore. This line had formed a
+postscript, and the writer had hesitated much before she added it.
+She had not intended to write to her aunt on this subject; but she
+had remembered at the last moment how much easier it would be to tell
+the remainder of her story on her arrival at Loring, if so much had
+already been told beforehand. Therefore it was that she had added
+these words. "Everything has been broken off between me and Mr.
+Gilmore--for ever."
+
+This was a terrible blow upon poor Miss Marrable, who, up to the
+moment of her receiving that letter, thought that her niece was
+disposed of in the manner that had seemed most desirable to all her
+friends. Aunt Sarah loved her niece dearly, and by no means looked
+forward to improved happiness in her own old age when she should be
+left alone in the house at Uphill; but she entertained the view about
+young women which is usual with old women who have young women under
+their charge, and she thought it much best that this special young
+woman should get herself married. The old women are right in their
+views on this matter; and the young women, who on this point are not
+often refractory, are right also. Miss Marrable, who entertained a
+very strong opinion on the subject above-mentioned, was very unhappy
+when she was thus abruptly told by her own peculiar young woman that
+this second engagement had been broken off and sent to the winds. It
+had become a theory on the part of Mary's friends that the Gilmore
+match was the proper thing for her. At last, after many difficulties,
+the Gilmore match had been arranged. The anxiety as to Mary's future
+life was at an end, and the theory of the elders concerned with
+her welfare was to be carried out. Then there came a short note,
+proclaiming her return home, and simply telling as a fact almost
+indifferent,--in a single line,--that all the trouble hitherto taken
+as to her own disposition had entirely been thrown away. "Everything
+has been broken off between me and Mr. Gilmore." It was a cruel and a
+heartrending postscript!
+
+Poor Miss Marrable knew very well that she was armed with no parental
+authority. She could hold her theory, and could advise; but she could
+do no more. She could not even scold. And there had been some qualm
+of conscience on her part as to Walter Marrable, now that Walter
+Marrable had been taken in hand and made much of by the baronet,--and
+now, also, that poor Gregory had been removed from the path. No doubt
+she, Aunt Sarah, had done all in her power to aid the difficulties
+which had separated the two cousins;--and while she thought that the
+Gilmore match had been the consequence of such aiding on her part,
+she was happy enough in reflecting upon what she had done. Old Sir
+Gregory would not have taken Walter by the hand unless Walter had
+been free to marry Edith Brownlow; and though she could not quite
+resolve that the death of the younger Gregory had been part of the
+family arrangement due to the happy policy of the elder Marrables
+generally, still she was quite sure that Walter's present position
+at Dunripple had come entirely from the favour with which he had
+regarded the baronet's wishes as to Edith. Mary was provided for with
+the Squire, who was in immediate possession; and Walter with his
+bride would become as it were the eldest son of Dunripple. It was
+all as comfortable as could be till there came this unfortunate
+postscript.
+
+The letter reached her on Friday, and on Saturday Mary arrived. Miss
+Marrable determined that she would not complain. As regarded her own
+comfort it was doubtless all for the best. But old women are never
+selfish in regard to the marriage of young women. That the young
+women belonging to them should be settled,--and thus got rid of,--is
+no doubt the great desire; but, whether the old woman be herself
+married or a spinster, the desire is founded on an adamantine
+confidence that marriage is the most proper and the happiest thing
+for the young woman. The belief is so thorough that the woman would
+cease to be a woman, would already have become a brute, who would
+desire to keep any girl belonging to her out of matrimony for the
+sake of companionship to herself. But no woman does so desire in
+regard to those who are dear and near to her. A dependant, distant
+in blood, or a paid assistant, may find here and there a want of the
+true feminine sympathy; but in regard to a daughter, or one held as
+a daughter, it is never wanting. "As the pelican loveth her young do
+I love thee; and therefore will I give thee away in marriage to some
+one strong enough to hold thee, even though my heartstrings be torn
+asunder by the parting." Such is always the heart's declaration of
+the mother respecting her daughter. The match-making of mothers is
+the natural result of mother's love; for the ambition of one woman
+for another is never other than this,--that the one loved by her
+shall be given to a man to be loved more worthily. Poor Aunt Sarah,
+considering of these things during those two lonely days, came to the
+conclusion that if ever Mary were to be so loved again that she might
+be given away, a long time might first elapse; and then she was aware
+that such gifts given late lose much of their value, and have to be
+given cheaply.
+
+Mary herself, as she was driven slowly up the hill to her aunt's
+door, did not share her aunt's melancholy. To be returned as a bad
+shilling, which has been presented over the counter and found to be
+bad, must be very disagreeable to a young woman's feelings. That was
+not the case with Mary Lowther. She had, no doubt, a great sorrow
+at heart. She had created a shipwreck which she did regret most
+bitterly. But the sorrow and the regret were not humiliating, as they
+would have been had they been caused by failure on her own part. And
+then she had behind her the strong comfort of her own rock, of which
+nothing should now rob her,--which should be a rock for rest and
+safety, and not a rock for shipwreck, and as to the disposition of
+which Aunt Sarah's present ideas were so very erroneous!
+
+It was impossible that the first evening should pass without a word
+or two about poor Gilmore. Mary knew well enough that she had told
+her aunt nothing of her renewed engagement with her cousin; but
+she could not bring herself at once to utter a song of triumph, as
+she would have done had she blurted out all her story. Not a word
+was said about either lover till they were seated together in the
+evening. "What you tell me about Mr. Gilmore has made me so unhappy,"
+said Miss Marrable, sadly.
+
+"It could not be helped, Aunt Sarah. I tried my best, but it could
+not be helped. Of course I have been very, very unhappy myself."
+
+"I don't pretend to understand it."
+
+"And yet it is so easily understood!" said Mary, pleading hard for
+herself. "I did not love him, and--"
+
+"But you had accepted him, Mary."
+
+"I know I had. It is so natural that you should think that I have
+behaved badly."
+
+"I have not said so, my dear."
+
+"I know that, Aunt Sarah; but if you think so,--and of course you
+do,--write and ask Janet Fenwick. She will tell you everything. You
+know how devoted she is to Mr. Gilmore. She would have done anything
+for him. But even she will tell you that at last I could not help
+it. When I was so very wretched I thought that I would do my best
+to comply with other people's wishes. I got a feeling that nothing
+signified for myself. If they had told me to go into a convent or to
+be a nurse in a hospital I would have gone. I had nothing to care
+for, and if I could do what I was told perhaps it might be best."
+
+"But why did you not go on with it, my dear?"
+
+"It was impossible--after Walter had written to me."
+
+"But Walter is to marry Edith Brownlow."
+
+"No, dear aunt; no. Walter is to marry me. Don't look like that, Aunt
+Sarah. It is true;--it is, indeed." She had now dragged her chair
+close to her aunt's seat upon the sofa, so that she could put her
+hands upon her aunt's knees. "All that about Miss Brownlow has been a
+fable."
+
+"Parson John told me that it was fixed."
+
+"It is not fixed. The other thing is fixed. Parson John tells many
+fables. He is to come here."
+
+"Who is to come here?"
+
+"Walter,--of course. He is to be here,--I don't know how soon; but I
+shall hear from him. Dear aunt, you must be good to him;--indeed you
+must. He is your cousin just as much as mine."
+
+"I'm not in love with him, Mary."
+
+"But I am, Aunt Sarah. Oh dear, how much I am in love with him! It
+never changed in the least, though I struggled, and struggled not to
+think of him. I broke his picture and burned it;--and I would not
+have a scrap of his handwriting;--I would not have near me anything
+that he had even spoken of. But it was no good. I could not get away
+from him for an hour. Now I shall never want to get away from him
+again. As for Mr. Gilmore, it would have come to the same thing at
+last, had I never heard another word from Walter Marrable. I could
+not have done it."
+
+"I suppose we must submit to it," said Aunt Sarah, after a pause.
+This certainly was not the most exhilarating view which might have
+been taken of the matter as far as Mary was concerned; but as it did
+not suggest any open opposition to her scheme, and as there was no
+refusal to see Walter when he should again appear at Uphill as her
+lover, she made no complaint. Miss Marrable went on to inquire how
+Sir Gregory would like these plans, which were so diametrically
+opposed to his own. As to that, Mary could say nothing. No doubt
+Walter would make a clean breast of it to Sir Gregory before he left
+Dunripple, and would be able to tell them what had passed when he
+came to Loring. Mary, however, did not forget to argue that the
+ground on which Walter Marrable stood was his own ground. After the
+death of two men, the youngest of whom was over seventy, the property
+would be his property, and could not be taken from him. If Sir
+Gregory chose to quarrel with him,--as to the probability of which,
+Mary and her aunt professed very different opinions,--they must wait.
+Waiting now would be very different from what it had been when their
+prospects in life had not seemed to depend in any degree upon the
+succession to the family property. "And I know myself better now
+than I did then," said Mary. "Though it were to be for all my life,
+I would wait."
+
+On the Monday she got a letter from her cousin. It was very short,
+and there was not a word in it about Sir Gregory or Edith Brownlow.
+It only said that he was the happiest man in the world, and that he
+would be at Loring on the following Saturday. He must return at once
+to Birmingham, but would certainly be at Loring on Saturday. He had
+written to his uncle to ask for hospitality. He did not suppose that
+Parson John would refuse; but should this be the case, he would put
+up at The Dragon. Mary might be quite sure that she would see him on
+Saturday.
+
+And on the Saturday he came. The parson had consented to receive him;
+but, not thinking highly of the wisdom of the proposed visit, had
+worded his letter rather coldly. But of that Walter in his present
+circumstances thought but little. He was hardly within the house
+before he had told his story. "You haven't heard, I suppose," he
+said, "that Mary and I have made it up?"
+
+"How made it up?"
+
+"Well,--I mean that you shall make us man and wife some day."
+
+"But I thought you were to marry Edith Brownlow."
+
+"Who told you that, sir? I am sure Edith did not, nor yet her mother.
+But I believe these sort of things are often settled without
+consulting the principals."
+
+"And what does my brother say?"
+
+"Sir Gregory, you mean?"
+
+"Of course I mean Sir Gregory. I don't suppose you'd ask your
+father."
+
+"I never had the slightest intention, sir, of asking either one or
+the other. I don't suppose that I am to ask his leave to be married,
+like a young girl; and it isn't likely that any objection on family
+grounds could be made to such a woman as Mary Lowther."
+
+"You needn't ask leave of any one, most noble Hector. That is a
+matter of course. You can marry the cook-maid to-morrow, if you
+please. But I thought you meant to live at Dunripple?"
+
+"So I shall,--part of the year; if Sir Gregory likes it."
+
+"And that you were to have an allowance and all that sort of thing.
+Now, if you do marry the cook-maid--"
+
+"I am not going to marry the cook-maid,--as you know very well."
+
+"Or if you marry any one else in opposition to my brother's wishes,
+I don't suppose it likely that he'll bestow that which he intended to
+give as a reward to you for following his wishes."
+
+"He can do as he pleases. The moment that it was settled I told him."
+
+"And what did he say?"
+
+"He complained of headache. Sir Gregory very often does complain of
+headache. When I took leave of him, he said I should hear from him."
+
+"Then it's all up with Dunripple for you,--as long as he lives. I've
+no doubt that since poor Gregory's death your father's interest
+in the property has been disposed of among the Jews to the last
+farthing."
+
+"I shouldn't wonder."
+
+"And you are,--just where you were, my boy."
+
+"That depends entirely upon Sir Gregory. You may be sure of this,
+sir,--that I shall ask him for nothing. If the worst comes to the
+worst, I can go to the Jews as well as my father. I won't, unless I
+am driven."
+
+He was with Mary, of course, that evening, walking again along the
+banks of the Lurwell, as they had first done now nearly twelve months
+since. Then the autumn had begun, and now the last of the summer
+months was near its close. How very much had happened to her, or had
+seemed to happen, during the interval. At that time she had thrice
+declined Harry Gilmore's suit; but she had done so without any weight
+on her own conscience. Her friends had wished her to marry the man,
+and therefore she had been troubled; but the trouble had lain light
+upon her, and as she looked back at it all, she felt that at that
+time there had been something of triumph at her heart. A girl when
+she is courted knows at any rate that she is thought worthy of
+courtship, and in this instance she had been at least courted
+worthily. Since then a whole world of trouble had come upon her
+from that source. She had been driven hither and thither, first by
+love, and then by a false idea of duty, till she had come almost to
+shipwreck. And in her tossing she had gone against another barque
+which, for aught she knew, might even yet go down from the effects of
+the collision. She could not be all happy, even though she were again
+leaning on Walter Marrable's arm, or again sitting with it round her
+waist, beneath the shade of the trees on the banks of the Lurwell.
+
+"Then we must wait, and this time we must be patient," she said, when
+he told her of poor Sir Gregory's headache.
+
+"I cannot ask him for anything," said Walter.
+
+"Of course not. Do not ask anybody for anything,--but just wait. I
+have quite made up my mind that forty-five for the gentleman, and
+thirty-five for the lady, is quite time enough for marrying."
+
+"The grapes are sour," said Walter.
+
+"They are not sour at all, sir," said Mary.
+
+"I was speaking of my own grapes, as I look at them when I use that
+argument for my own comfort. The worst of it is that when we know
+that the grapes are not sour,--that they are the sweetest grapes in
+the world,--the argument is of no use. I won't tell any lies about
+it, to myself or anybody else. I want my grapes at once."
+
+"And so do I," said Mary, eagerly; "of course I do. I am not going to
+make any pretence with you. Of course I want them at once. But I have
+learned to know that they are precious enough to be worth the waiting
+for. I made a fool of myself once; but I shall not do it again, let
+Sir Gregory make himself ever so disagreeable."
+
+This was all very pleasant for Captain Marrable. Ah, yes! what other
+moment in a man's life is at all equal to that in which he is being
+flattered to the top of his bent by the love of the woman he loves.
+To be flattered by the love of a woman whom he does not love is
+almost equally unpleasant,--if the man be anything of a man. But at
+the present moment our Captain was supremely happy. His Thais was
+telling him that he was indeed her king, and should he not take the
+goods with which the gods provided him? To have been robbed of his
+all by a father, and to have an uncle who would have a headache
+instead of making settlements,--these indeed were drawbacks; but the
+pleasure was so sweet that even such drawbacks as these could hardly
+sully his bliss. "If you knew what your letter was to me!" she said,
+as she leaned against his shoulder. His father and his uncle and all
+the Marrables on the earth might do their worst, they could not rob
+the present hour of its joy.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXVIII.
+
+THE SQUIRE IS VERY OBSTINATE.
+
+
+Mr. Gilmore left his own home on a Thursday afternoon, and on the
+Monday when the Vicar again visited the Privets nothing had been
+heard of him. Money had been left with the bailiff for the Saturday
+wages of the men working about the place, but no provision for
+anything had been made beyond that. The Sunday had been wet from
+morning to night, and nothing could possibly be more disconsolate
+than the aspect of things round the house, or more disreputable if
+they were to be left in their present condition. The barrows, and the
+planks, and the pickaxes had been taken away, which things, though
+they are not in themselves beautiful, are safeguards against the
+ill-effects of ugliness, as they inform the eyes why it is that such
+disorder lies around. There was the disorder at the Privets now
+without any such instruction to the eye. Pits were full of muddy
+water, and half-formed paths had become the beds of stagnant pools.
+The Vicar then went into the house, and though there was still a
+workman and a boy who were listlessly pulling about some rolls of
+paper, there were ample signs that misfortune had come and that
+neglect was the consequence. "And all this," said Fenwick to himself,
+"because the man cannot get the idea of a certain woman out of his
+head!" Then he thought of himself and his own character, and asked
+himself whether, in any position of life, he could have been thus
+overruled to misery by circumstances altogether outside himself.
+Misfortunes might come which would be very heavy; his wife or
+children might die; or he might become a pauper; or subject to some
+crushing disease. But Gilmore's trouble had not fallen upon him from
+the hands of Providence. He had set his heart upon the gaining of a
+thing, and was now absolutely broken-hearted because he could not
+have it. And the thing was a woman. Fenwick admitted to himself that
+the thing itself was the most worthy for which a man can struggle;
+but would not admit that even in his search for that a man should
+allow his heart to give way, or his strength to be broken down.
+
+He went up to the house again on the Wednesday, and again on the
+Thursday,--but nothing had been heard from the Squire. The bailiff
+was very unhappy. Even though there might come a cheque on the
+Saturday morning, which both Fenwick and the bailiff thought to be
+probable, still there would be grave difficulties.
+
+"Here'll be the first of September on us afore we know where we are,"
+said the bailiff, "and is we to go on with the horses?"
+
+For the Squire was of all men the most regular, and began to get
+his horses into condition on the first of September as regularly as
+he began to shoot partridges. The Vicar went home and then made up
+his mind that he would go up to London after his friend. He must
+provide for his next Sunday's duty, but he could do that out of a
+neighbouring parish, and he would start on the morrow. He arranged
+the matter with his wife and with his friend's curate, and on the
+Friday he started.
+
+He drove himself into Salisbury instead of to the Bullhampton Road
+station in order that he might travel by the express train. That at
+least was the reason which he gave to himself and to his wife. But
+there was present to his mind the idea that he might look into the
+court and see how the trial was going on. Poor Carry Brattle would
+have a bad time of it beneath a lawyer's claws. Such a one as Carry,
+of the evil of whose past life there was no doubt, and who would
+appear as a witness against a man whom she had once been engaged to
+marry, would certainly meet with no mercy from a cross-examining
+barrister. The broad landmarks between the respectable and the
+disreputable may guide the tone of a lawyer somewhat, when he has a
+witness in his power; but the finer lines which separate that which
+is at the moment good and true from that which is false and bad
+cannot be discerned amidst the turmoil of a trial, unless the eyes,
+and the ears, and the inner touch of him who has the handling of the
+victim be of a quality more than ordinarily high.
+
+The Vicar drove himself over to Salisbury and had an hour there for
+strolling into the court. He had heard on the previous day that the
+case would be brought on the first thing on the Friday, and it was
+half-past eleven when he made his way in through the crowd. The train
+by which he was to be taken on to London did not start till half-past
+twelve. At that moment the court was occupied in deciding whether
+a certain tradesman, living at Devizes, should or should not be on
+the jury. The man himself objected that, being a butcher, he was, by
+reason of the second nature acquired in his business, too cruel, and
+bloody-minded to be entrusted with an affair of life and death. To a
+proposition in itself so reasonable no direct answer was made; but it
+was argued with great power on behalf of the crown, which seemed to
+think at the time that the whole case depended on getting this one
+particular man into the jury box, that the recalcitrant juryman
+was not in truth a butcher, that he was only a dealer in meat, and
+that though the stain of the blood descended the cruelty did not.
+Fenwick remained there till he heard the case given against the
+pseudo-butcher, and then retired from the court. He had, however,
+just seen Carry Brattle and her father seated side by side on a bench
+in a little outside room appropriated to the witnesses, and there
+had been a constable there seeming to stand on guard over them. The
+miller was sitting, leaning on his stick, with his eyes fixed upon
+the ground, and Carry was pale, wretched, and draggled. Sam had not
+yet made his appearance.
+
+"I'm afeard, sir, he'll be in trouble," said Carry to the Vicar.
+
+"Let 'un alone," said the miller; "when they wants 'im he'll be here.
+He know'd more about it nor I did."
+
+That afternoon Fenwick went to the club of which he and Gilmore were
+both members, and found that his friend was in London. He had been
+so, at least, that morning at nine o'clock. According to the porter
+at the club door, Mr. Gilmore called there every morning for his
+letters as soon as the club was open. He did not eat his breakfast
+in the house, nor, as far as the porter's memory went, did he even
+enter the club. Fenwick had lodged himself at an hotel in the
+immediate neighbourhood of Pall-Mall, and he made up his mind that
+his only chance of catching his friend was to be at the steps of
+the club door when it was opened at nine o'clock. So he eat his
+dinner,--very much in solitude, for on the 28th of August it is not
+often that the coffee rooms of clubs are full,--and in the evening
+took himself to one of the theatres which was still open. His club
+had been deserted, and it had seemed to him that the streets also
+were empty. One old gentleman, who, together with himself, had
+employed the forces of the establishment that evening, had told him
+that there wasn't a single soul left in London. He had gone to his
+tailor's and had found that both the tailor and the foreman were out
+of town. His publisher,--for our Vicar did a little in the way of
+light literature on social subjects, and had brought out a pretty
+volume in green and gold on the half-profit system, intending to give
+his share to a certain county hospital,--his publisher had been in
+the north since the 12th, and would not be back for three weeks. He
+found, however, a confidential young man who was able to tell him
+that the hospital need not increase the number of its wards on this
+occasion. He had dropped down to Dean's Yard to see a clerical
+friend,--but the house was shut up and he could not even get an
+answer. He sauntered into the Abbey, and found them mending the
+organ. He got into a cab and was driven hither and thither because
+all the streets were pulled up. He called at the War-Office to
+see a young clerk, and found one old messenger fast asleep in
+his arm-chair. "Gone for his holiday, sir," said the man in the
+arm-chair, speaking amidst his dreams, without waiting to hear the
+particular name of the young clerk who was wanted. And yet, when he
+got to the theatre, it was so full that he could hardly find a seat
+on which to sit. In all the world around us there is nothing more
+singular than the emptiness and the fullness of London.
+
+He was up early the next morning and breakfasted before he went out,
+thinking that even should he succeed in catching the Squire, he would
+not be able to persuade the unhappy man to come and breakfast with
+him. At a little before nine he was in Pall-Mall, walking up and down
+before the club, and as the clocks struck the hour he began to be
+impatient. The porter had said that Gilmore always came exactly at
+nine, and within two minutes after that hour the Vicar began to feel
+that his friend was breaking an engagement and behaving badly to him.
+By ten minutes past, the idea had got into his head that all the
+people in Pall-Mall were watching him, and at the quarter he was
+angry and unhappy. He had just counted the seconds up to twenty
+minutes, and had begun to consider that it would be absurd for him to
+walk there all the day, when he saw the Squire coming slowly along
+the street. He had been afraid to make himself comfortable within the
+club, and there to wait for his friend's coming, lest Gilmore should
+have escaped him, not choosing to be thus caught by any one;--and
+even now he had his fear lest his quarry should slip through his
+fingers. He waited till the Squire had gone up to the porter and
+returned to the street, and then he crossed over and seized him
+by the arm. "Harry," he said, "you didn't expect to see me in
+London;--did you?"
+
+"Certainly not," said the other, implying very plainly by his looks
+that the meeting had given him no special pleasure.
+
+"I came up yesterday afternoon, and I was at Cutcote's the tailor's,
+and at Messrs. Bringémout and Neversell's. Bringémout has retired,
+but it's Neversell that does the business. And then I went down to
+see old Drybird, and I called on young Dozey at his office. But
+everybody is out of town. I never saw anything like it. I vote that
+we take to having holidays in the country, and all come to London,
+and live in the empty houses."
+
+"I suppose you came up to look after me?" said Gilmore, with a brow
+as black as a thunder-cloud.
+
+Fenwick perceived that he need not carry on any further his lame
+pretences. "Well, I did. Come, old fellow, this won't do, you know.
+Everything is not to be thrown overboard because a girl doesn't know
+her own mind. Aren't your anchors better than that?"
+
+"I haven't an anchor left," said Gilmore.
+
+"How can you be so weak and so wicked as to say so? Come, Harry, take
+a turn with me in the park. You may be quite sure I shan't let you go
+now I've got you."
+
+"You'll have to let me go," said the other.
+
+"Not till I've told you my mind. Everybody is out of town, so I
+suppose even a parson may light a cigar down here. Harry, you must
+come back with me."
+
+"No;--I cannot."
+
+"Do you mean to say that you will yield up all your strength, all
+your duty, all your life, and throw over every purpose of your
+existence because you have been ill-used by a wench? Is that your
+idea of manhood,--of that manhood you have so often preached?"
+
+"After what I have suffered there I cannot bear the place."
+
+"You must force yourself to bear it. Do you mean to say that because
+you are unhappy you will not pay your debts?"
+
+"I owe no man a shilling;--or, if I do, I will pay it to-morrow."
+
+"There are debts you can only settle by daily payments. To every man
+living on your land you owe such a debt. To every friend connected
+with you by name, or blood, or love, you owe such a debt. Do you
+suppose that you can cast yourself adrift, and make yourself a
+by-word, and hurt no one but yourself? Why is it that we hate a
+suicide?"
+
+"Because he sins."
+
+"Because he is a coward, and runs away from the burden which he ought
+to bear gallantly. He throws his load down on the roadside, and does
+not care who may bear it, or who may suffer because he is too poor
+a creature to struggle on! Have you no feeling that, though it may
+be hard with you here,"--and the Vicar, as he spoke, struck his
+breast,--"you should so carry your outer self, that the eyes of those
+around you should see nothing of the sorrow within? That is my idea
+of manliness, and I have ever taken you to be a man."
+
+"We work for the esteem of others while we desire it. I desire
+nothing now. She has so knocked me about that I should be a liar if
+I were to say that there is enough manhood left in me to bear it. I
+shan't kill myself."
+
+"No, Harry, you won't do that."
+
+"But I shall give up the place, and go abroad."
+
+"Whom will you serve by that?"
+
+"It is all very well to preach, Frank. Bad as I am I could preach to
+you if there were a matter to preach about. I don't know that there
+is anything much easier than preaching. But as for practising, you
+can't do it if you have not got the strength. A man can't walk if you
+take away his legs. If you break a bird's wing he can't fly, let the
+bird be ever so full of pluck. All that there was in me she has taken
+out of me. I could fight him, and would willingly, if I thought there
+was a chance of his meeting me."
+
+"He would not be such a fool."
+
+"But I could not stand up and look at her."
+
+"She has left Bullhampton, you know."
+
+"It does not matter, Frank. There is the place that I was getting
+ready for her. And if I were there, you and your wife would always be
+thinking about it. And every fellow about the estate knows the whole
+story. It seems to me to be almost inconceivable that a woman should
+have done such a thing."
+
+"She has not meant to act badly, Harry."
+
+"To tell the truth, when I look back at it all, I blame myself more
+than her. A man should never be ass enough to ask any woman a second
+time. But I had got it into my head that it was a disgraceful thing
+to ask and not to have. It is that which kills me now. I do not think
+that I will ever again attempt anything, because failure is so hard
+to me to bear. At any rate, I won't go back to the Privets." This he
+added after a pause, during which the Vicar had been thinking what
+new arguments he could bring up to urge his friend's return.
+
+Fenwick learned that Gilmore had sent a cheque to his bailiff by the
+post of the preceding night. He acknowledged that in sending the
+cheque he had said no more than to bid the man pay what wages were
+due. He had not as yet made up his mind as to any further steps. As
+they walked round the enclosure of St. James's Park together, and as
+the warmth of their old friendship produced freedom of intercourse,
+Gilmore acknowledged a dozen wild schemes that had passed through his
+brain. That to which he was most wedded was a plan for meeting Walter
+Marrable and cudgelling him pretty well to death. Fenwick pointed
+out three or four objections to this. In the first place, Marrable
+had committed no offence whatever against Gilmore. And then, in all
+probability, Marrable might be as good at cudgelling as the Squire
+himself. And thirdly, when the cudgelling was over, the man who began
+the row would certainly be put into prison, and in atonement for that
+would receive no public sympathy. "You can't throw yourself on the
+public pity as a woman might," said the Vicar.
+
+"D---- the public pity," said the Squire, who was not often driven to
+make his language forcible after that fashion.
+
+Another scheme was that he would publish the whole transaction. And
+here again his friend was obliged to remind him, that a man in his
+position should be reticent rather than outspoken. "You have already
+declared," said the Vicar, "that you can't endure failure, and yet
+you want to make your failure known to all the world." His third
+proposition was more absurd still. He would write such a letter to
+Mary Lowther as would cover her head with red hot coals. He would
+tell her that she had made the world utterly unbearable to him, and
+that she might have the Privets for herself and go and live there. "I
+do not doubt but that such a letter would annoy her," said the Vicar.
+
+"Why should I care how much she is annoyed?"
+
+"Just so;--but everyone who saw the letter would know that it was
+pretence and bombast. Of course you will do nothing of the kind."
+
+They were together pretty nearly the whole day. Gilmore, no doubt,
+would have avoided the Vicar in the morning had it been possible;
+but now that he had been caught, and had been made to undergo
+his friend's lectures, he was rather grateful than otherwise for
+something in the shape of society. It was Fenwick's desire to induce
+him to return to Bullhampton. If this could not be done, it would no
+doubt be well that some authority should be obtained from him as to
+the management of the place. But this subject had not been mooted
+as yet, because Fenwick felt that if he once acknowledged that the
+runaway might continue to be a runaway, his chance of bringing the
+man back to his own home would be much lessened. As yet, however, he
+had made no impression in that direction. At last they parted on an
+understanding that they were to breakfast together the next morning
+at Fenwick's hotel, and then go to the eleven o'clock Sunday service
+at a certain noted metropolitan church. At breakfast, and during
+the walk to church, Fenwick said not a word to his friend about
+Bullhampton. He talked of church services, of ritual, of the
+quietness of a Sunday in London, and of the Sunday occupations of
+three millions of people not a fourth of whom attend divine service.
+He chose any subject other than that of which Gilmore was thinking.
+But as soon as they were out of church he made another attack upon
+him. "After that, Harry, don't you feel like trying to do your duty?"
+
+"I feel that I can't fly because my wing is broken," said the Squire.
+
+They spent the whole of the afternoon and evening together, but no
+good was done. Gilmore, as far as he had a plan, intended to go
+abroad, travel to the East, or to the West,--or to the South, if so
+it came about. The Privets might be let if any would choose to take
+the place. As far as he was concerned his income from his tenants
+would be more than he wanted. "As for doing them any good, I never
+did them any good," he said, as he parted from the Vicar for the
+night. "If they can't live on the land without my being at home, I am
+sure they won't if I stay there."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXIX.
+
+THE TRIAL.
+
+
+The miller, as he was starting from his house door, had called
+his daughter by her own name for the first time since her return
+home,--and Carry had been comforted. But no further comfort came
+to her during her journey to Salisbury from her father's speech.
+He hardly spoke the whole morning, and when he did say a word as
+to any matter on the work they had in hand, his voice was low and
+melancholy. Carry knew well, as did every one at Bullhampton, that
+her father was a man not much given to conversation, and she had not
+expected him to talk to her; but the silence, together with the load
+at her heart as to the ordeal of her examination, was very heavy on
+her. If she could have asked questions, and received encouragement,
+she could have borne her position comparatively with ease.
+
+The instructions with which the miller was furnished required that
+Carry Brattle should present herself at a certain office in Salisbury
+at a certain hour on that Wednesday. Exactly at that hour she and
+her father were at the place indicated, already having visited their
+lodgings at Mrs. Stiggs'. They were then told that they would not be
+again wanted on that day, but that they must infallibly be in the
+Court the next morning at half-past nine. The attorney's clerk whom
+they saw, when he learned that Sam Brattle was not yet in Salisbury,
+expressed an opinion as to that young man's iniquity which led Carry
+to think that he was certainly in more danger than either of the
+prisoners. As they left the office, she suggested to her father that
+a message should be immediately sent to Bullhampton after Sam. "Let
+'un be," said the miller; and it was all that he did say. On that
+evening they retired to the interior of one of the bedrooms at
+Trotter's Buildings, at four o'clock in the afternoon, and did not
+leave the house again. Anything more dreary than those hours could
+not be imagined. The miller, who was accustomed to work hard all
+day and then to rest, did not know what to do with his limbs.
+Carry, seeing his misery, and thinking rather of that than her own,
+suggested to him that they should go out and walk round the town.
+"Bide as thee be," said the miller; "it ain't no time now for showing
+theeself." Carry took the rebuke without a word, but turned her head
+to hide her tears.
+
+And the next day was worse, because it was longer. Exactly at
+half-past nine they were down at the court; and there they hung about
+till half-past ten. Then they were told that their affair would not
+be brought on till the Friday, but that at half-past nine on that
+day, it would undoubtedly be commenced; and that if Sam was not there
+then, it would go very hard with Sam. The miller, who was beginning
+to lose his respect for the young man from whom he received these
+communications, muttered something about Sam being all right. "You'll
+find he won't be all right if he isn't here at half-past nine
+to-morrow," said the young man. "There is them as their bark is worse
+than their bite," said the miller. Then they went back to Trotter's
+Buildings, and did not stir outside of Mrs. Stiggs' house throughout
+the whole day.
+
+On the Friday, which was in truth to be the day of the trial, they
+were again in court at half-past nine; and there, as we have seen,
+they were found, two hours later, by Mr. Fenwick, waiting patiently
+while the great preliminary affair of the dealer in meat was being
+settled. At that hour Sam had not made his appearance; but between
+twelve and one he sauntered into the comfortless room in which Carry
+was still sitting with her father. The sight of him was a joy to poor
+Carry, as he would speak to her, and tell her something of what was
+going on. "I'm about in time for the play, father," he said, coming
+up to them. The miller picked up his hat, and scratched his head, and
+muttered something. But there had been a sparkle in his eye when he
+saw Sam. In truth, the sight in all the world most agreeable to the
+old man's eyes was the figure of his youngest son. To the miller no
+Apollo could have been more perfect in beauty, and no Hercules more
+useful in strength. Carry's sweet woman's brightness had once been as
+dear to him,--but all that had now passed away.
+
+"Is it a'going all through?" asked the miller, referring to the mill.
+
+"Running as pretty as a coach-and-four when I left at seven this
+morning," said Sam.
+
+"And how did thee come?"
+
+"By the marrow-bone stage, as don't pay no tolls; how else?" The
+miller did not express a single word of approbation, but he looked
+up and down at his son's legs and limbs, delighted to think that
+the young man was at work in the mill this morning, had since that
+walked seventeen miles, and now stood before them showing no sign of
+fatigue.
+
+"What are they a'doing on now, Sam?" asked Carry, in a whisper. Sam
+had already been into the court, and was able to inform them that
+the "big swell of all was making a speech, in which he was telling
+everybody every 'varsal thing about it. And what do you think,
+father?"
+
+"I don't think nothing," said the miller.
+
+"They've been and found Trumbull's money-box buried in old mother
+Burrows's garden at Pycroft." Carry uttered the slightest possible
+scream as she heard this, thinking of the place which she had known
+so well. "Dash my buttons if they ain't," continued Sam. "It's about
+up with 'em now."
+
+"They'll be hung--of course," said the miller.
+
+"What asses men is," said Sam; "--to go to bury the box there! Why
+didn't they smash it into atoms?"
+
+"Them as goes crooked in big things is like to go crooked in little,"
+said the miller.
+
+At about two Sam and Carry were told to go into Court, and way
+was made for the old man to accompany them. At that moment the
+cross-examination was being continued of the man who, early on the
+Sunday morning, had seen the Grinder with his companion in the cart
+on the road leading towards Pycroft Common. A big burly barrister,
+with a broad forehead and grey eyes, was questioning this witness as
+to the identity of the men in the cart; and at every answer that he
+received he turned round to the jury as though he would say "There,
+then, what do you think of the case now, when such a man as that is
+brought before you to give evidence?" "You will swear, then, that
+these two men who are here in the dock were the two men you saw that
+morning in that cart?" The witness said that he would so swear. "You
+knew them both before, of course?" The witness declared that he had
+never seen either of them before in his life. "And you expect the
+jury to believe, now that the lives of these men depend on their
+believing it, that after the lapse of a year you can identify these
+two men, whom you had never seen before, and who were at that time
+being carried along the road at the rate of eight or ten miles an
+hour?" The witness, who had already encountered a good many of these
+questions, and who was inclined to be rough rather than timid, said
+that he didn't care twopence what the jury believed. It was simply
+his business to tell what he knew. Then the judge looked at that
+wicked witness,--who had talked in this wretched, jeering way about
+twopence!--looked at him over his spectacles, and shaking his head as
+though with pity at that witness's wickedness, cautioned him as to
+the peril of his body, making, too, a marked reference to the peril
+of his soul by that melancholy wagging of the head. Then the burly
+barrister with the broad forehead looked up beseechingly to the jury.
+Was it right that any man should be hung for any offence against whom
+such a witness as this was brought up to give testimony? It was the
+manifest feeling of the crowd in the court that the witness himself
+ought to be hung immediately. "You may go down, sir," said the burly
+barrister, giving an impression to those who looked on, but did not
+understand, that the case was over as far as it depended on that
+man's evidence. The burly barrister himself was not so sanguine.
+He knew very well that the judge who had wagged his head in so
+melancholy a way at the iniquity of a witness who had dared to
+say that he didn't care twopence, would, when he was summing up,
+refer to the presence of the two prisoners in the cart as a thing
+fairly supported by evidence. The amount of the burly barrister's
+achievement was simply this,--that for the moment a sort of sympathy
+was excited on behalf of the prisoners by the disapprobation which
+was aroused against the wicked man who hadn't cared twopence.
+Sympathy, like electricity, will run so quick that no man may stop
+it. If sympathy might be made to run through the jury-box there might
+perchance be a man or two there weak enough to entertain it to the
+prejudice of his duty on that day. The hopes of the burly barrister
+in this matter did not go further than that.
+
+Then there was another man put forward who had seen neither of the
+prisoners, but had seen the cart and pony at Pycroft Common, and had
+known that the cart and pony were for the time in the possession of
+the Grinder. He was questioned by the burly barrister about himself
+rather than about his evidence; and when he had been made to own that
+he had been five times in prison, the burly barrister was almost
+justified in the look he gave to the jury, and he shook his head as
+though in sorrow that his learned friend on the other side should
+have dared to bring such a man as that before them as a witness.
+
+Various others were brought up and examined before poor Carry's turn
+had come; and on each occasion, as one after another was dismissed
+from the hands of the burly barrister, here one crushed and
+confounded, there another loud and triumphant, her heart was almost
+in her throat. And yet though she so dreaded the moment when it
+should come, there was a sense of wretched disappointment in that
+she was kept waiting. It was now between four and five, and whispers
+began to be rife that the Crown would not finish their case that day.
+There was much trouble and more amusement with the old woman who
+had been Trumbull's housekeeper. She was very deaf; but it had been
+discovered that there was an old friendship between her and the
+Grinder's mother, and that she had at one time whispered the fact of
+the farmer's money into the ears of Mrs. Burrows of Pycroft Common.
+Deaf as she was, she was made to admit this. Mrs. Burrows was also
+examined, but she would admit nothing. She had never heard of the
+money, or of Farmer Trumbull, or of the murder,--not till the world
+heard of it, and she knew nothing about her son's doings or comings
+or goings. No doubt she had given shelter to a young woman at the
+request of a friend of her son, the young woman paying her ten
+shillings a week for her board and lodging. That young woman was
+Carry Brattle. Her son and that young man had certainly been at her
+house together; but she could not at all say whether they had been
+there on that Sunday morning. Perhaps, of all who had been examined
+Mrs. Burrows was the most capable witness, for the lawyer who
+examined her on behalf of the Crown was able to extract absolutely
+nothing from her. When she turned herself round with an air of
+satisfaction, to face the questions of the burly barrister, she was
+told that he had no question to ask her. "It's all as one to me,
+sir," said Mrs. Burrows, as she smoothed her apron and went down.
+
+And then it was poor Carry's turn. When the name of Caroline Brattle
+was called she turned her eyes beseechingly to her father, as though
+hoping that he would accompany her in this the dreaded moment of her
+punishment. She caught him convulsively by the sleeve of the coat, as
+she was partly dragged and partly shoved on towards the little box
+in which she was to take her stand. He accompanied her to the foot
+of the two or three steps which she was called on to ascend, but of
+course he could go no further with her.
+
+"I'll bide nigh thee, Carry," he said; and it was the only word which
+he had spoken to comfort her that day. It did, however, serve to
+lessen her present misery, and added something to her poor stock of
+courage. "Your name is Caroline Brattle?" "And you were living on the
+thirty-first of last August with Mrs. Burrows at Pycroft Common?" "Do
+you remember Sunday the thirty-first of August?" These, and two or
+three other questions like them were asked by a young barrister in
+the mildest tone he could assume. "Speak out, Miss Brattle," he said,
+"and then there will be nothing to trouble you." "Yes, sir," she
+said, in answer to each of the questions, still almost in a whisper.
+
+Nothing to trouble her, and all the eyes of that cruel world around
+fixed upon her! Nothing to trouble her, and every ear on the alert
+to hear her,--young and pretty as she was,--confess her own shame
+in that public court! Nothing to trouble her, when she would so
+willingly have died to escape the agony that was coming on her! For
+she knew that it would come. Though she had never been in a court of
+law before, and had had no one tell her what would happen, she knew
+that the question would be asked. She was sure that she would be made
+to say what she had been before all that crowd of men.
+
+The evidence which she could give, though it was material, was very
+short. John Burrows and Lawrence Acorn had come to the cottage on
+Pycroft Common on that Sunday morning, and there she had seen both
+of them. It was daylight when they came, but still it was very early.
+She had not observed the clock, but she thought that it may have
+been about five. The men were in and out of the house, but they had
+some breakfast. She had risen from bed to help to get them their
+breakfast. If anything had been buried by them in the garden, she
+had known nothing of it. She had then received three sovereigns from
+Acorn, whom she was engaged to marry. From that day to the present
+she had never seen either of the men. As soon as she heard of the
+suspicion against Acorn, and that he had fled, she conceived her
+engagement to be at an end. All this she testified, with infinite
+difficulty, in so low a voice that a man was sworn to stand by her
+and repeat her answers aloud to the jury;--and then she was handed
+over to the burly barrister.
+
+She had been long enough in the court to perceive, and had been
+clever enough to learn, that this man would be her enemy. Though
+she had been unable to speak aloud in answering the counsel for
+the prosecution, she had quite understood that the man was her
+friend,--that he was only putting to her those questions which
+must be asked,--and questions which she could answer without much
+difficulty. But when she was told to attend to what the other
+gentleman would say to her, then, indeed, her poor heart failed her.
+
+It came at once. "My dear, I believe you have been indiscreet?"
+The words, perhaps, had been chosen with some idea of mercy, but
+certainly there was no mercy in the tone. The man's voice was loud,
+and there was something in it almost of a jeer,--something which
+seemed to leave an impression on the hearer that there had been
+pleasure in the asking it. She struggled to make an answer, and the
+monosyllable, yes, was formed by her lips. The man who was acting as
+her mouthpiece stooped down his ears to her lips, and then shook his
+head. Assuredly no sound had come from them that could have reached
+his sense, had he been ever so close. The burly barrister waited in
+patience, looking now at her, and now round at the court. "I must
+have an answer. I say that I believe you have been indiscreet. You
+know, I dare say, what I mean. Yes or no will do; but I must have
+an answer." She glanced round for an instant, trying to catch her
+father's eye; but she could see nothing; everything seemed to swim
+before her except the broad face of that burly barrister. "Has she
+given any answer?" he asked of the mouthpiece; and the mouthpiece
+again shook his head. The heart of the mouthpiece was tender, and he
+was beginning to hate the burly barrister. "My dear," said the burly
+barrister, "the jury must have the information from you."
+
+Then gradually there was heard through the court the gurgling sounds
+of irrepressible sobs,--and with them there came a moan from the old
+man, who was only divided from his daughter by the few steps,--which
+was understood by the whole crowd. The story of the poor girl, in
+reference to the trial, had been so noised about that it was known
+to all the listeners. That spark of sympathy, of which we have said
+that its course cannot be arrested when it once finds its way into
+a crowd, had been created, and there was hardly present then one,
+either man or woman, who would not have prayed that Carry Brattle
+might be spared if it were possible. There was a juryman there, a
+father with many daughters, who thought that it might not misbecome
+him to put forward such a prayer himself.
+
+"Perhaps it mayn't be necessary," said the soft-hearted juryman.
+
+But the burly barrister was not a man who liked to be taught his duty
+by any one in court,--not even by a juryman,--and his quick intellect
+immediately told him that he must seize the spark of sympathy in
+its flight. It could not be stopped, but it might be turned to his
+own purpose. It would not suffice for him now that he should simply
+defend the question he had asked. The court was showing its aptitude
+for pathos, and he also must be pathetic on his own side. He knew
+well enough that he could not arrest public opinion which was going
+against him, by shewing that his question was a proper question; but
+he might do so by proving at once how tender was his own heart.
+
+"It is a pain and grief to me," said he, "to bring sorrow upon
+any one. But look at those prisoners at the bar, whose lives are
+committed to my charge, and know that I, as their advocate, love them
+while they are my clients as well as any father can love his child. I
+will spend myself for them, even though it may be at the risk of the
+harsh judgment of those around me. It is my duty to prove to the jury
+on their behalf that the life of this young woman has been such as
+to invalidate her testimony against them;--and that duty I shall do,
+fearless of the remarks of any one. Now I ask you again, Caroline
+Brattle, whether you are not one of the unfortunates?"
+
+This attempt of the burly barrister was to a certain extent
+successful. The juryman who had daughters of his own had been put
+down, and the barrister had given, at any rate, an answer to the
+attack that had been silently made on him by the feeling of the
+court. Let a man be ready with a reply, be it ever so bad a reply,
+and any attack is parried. But Carry had given no answer to the
+question, and those who looked at her thought it very improbable that
+she would be able to do so. She had clutched the arm of the man who
+stood by her, and in the midst of her sobs was looking round with
+snatched, quick, half-completed glances for protection to the spot on
+which her father and brother were standing. The old man had moaned
+once; but after that he uttered no sound. He stood leaning on his
+stick with his eyes fixed upon the ground, quite motionless. Sam was
+standing with his hands grasping the woodwork before him and his bold
+gaze fastened on the barrister's face, as though he were about to fly
+at him. The burly barrister saw it all and perceived that more was to
+be gained by sparing than by persecuting his witness, and resolved to
+let her go.
+
+"I believe that will do," he said. "Your silence tells all that I
+wish the jury to know. You may go down." Then the man who had acted
+as mouthpiece led Carry away, delivered her up to her father, and
+guided them both out of court.
+
+They went back to the room in which they had before been seated, and
+there they waited for Sam, who was called into the witness-box as
+they left the court.
+
+"Oh, father," said Carry, as soon as the old man was again placed
+upon the bench. And she stood over him, and put her hand upon his
+neck.
+
+"We've won through it, girl, and let that be enough," said the
+miller. Then she sat down close by his side, and not another word was
+spoken by them till Sam returned.
+
+Sam's evidence was, in fact, but of little use. He had had dealings
+with Acorn, who had introduced him to Burrows, and had known the two
+men at the old woman's cottage on the Common. When he was asked, what
+these dealings had been, he said they were honest dealings.
+
+"About your sister's marriage?" suggested the crown lawyer.
+
+"Well,--yes," said Sam. And then he stated that the men had come over
+to Bullhampton and that he had accompanied them as they walked round
+Farmer Trumbull's house. He had taken them into the Vicar's garden;
+and then he gave an account of the meeting there with Mr. Fenwick.
+After that he had known and seen nothing of the men. When he
+testified so far he was handed over to the burly barrister.
+
+The burly barrister tried all he knew, but he could make nothing of
+this witness. A question was asked him, the true answer to which
+would have implied that his sister's life had been disreputable. When
+this was asked Sam declared that he would not say a word about his
+sister one way or the other. His sister had told them all she knew
+about the murder, and now he had told them all he knew. He protested
+that he was willing to answer any questions they might ask him about
+himself; but about his sister he would answer none. When told that
+the information desired might be got in a more injurious way from
+other sources, he became rather impudent.
+
+"Then you may go to--other sources," he said.
+
+He was threatened with all manner of pains and penalties; but he made
+nothing of these threats, and was at last allowed to leave the box.
+When his evidence was completed the trial was adjourned for another
+day.
+
+Though it was then late in the afternoon the three Brattles returned
+home that night. There was a train which took them to the Bullhampton
+Road station, and from thence they walked to the mill. It was a weary
+journey both for the poor girl and for the old man; but anything was
+better than delay for another night in Trotter's Buildings. And then
+the miller was unwilling to be absent from his mill one hour longer
+than was necessary. When there came to be a question whether he could
+walk, he laughed the difficulty to scorn in his quiet way. "Why
+shouldn't I walk it? Ain't I got to 'arn my bread every day?"
+
+It was ten o'clock when they reached the mill, and Mrs. Brattle, not
+expecting them at that hour, was in bed. But Fanny was up, and did
+what she could to comfort them. But no one could ever comfort old
+Brattle. He was not susceptible to soft influences. It may almost
+be said that he condemned himself because he gave way to the daily
+luxury of a pipe. He believed in plenty of food, because food for the
+workman is as coals to the steam-engine, as oats to the horse,--the
+raw material out of which the motive power of labour must be made.
+Beyond eating and working a man had little to do, but just to wait
+till he died. That was his theory of life in these his latter days;
+and yet he was a man with keen feelings and a loving heart.
+
+But Carry was comforted when her sister's arms were around her. "They
+asked me if I was bad," she said, "and I thought I should a' died,
+and I never answered them a word,--and at last they let me go."
+When Fanny inquired whether their father had been kind to her, she
+declared that he had been "main kind." "But, oh, Fanny! if he'd only
+say a word, it would warm one's heart; wouldn't it?"
+
+On the following evening news reached Bullhampton that the Grinder
+had been convicted and sentenced to death, but that Lawrence Acorn
+had been acquitted. The judge, in his summing up, had shown that
+certain evidence which applied to the Grinder had not applied to his
+comrade in the dock, and the jury had been willing to take any excuse
+for saving one man from the halter.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXX.
+
+THE FATE OF THE PUDDLEHAMITES.
+
+
+Fenwick and Gilmore breakfasted together on the morning that the
+former left London for Bullhampton; and by that time the Vicar had
+assured himself that it would be quite impossible to induce his
+friend to go back to his home. "I shall turn up after some years if
+I live," said the Squire; "and I suppose I shan't think so much about
+it then; but for the present I will not go to the place."
+
+He authorised Fenwick to do what he pleased about the house and
+the gardens, and promised to give instructions as to the sale of
+his horses. If the whole place were not let, the bailiff might, he
+suggested, carry on the farm himself. When he was urged as to his
+duty, he again answered by his illustration of the man without a leg.
+"It may be all very true," he said, "that a man ought to walk, but if
+you cut off his leg he can't walk." Fenwick at last found that there
+was nothing more to be said, and he was constrained to take his
+leave.
+
+"May I tell her that you forgive her?" the Vicar asked, as they were
+walking together up and down the station in the Waterloo Road.
+
+"She will not care a brass farthing for my forgiveness," said
+Gilmore.
+
+"You wrong her there. I am sure that nothing would give her so much
+comfort as such a message."
+
+Gilmore walked half the length of the platform before he replied.
+"What is the good of telling a lie about it?"--he said, at last.
+
+"I certainly would not tell a lie."
+
+"Then I can't say that I forgive her. How is a man to forgive such
+treatment? If I said that I did, you wouldn't believe me. I will keep
+out of her way, and that will be better for her than forgiving her."
+
+"Some of your wrath, I fear, falls to my lot?" said the Vicar.
+
+"No, Frank. You and your wife have done the best for me all
+through,--as far as you thought was best."
+
+"We have meant to do so."
+
+"And if she has been false to me as no woman was ever false before,
+that is not your fault. As for the jewels, tell your wife to lock
+them up,--or to throw them away if she likes that better. My
+brother's wife will have them some day, I suppose." Now his brother
+was in India, and his brother's wife he had never seen. Then there
+was a pledge given that Gilmore would inform his friend by letter of
+his future destination, and so they parted.
+
+This was on the Tuesday, and Fenwick had desired that his gig might
+meet him at the Bullhampton Road station. He had learned by this time
+of the condemnation of one man for the murder, and the acquittal of
+the other, and was full of the subject when his groom was seated
+beside him. Had the Brattles come back to the mill? And what of
+Sam? And what did the people say about Acorn's escape? These, and
+many other questions he asked, but he found that his servant was
+so burdened with a matter of separate and of infinitely greater
+interest, that he could not be got to give his mind to the late
+trial. He believed the Brattles were back; he had seen nothing of
+Sam; he didn't know anything about Acorn; but the new chapel was
+going to be pulled down.
+
+"What!" exclaimed the Vicar;--"not at once?"
+
+"So they was saying, sir, when I come away. And the men was at
+it,--that is, standing all about. And there is to be no more
+preaching, sir. And missus was out in the front looking at 'em as I
+drove out of the yard."
+
+Fenwick asked twenty questions, but could obtain no other information
+than was given in the first announcement of these astounding news.
+And as he entered the vicarage he was still asking questions, and the
+man was still endeavouring to express his own conviction that that
+horrible, damnable, and most heart-breaking red brick building would
+be demolished, and carted clean away before the end of the week.
+For the servants and dependents of the vicarage were staunch to the
+interests of the church establishment, with a degree of fervour
+of which the Vicar himself knew nothing. They hated Puddleham and
+dissent. This groom would have liked nothing better than a commission
+to punch the head of Mr. Puddleham's eldest son, a young man who had
+been employed in a banker's office at Warminster, but had lately come
+home because he had been found to have a taste for late hours and
+public-house parlours; and had made himself busy on the question of
+the chapel. The maid servants at the vicarage looked down as from a
+mighty great height on the young women of Bullhampton who attended
+the chapel, and the vicarage gardener, since he had found out that
+the chapel stood on glebe land, and ought therefore, to be placed
+under his hands, had hardly been able to keep himself off the ground.
+His proposed cure for the evil that had been done,--as an immediate
+remedy before erection and demolition could be carried out, was to
+form the vicarage manure pit close against the chapel door,--"and
+then let anybody touch our property who dares!" He had, however, been
+too cautious to carry out any such strategy as this, without direct
+authority from the Commander-in-Chief. "Master thinks a deal too much
+on 'em," he had said to the groom, almost in disgust at the Vicar's
+pusillanimity.
+
+When Fenwick reached his own gate there was a crowd of men loitering
+around the chapel, and he got out from his gig and joined them. His
+eye first fell upon Mr. Puddleham, who was standing directly in front
+of the door, with his back to the building, wearing on his face
+an expression of infinite displeasure. The Vicar was desirous of
+assuring the minister that no steps need be taken, at any rate,
+for the present, towards removing the chapel from its present
+situation. But before he could speak to Mr. Puddleham he perceived
+the builder from Salisbury, who appeared to be very busy,--Grimes,
+the Bullhampton tradesman, so lately discomfited, but now
+triumphant,--Bolt, the elder, close at Mr. Puddleham's elbow,--his
+own churchwarden, with one or two other farmers,--and lastly, Lord
+St. George himself, walking in company with Mr. Packer, the agent.
+Many others from the village were there, so that there was quite
+a public meeting on the bit of ground which had been appropriated
+to Mr. Puddleham's preachings. Fenwick, as soon as he saw Lord St.
+George, accosted him before he spoke to the others.
+
+"My friend Mr. Puddleham," said he, "seems to have the benefit of a
+distinguished congregation this morning."
+
+"The last, I fear, he will ever have on this spot," said the lord, as
+he shook hands with the Vicar.
+
+"I am very sorry to hear you say so, my lord. Of course, I don't know
+what you are doing, and I can't make Mr. Puddleham preach here, if he
+be not willing."
+
+Mr. Puddleham had now joined them. "I am ready and willing," said he,
+"to do my duty in that sphere of life to which it has pleased God to
+call me." And it was evident that he thought that the sphere to which
+he had been called was that special chapel opposite to the vicarage
+entrance.
+
+"As I was saying," continued the Vicar, "I have neither the wish nor
+the power to control my neighbour; but, as far as I am concerned, no
+step need be taken to displace him. I did not like this site for the
+chapel at first; but I have got quit of all that feeling, and Mr.
+Puddleham may preach to his heart's content,--as he will, no doubt,
+to his hearers' welfare, and will not annoy me in the least." On
+hearing this, Mr. Puddleham pushed his hat off his forehead and
+looked up and frowned, as though the levity of expression in which
+his rival indulged, was altogether unbecoming the solemnity of the
+occasion.
+
+"Mr. Fenwick," said the lord, "we have taken advice, and we find the
+thing ought to be done,--and to be done instantly. The leading men of
+the congregation are quite of that view."
+
+"They are of course unwilling to oppose your noble father, my lord,"
+said the minister.
+
+"And to tell you the truth, Mr. Fenwick," continued Lord St. George,
+"you might be put, most unjustly, into a peck of troubles if we did
+not do this. You have no right to let the glebe on a building lease,
+even if you were willing, and high ecclesiastical authority would
+call upon you at once to have the nuisance removed."
+
+"Nuisance, my lord!" said Mr. Puddleham, who had seen with half an
+eye that the son was by no means worthy of the father.
+
+"Well, yes,--placed in the middle of the Vicar's ground! What would
+you say if Mr. Fenwick demanded leave to use your parlour for his
+vestry room, and to lock up his surplice in your cupboard?"
+
+"I'm sure he'd try it on before he'd had it a day," said the Vicar,
+"and very well he'd look in it," whereupon the minister again raised
+his hat, and again frowned.
+
+"The long and the short of it is," continued the lord, "that we've,
+among us, made a most absurd mistake, and the sooner we put it right
+the better. My father, feeling that our mistake has led to all the
+others, and that we have caused all this confusion, thinks it to be
+his duty to pull the chapel down and build it up on the site before
+proposed near the cross roads. We'll begin at once, and hope to get
+it done by Christmas. In the mean time, Mr. Puddleham has consented
+to go back to the old chapel."
+
+"Why not let him stay here till the other is finished?" asked the
+Vicar.
+
+"My dear sir," replied the lord, "we are going to transfer the chapel
+body and bones. If we were Yankees we should know how to do it
+without pulling it in pieces. As it is, we've got to do it piecemeal.
+So now, Mr. Hickbody," he continued, turning round to the builder
+from Salisbury, "you may go to work at once. The Marquis will be much
+obliged to you if you will press it on."
+
+"Certainly, my lord," said Mr. Hickbody, taking off his hat. "We'll
+put on quite a body of men, my lord, and his lordship's commands
+shall be obeyed."
+
+After which Lord St. George and Mr. Fenwick withdrew together from
+the chapel and walked into the vicarage.
+
+"If all that be absolutely necessary--" began the Vicar.
+
+"It is, Mr. Fenwick; we've made a mistake." Lord St. George always
+spoke of his father as "we," when there came upon him the necessity
+of retrieving his father's errors. "And our only way out of it is
+to take the bull by the horns at once and put the thing right. It
+will cost us about £700, and then there is the bore of having to own
+ourselves to be wrong. But that is much better than a fight."
+
+"I should not have fought."
+
+"You would have been driven to fight. And then there is the one
+absolute fact;--the chapel ought not to be there. And now I've one
+other word to say. Don't you think this quarrelling between clergyman
+and landlord is bad for the parish?"
+
+"Very bad indeed, Lord St. George."
+
+"Now I'm not going to measure out censure, or to say that we have
+been wrong, or that you have been wrong."
+
+"If you do I shall defend myself," said the Vicar.
+
+"Exactly so. But if bygones can be bygones there need be neither
+offence nor defence."
+
+"What can a clergyman think, Lord St. George, when the landlord of
+his parish writes letters against him to his bishop, maligning his
+private character, and spreading reports for which there is not the
+slightest foundation?"
+
+"Mr. Fenwick, is that the way in which you let bygones be bygones?"
+
+"It is very hard to say that I can forget such an injury."
+
+"My father, at any rate, is willing to forget,--and, as he hopes,
+to forgive. In all disputes each party of course thinks that he has
+been right. If you, for the sake of the parish, and for the sake of
+Christian charity and goodwill, are ready to meet him half way, all
+this ill-will may be buried in the ground."
+
+What could the Vicar do? He felt that he was being cunningly cheated
+out of his grievance. He would have had not a minute's hesitation as
+to forgiving the Marquis, had the Marquis owned himself to be wrong.
+But he was now invited to bury the hatchet on even terms, and he knew
+that the terms should not be even. And he resented all this the more
+in his heart because he understood very well how clever and cunning
+was the son of his enemy. He did not like to be cheated out of his
+forgiveness. But after all, what did it matter? Would it not be
+enough for him to know, himself, that he had been right? Was it
+not much to feel himself free from all pricks of conscience in the
+matter?
+
+"If Lord Trowbridge is willing to let it all pass," said he, "so am
+I."
+
+"I am delighted," said Lord St. George, with spirit; "I will not come
+in now, because I have already overstayed my time, but I hope you may
+hear from my father before long in a spirit of kindness."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXI.
+
+THE END OF MARY LOWTHER'S STORY.
+
+
+Sir Gregory Marrable's headache was not of long duration. Allusion
+is here made to that especial headache under the acute effects of
+which he had taken so very unpromising a farewell of his nephew and
+heir. It lasted, however, for two or three days, during which he had
+frequent consultations with Mrs. Brownlow, and had one conversation
+with Edith. He was disappointed, sorry, and sore at heart because the
+desire on which he had set his mind could not be fulfilled; but he
+was too weak to cling either to his hope or to his anger. His own son
+had gone from him, and this young man must be his heir and the owner
+of Dunripple. No doubt he might punish the young man by excluding
+him from any share of ownership for the present; but there would be
+neither comfort nor advantage in that. It is true that he might save
+any money that Walter would cost him, and give it to Edith,--but such
+a scheme of saving for such a purpose was contrary to the old man's
+nature. He wanted to have his heir near him at Dunripple. He hated
+the feeling of desolation which was presented to him by the idea of
+Dunripple without some young male Marrable at hand to help him. He
+desired, unconsciously, to fill up the void made by the death of his
+son with as little trouble as might be. And therefore he consulted
+Mrs. Brownlow.
+
+Mrs. Brownlow was clearly of opinion that he had better take his
+nephew, with the encumbrance of Mary Lowther, and make them both
+welcome to the house. "We have all heard so much good of Miss
+Lowther, you know," said Mrs. Brownlow, "and she is not at all the
+same as a stranger."
+
+"That is true," said Sir Gregory, willing to be talked over.
+
+"And then, you know, who can say whether Edith would ever have liked
+him or not. You never can tell what way a young woman's feelings will
+go."
+
+On hearing this Sir Gregory uttered some sound intended to express
+mildly a divergence of opinion. He did not doubt but what Edith would
+have been quite willing to fall in love with Walter, had all things
+been conformable to her doing so. Mrs. Brownlow did not notice this
+as she continued,--"At any rate the poor girl would suffer dreadfully
+now if she were allowed to think that you should be divided from
+your nephew by your regard for her. Indeed, she could hardly stay at
+Dunripple if that were so."
+
+Mrs. Brownlow in a mild way suggested that nothing should be said to
+Edith, and Sir Gregory gave half a promise that he would be silent.
+But it was against his nature not to speak. When the moment came the
+temptation to say something that could be easily said, and which
+would produce some mild excitement, was always too strong for him.
+"My dear," he said, one evening, when Edith was hovering round his
+chair, "you remember what I once said to you about your cousin
+Walter?"
+
+"About Captain Marrable, uncle?"
+
+"Well,--he is just the same as a cousin;--it turns out that he is
+engaged to marry another cousin,--Mary Lowther."
+
+"She is his real cousin, Uncle Gregory."
+
+"I never saw the young lady,--that I know of."
+
+"Nor have I,--but I've heard so much about her! And everybody says
+she is nice. I hope they'll come and live here."
+
+"I don't know yet, my dear."
+
+"He told me all about it when he was here."
+
+"Told you he was going to be married?"
+
+"No, uncle, he did not tell me that exactly;--but he said
+that--that--. He told me how much he loved Mary Lowther, and a great
+deal about her, and I felt sure it would come so."
+
+"Then you are aware that what I had hinted about you and Walter--"
+
+"Don't talk about that, Uncle Gregory. I knew that it was ever so
+unlikely, and I didn't think about it. You are so good to me that of
+course I couldn't say anything. But you may be sure he is ever so
+much in love with Miss Lowther; and I do hope we shall be so fond of
+her!"
+
+Sir Gregory was pacified and his headache for the time was cured. He
+had had his little scheme, and it had failed. Edith was very good,
+and she should still be his pet and his favourite,--but Walter
+Marrable should be told that he might marry and bring his bride to
+Dunripple, and that if he would sell out of his regiment, the family
+lawyer should be instructed to make such arrangements for him as
+would have been made had he actually been a son. There would be some
+little difficulty about the colonel's rights; but the colonel had
+already seized upon so much that it could not but be easy to deal
+with him. On the next morning the letter was written to Walter by
+Mrs. Brownlow herself.
+
+About a week after this Mary Lowther, who was waiting at Loring with
+an outward show of patience, but with much inward anxiety for further
+tidings from her lover, received two letters, one from Walter, and
+the other from her friend, Janet Fenwick. The reader shall see those,
+and the replies which Mary made to them, and then our whole story
+will have been told as far as the loves, and hopes, and cares, and
+troubles of Mary Lowther are concerned.
+
+
+   Bullhampton, 1st September.
+
+   DEAREST MARY,
+
+   I write a line just because I said I would. Frank went
+   up to London last week and was away one Sunday. He found
+   his poor friend in town and was with him for two or three
+   days. He has made up his mind to let the Privets, and go
+   abroad, and nothing that Frank could say would move him.
+   I do not know whether it may not be for the best. We shall
+   lose such a neighbour as we never shall have again. He
+   was the same as a brother to both of us; and I can only
+   say, that loving him like a brother, I endeavoured to
+   do the best for him that I could. This I do know;--that
+   nothing on earth shall ever tempt me to set my hand at
+   match-making again. But it was alluring,--the idea of
+   bringing my two dearest friends near me together.
+
+   If you have anything to tell me of your happiness, I shall
+   be delighted to hear it; I will not set my heart against
+   this other man;--but you can hardly expect me to say that
+   he will be as much to me as might have been that other.
+   God bless you,
+
+   Your most affectionate friend,
+
+   JANET FENWICK.
+
+   I must tell you the fate of the chapel. They are already
+   pulling it down, and carting away the things to the other
+   place. They are doing it so quick, that it will all be
+   gone before we know where we are. I own I am glad. As
+   for Frank, I really believe he'd rather let it remain.
+   But this is not all. The Marquis has promised that we
+   shall hear from him "in a spirit of kindness." I wonder
+   what this will come to? It certainly was not a spirit of
+   kindness that made him write to the bishop and call Frank
+   an infidel.
+
+
+And this was the other letter.
+
+
+   Barracks, 1st September, 186--.
+
+   DEAREST LOVE,
+
+   I hope this will be one of the last letters I shall write
+   from this abominable place, for I am going to sell out at
+   once. It is all settled, and I'm to be a sort of deputy
+   Squire at Dunripple, under my uncle. As that is to be my
+   fate in life, I may as well begin it at once. But that's
+   not the whole of my fate, nor the best of it. You are to
+   be admitted as deputy Squiress,--or rather as Squiress
+   in chief, seeing that you will be mistress of the house.
+   Dearest Mary, may I hope that you won't object to the
+   promotion?
+
+   I have had a long letter from Mrs. Brownlow; and I ran
+   over yesterday and saw my uncle. I was so hurried that
+   I could not write from Dunripple. I would send you Mrs.
+   Brownlow's letter, only perhaps it would not be quite
+   fair. I dare say you will see it some day. She says ever
+   so much about you, and as complimentary as possible.
+   And then she declares her purpose to resign all rights,
+   honours, pains, privileges, and duties of mistress
+   of Dunripple into your hands as soon as you are Mrs.
+   Marrable. And this she repeated yesterday with some
+   stateliness, and a great deal of high-minded resignation.
+   But I don't mean to laugh at her, because I know she means
+   to do what is right.
+
+   My own, own, Mary, write me a line instantly to say that
+   it is right,--and to say also that you agree with me that
+   as it is to be done, 'twere well it were done quickly.
+
+   Yours always, with all my heart,
+
+   W. M.
+
+
+It was of course necessary that Mary should consult with her aunt
+before she answered the second letter. Of that which she received
+from Mrs. Fenwick she determined to say nothing. Why should she ever
+mention to her aunt again a name so painful to her as that of Mr.
+Gilmore? The thinking of him could not be avoided. In this, the great
+struggle of her life, she had endeavoured to do right, and yet she
+could not acquit herself of evil. But the pain, though it existed,
+might at least be kept out of sight.
+
+"And so you are to go and live at Dunripple at once," said Miss
+Marrable.
+
+"I suppose we shall."
+
+"Ah, well! It's all right, I'm sure. Of course there is not a word to
+be said against it. I hope Sir Gregory won't die before the Colonel.
+That's all."
+
+"The Colonel is his father, you know."
+
+"I hope there may not come to be trouble about it, that's all. I
+shall be very lonely, but of course I had to expect that."
+
+"You'll come to us, Aunt Sarah? You'll be as much there as here."
+
+"Thank you, dear. I don't quite know about that. Sir Gregory is all
+very well; but one does like one's own house."
+
+From all which Mary understood that her dear aunt still wished that
+she might have had her own way in disposing of her niece's hand,--as
+her dear friends at Bullhampton had wished to have theirs.
+
+The following were the answers from Mary to the two letters given
+above;--
+
+
+   Loring, 3rd September, 186--.
+
+   DEAR JANET,
+
+   I am very, very, very sorry. I do not know what more I can
+   say. I meant to do well all through. When I first told Mr.
+   Gilmore that it could not be as he wished it, I was right.
+   When I made up my mind that it must be so at last, I was
+   right also. I fear I cannot say so much of myself as to
+   that middle step which I took, thinking it was best to do
+   as I was bidden. I meant to be right, but of course I was
+   wrong, and I am very, very sorry. Nevertheless, I am much
+   obliged to you for writing to me. Of course I cannot but
+   desire to know what he does. If he writes and seems to be
+   happy on his travels, pray tell me.
+
+   I have much to tell you of my own happiness,--though, in
+   truth, I feel a remorse at being happy when I have caused
+   so much unhappiness. Walter is to sell out and to live
+   at Dunripple, and I also am to live there when we are
+   married. I suppose it will not be long now. I am writing
+   to him to-day, though I do not yet know what I shall say
+   to him. Sir Gregory has assented, and arrangements are to
+   be made, and lawyers are to be consulted, and we are to be
+   what Walter calls deputy Squire and Squiress at Dunripple.
+   Mrs. Brownlow and Edith Brownlow are still to live there,
+   but I am to have the honour of ordering the dinner, and
+   looking wise at the housekeeper. Of course I shall feel
+   very strange at going into such a house. To you I may
+   say how much nicer it would be to go to some place that
+   Walter and I could have to ourselves,--as you did when you
+   married. But I am not such a simpleton as to repine at
+   that. So much has gone as I would have it that I only feel
+   myself to be happier than I deserve. What I shall chiefly
+   look forward to will be your first visit to Dunripple.
+
+   Your most affectionate friend,
+
+   MARY LOWTHER.
+
+
+The other letter, as to which Mary had declared that she had not as
+yet made up her own mind when she wrote to Mrs. Fenwick, was more
+difficult in composition.
+
+
+   Loring, 2nd September, 186--.
+
+   DEAREST WALTER,
+
+   So it is all settled, and I am to be a deputy Squiress! I
+   have no objection to urge. As long as you are the deputy
+   Squire, I will be the deputy Squiress. For your sake,
+   my dearest, I do most heartily rejoice that the affair
+   is settled. I think you will be happier as a county
+   gentleman than you would have been in the army; and as
+   Dunripple must ultimately be your home,--I will say our
+   home,--perhaps it is as well that you, and I also, should
+   know it as soon as possible. Of course I am very nervous
+   about Mrs. Brownlow and her daughter; but though nervous I
+   am not fearful; and I shall prepare myself to like them.
+
+   As to that other matter, I hardly know what answer to make
+   on so very quick a questioning. It was only the other
+   day that it was decided that it was to be;--and there
+   ought to be breathing time before one also decides when.
+   But, dear Walter, I will do nothing to interfere with
+   your prospects. Let me know what you think yourself; but
+   remember, in thinking, that a little interval for purposes
+   of sentiment and of stitching is always desired by the
+   weaker vessel on such an occasion.
+
+   God bless you, my own one,
+
+   Yours always and always, M. L.
+
+   In real truth, I will do whatever you bid me.
+
+
+Of course, after that, the marriage was not very long postponed.
+Walter Marrable allowed that some grace should be given for
+sentiment, and some also for stitching, but as to neither did he
+feel that any long delay was needed. A week for sentiment, and two
+more for the preparation of bridal adornments, he thought would be
+sufficient. There was a compromise at last, as is usual in such
+cases, and the marriage took place about the middle of October. No
+doubt, at that time of year they went to Italy,--but of that the
+present narrator is not able to speak with any certainty. This,
+however, is certain,--that if they did travel abroad, Mary Marrable
+travelled in daily fear lest her unlucky fate should bring her
+face to face with Mr. Gilmore. Wherever they went, their tour, in
+accordance with a contract made by the baronet, was terminated within
+two months. For on Christmas Day Mrs. Walter Marrable was to take her
+place as mistress of the house at the dinner table.
+
+The reader may, perhaps, desire to know whether things were made
+altogether smooth with the Colonel. On this matter Messrs. Block and
+Curling, the family lawyers, encountered very much trouble indeed.
+The Colonel, when application was made to him, was as sweet as honey.
+He would do anything for the interests of his dearest son. There did
+not breathe a father on earth who cared less for himself or his own
+position. But still he must live. He submitted to Messrs. Block and
+Curling whether it was not necessary that he should live. Messrs.
+Block and Curling explained to him very clearly that his brother,
+the baronet, had nothing to do with his living or dying,--and that
+towards his living he had already robbed his son of a large property.
+At last, however, he would not make over his life interest in the
+property, as it would come to him in the event of his brother dying
+before him, except on payment of an annuity on and from that date
+of £200 a year. He began by asking £500, and was then told that the
+Captain would run the chance and would sue his father for the £20,000
+in the event of Sir Gregory dying before the Colonel.
+
+Now the narrator will bid adieu to Mary Lowther, to Loring, and to
+Dunripple. The conduct of his heroine, as depicted in these pages,
+will, he fears, meet with the disapprobation of many close and good
+judges of female character. He has endeavoured to describe a young
+woman, prompted in all her doings by a conscience wide awake, guided
+by principle, willing, if need be, to sacrifice herself, struggling
+always to keep herself from doing wrong, but yet causing infinite
+grief to others, and nearly bringing herself to utter shipwreck,
+because, for a while, she allowed herself to believe that it would be
+right for her to marry a man whom she did not love.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXII.
+
+AT TURNOVER CASTLE.
+
+
+Mrs. Fenwick had many quips and quirks with her husband as to those
+tidings to be made in a pleasant spirit which were expected from
+Turnover Castle. From the very moment that Lord St. George had given
+the order,--upon the authority chiefly of the unfortunate Mr. Bolt,
+who on this occasion found it to be impossible to refuse to give an
+authority which a lord demanded from him,--the demolition of the
+building had been commenced. Before the first Sunday came any use of
+the new chapel for divine service was already impossible. On that
+day Mr. Puddleham preached a stirring sermon about tabernacles in
+general. "It did not matter where the people of the Lord met," he
+said, "so long as they did meet to worship the Lord in a proper
+spirit of independent resistance to any authority that had not come
+to them from revelation. Any hedge-side was a sufficient tabernacle
+for a devout Christian. But--," and then, without naming any name, he
+described the Church of England as a Upas tree which, by its poison,
+destroyed those beautiful flowers which strove to spring up amidst
+the rank grass beneath it and to make the air sweet within its
+neighbourhood. Something he said, too, of a weak sister tottering to
+its base, only to be followed in its ruin by the speedy prostration
+of its elder brother. All this was of course told in detail to the
+Vicar; but the Vicar refused even to be interested by it. "Of course
+he did," said the Vicar. "If a man is to preach, what can he preach
+but his own views?"
+
+The tidings to be made in a pleasant spirit were not long waited
+for,--or, at any rate, the first instalment of them. On the 2nd of
+September there arrived a large hamper full of partridges, addressed
+to Mrs. Fenwick in the Earl's own handwriting. "The very first
+fruits," said the Vicar, as he went down to inspect the plentiful
+provision thus made for the vicarage larder. Well;--it was certainly
+better to have partridges from Turnover than accusations of
+immorality and infidelity. The Vicar so declared at once, but his
+wife would not at first agree with him. "I really should have such
+pleasure in packing them up and sending them back," said she.
+
+"Indeed, you shall do nothing of the kind."
+
+"The idea of a basket of birds to atone for such insults and calumny
+as that man has heaped on you!"
+
+"The birds will be only a first instalment," said the Vicar,--and
+then there were more quips and quirks about that. It was presumed by
+Mr. Fenwick that the second instalment would be the first pheasants
+shot in October. But the second instalment came before September was
+over in the shape of the following note:--
+
+
+   Turnover Park, 20th September, 186--.
+
+   The Marquis of Trowbridge and the Ladies Sophie and
+   Carolina Stowte request that Mr. and Mrs. Fenwick will do
+   them the honour of coming to Turnover Park on Monday the
+   6th October, and staying till Saturday the 11th.
+
+
+"That's an instalment indeed," said Mrs. Fenwick. "And now what on
+earth are we to do?" The Vicar admitted that it had become very
+serious. "We must either go, and endure a terrible time of it,"
+continued Mrs. Fenwick, "or we must show him very plainly that we
+will have nothing more to do with him. I don't see why we are to be
+annoyed, merely because he is a Marquis."
+
+"It won't be because he is a Marquis."
+
+"Why then? You can't say that you love the old man, or that the
+Ladies Sophie and Carolina Stowte are the women you'd have me choose
+for companions, or that that soapy, silky, humbugging Lord St. George
+is to your taste."
+
+"I am not sure about St. George. He can be everything to everybody,
+and would make an excellent bishop."
+
+"You know you don't like him, and you know also that you will have a
+very bad time of it at Turnover."
+
+"I could shoot pheasants all the week."
+
+"Yes,--with a conviction at the time that the Ladies Sophie and
+Carolina were calling you an infidel behind your back for doing so.
+As for myself I feel perfectly certain that I should spar with them."
+
+"It isn't because he's a Marquis," said the Vicar, carrying on his
+argument after a long pause. "If I know myself, I think I may say
+that that has no allurement for me. And, to tell the truth, had he
+been simply a Marquis, and had I been at liberty to indulge my own
+wishes, I would never have allowed myself to be talked out of my
+righteous anger by that soft-tongued son of his. But to us he is a
+man of the very greatest importance, because he owns the land on
+which the people live with whom we are concerned. It is for their
+welfare that he and I should be on good terms together; and therefore
+if you don't mind the sacrifice, I think we'll go."
+
+"What;--for the whole week, Frank?"
+
+The Vicar was of opinion that the week might be judiciously
+curtailed by two days; and, consequently, Mrs. Fenwick presented her
+compliments to the Ladies Sophie and Carolina Stowte, and expressed
+the great pleasure which she and Mr. Fenwick would have in going to
+Turnover Park on the Tuesday, and staying till the Friday.
+
+"So that I shall only be shooting two days," said the Vicar, "which
+will modify the aspect of my infidelity considerably."
+
+They went to Turnover Castle. The poor old Marquis had rather a bad
+time of it for the hour or two previous to their arrival. It had
+become an acknowledged fact now in the county that Sam Brattle had
+had nothing to do with the murder of Farmer Trumbull, and that his
+acquaintance with the murderers had sprung from his desire to see his
+unfortunate sister settled in marriage with a man whom he at the time
+did not know to be disreputable. There had therefore been a reaction
+in favour of Sam Brattle, whom the county now began to regard as
+something of a hero. The Marquis, understanding all that, had come to
+be aware that he had wronged the Vicar in that matter of the murder.
+And then, though he had been told upon very good authority,--no less
+than that of his daughters, who had been so informed by the sisters
+of a most exemplary neighbouring curate,--that Mr. Fenwick was a man
+who believed "just next to nothing," and would just as soon associate
+with a downright Pagan like old Brattle, as with any professing
+Christian,--still there was the fact of the Bishop's good opinion;
+and, though the Marquis was a self-willed man, to him a bishop was
+always a bishop. It was also clear to him that he had been misled in
+those charges which he had made against the Vicar in that matter of
+poor Carry Brattle's residence at Salisbury. Something of the truth
+of the girl's history had come to the ears of the Marquis, and he
+had been made to believe that he had been wrong. Then there was the
+affair of the chapel, in which, under his son's advice, he was at
+this moment expending £700 in rectifying the mistake which he had
+made. In giving the Marquis his due we must acknowledge that he cared
+but little about the money. Marquises, though they may have large
+properties, are not always in possession of any number of loose
+hundreds which they can throw away without feeling the loss. Nor was
+the Marquis of Trowbridge so circumstanced now. But that trouble did
+not gall him nearly so severely as the necessity which was on him to
+rectify an error made by himself. He had done a foolish thing. Under
+no circumstances should the chapel have been built on that spot. He
+knew it now, and he knew that he must apologise. Noblesse oblige.
+The old lord was very stupid, very wrong-headed, and sometimes very
+arrogant; but he would not do a wrong if he knew it, and nothing on
+earth would make him tell a wilful lie. The epithet indeed might have
+been omitted; for a lie is not a lie unless it be wilful.
+
+Lord Trowbridge passed the hours of this Tuesday morning under
+the frightful sense of the necessity for apologising;--and yet he
+remembered well the impudence of the man, how he had ventured to
+allude to the Ladies Stowte, likening them to--to--to--! It was
+terrible to be thought of. And his lordship remembered, too, how
+this man had written about the principal entrance to his own mansion
+as though it had been no more than the entrance to any other man's
+house! Though the thorns still rankled in his own flesh, he had to
+own that he himself had been wrong.
+
+And he did it,--with an honesty that was beyond the reach of his much
+more clever son. When the Fenwicks arrived, they were taken into the
+drawing-room, in which were sitting the Ladies Sophie and Carolina
+with various guests already assembled at the Castle. In a minute or
+two the Marquis shuffled in and shook hands with the two new comers.
+Then he shuffled about the room for another minute or two, and at
+last got his arm through that of the Vicar, and led him away into his
+own sanctum. "Mr. Fenwick," he said, "I think it best to express my
+regret at once for two things that have occurred."
+
+
+[Illustration: The drawing-room at Turnover Castle.]
+
+
+"It does not signify, my lord."
+
+"But it does signify to me, and if you will listen to me for a moment
+I shall take your doing so as a favour added to that which you have
+conferred upon me in coming here." The Vicar could only bow and
+listen. "I am sorry, Mr. Fenwick, that I should have written to the
+bishop of this diocese in reference to your conduct." Fenwick found
+it very difficult to hold his tongue when this was said. He imagined
+that the Marquis was going to excuse himself about the chapel,--and
+about the chapel he cared nothing at all. But as to that letter to
+the bishop, he did feel that the less said about it the better. He
+restrained himself, however, and the Marquis went on. "Things had
+been told me, Mr. Fenwick;--and I thought that I was doing my duty."
+
+"It did me no harm, my lord."
+
+"I believe not. I had been misinformed,--and I apologise." The
+Marquis paused, and the Vicar bowed. It is probable that the Vicar
+did not at all know how deep at that moment were the sufferings of
+the Marquis. "And now as to the chapel," continued the Marquis.
+
+"My lord, that is such a trifle that you must let me say that it is
+not and has not been of the slightest consequence."
+
+"I was misled as to that bit of ground."
+
+"I only wish, my lord, that the chapel could stand there."
+
+"That is impossible. The land has been appropriated to other
+purposes, and though we have all been a little in the dark about
+our own rights, right must be done. I will only add that I have the
+greatest satisfaction in seeing you and Mrs. Fenwick at Turnover, and
+that I hope the satisfaction may often be repeated." Then he led the
+way back into the drawing-room, and the evil hour had passed over his
+head.
+
+Upon the whole, things went very well with both the Vicar and his
+wife during their visit. He did go out shooting one day, and was
+treated very civilly by the Turnover gamekeeper, though he was
+prepared with no five-pound note at the end of his day's amusement.
+When he returned to the house, his host congratulated him on his
+performance just as cordially as though he had been one of the laity.
+On the next day he rode over with Lord St. George to see the County
+Hunt kennels, which were then at Charleycoats, and nobody seemed to
+think him very wicked because he ventured to have an opinion about
+hounds. Mrs. Fenwick's amusements were, perhaps, less exciting, but
+she went through them with equanimity. She was taken to see the
+parish schools, and was walked into the parish church,--in which the
+Stowte family were possessed of an enormous recess called a pew,
+but which was in truth a room, with a fireplace in it. Mrs. Fenwick
+thought it did not look very much like a church; but as the Ladies
+Stowte were clearly very proud of it she held her peace as to that
+idea. And so the visit to Turnover Park was made, and the Fenwicks
+were driven home.
+
+"After all, there's nothing like burying the hatchet," said he.
+
+"But who sharpened the hatchet?" asked Mrs. Fenwick.
+
+"Never mind who sharpened it. We've buried it."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXIII.
+
+CONCLUSION.
+
+
+There is nothing further left to be told of this story of the village
+of Bullhampton and its Vicar beyond what may be necessary to satisfy
+the reader as to the condition and future prospects of the Brattle
+family. The writer of these pages ventures to hope that whatever may
+have been the fate in the readers' mind of that couple which are
+about to settle themselves peaceably at Dunripple, and to wait there
+in comfort till their own time for reigning shall have come, some
+sympathy may have been felt with those humbler personages who have
+lived with orderly industry at the mill,--as, also, with those who,
+led away by disorderly passions, have strayed away from it, and have
+come back again to the old home.
+
+For a couple of days after the return of the miller with his daughter
+and son, very little was said about the past;--very little, at
+least, in which either the father or Sam took any part. Between the
+two sisters there were no doubt questions and answers by the hour
+together as to every smallest detail of the occurrences at Salisbury.
+And the mother almost sang hymns of joy over her child, in that the
+hour which she had so much dreaded had passed by. But the miller said
+not a word;--and Sam was almost equally silent. "But it be all over,
+Sam?" asked his mother, anxiously one day. "For certain sure it be
+all over now?"
+
+"There's one, mother, for whom it ain't all over yet;--poor devil."
+
+"But he was the--murderer, Sam."
+
+"So was t'other fellow. There weren't no difference. If one was more
+spry to kill t'old chap than t'other, Acorn was the spryest. That's
+what I think. But it's done now, and there ain't been much justice in
+it. As far as I sees, there never ain't much justice. They was nigh
+a-hanging o' me; and if those chaps had thought o' bringing t'old
+man's box nigh the mill, instead of over by t'old woman's cottage,
+they would a hung me;--outright. And then they was twelve months
+about it! I don't think much on 'em." When his mother tried to
+continue the conversation,--which she would have loved to do with
+that morbid interest which we always take in a matter which has been
+nearly fatal to us, but from which we have escaped,--Sam turned into
+the mill, saying that he had had enough of it, and wouldn't have any
+more.
+
+Then, on the third day, a report of the trial in a county newspaper
+reached them. This the miller read all through, painfully, from the
+beginning to the end, omitting no detail of the official occurrences.
+At last, when he came to the account of Sam's evidence, he got up
+from the chair on which he was sitting close to the window, and
+striking his fist upon the table, made his first and last comment
+upon the trial. "It was well said, Sam. Yes; though thou be'est my
+own, it was well said." Then he put the paper down and walked out of
+doors, and they could see that his eyes were full of tears.
+
+But from that time forth there came a great change in his manner to
+his youngest daughter. "Well, Carry," he would say to her in the
+morning, with as much outward sign of affection as he ever showed to
+any one; and at night, when she came and stood over him before he
+lifted his weary limbs out of his chair to take himself away to his
+bed, he turned his forehead to her to be kissed, as he did to that
+better daughter who had needed no forgiveness from him. Nevertheless,
+they who knew him,--and there were none who knew him better than
+Fanny did,--were aware that he never for a moment forgot the disgrace
+which had fallen upon his household. He had forgiven the sinner, but
+the shame of the sin was always on him; and he carried himself as a
+man who was bound to hide himself from the eyes of his neighbours
+because there had come upon him a misfortune which made it fit that
+he should live in retirement.
+
+Sam took up his abode in the house, and worked daily in the mill,
+and for weeks nothing was said either of his going away or of his
+return. He would talk to his sisters of the manner in which he had
+worked among the machinery of the Durham mine at which he had found
+employment; but he said nothing for awhile of the cause which had
+taken him north, or of his purpose of remaining where he was. He ate
+and drank in the house, and from time to time his father paid him
+small sums as wages. At last, sitting one evening after the work of
+the day was done, he spoke out his mind. "Father," said he, "I'm
+about minded to get me a wife." His mother and sisters were all there
+and heard the proposition made.
+
+"And who is the girl as is to have thee, Sam?" asked his mother.
+
+As Sam did not answer at once, Carry replied for him. "Who should it
+be, mother;--but only Agnes Pope?"
+
+"It ain't that 'un?" said the miller, surlily.
+
+"And why shouldn't it be that 'un, father? It is that 'un, and no
+other. If she be not liked here, why, we'll just go further, and
+perhaps not fare worse."
+
+There was nothing to be said against poor Agnes Pope,--only this,
+that she had been in Trumbull's house on the night of the murder, and
+had for awhile been suspected by the police of having communicated
+to her lover the tidings of the farmer's box of money. Evil things
+had of course been said of her then, but the words spoken of her had
+been proved to be untrue. She had been taken from the farmer's house
+into that of the Vicar,--who had, indeed, been somewhat abused by
+the Puddlehamites for harbouring her; but as the belief in Sam's
+guilt had gradually been abandoned, so, of course, had the ground
+disappeared for supposing that poor Agnes had had ought to do in
+bringing about the murder of her late master. For two days the miller
+was very gloomy, and made no reply when Sam declared his purpose of
+leaving the mill before Christmas unless Agnes should be received
+there as his wife;--but at last he gave way. "As the old 'uns go into
+their graves," he said, "it's no more than nature that the young 'uns
+should become masters." And so Sam was married, and was taken, with
+his wife, to live with the other Brattles at the mill. It was well
+for the miller that it should be so, for Sam was a man who would
+surely earn money when he put his shoulder in earnest to the wheel.
+
+As for Carry, she lived still with them, doomed by her beauty, as was
+her elder sister by the want of it, to expect that no lover should
+come and ask her to establish with him a homestead of their own.
+
+Our friend the Vicar married Sam and his sweetheart, and is still
+often at the mill. From time to time he has made efforts to convert
+the unbelieving old man whose grave is now so near to his feet; but
+he has never prevailed to make the miller own even the need of any
+change. "I've struv' to be honest," he said, when last he was thus
+attacked, "and I've wrought for my wife and bairns. I ain't been a
+drunkard, nor yet, as I knows on, neither a tale-bearer, nor yet a
+liar. I've been harsh-tempered and dour enough I know, and maybe it's
+fitting as they shall be hard and dour to me where I'm going. I don't
+say again it, Muster Fenwick;--but nothing as I can do now 'll change
+it." This, at any rate, was clear to the Vicar,--that Death, when it
+came, would come without making the old man tremble.
+
+Mr. Gilmore has been some years away from Bullhampton; but when I
+last heard from my friends in that village I was told that at last he
+was expected home.
+
+
+Bradbury, Evans, and Co., Printers, Whitefriars.
+
+
+      *      *      *      *      *      *
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's note:
+
+   Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
+
+   Chapter I, paragraph 10. The reader should note that the
+   town of Haylesbury named in this paragraph is henceforth
+   called Haytesbury.
+
+   Chapter IV, paragraph 1. The gardener is here called
+   "Jem;" in the rest of the text he is called "Jim". We
+   do not know whether this is a typographical error or
+   an example of Trollope's inconsistency with the names
+   of minor characters.
+
+   Chapter XL, paragraph 28. The astute reader of Trollope
+   will recognize the "Dragon of Wantley" as the name of
+   the hostelry inherited by Mr. Harding's daughter Eleanor
+   in the "Barsetshire" novels.
+
+   Specific changes in wording of the text are listed below.
+
+      Chapter I, next-to-last paragraph. The name "Chamerblaine"
+      was changed to "Chamberlaine" in the sentence: His mother
+      had been the sister of the Rev. Henry Fitzackerly
+      Chamberlaine; and as Mr. CHAMBERLAINE had never married,
+      much of his solicitude was bestowed upon his nephew.
+
+      Chapter III, paragraph 7. Full stop after "bugglary"
+      was changed to a question mark in the sentence: Not
+      bugglary?"
+
+      Chapter IX, paragraph 6. The word "could't" was changed
+      to "couldn't" in the sentence: She drank two glasses of
+      Marsala every day, and let it be clearly understood that
+      she COULDN'T afford sherry.
+
+      Chapter XXII, paragraph 1. "Bullhampton" was changed to
+      "Lavington" in the sentence: He, being an energetic man,
+      carried on a long and angry correspondence with the
+      authorities aforesaid; but the old man from LAVINGTON
+      continued to toddle into the village just at eleven
+      o'clock.
+
+      Chapter XXVIII, paragraph 9. The word "shoudn't" was
+      changed to "shouldn't" in the sentence: "I suppose
+      not, Mr. Fenwick. I SHOULDN'T ought;--ought I, now?
+
+      Chapter XXXII, paragraph 26. The word "friend's" was
+      changed to the plural "friends'" in the sentence:
+      Had not this dangerous captain come up, Mary, no
+      doubt,--so thought Miss Marrable,--would at last have
+      complied with her FRIENDS' advice, and have accepted
+      a marriage which was in all respects advantageous.
+
+      Chapter XXXV, paragraph 3. The word "began" was
+      changed to "begun" in the sentence: . . . and had
+      long since BEGUN to feel that a few cabbages and
+      peaches did not repay him for the loss of those
+      pleasant and bitter things, . . .
+
+      Chapter XXXIX, paragraph 13. "Gay" was changed to "Jay"
+      in the sentence: Mrs. JAY, no doubt, is a religious
+      woman. We do not know whether this was a typographical
+      error or another example of Trollope's inconsistency
+      with names of minor characters.
+
+      Chapter XLII, paragraph 5. A hyphen was removed from
+      "any-rate" in the sentence: His gown was of silk, and
+      his income almost greater than his desires; but he
+      would fain sit upon the Bench, and have at ANY RATE
+      his evenings for his own enjoyment.
+
+      Chapter XLII, paragraph 6. The word "that" was
+      removed from the sentence: Mr. Quickenham was a tall,
+      thin man, with eager gray eyes, and a long projecting
+      nose, on which, his enemies in the courts of law were
+      wont to say, [THAT] his wife would hang a kettle, in
+      order that the unnecessary heat coming from his mouth
+      might not be wasted.
+
+      Chapter XLVIII, paragraph 2. The word "injustice" was
+      changed to "justice" in the sentence: He reminded
+      himself, too, of the murderer's present escape from
+      JUSTICE by aid of this pestilent clergyman; . . .
+
+      Chapter XLVIII, paragraph 4. "St." was added to the
+      sentence: He had already told St. George of Fenwick's
+      letter to him and of his letter to the bishop, and
+      ST. George had whistled.
+
+      Chapter XLIX, paragraph 21. The words "much as" were
+      added to the sentence: I believe I owe as much to
+      you,--almost as MUCH AS a woman can owe to a man;
+      but still, were my cousin so placed that he could
+      afford to marry a poor wife, I should leave you and
+      go to him at once.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE VICAR OF BULLHAMPTON***
+
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+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
+<head>
+<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1" />
+<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Vicar of Bullhampton, by Anthony Trollope</title>
+<style type="text/css">
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+<body>
+<h1>The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Vicar of Bullhampton, by Anthony
+Trollope, Illustrated by H. Woods</h1>
+<pre>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at <a href = "http://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre>
+<p class="noindent">Title: The Vicar of Bullhampton</p>
+<p class="noindent">Author: Anthony Trollope</p>
+<p class="noindent">Release Date: September 5, 2008  [eBook #26541]<br />
+Most recently updated October 5, 2017</p>
+<p class="noindent">Language: English</p>
+<p class="noindent">Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1</p>
+<p class="noindent">***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE VICAR OF BULLHAMPTON***</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>E-text prepared by<br />
+    Delphine Lettau and Joseph E. Loewenstein, M.D.</h3>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div class="center"><a name="il1" id="il1"></a>
+<table style="margin: 0 auto" cellpadding="4px">
+  <tr>
+    <td align="center">
+      <a href="images/frontis.jpg">
+      <img src="images/frontis-t.jpg" width="334"
+      alt="Waiting-Room at
+      the Assize Court." /></a>
+    </td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="center">
+      <span class="caption">Waiting-Room at the Assize Court.<br />
+      Click to <a href="images/frontis.jpg">ENLARGE</a></span>
+    </td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="narrow" />
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h3>THE</h3>
+<h1>VICAR OF BULLHAMPTON.</h1>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h4>BY</h4>
+
+<h2>ANTHONY TROLLOPE.</h2>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div class="center">
+<img src="images/tpb2.jpg" width="283" alt="Title Page Illustration" />
+</div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h4>WITH THIRTY ILLUSTRATIONS BY H. WOODS.</h4>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h5>LONDON:<br />
+BRADBURY, EVANS, AND CO., 11, BOUVERIE STREET.<br />
+1870.</h5>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="narrow" />
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h3>PREFACE.</h3>
+
+
+
+<p>The writing of prefaces is, for the most part, work thrown away; and
+the writing of a preface to a novel is almost always a vain thing.
+Nevertheless, I am tempted to prefix a few words to this novel on its
+completion, not expecting that many people will read them, but
+desirous, in doing so, of defending myself against a charge which may
+possibly be made against me by the critics,&mdash;as to which I shall be
+unwilling to revert after it shall have been preferred.</p>
+
+<p>I have introduced in the Vicar of Bullhampton the character of a girl
+whom I will call,&mdash;for want of a truer word that shall not in its
+truth be offensive,&mdash;a castaway. I have endeavoured to endow her with
+qualities that may create sympathy, and I have brought her back at
+last from degradation at least to decency. I have not married her to
+a wealthy lover, and I have endeavoured to explain that though there
+was possible to her a way out of perdition, still things could not be
+with her as they would have been had she not fallen.</p>
+
+<p>There arises, of course, the question whether a novelist, who
+professes to write for the amusement of the young of both sexes,
+should allow himself to bring upon his stage such a character as that
+of Carry Brattle? It is not long since,&mdash;it is well within the memory
+of the author,&mdash;that the very existence of such a condition of life,
+as was hers, was supposed to be unknown to our sisters and daughters,
+and was, in truth, unknown to many of them. Whether that ignorance
+was good may be questioned; but that it exists no longer is beyond
+question. Then arises that further question,&mdash;how far the condition
+of such unfortunates should be made a matter of concern to the sweet
+young hearts of those whose delicacy and cleanliness of thought is a
+matter of pride to so many of us. Cannot women, who are good, pity
+the sufferings of the vicious, and do something perhaps to mitigate
+and shorten them, without contamination from the vice? It will be
+admitted probably by most men who have thought upon the subject that
+no fault among us is punished so heavily as that fault, often so
+light in itself but so terrible in its consequences to the less
+faulty of the two offenders, by which a woman falls. All her own sex
+is against her,&mdash;and all those of the other sex in whose veins runs
+the blood which she is thought to have contaminated, and who, of
+nature, would befriend her were her trouble any other than it is.</p>
+
+<p>She is what she is, and remains in her abject, pitiless, unutterable
+misery, because this sentence of the world has placed her beyond the
+helping hand of Love and Friendship. It may be said, no doubt, that
+the severity of this judgment acts as a protection to female
+virtue,&mdash;deterring, as all known punishments do deter, from vice. But
+this punishment, which is horrible beyond the conception of those who
+have not regarded it closely, is not known beforehand. Instead of the
+punishment there is seen a false glitter of gaudy life,&mdash;a glitter
+which is damnably false,&mdash;and which, alas, has been more often
+portrayed in glowing colours, for the injury of young girls, than
+have those horrors, which ought to deter, with the dark shadowings
+which belong to them.</p>
+
+<p>To write in fiction of one so fallen as the noblest of her sex, as
+one to be rewarded because of her weakness, as one whose life is
+happy, bright, and glorious, is certainly to allure to vice and
+misery. But it may perhaps be possible that if the matter be handled
+with truth to life, some girl, who would have been thoughtless, may
+be made thoughtful, or some parent's heart may be softened. It may
+also at last be felt that this misery is worthy of alleviation, as is
+every misery to which humanity is subject.</p>
+
+<p class="ind18">A. T.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="narrow" />
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h3>CONTENTS</h3>
+<div class="center">
+<table style="margin: 0 auto" cellpadding="1">
+<tr><td align="right" valign="top">I.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>      <td align="left"><a href="#c1" >BULLHAMPTON</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right" valign="top">II.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>     <td align="left"><a href="#c2" >FLO'S RED BALL</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right" valign="top">III.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>    <td align="left"><a href="#c3" >SAM BRATTLE</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right" valign="top">IV.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>     <td align="left"><a href="#c4" >THERE IS NO ONE ELSE</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right" valign="top">V.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>      <td align="left"><a href="#c5" >THE MILLER</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right" valign="top">VI.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>     <td align="left"><a href="#c6" >BRATTLE'S MILL</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right" valign="top">VII.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>    <td align="left"><a href="#c7" >THE MILLER'S WIFE</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right" valign="top">VIII.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>   <td align="left"><a href="#c8" >THE LAST DAY</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right" valign="top">IX.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>     <td align="left"><a href="#c9" >MISS MARRABLE</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right" valign="top">X.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>      <td align="left"><a href="#c10" >CRUNCH'EM CAN'T BE HAD</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right" valign="top">XI.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>     <td align="left"><a href="#c11" >DON'T YOU BE AFEARD ABOUT ME</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right" valign="top">XII.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>    <td align="left"><a href="#c12" >BONE'M AND HIS MASTER</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right" valign="top">XIII.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>   <td align="left"><a href="#c13" >CAPTAIN MARRABLE AND HIS FATHER</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right" valign="top">XIV.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>    <td align="left"><a href="#c14" >COUSINHOOD</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right" valign="top">XV.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>     <td align="left"><a href="#c15" >THE POLICE AT FAULT</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right" valign="top">XVI.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>    <td align="left"><a href="#c16" >MISS LOWTHER ASKS FOR ADVICE</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right" valign="top">XVII.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>   <td align="left"><a href="#c17" >THE MARQUIS OF TROWBRIDGE</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right" valign="top">XVIII.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>  <td align="left"><a href="#c18" >BLANK PAPER</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right" valign="top">XIX.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>    <td align="left"><a href="#c19" >SAM BRATTLE RETURNS HOME</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right" valign="top">XX.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>     <td align="left"><a href="#c20" >I HAVE A JUPITER OF MY OWN NOW</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right" valign="top">XXI.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>    <td align="left"><a href="#c21" >WHAT PARSON JOHN THINKS ABOUT IT</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right" valign="top">XXII.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>   <td align="left"><a href="#c22" >WHAT THE FENWICKS THOUGHT ABOUT IT</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right" valign="top">XXIII.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>  <td align="left"><a href="#c23" >WHAT MR. GILMORE THOUGHT ABOUT IT</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right" valign="top">XXIV.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>   <td align="left"><a href="#c24" >THE REV. HENRY FITZACKERLEY CHAMBERLAINE</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right" valign="top">XXV.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>    <td align="left"><a href="#c25" >CARRY BRATTLE</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right" valign="top">XXVI.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>   <td align="left"><a href="#c26" >THE TURNOVER CORRESPONDENCE</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right" valign="top">XXVII.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>  <td align="left"><a href="#c27" >"I NEVER SHAMED NONE OF THEM"</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right" valign="top">XXVIII.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td> <td align="left"><a href="#c28" >MRS. BRATTLE'S JOURNEY</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right" valign="top">XXIX.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>   <td align="left"><a href="#c29" >THE BULL AT LORING</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right" valign="top">XXX.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>    <td align="left"><a href="#c30" >THE AUNT AND THE UNCLE</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right" valign="top">XXXI.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>   <td align="left"><a href="#c31" >MARY LOWTHER FEELS HER WAY</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right" valign="top">XXXII.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>  <td align="left"><a href="#c32" >MR. GILMORE'S SUCCESS</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right" valign="top">XXXIII.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td> <td align="left"><a href="#c33" >FAREWELL</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right" valign="top">XXXIV.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>  <td align="left"><a href="#c34" >BULLHAMPTON NEWS</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right" valign="top">XXXV.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>   <td align="left"><a href="#c35" >MR. PUDDLEHAM'S NEW CHAPEL</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right" valign="top">XXXVI.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>  <td align="left"><a href="#c36" >SAM BRATTLE GOES OFF AGAIN</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right" valign="top">XXXVII.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td> <td align="left"><a href="#c37" >FEMALE MARTYRDOM</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right" valign="top">XXXVIII.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td><td align="left"><a href="#c38" >A LOVER'S MADNESS</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right" valign="top">XXXIX.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>  <td align="left"><a href="#c39" >THE THREE HONEST MEN</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right" valign="top">XL.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>     <td align="left"><a href="#c40" >TROTTER'S BUILDINGS</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right" valign="top">XLI.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>    <td align="left"><a href="#c41" >STARTUP FARM</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right" valign="top">XLII.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>   <td align="left"><a href="#c42" >MR. QUICKENHAM, Q.C.</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right" valign="top">XLIII.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>  <td align="left"><a href="#c43" >EASTER AT TURNOVER CASTLE</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right" valign="top">XLIV.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>   <td align="left"><a href="#c44" >THE MARRABLES OF DUNRIPPLE</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right" valign="top">XLV.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>    <td align="left"><a href="#c45" >WHAT SHALL I DO WITH MYSELF?</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right" valign="top">XLVI.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>   <td align="left"><a href="#c46" >MR. JAY OF WARMINSTER</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right" valign="top">XLVII.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>  <td align="left"><a href="#c47" >SAM BRATTLE IS WANTED</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right" valign="top">XLVIII.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td> <td align="left"><a href="#c48" >MARY LOWTHER RETURNS TO BULLHAMPTON</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right" valign="top">XLIX.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>   <td align="left"><a href="#c49" >MARY LOWTHER'S DOOM</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right" valign="top">L.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>      <td align="left"><a href="#c50" >MARY LOWTHER INSPECTS HER FUTURE HOME</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right" valign="top">LI.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>     <td align="left"><a href="#c51" >THE GRINDER AND HIS COMRADE</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right" valign="top">LII.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>    <td align="left"><a href="#c52" >CARRY BRATTLE'S JOURNEY</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right" valign="top">LIII.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>   <td align="left"><a href="#c53" >THE FATTED CALF</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right" valign="top">LIV.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>    <td align="left"><a href="#c54" >MR. GILMORE'S RUBIES</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right" valign="top">LV.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>     <td align="left"><a href="#c55" >GLEBE LAND</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right" valign="top">LVI.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>    <td align="left"><a href="#c56" >THE VICAR'S VENGEANCE</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right" valign="top">LVII.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>   <td align="left"><a href="#c57" >OIL IS TO BE THROWN UPON THE WATERS</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right" valign="top">LVIII.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>  <td align="left"><a href="#c58" >EDITH BROWNLOW'S DREAM</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right" valign="top">LIX.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>    <td align="left"><a href="#c59" >NEWS FROM DUNRIPPLE</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right" valign="top">LX.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>     <td align="left"><a href="#c60" >LORD ST. GEORGE IS VERY CUNNING</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right" valign="top">LXI.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>    <td align="left"><a href="#c61" >MARY LOWTHER'S TREACHERY</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right" valign="top">LXII.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>   <td align="left"><a href="#c62" >UP AT THE PRIVETS</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right" valign="top">LXIII.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>  <td align="left"><a href="#c63" >THE MILLER TELLS HIS TROUBLES</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right" valign="top">LXIV.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>   <td align="left"><a href="#c64" >IF I WERE YOUR SISTER!</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right" valign="top">LXV.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>    <td align="left"><a href="#c65" >MARY LOWTHER LEAVES BULLHAMPTON</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right" valign="top">LXVI.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>   <td align="left"><a href="#c66" >AT THE MILL</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right" valign="top">LXVII.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>  <td align="left"><a href="#c67" >SIR GREGORY MARRABLE HAS A HEADACHE</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right" valign="top">LXVIII.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td> <td align="left"><a href="#c68" >THE SQUIRE IS VERY OBSTINATE</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right" valign="top">LXIX.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>   <td align="left"><a href="#c69" >THE TRIAL</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right" valign="top">LXX.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>    <td align="left"><a href="#c70" >THE FATE OF THE PUDDLEHAMITES</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right" valign="top">LXXI.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>   <td align="left"><a href="#c71" >THE END OF MARY LOWTHER'S STORY</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right" valign="top">LXXII.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>  <td align="left"><a href="#c72" >AT TURNOVER CASTLE</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right" valign="top">LXXIII.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td> <td align="left"><a href="#c73" >CONCLUSION</a></td></tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="narrow" />
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h3>LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.</h3>
+<div class="center">
+<table style="margin: 0 auto" class="small" cellpadding="4">
+<tr><td align="left"><a href="#il1" >WAITING-ROOM AT THE ASSIZE COURT.</a></td><td valign="bottom" align="right">&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>frontispiece</i></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><a href="#il2" >"YOU SHOULD GIVE HIM AN ANSWER,<br />DEAR, ONE WAY OR THE OTHER."</a></td><td valign="bottom" align="right">&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Chapter II</i></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><a href="#il3" >"I THOUGHT I SHOULD CATCH YOU<br />IDLE JUST AT THIS MOMENT,"<br />SAID THE CLERGYMAN.</a></td><td valign="bottom" align="right">&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Chapter VI</i></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><a href="#il4" >MR. FENWICK CAME ROUND FROM FARMER<br />TRUMBULL'S SIDE OF THE CHURCH, AND<br />GOT OVER THE STILE INTO THE CHURCHYARD.</a></td><td valign="bottom" align="right">&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Chapter VIII</i></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><a href="#il5" >"I HOPE IT WILL BE ALL RIGHT NOW,<br />MR. FENWICK," THE GIRL SAID.</a></td><td valign="bottom" align="right">&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Chapter XI</i></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><a href="#il6" >"HOW DARE YOU MENTION MY<br />DAUGHTERS?"</a></td><td valign="bottom" align="right">&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Chapter XVII</i></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><a href="#il7" >"IT IS ALL BLANK PAPER WITH YOU?"</a></td><td valign="bottom" align="right">&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Chapter XVIII</i></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><a href="#il8" >"I HAVE COME TO SAY A WORD, IF I CAN,<br />TO COMFORT YOU."</a></td><td valign="bottom" align="right">&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Chapter XXIII</i></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><a href="#il9" >"CARRY," HE SAID, COMING BACK TO HER,<br />"IT WASN'T ALL FOR HIM THAT I CAME."</a></td><td valign="bottom" align="right">&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Chapter XXV</i></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><a href="#il10" >PARSON JOHN AND WALTER MARRABLE.</a></td><td valign="bottom" align="right">&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Chapter XXIX</i></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><a href="#il11" >MARY LOWTHER WRITES TO WALTER MARRABLE.</a></td><td valign="bottom" align="right">&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Chapter XXXIII</i></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><a href="#il12" >SITE OF MR. PUDDLEHAM'S NEW CHAPEL.</a></td><td valign="bottom" align="right">&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Chapter XXXV</i></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><a href="#il13" >"DO COME IN, HARRY."</a></td><td valign="bottom" align="right">&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Chapter XXXVIII</i></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><a href="#il14" >"I DARE SAY NOT," SAID MR. QUICKENHAM.</a></td><td valign="bottom" align="right">&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Chapter XLII</i></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><a href="#il15" >SUNDAY MORNING AT DUNRIPPLE.</a></td><td valign="bottom" align="right">&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Chapter XLIV</i></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><a href="#il16" >"WHO ARE YOU, SIR, THAT YOU SHOULD<br />INTERPRET MY WORDS?"</a></td><td valign="bottom" align="right">&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Chapter XLVII</i></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><a href="#il17" >CARRY BRATTLE.</a></td><td valign="bottom" align="right">&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Chapter LII</i></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><a href="#il18" >"IF I MAY BIDE WITH YOU,&mdash;IF I MAY BIDE<br />WITH YOU&mdash;."</a></td><td valign="bottom" align="right">&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Chapter LIII</i></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><a href="#il19" >MR. QUICKENHAM'S LETTER DISCUSSED.</a></td><td valign="bottom" align="right">&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Chapter LV</i></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><a href="#il20" >SHE HAD BROUGHT HIM OUT A CUP OF COFFEE.</a></td><td valign="bottom" align="right">&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Chapter LVIII</i></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><a href="#il21" >"IT'S IN HERE, MUSTER FENWICK,&mdash;IN HERE."</a></td><td valign="bottom" align="right">&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Chapter LXIII</i></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><a href="#il22" >"OH, FATHER," SHE SAID, "I WILL BE GOOD."</a></td><td valign="bottom" align="right">&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Chapter LXVI</i></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><a href="#il23" >THE DRAWING-ROOM AT TURNOVER CASTLE.</a></td><td valign="bottom" align="right">&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>Chapter LXXII</i></td></tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="narrow" />
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h4>THE</h4>
+<h2>VICAR OF BULLHAMPTON.</h2>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<hr class="narrow" />
+
+<p><a name="c1" id="c1"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>CHAPTER I.</h3>
+<h4>BULLHAMPTON.<br />&nbsp;</h4>
+
+<p><img class="left" src="images/ch1a.jpg" width="310" alt="Illustration" />
+I am disposed to believe that no novel reader in England has seen the
+little town of Bullhampton, in Wiltshire, except such novel readers
+as live there, and those others, very few in number, who visit it
+perhaps four times a year for the purposes of trade, and who are
+known as commercial gentlemen. Bullhampton is seventeen miles from
+Salisbury, eleven from Marlborough, nine from Westbury, seven from
+Haylesbury, and five from the nearest railroad station, which is
+called Bullhampton Road, and lies on the line from Salisbury to
+Yeovil. It is not quite on Salisbury Plain, but probably was so once,
+when Salisbury Plain was wider than it is now. Whether it should be
+called a small town or a large village I cannot say. It has no mayor,
+and no market, but it has a fair. There rages a feud in Bullhampton
+touching this want of a market, as there are certain Bullhamptonites
+who aver that the charter giving all rights of a market to
+Bullhampton does exist; and that at one period in its history the
+market existed also,&mdash;for a year or two; but the three bakers and two
+butchers are opposed to change; and the patriots of the place, though
+they declaim on the matter over their evening pipes and
+gin-and-water, have not enough of matutinal zeal to carry out their
+purpose. Bullhampton is situated on a little river, which meanders
+through the chalky ground, and has a quiet, slow, dreamy prettiness
+of its own. A mile above the town,&mdash;for we will call it a town,&mdash;the
+stream divides itself into many streamlets, and there is a district
+called the Water Meads, in which bridges are more frequent than
+trustworthy, in which there are hundreds of little sluice-gates for
+regulating the irrigation, and a growth of grass which is a source of
+much anxiety and considerable trouble to the farmers. There is a
+water-mill here, too, very low, with ever a floury, mealy look, with
+a pasty look often, as the flour becomes damp with the spray of the
+water as it is thrown by the mill-wheel. It seems to be a tattered,
+shattered, ramshackle concern, but it has been in the same family for
+many years; and as the family has not hitherto been in distress, it
+may be supposed that the mill still affords a fair means of
+livelihood. The Brattles,&mdash;for Jacob Brattle is the miller's
+name,&mdash;have ever been known as men who paid their way, and were able
+to hold up their heads. But nevertheless Jacob Brattle is ever at war
+with his landlord in regard to repairs wanted for his mill, and Mr.
+Gilmore, the landlord in question, declares that he wishes that the
+Avon would some night run so high as to carry off the mill
+altogether. Bullhampton is very quiet. There is no special trade in
+the place. Its interests are altogether agricultural. It has no
+newspaper. Its tendencies are altogether conservative. It is a good
+deal given to religion; and the Primitive Methodists have a very
+strong holding there, although in all Wiltshire there is not a
+clergyman more popular in his own parish than the Rev. Frank Fenwick.
+He himself, in his inner heart, rather likes his rival, Mr.
+Puddleham, the dissenting minister; because Mr. Puddleham is an
+earnest man, who, in spite of the intensity of his ignorance, is
+efficacious among the poor. But Mr. Fenwick is bound to keep up the
+fight; and Mr. Puddleham considers it to be his duty to put down Mr.
+Fenwick and the Church Establishment altogether.</p>
+
+<p>The men of Bullhampton, and the women also, are aware that the glory
+has departed from them, in that Bullhampton was once a borough, and
+returned two members to Parliament. No borough more close, or shall
+we say more rotten, ever existed. It was not that the Marquis of
+Trowbridge had, what has often delicately been called, an interest in
+it; but he held it absolutely in his breeches pocket, to do with it
+as he liked; and it had been the liking of the late Marquis to sell
+one of the seats at every election to the highest bidder on his side
+in politics. Nevertheless, the people of Bullhampton had gloried in
+being a borough, and the shame, or at least the regret of their
+downfall, had not yet altogether passed away when the tidings of a
+new Reform Bill came upon them. The people of Bullhampton are
+notoriously slow to learn, and slow to forget. It was told of a
+farmer of Bullhampton, in old days, that he asked what had become of
+Charles I., when told that Charles II. had been restored. Cromwell
+had come and gone, and had not disturbed him at Bullhampton.</p>
+
+<p>At Bullhampton there is no public building, except the church, which
+indeed is a very handsome edifice with a magnificent tower, a thing
+to go to see, and almost as worthy of a visit as its neighbour the
+cathedral at Salisbury. The body of the church is somewhat low, but
+its yellow-gray colour is perfect, and there is, moreover, a Norman
+door, and there are Early English windows in the aisle, and a
+perfection of perpendicular architecture in the chancel, all of which
+should bring many visitors to Bullhampton; and there are brasses in
+the nave, very curious, and one or two tombs of the Gilmore family,
+very rare in their construction, and the churchyard is large and
+green, and bowery, with the Avon flowing close under it, and nooks in
+it which would make a man wish to die that he might be buried there.
+The church and churchyard of Bullhampton are indeed perfect, and yet
+but few people go to see it. It has not as yet had its own bard to
+sing its praises. Properly it is called Bullhampton Monachorum, the
+living having belonged to the friars of Chiltern. The great tithes
+now go to the Earl of Todmorden, who has no other interest in the
+place whatever, and who never saw it. The benefice belongs to St.
+John's, Oxford, and as the vicarage is not worth more than &pound;400 a
+year, it happens that a clergyman generally accepts it before he has
+lived for twenty or thirty years in the common room of his college.
+Mr. Fenwick took it on his marriage, when he was about twenty-seven,
+and Bullhampton has been lucky.</p>
+
+<p>The bulk of the parish belongs to the Marquis of Trowbridge, who,
+however, has no residence within ten miles of it. The squire of the
+parish is Squire Gilmore,&mdash;Harry Gilmore,&mdash;and he possesses every
+acre in it that is not owned by the Marquis. With the village, or
+town as it may be, Mr. Gilmore has no concern; but he owns a large
+tract of the water meads, and again has a farm or two up on the downs
+as you go towards Chiltern. But they lie out of the parish of
+Bullhampton. Altogether he is a man of about fifteen hundred a year,
+and as he is not as yet married, many a Wiltshire mother's eye is
+turned towards Hampton Privets, as Mr. Gilmore's house is, somewhat
+fantastically, named.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Gilmore's character must be made to develope itself in these
+pages,&mdash;if such developing may be accomplished. He is to be our
+hero,&mdash;or at least one of two. The author will not, in these early
+words, declare that the squire will be his favourite hero, as he will
+wish that his readers should form their own opinions on that matter.
+At this period he was a man somewhat over thirty,&mdash;perhaps
+thirty-three years of age, who had done fairly well at Harrow and at
+Oxford, but had never done enough to make his friends regard him as a
+swan. He still read a good deal; but he shot and fished more than he
+read, and had become, since his residence at the Privets, very fond
+of the outside of his books. Nevertheless, he went on buying books,
+and was rather proud of his library. He had travelled a good deal,
+and was a politician,&mdash;somewhat scandalising his own tenants and
+other Bullhamptonites by voting for the liberal candidates for his
+division of the county. The Marquis of Trowbridge did not know him,
+but regarded him as an objectionable person, who did not understand
+the nature of the duties which devolved upon him as a country
+gentleman; and the Marquis himself was always spoken of by Mr.
+Gilmore as&mdash;an idiot. On these various grounds the squire has
+hitherto regarded himself as being a little in advance of other
+squires, and has, perhaps, given himself more credit than he has
+deserved for intellectuality. But he is a man with a good heart, and
+a pure mind, generous, desirous of being just, somewhat sparing of
+that which is his own, never desirous of that which is another's. He
+is good-looking, though, perhaps, somewhat ordinary in appearance;
+tall, strong, with dark-brown hair, and dark-brown whiskers, with
+small, quick grey eyes, and teeth which are almost too white and too
+perfect for a man. Perhaps it is his greatest fault that he thinks
+that as a liberal politician and as an English country gentleman he
+has combined in his own position all that is most desirable upon
+earth. To have the acres without the acre-laden brains, is, he
+thinks, everything.</p>
+
+<p>And now it may be as well told at once that Mr. Gilmore is over head
+and ears in love with a young lady to whom he has offered his hand
+and all that can be made to appertain to the future mistress of
+Hampton Privets. And the lady is one who has nothing to give in
+return but her hand, and her heart, and herself. The neighbours all
+round the country have been saying for the last five years that Harry
+Gilmore was looking out for an heiress; for it has always been told
+of Harry, especially among those who have opposed him in politics,
+that he had a keen eye for the main chance. But Mary Lowther has not,
+and never can have, a penny with which to make up for any deficiency
+in her own personal attributes. But Mary is a lady, and Harry Gilmore
+thinks her the sweetest woman on whom his eye ever rested. Whatever
+resolutions as to fortune-hunting he may have made,&mdash;though probably
+none were ever made,&mdash;they have all now gone to the winds. He is so
+absolutely in love that nothing in the world is, to him, at present
+worth thinking about except Mary Lowther. I do not doubt that he
+would vote for a conservative candidate if Mary Lowther so ordered
+him; or consent to go and live in New York if Mary Lowther would
+accept him on no other condition. All Bullhampton parish is nothing
+to him at the present moment, except as far as it is connected with
+Mary Lowther. Hampton Privets is dear to him only as far as it can be
+made to look attractive in the eyes of Mary Lowther. The mill is to
+be repaired, though he knows he will never get any interest on the
+outlay, because Mary Lowther has said that Bullhampton water-meads
+would be destroyed if the mill were to tumble down. He has drawn for
+himself mental pictures of Mary Lowther till he has invested her with
+every charm and grace and virtue that can adorn a woman. In very
+truth he believes her to be perfect. He is actually and absolutely in
+love. Mary Lowther has hitherto neither accepted nor rejected him. In
+a very few lines further on we will tell how the matter stands
+between them.</p>
+
+<p>It has already been told that the Rev. Frank Fenwick is Vicar of
+Bullhampton. Perhaps he was somewhat guided in his taking of the
+living by the fact that Harry Gilmore, the squire of the parish, had
+been his very intimate friend at Oxford. Fenwick, at the period with
+which we are about to begin our story, had been six years at
+Bullhampton, and had been married about five and a half. Of him
+something has already been said, and perhaps it may be only necessary
+further to state that he is a tall, fair-haired man, already becoming
+somewhat bald on the top of his head, with bright eyes, and the
+slightest possible amount of whiskers, and a look about his nose and
+mouth which seems to imply that he could be severe if he were not so
+thoroughly good-humoured. He has more of breeding in his appearance
+than his friend,&mdash;a show of higher blood; though whence comes such
+show, and how one discerns that appearance, few of us can tell. He
+was a man who read more and thought more than Harry Gilmore, though
+given much to athletics and very fond of field sports. It shall only
+further be said of Frank Fenwick that he esteemed both his
+churchwardens and his bishop, and was afraid of neither.</p>
+
+<p>His wife had been a Miss Balfour, from Loring, in Gloucestershire,
+and had had some considerable fortune. She was now the mother of four
+children, and, as Fenwick used to say, might have fourteen for
+anything he knew. But as he also had possessed some small means of
+his own, there was no poverty, or prospect of poverty at the
+vicarage, and the babies were made welcome as they came. Mrs. Fenwick
+is as good a specimen of an English country parson's wife as you
+shall meet in a county,&mdash;gay, good-looking, fond of the society
+around her, with a little dash of fun, knowing in blankets and
+corduroys and coals and tea; knowing also as to beer and gin and
+tobacco; acquainted with every man and woman in the parish; thinking
+her husband to be quite as good as the squire in regard to position,
+and to be infinitely superior to the squire, or any other man in the
+world, in regard to his personal self;&mdash;a handsome, pleasant,
+well-dressed lady, who has no nonsense about her. Such a one was, and
+is, Mrs. Fenwick.</p>
+
+<p>Now the Balfours were considerable people at Loring, though their
+property was not county property; and it was always considered that
+Janet Balfour might have done better than she did, in a worldly point
+of view. Of that, however, little had been said at Loring, because it
+soon became known there that she and her husband stood rather well in
+the country round about Bullhampton; and when she asked Mary Lowther
+to come and stay with her for six months, Mary Lowther's aunt, Miss
+Marrable, had nothing to say against the arrangement, although she
+herself was a most particular old lady, and always remembered that
+Mary Lowther was third or fourth cousin to some earl in Scotland.
+Nothing more shall be said of Miss Marrable at present, as it is
+expedient, for the sake of the story, that the reader should fix his
+attention on Bullhampton till he find himself quite at home there. I
+would wish him to know his way among the water meads, to be quite
+alive to the fact that the lodge of Hampton Privets is a mile and a
+quarter to the north of Bullhampton church, and half a mile across
+the fields west from Brattle's mill; that Mr. Fenwick's parsonage
+adjoins the churchyard, being thus a little farther from Hampton
+Privets than the church; and that there commences Bullhampton street,
+with its inn,&mdash;the Trowbridge Arms, its four public-houses, its three
+bakers, and its two butchers. The bounds of the parsonage run down to
+the river, so that the Vicar can catch his trout from his own
+bank,&mdash;though he much prefers to catch them at distances which admit
+of the appurtenances of sport.</p>
+
+<p>Now there must be one word of Mary Lowther, and then the story shall
+be commenced. She had come to the vicarage in May, intending to stay
+a month, and it was now August, and she had been already three months
+with her friend. Everybody said that she was staying because she
+intended to become the mistress of Hampton Privets. It was a month
+since Harry Gilmore had formally made his offer, and as she had not
+refused him, and as she still stayed on, the folk of Bullhampton were
+justified in their conclusions. She was a tall girl, with dark brown
+hair, which she wore fastened in a knot at the back of her head,
+after the simplest fashion. Her eyes were large and grey, and full of
+lustre; but they were not eyes which would make you say that Mary
+Lowther was especially a bright-eyed girl. They were eyes, however,
+which could make you think, when they looked at you, that if Mary
+Lowther would only like you, how happy your lot would be,&mdash;that if
+she would love you, the world would have nothing higher or better to
+offer. If you judged her face by any rules of beauty, you would say
+that it was too thin; but feeling its influence with sympathy, you
+could never wish it to be changed. Her nose and mouth were perfect.
+How many little noses there are on young women's faces which of
+themselves cannot be said to be things of beauty, or joys for ever,
+although they do very well in their places! There is the softness and
+colour of youth, and perhaps a dash of fun, and the eyes above are
+bright, and the lips below alluring. In the midst of such sweet
+charms, what does it matter that the nose be puggish,&mdash;or even a nose
+of putty, such as you think you might improve in the original
+material by a squeeze of your thumb and forefinger? But with Mary
+Lowther her nose itself was a feature of exquisite beauty, a feature
+that could be eloquent with pity, reverence, or scorn. The curves of
+the nostrils, with their almost transparent membranes, told of the
+working of the mind within, as every portion of human face should
+tell&mdash;in some degree. And the mouth was equally expressive, though
+the lips were thin. It was a mouth to watch, and listen to, and read
+with curious interest, rather than a mouth to kiss. Not but that the
+desire to kiss would come, when there might be a hope to kiss with
+favour;&mdash;but they were lips which no man would think to ravage in
+boisterous play. It might have been said that there was a want of
+capability for passion in her face, had it not been for the
+well-marked dimple in her little chin,&mdash;that soft couch in which one
+may be always sure, when one sees it, that some little imp of Love
+lies hidden.</p>
+
+<p>It has already been said that Mary Lowther was tall,&mdash;taller than
+common. Her back was as lovely a form of womanhood as man's eye ever
+measured and appreciated. Her movements, which were never naturally
+quick, had a grace about them which touched men and women alike. It
+was the very poetry of motion; but its chief beauty consisted in
+this, that it was what it was by no effort of her own. We have all
+seen those efforts, and it may be that many of us have liked them
+when they have been made on our own behalf. But no man as yet could
+ever have felt himself to be so far flattered by Miss Lowther. Her
+dress was very plain; as it became her that it should be, for she was
+living on the kindness of an aunt who was herself not a rich woman.
+But it may be doubted whether dress could have added much to her
+charms.</p>
+
+<p>She was now turned one-and-twenty, and though, doubtless, there were
+young men at Loring who had sighed for her smiles, no young man had
+sighed with any efficacy. It must be acknowledged, indeed, that she
+was not a girl for whom the most susceptible of young men would sigh.
+Young men given to sigh are generally attracted by some outward and
+visible sign of softness which may be taken as an indication that
+sighing will produce some result, however small. At Loring it was
+said that Mary Lowther was cold and repellent, and, on that account,
+one who might very probably descend to the shades as an old maid in
+spite of the beauty of which she was the acknowledged possessor. No
+enemy, no friend, had ever accused her of being a flirt.</p>
+
+<p>Such as she was, Harry Gilmore's passion for her much astonished his
+friends. Those who knew him best had thought that, as regarded his
+fate matrimonial,&mdash;or non-matrimonial,&mdash;there were three chances
+before him: he might carry out their presumed intention of marrying
+money; or he might become the sudden spoil of the bow and spear of
+some red-cheeked lass; or he might walk on as an old bachelor, too
+cautious to be caught at all. But none believed that he would become
+the victim of a grand passion for a poor, reticent, high-bred,
+high-minded specimen of womanhood. Such, however, was now his
+condition.</p>
+
+<p>He had an uncle, a clergyman, living at Salisbury, a prebendary
+there, who was a man of the world, and in whom Harry trusted more
+than in any other member of his own family. His mother had been the
+sister of the Rev. Henry Fitzackerly Chamberlaine; and as Mr.
+Chamberlaine had never married, much of his solicitude was bestowed
+upon his nephew.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't, my dear fellow," had been the prebendary's advice when he was
+taken over to see Miss Lowther. "She is a lady, no doubt; but you
+would never be your own master, and you would be a poor man till you
+died. An easy temper and a little money are almost as common in our
+rank of life as destitution and obstinacy." On the day after this
+advice was given, Harry Gilmore made his formal offer.</p>
+
+
+<p><a name="c2" id="c2"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>CHAPTER II.</h3>
+<h4>FLO'S RED BALL.<br />&nbsp;</h4>
+
+
+<p>"You should give him an answer, dear, one way or the other." These
+wise words were spoken by Mrs. Fenwick to her friend as they sat
+together, with their work in their hands, on a garden seat under a
+cedar tree. It was an August evening after dinner, and the Vicar was
+out about his parish. The two elder children were playing in the
+garden, and the two young women were alone together.</p>
+
+
+<div class="center"><a name="il2" id="il2"></a>
+<table style="margin: 0 auto" cellpadding="4px">
+  <tr>
+    <td align="center">
+      <a href="images/il2.jpg">
+      <img src="images/il2-t.jpg" width="325"
+      alt='"You should give him an answer,
+      dear, one way or the other."' /></a>
+    </td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="center">
+      <span class="caption">"You should give him an answer,
+      dear, one way or the other."<br />
+      Click to <a href="images/il2.jpg">ENLARGE</a></span>
+    </td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>"Of course I shall give him an answer. What answer does he wish?"</p>
+
+<p>"You know what answer he wishes. If any man was ever in earnest he
+is."</p>
+
+<p>"Am I not doing the best I can for him then in waiting&mdash;to see
+whether I can say yes?"</p>
+
+<p>"It cannot be well for him to be in suspense on such a matter; and,
+dear Mary, it cannot be well for you either. One always feels that
+when a girl bids a man to wait, she will take him after a while. It
+always comes to that. If you had been at home at Loring, the time
+would not have been much; but, being so near to him, and seeing him
+every day, must be bad. You must both be in a state of fever."</p>
+
+<p>"Then I will go back to Loring."</p>
+
+<p>"No; not now, till you have positively made up your mind, and given
+him an answer one way or the other. You could not go now and leave
+him in doubt. Take him at once, and have done with it. He is as good
+as gold."</p>
+
+<p>In answer to this, Mary for a while said nothing, but went sedulously
+on with her work.</p>
+
+<p>"Mamma," said a little girl, running up, followed by a nursery-maid,
+"the ball's in the water!"</p>
+
+<p>The child was a beautiful fair-haired little darling about
+four-and-a-half years old, and a boy, a year younger, and a little
+shorter, and a little stouter, was toddling after her.</p>
+
+<p>"The ball in the water, Flo! Can't Jim get it out?"</p>
+
+<p>"Jim's gone, mamma."</p>
+
+<p>Then Jane, the nursery-maid, proceeded to explain that the ball had
+rolled in and had been carried down the stream to some bushes, and
+that it was caught there just out of reach of all that she, Jane,
+could do with a long stick for its recovery. Jim, the gardener, was
+not to be found; and they were in despair lest the ball should become
+wet through and should perish.</p>
+
+<p>Mary at once saw her opportunity of escape,&mdash;her opportunity for that
+five minutes of thought by herself which she needed. "I'll come, Flo,
+and see what can be done," said Mary.</p>
+
+<p>"Do; 'cause you is so big," said the little girl.</p>
+
+<p>"We'll see if my long arms won't do as well as Jim's," said Mary;
+"only Jim would go in, perhaps, which I certainly shall not do." Then
+she took Flo by the hand, and together they ran down to the margin of
+the river.</p>
+
+<p>There lay the treasure, a huge red inflated ball, just stopped in its
+downward current by a short projecting stick. Jim could have got it
+certainly, because he could have suspended himself over the stream
+from a bough, and could have dislodged the ball, and have floated it
+on to the bank.</p>
+
+<p>"Lean over, Mary,&mdash;a great deal, and we'll hold you," said Flo, to
+whom her ball was at this moment worth any effort. Mary did lean
+over, and poked at it, and at last thought that she would trust
+herself to the bough, as Jim would have done, and became more and
+more venturous, and at last touched the ball, and then, at
+last,&mdash;fell into the river! Immediately there was a scream and a
+roar, and a splashing about of skirts and petticoats, and by the time
+that Mrs. Fenwick was on the bank, Mary Lowther had extricated
+herself, and had triumphantly brought out Flo's treasure with her.</p>
+
+<p>"Mary, are you hurt?" said her friend.</p>
+
+<p>"What should hurt me? Oh dear, oh dear! I never fell into a river
+before. My darling Flo, don't be unhappy. It's such good fun. Only
+you mustn't fall in yourself, till you're as big as I am." Flo was in
+an agony of tears, not deigning to look at the rescued ball.</p>
+
+<p>"You do not mean that your head has been under?" said Mrs. Fenwick.</p>
+
+<p>"My face was, and I felt so odd. For about half a moment I had a
+sound of Ophelia in my ears. Then I was laughing at myself for being
+such a goose."</p>
+
+<p>"You'd better come up and go to bed, dear; and I'll get you something
+warm."</p>
+
+<p>"I won't go to bed, and I won't have anything warm; but I will change
+my clothes. What an adventure! What will Mr. Fenwick say?"</p>
+
+<p>"What will Mr. Gilmore say?" To this Mary Lowther made no answer, but
+went straight up to the house, and into her room, and changed her
+clothes.</p>
+
+<p>While she was there Fenwick and Gilmore both appeared at the open
+window of the drawing-room in which Mrs. Fenwick was sitting. She had
+known well enough that Harry Gilmore would not let the evening pass
+without coming to the vicarage, and at one time had hoped to persuade
+Mary Lowther to give her verdict on this very day. Both she and her
+husband were painfully anxious that Harry might succeed. Fenwick had
+loved the man dearly for many years, and Janet Fenwick had loved him
+since she had known him as her husband's friend. They both felt that
+he was showing more of manhood than they had expected from him in the
+persistency of his love, and that he deserved his reward. And they
+both believed also that for Mary herself it would be a prosperous and
+a happy marriage. And then, where is the married woman who does not
+wish that the maiden friend who comes to stay with her should find a
+husband in her house? The parson and his wife were altogether of one
+mind in this matter, and thought that Mary Lowther ought to be made
+to give herself to Harry Gilmore.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you think has happened?" said Mrs. Fenwick, coming to the
+window, which opened down to the ground. "Mary Lowther has fallen
+into the river."</p>
+
+<p>"Fallen where?" shouted Gilmore, putting up both his hands, and
+seeming to prepare himself to rush away among the river gods in
+search of his love.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't be alarmed, Mr. Gilmore, she's upstairs, quite safe,&mdash;only she
+has had a ducking." Then the circumstances were explained, and the
+papa declared magisterially that Flo must not play any more with her
+ball near the river,&mdash;an order to which it was not probable that much
+close attention would ever be paid.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose Miss Lowther will have gone to bed?" said Gilmore.</p>
+
+<p>"On the contrary, I expect her every moment. I suggested bed, and
+warm drinks, and cossetting; but she would have none of it. She
+scrambled out all by herself, and seemed to think it very good fun."</p>
+
+<p>"Come in at any rate and have some tea," said the Vicar. "If you
+start before eleven, I'll walk half the way back with you."</p>
+
+<p>In the mean time, in spite of her accident, Mary had gained the
+opportunity that she had required. The point for self-meditation was
+not so much whether she would or would not accept Mr. Gilmore now, as
+that other point;&mdash;was she or was she not wrong to keep him in
+suspense. She knew very well that she would not accept him now. It
+seemed to her that a girl should know a man very thoroughly before
+she would be justified in trusting herself altogether to his hands,
+and she thought that her knowledge of Mr. Gilmore was insufficient.
+It might however be the case that in such circumstances duty required
+her to give him at once an unhesitating answer. She did not find
+herself to be a bit nearer to knowing him and to loving him than she
+was a month since. Her friend Janet had complained again and again of
+the suspense to which she was subjecting the man;&mdash;but she knew on
+the other hand that her friend Janet did this in her intense anxiety
+to promote the match. Was it wrong to say to the man&mdash;"I will wait
+and try?" Her friend told her that to say that she would wait and
+try, was in truth to say that she would take him at some future
+time;&mdash;that any girl who said so had almost committed herself to such
+a decision;&mdash;that the very fact that she was waiting and trying to
+love a man ought to bind her to the man at last. Such certainly had
+not been her own idea. As far as she could at present look into her
+own future feelings, she did not think that she could ever bring
+herself to say that she would be this man's wife. There was a
+solemnity about the position which had never come fully home to her
+before she had been thus placed. Everybody around her told her that
+the man's happiness was really bound up in her reply. If this were
+so,&mdash;and she in truth believed that it was so,&mdash;was she not bound to
+give him every chance in her power? And yet because she still
+doubted, she was told by her friend that she was behaving badly! She
+would believe her friend, would confess her fault, and would tell her
+lover in what most respectful words of denial she could mould, that
+she would not be his wife. For herself personally, there would be no
+sorrow in this, and no regret.</p>
+
+<p>Her ducking had given her time for all this thought; and then, having
+so decided, she went downstairs. She was met, of course, with various
+inquiries about her bath. Mr. Gilmore was all pity, as though the
+accident were the most serious thing in the world. Mr. Fenwick was
+all mirth, as though there had never been a better joke. Mrs.
+Fenwick, who was perhaps unwise in her impatience, was specially
+anxious that her two guests might be left together. She did not
+believe that Mary Lowther would ever say the final No; and yet she
+thought also that, if it were so, the time had quite come in which
+Mary Lowther ought to say the final Yes.</p>
+
+<p>"Let us go down and look at the spot," she said, after tea.</p>
+
+<p>So they went down. It was a beautiful August night. There was no
+moon, and the twilight was over; but still it was not absolutely
+dark; and the air was as soft as a mother's kiss to her sleeping
+child. They walked down together, four abreast, across the lawn, and
+thence they reached a certain green orchard path that led down to the
+river. Mrs. Fenwick purposely went on with the lover, leaving Mary
+with her husband, in order that there might be no appearance of a
+scheme. She would return with her husband, and then there might be a
+ramble among the paths, and the question would be pressed, and the
+thing might be settled.</p>
+
+<p>They saw through the gloom the spot where Mary had scrambled, and the
+water which had then been bright and smiling, was now black and
+awful.</p>
+
+<p>"To think that you should have been in there!" said Harry Gilmore,
+shuddering.</p>
+
+<p>"To think that she should ever have got out again!" said the parson.</p>
+
+<p>"It looks frightful in the dark," said Mrs. Fenwick. "Come away,
+Frank. It makes me sick." And the charming schemer took her husband's
+arm, and continued the round of the garden. "I have been talking to
+her, and I think she would take him if he would ask her now."</p>
+
+<p>The other pair of course followed them. Mary's mind was so fully made
+up, at this moment, that she almost wished that her companion might
+ask the question. She had been told that she was misusing him; and
+she would misuse him no longer. She had a firm No, as it were, within
+her grasp, and a resolution that she would not be driven from it. But
+he walked on beside her talking of the water, and of the danger, and
+of the chance of a cold, and got no nearer to the subject than to bid
+her think what suffering she would have caused had she failed to
+extricate herself from the pool. He also had made up his mind.
+Something had been said by himself of a certain day when last he had
+pleaded his cause; and that day would not come round till the morrow.
+He considered himself pledged to restrain himself till then; but on
+the morrow he would come to her.</p>
+
+<p>There was a little gate which led from the parsonage garden through
+the churchyard to a field path, by which was the nearest way to
+Hampton Privets.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll leave you here," he said, "because I don't want to make Fenwick
+come out again to-night. You won't mind going up through the garden
+alone?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh dear, no."</p>
+
+<p>"And, Miss Lowther,&mdash;pray, pray take care of yourself. I hardly think
+you ought to have been out again to-night."</p>
+
+<p>"It was nothing, Mr. Gilmore. You make infinitely too much of it."</p>
+
+<p>"How can I make too much of anything that regards you? You will be at
+home to-morrow?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I fancy so."</p>
+
+<p>"Do remain at home. I intend to come down after lunch. Do remain at
+home." He held her by the hand as he spoke to her, and she promised
+him that she would obey him. He clearly was entitled to her obedience
+on such a point. Then she slowly made her way round the garden, and
+entered the house at the front door, some quarter of an hour after
+the others.</p>
+
+<p>Why should she refuse him? What was it that she wanted in the world?
+She liked him, his manners, his character, his ways, his mode of
+life, and after a fashion she liked his person. If there was more of
+love in the world than this, she did not think that it would ever
+come in her way. Up to this time of her life she had never felt any
+such feeling. If not for her own sake, why should she not do it for
+him? Why should he not be made happy? She had risked a plunge in the
+water to get Flo her ball, and she liked him better than she liked
+Flo. It seemed that her mind had been altogether changed by that
+stroll through the dark alleys.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said Janet, "how is it to be?"</p>
+
+<p>"He is to come to-morrow, and I do not know how it will be," she
+said, turning away to her own room.</p>
+
+
+<p><a name="c3" id="c3"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>CHAPTER III.</h3>
+<h4>SAM BRATTLE.<br />&nbsp;</h4>
+
+
+<p>It was about eleven o'clock when Gilmore passed through the wicket
+leading from the vicarage garden to the churchyard. The path he was
+about to take crossed simply a corner of the church precincts, as it
+came at once upon a public footway leading from the fields through
+the churchyard to the town. There was, of course, no stopping the
+public path, but Fenwick had been often advised to keep a lock on his
+own gate, as otherwise it almost seemed that the vicarage gardens
+were open to all Bullhampton. But the lock had never been put on. The
+gate was the way by which he and his family went to the church, and
+the parson was accustomed to say that however many keys there might
+be provided, he knew that there would never be one in his pocket when
+he wanted it. And he was wont to add, when his wife would tease him
+on the subject, that they who desired to come in decently were
+welcome, and that they who were minded to make an entrance indecently
+would not be debarred by such rails and fences as hemmed in the
+vicarage grounds. Gilmore, as he passed through the corner of the
+churchyard, clearly saw a man standing near to the stile leading from
+the fields. Indeed, this man was quite close to him, although, from
+the want of light and the posture of the man, the face was invisible
+to him. But he knew the fellow to be a stranger to Bullhampton. The
+dress was strange, the manner was strange, and the mode of standing
+was strange. Gilmore had lived at Bullhampton all his life, and,
+without much thought on the subject, knew Bullhampton ways. The
+jacket which the man wore was a town-made jacket, a jacket that had
+come farther a-field even than Salisbury; and the man's gaiters had a
+savour which was decidedly not of Wiltshire. Dark as it was, he could
+see so much as this. "Good night, my friend," said Gilmore, in a
+sharp cheery voice. The man muttered something, and passed on as
+though to the village. There had, however, been something in his
+position which made Gilmore think that the stranger had intended to
+trespass on his friend's garden. He crossed the stile into the
+fields, however, without waiting,&mdash;without having waited for half a
+moment, and immediately saw the figure of a second man standing down,
+hidden as it were in the ditch; and though he could discover no more
+than the cap and shoulders of the man through the gloom, he was sure
+he knew who it was that owned the cap and shoulders. He did not speak
+again, but passed on quickly, thinking what he might best do. The man
+whom he had seen and recognised had latterly been talked of as a
+discredit to his family, and anything but an honour to the usually
+respectable inhabitants of Bullhampton.</p>
+
+<p>On the further side of the church from the town was a farmyard, in
+the occupation of one of Lord Trowbridge's tenants,&mdash;a man who had
+ever been very keen at preventing the inroads of trespassers, to
+which he had, perhaps, been driven by the fact that his land was
+traversed by various public pathways. Now a public pathway through
+pasture is a nuisance, as it is impossible to induce those who use it
+to keep themselves to one beaten track; but a pathway through
+cornfields is worse, for, let what pains may be taken, wheat, beans,
+and barley will be torn down and trampled under foot. And yet in
+apportioning his rents, no landlord takes all this into
+consideration. Farmer Trumbull considered it a good deal, and was
+often a wrathful man. There was at any rate no right of way across
+his farmyard, and here he might keep as big a dog as he chose,
+chained or unchained. Harry Gilmore knew the dog well, and stood for
+a moment leaning on the gate.</p>
+
+<p>"Who be there?" said the voice of the farmer.</p>
+
+<p>"Is that you, Mr. Trumbull? It is I,&mdash;Mr. Gilmore. I want to get
+round to the front of the parson's house."</p>
+
+<p>"Zurely, zurely," said the farmer, coming forward and opening the
+gate. "Be there anything wrong about, Squire?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know. I think there is. Speak softly. I fancy there are men
+lying in the churchyard."</p>
+
+<p>"I be a-thinking so, too, Squire. Bone'm was a growling just now like
+the old 'un." Bone'm was the name of the bull-dog as to which Gilmore
+had been solicitous as he looked over the gate. "What is't t'ey're up
+to? Not bugglary?"</p>
+
+<p>"Our friend's apricots, perhaps. But I'll just move round to the
+front. Do you and Bone'm keep a look-out here."</p>
+
+<p>"Never fear, Squire; never fear. Me and Bone'm together is a'most too
+much for 'em, bugglars and all." Then he led Mr. Gilmore through the
+farmyard, and out on to the road, Bone'm growling a low growl as he
+passed away.</p>
+
+<p>The Squire hurried along the high road, past the church, and in at
+the Vicarage front gate. Knowing the place well, he could have made
+his way round into the garden; but he thought it better to go to the
+front door. There was no light to be seen from the windows; but
+almost all the rooms of the house looked out into the garden at the
+back. He knocked sharply, and in a minute or two the door was opened
+by the parson in person.</p>
+
+<p>"Frank," said the Squire.</p>
+
+<p>"Halloo! is that you? What's up now?"</p>
+
+<p>"Men who ought to be in bed. I came across two men hanging about your
+gate in the churchyard, and I'm not sure there wasn't a third."</p>
+
+<p>"They're up to nothing. They often sit and smoke there."</p>
+
+<p>"These fellows were up to something. The man I saw plainest was a
+stranger, and just the sort of man who won't do your parishioners any
+good to be among them. The other was Sam Brattle."</p>
+
+<p>"Whew&mdash;w&mdash;w," said the parson.</p>
+
+<p>"He has gone utterly to the dogs," said the Squire.</p>
+
+<p>"He's on the road, Harry; but nobody has gone while he's still going.
+I had some words with him in his father's presence last week, and he
+followed me afterwards, and told me he'd see it out with me. I
+wouldn't tell you, because I didn't want to set you more against
+them."</p>
+
+<p>"I wish they were out of the place,&mdash;the whole lot of them."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know that they'd do better elsewhere than here. I suppose
+Mr. Sam is going to keep his word with me."</p>
+
+<p>"Only for the look of that other fellow, I shouldn't think they meant
+anything serious," said Gilmore.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't suppose they do, but I'll be on the look-out."</p>
+
+<p>"Shall I stay with you, Frank?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no; I've a life-preserver, and I'll take a round of the gardens.
+You come with me, and you can pass home that way. The chances are
+they'll mizzle away to bed, as they've seen you, and heard
+Bone'm,&mdash;and probably heard too every word you said to Trumbull."</p>
+
+<p>He then got his hat and the short, thick stick of which he had
+spoken, and turning the key of the door, put it in his pocket. Then
+the two friends went round by the kitchen garden, and so through to
+the orchard, and down to the churchyard gate. Hitherto they had seen
+nothing, and heard nothing, and Fenwick was sure that the men had
+made their way through the churchyard to the village.</p>
+
+<p>"But they may come back," said Gilmore.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll be about if they do," said the parson.</p>
+
+<p>"What is one against three? You had better let me stay."</p>
+
+<p>Fenwick laughed at this, saying that it would be quite as rational to
+propose that they should keep watch every night.</p>
+
+<p>"But, hark!" said the Squire, with a mind evidently perturbed.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you be alarmed about us," said the parson.</p>
+
+<p>"If anything should happen to Mary Lowther!"</p>
+
+<p>"That, no doubt, is matter of anxiety, to which may, perhaps, be
+added some trifle of additional feeling on the score of Janet and the
+children. But I'll do my best. If the women knew that you and I were
+patrolling the place, they'd be frightened out of their wits."</p>
+
+<p>Then Gilmore, who never liked that there should be a laugh against
+himself, took his leave and walked home across the fields. Fenwick
+passed up through the garden, and, when he was near the terrace which
+ran along the garden front of the house, he thought that he heard a
+voice. He stood under the shade of a wall dark with ivy, and
+distinctly heard whispering on the other side of it. As far as he
+could tell there were the voices of more than two men. He wished now
+that he had kept Gilmore with him,&mdash;not that he was personally afraid
+of the trespassers, for his courage was of that steady settled kind
+which enables the possessor to remember that men who are doing deeds
+of darkness are ever afraid of those whom they are injuring; but had
+there been an ally with him his prospect of catching one or more of
+the ruffians would have been greatly increased. Standing where he was
+he would probably be able to interrupt them, should they attempt to
+enter the house; but in the mean time they might be stripping his
+fruit from the wall. They were certainly, at present, in the kitchen
+garden, and he was not minded to leave them there at such work as
+they might have in hand. Having paused to think of this, he crept
+along under the wall, close to the house, towards the passage by
+which he could reach them. But they had not heard him, nor had they
+waited among the fruit. When he was near the corner of the wall, one
+leading man came round within a foot or two of the spot on which he
+stood; and, before he could decide on what he would do, the second
+had appeared. He rushed forward with the loaded stick in his hand,
+but, knowing its weight, and remembering the possibility of the
+comparative innocence of the intruders, he hesitated to strike. A
+blow on the head would have brained a man, and a knock on the arm
+with such an instrument would break the bone. In a moment he found
+his left hand on the leading man's throat, and the man's foot behind
+his heel. He fell, but as he fell he did strike heavily, cutting
+upwards with his weapon, and bringing the heavy weight of lead at the
+end of it on to the man's shoulder. He stumbled rather than fell, but
+when he regained his footing, the man was gone. That man was gone,
+and two others were following him down towards the gate at the bottom
+of the orchard. Of these two, in a few strides, he was able to catch
+the hindermost, and then he found himself wrestling with Sam Brattle.</p>
+
+<p>"Sam," said he, speaking as well as he could with his short breath,
+"if you don't stand, I'll strike you with the life-preserver."</p>
+
+<p>Sam made another struggle, trying to seize the weapon, and the parson
+hit him with it on the right arm.</p>
+
+<p>"You've smashed that anyway, Mr. Fenwick," said the man.</p>
+
+<p>"I hope not; but do you come along with me quietly, or I'll smash
+something else. I'll hit you on the head if you attempt to move away.
+What were you doing here?"</p>
+
+<p>Brattle made no answer, but walked along towards the house at the
+parson's left hand, the parson holding him the while by the neck of
+his jacket, and swinging the life-preserver in his right hand. In
+this way he took him round to the front of the house, and then began
+to think what he would do with him.</p>
+
+<p>"That, after all, you should be at this work, Sam!"</p>
+
+<p>"What work is it, then?"</p>
+
+<p>"Prowling about my place, after midnight, with a couple of strange
+blackguards."</p>
+
+<p>"There ain't so much harm in that, as I knows of."</p>
+
+<p>"Who were the men, Sam?"</p>
+
+<p>"Who was the men?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes;&mdash;who were they?"</p>
+
+<p>"Just friends of mine, Mr. Fenwick. I shan't say no more about 'em.
+You've got me, and you've smashed my arm, and now what is it you're
+a-going to do with me? I ain't done no harm,&mdash;only just walked about,
+like."</p>
+
+<p>To tell the truth, our friend the parson did not quite know what he
+meant to do with the Tartar he had caught. There were reasons which
+made him very unwilling to hand over Sam Brattle to the village
+constable. Sam had a mother and sister who were among the Vicar's
+first favourites in the parish; and though old Jacob Brattle, the
+father, was not so great a favourite, and was a man whom the Squire,
+his landlord, held in great disfavour, Mr. Fenwick would desire, if
+possible, to spare the family. And of Sam, himself, he had had high
+hopes, though those hopes, for the last eighteen months had been
+becoming fainter and fainter. Upon the whole, he was much averse to
+knocking up the groom, the only man who lived on the parsonage except
+himself, and dragging Sam into the village. "I wish I knew," he said,
+"what you and your friends were going to do. I hardly think it has
+come to that with you, that you'd try to break into the house and cut
+our throats."</p>
+
+<p>"We warn't after no breaking in, nor no cutting of throats, Mr.
+Fenwick. We warn't indeed!"</p>
+
+<p>"What shall you do with yourself, to-night, if I let you off?"</p>
+
+<p>"Just go home to father's, sir; not a foot else, s'help me."</p>
+
+<p>"One of your friends, as you call them, will have to go to the
+doctor, if I am not very much mistaken; for the rap I gave you was
+nothing to what he got. You're all right?"</p>
+
+<p>"It hurt, sir, I can tell ye;&mdash;but that won't matter."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Sam,&mdash;there; you may go. I shall be after you to-morrow, and
+the last word I say to you, to-night, is this;&mdash;as far as I can see,
+you're on the road to the gallows. It isn't pleasant to be hung, and
+I would advise you to change your road." So saying, he let go his
+hold, and stood waiting till Sam should have taken his departure.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't be a-coming after me, to-morrow, parson, please," said the
+man.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall see your mother, certainly."</p>
+
+<p>"Dont'ee tell her of my being here, Mr. Fenwick, and nobody shan't
+ever come anigh this place again,&mdash;not in the way of prigging
+anything."</p>
+
+<p>"You fool, you!" said the parson. "Do you think that it is to save
+anything that I might lose, that I let you go now? Don't you know
+that the thing I want to save is you,&mdash;you,&mdash;you; you helpless, idle,
+good-for-nothing reprobate? Go home, and be sure that I shall do the
+best I can according to my lights. I fear that my lights are bad
+lights, in that they have allowed me to let you go."</p>
+
+<p>When he had seen Sam take his departure through the front gate, he
+returned to the house, and found that his wife, who had gone to bed,
+had come down-stairs in search of him.</p>
+
+<p>"Frank, you have frightened me so terribly! Where have you been?"</p>
+
+<p>"Thief-catching. And I'm afraid I've about split one fellow's back. I
+caught another, but I let him go."</p>
+
+<p>"What on earth do you mean, Frank?"</p>
+
+<p>Then he told her the whole story,&mdash;how Gilmore had seen the men, and
+had come up to him; how he had gone out and had a tussle with one
+man, whom he had, as he thought, hurt; and how he had then caught
+another, while the third escaped.</p>
+
+<p>"We ain't safe in our beds, then," said the wife.</p>
+
+<p>"You ain't safe in yours, my dear, because you chose to leave it; but
+I hope you're safe out of it. I doubt whether the melons and peaches
+are safe. The truth is, there ought to be a gardener's cottage on the
+place, and I must build one. I wonder whether I hurt that fellow
+much. I seemed to hear the bone crunch."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Frank!"</p>
+
+<p>"But what could I do? I got that thing because I thought it safer
+than a pistol, but I really think it's worse. I might have murdered
+them all, if I'd lost my temper,&mdash;and just for half-a-dozen
+apricots!"</p>
+
+<p>"And what became of the man you took?"</p>
+
+<p>"I let him go."</p>
+
+<p>"Without doing anything to him?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well; he got a tap too."</p>
+
+<p>"Did you know him?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I knew him,&mdash;well."</p>
+
+<p>"Who was he, Frank?"</p>
+
+<p>The parson was silent for a moment, and then he answered her. "It was
+Sam Brattle."</p>
+
+<p>"Sam Brattle, coming to rob?"</p>
+
+<p>"He's been at it, I fear, for months, in some shape."</p>
+
+<p>"And what shall you do?"</p>
+
+<p>"I hardly know as yet. It would about kill her and Fanny, if they
+were told all that I suspect. They are stiff-necked, obstinate,
+ill-conditioned people&mdash;that is, the men. But I think Gilmore has
+been a little hard on them. The father and brother are honest men.
+Come;&mdash;we'll go to bed."</p>
+
+
+<p><a name="c4" id="c4"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>CHAPTER IV.</h3>
+<h4>THERE IS NO ONE ELSE.<br />&nbsp;</h4>
+
+
+<p>On the following morning there was of course a considerable amount of
+conversation at the Vicarage as to the affairs of the previous
+evening. There was first of all an examination of the fruit; but as
+this was made without taking Jem the gardener into confidence, no
+certain conclusion could be reached. It was clear, however, that no
+robbery for the purpose of sale had been made. An apricot or two
+might have been taken, and perhaps an assault made on an unripe
+peach. Mr. Fenwick was himself nearly sure that garden spoliation was
+not the purpose of the assailants, though it suited him to let his
+wife entertain that idea. The men would hardly have come from the
+kitchen garden up to the house and round the corner at which he had
+met them, if they were seeking fruit. Presuming it to have been their
+intention to attempt the drawing-room windows, he would have expected
+to meet them as he did meet them. From the garden the Vicar and the
+two ladies went down to the gate, and from thence over the stile to
+Farmer Trumbull's farmyard. The farmer had not again seen the men,
+after the Squire had left him, nor had he heard them. To him the
+parson said nothing of his encounter, and nothing of that blow on the
+man's back. From thence Mr. Fenwick went on to the town, and the
+ladies returned to the Vicarage.</p>
+
+<p>The only person whom the parson at once consulted was the
+surgeon,&mdash;Dr. Cuttenden, as he was called. No man with an injured
+shoulder-blade had come to him last night or that morning. A man, he
+said, might receive a very violent blow on his back, in the manner in
+which the fellow had been struck, and might be disabled for days from
+any great personal exertion, without having a bone broken. If the
+blade of his shoulder were broken, the man&mdash;so thought the
+doctor&mdash;could not travel far on foot, would hardly be able to get
+away to any of the neighbouring towns unless he were carried. Of Sam
+Brattle the parson said nothing to the doctor; but when he had
+finished his morning's work about the town, he walked on to the mill.</p>
+
+<p>In the mean time the two ladies remained at home at the Parsonage.
+The excitement occasioned by the events of the previous night was
+probably a little damaged by the knowledge that Mr. Gilmore was
+coming. The coming of Mr. Gilmore on this occasion was so important
+that even the terrible idea of burglars, and the sensation arising
+from the use of that deadly weapon which had been produced at the
+breakfast table during the morning, were robbed of some of their
+interest. They did not keep possession of the minds of the two ladies
+as they would have done had there been no violent interrupting cause.
+But here was the violent interrupting cause, and by the time that
+lunch was on the table, Sam Brattle and his comrades were forgotten.</p>
+
+<p>Very little was said between the two women on that morning respecting
+Mr. Gilmore. Mrs. Fenwick, who had allowed herself to be convinced
+that Mary would act with great impropriety if she did not accept the
+man, thought that further speech might only render her friend
+obstinate. Mary, who knew the inside of her friend's mind very
+clearly, and who loved and respected her friend, could hardly fix her
+own mind. During the past night it had been fixed, or nearly fixed,
+two different ways. She had first determined that she would refuse
+her lover,&mdash;as to which resolve, for some hours or so, she had been
+very firm; then that she would accept him,&mdash;as to which she had ever,
+when most that way inclined, entertained some doubt as to the
+possibility of her uttering that word "Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"If it be that other women don't love better than I love him, I
+wonder that they ever get married at all," she said to herself.</p>
+
+<p>She was told that she was wrong to keep the man in suspense, and she
+believed it. Had she not been so told, she would have thought that
+some further waiting would have been of the three alternatives the
+best.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall be upstairs with the bairns," said Mrs. Fenwick, as she left
+the dining-room after lunch, "so that if you prefer the garden to the
+drawing-room, it will be free."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh dear, how solemn and ceremonious you make it."</p>
+
+<p>"It is solemn, Mary; I don't know how anything can be more solemn,
+short of going to heaven or the other place. But I really don't see
+why there should be any doubt or difficulty."</p>
+
+<p>There was something in the tone in which these words were said which
+almost made Mary Lowther again decide against the man. The man had a
+home and an income, and was Squire of the parish; and therefore there
+need be no difficulty! When she compared Mr. Fenwick and Mr. Gilmore
+together, she found that she liked Mr. Fenwick the best. She thought
+him to be the more clever, the higher spirited, the most of a man of
+the two. She certainly was not the least in love with her friend's
+husband; but then she was just as little in love with Mr. Gilmore.</p>
+
+<p>At about half-past two Mr. Gilmore made his appearance, standing at
+the open window.</p>
+
+<p>"May I come in?" he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course you may come in."</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Fenwick is not here?"</p>
+
+<p>"She is in the house, I think, if you want her."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh no. I hope you were not frightened last night. I have not seen
+Frank this morning; but I hear from Mr. Trumbull that there was
+something of a row."</p>
+
+<p>"There was a row, certainly. Mr. Fenwick struck some of the men, and
+he is afraid that he hurt one of them."</p>
+
+<p>"I wish he had broken their heads. I take it there was a son of one
+of my tenants there, who is about as bad as he can be. Frank will
+believe me now. I hope you were not frightened here."</p>
+
+<p>"I heard nothing of it till this morning."</p>
+
+<p>After that there was a pause. He had told himself as he came along
+that the task before him could not be easy and pleasant. To declare a
+passion to the girl he loves may be very pleasant work to the man who
+feels almost sure that his answer will not be against him. It may be
+an easy task enough even when there is a doubt. The very possession
+of the passion,&mdash;or even its pretence,&mdash;gives the man a liberty which
+he has a pleasure and a pride in using. But this is the case when the
+man dashes boldly at his purpose without preconcerted arrangements.
+Such pleasure, if it ever was a pleasure to him,&mdash;such excitement at
+least, was come and gone with Harry Gilmore. He had told his tale,
+and had been desired to wait. Now he had come again at a fixed hour
+to be informed&mdash;like a servant waiting for a place&mdash;whether it was
+thought that he would suit. The servant out of place, however, would
+have had this advantage, that he would receive his answer without the
+necessity of further eloquence on his own part. With the lover it was
+different. It was evident that Mary Lowther would not say to him, "I
+have considered the matter, and I think that, upon the whole, you
+will do." It was necessary that he should ask the question again, and
+ask it as a suppliant.</p>
+
+<p>"Mary," he said, beginning with words that he had fixed for himself
+as he came up the garden, "it is six weeks, I think, since I asked
+you to be my wife; and now I have come to ask you again."</p>
+
+<p>She made him no immediate answer, but sat as though waiting for some
+further effort of his eloquence.</p>
+
+<p>"I do not think you doubt my truth, or the warmth of my affection. If
+you trust in <span class="nowrap">them&mdash;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"I do; I do."</p>
+
+<p>"Then I don't know that I can say anything further. Nothing that I
+can say now will make you love me. I have not that sort of power
+which would compel a girl to come into my arms."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't understand that kind of power,&mdash;how any man can have it with
+any girl."</p>
+
+<p>"They say that it is so; but I do not flatter myself that it is so
+with me; and I do not think that it would be so with any man over
+you. Perhaps I may assure you that, as far as I know myself at
+present, all my future happiness must depend on your answer. It will
+not kill me&mdash;to be refused; at least, I suppose not. But it will make
+me wish that it would." Having so spoken he waited for her reply.</p>
+
+<p>She believed every word that he said. And she liked him so well that,
+for his own sake, she desired that he might be gratified. As far as
+she knew herself, she had no desire to be Harry Gilmore's wife. The
+position was not even one in which she could allow herself to look
+for consolation on one side, for disappointments on the other. She
+had read about love, and talked about love; and she desired to be in
+love. Certainly she was not in love with this man. She had begun to
+doubt whether it would ever be given to her to love,&mdash;to love as her
+friend Janet loved Frank Fenwick. Janet loved her husband's very
+footsteps, and seemed to eat with his palate, hear with his ears, and
+see with his eyes. She was, as it were, absolutely a bone from her
+husband's rib. Mary thought that she was sure that she could never
+have that same feeling towards Henry Gilmore. And yet it might come;
+or something might come which would do almost as well. It was likely
+that Janet's nature was softer and sweeter than her own,&mdash;more prone
+to adapt itself, like ivy to a strong tree. For herself, it might be,
+that she could never become as the ivy; but that, nevertheless, she
+might be the true wife of a true husband. But if ever she was to be
+the true wife of Harry Gilmore, she could not to-day say that it
+should be so.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose I must answer you," she said, very gently.</p>
+
+<p>"If you tell me that you are not ready to do so I will wait, and come
+again. I shall never change my mind. You may be sure of that."</p>
+
+<p>"But that is just what I may not do, Mr. Gilmore."</p>
+
+<p>"Who says so?"</p>
+
+<p>"My own feelings tell me so. I have no right to keep you in suspense,
+and I will not do it. I respect and esteem you most honestly. I have
+so much liking for you that I do not mind owning that I wish that it
+were more. Mr. Gilmore, I like you so much that I would make a great
+sacrifice for you; but I cannot sacrifice my own honesty or your
+happiness by making believe that I love you."</p>
+
+<p>For a few moments he sat silent, and then there came over his face a
+look of inexpressible anguish,&mdash;a look as though the pain were almost
+more than he could bear. She could not keep her eyes from his face;
+and, in her woman's pity, she almost wished that her words had been
+different.</p>
+
+<p>"And must that be all?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"What else can I say, Mr. Gilmore?"</p>
+
+<p>"If that must be all, it will be to me a doom that I shall not know
+how to bear. I cannot live here without you. I have thought about you
+till you have become mixed with every tree and every cottage about
+the place. I did not know of myself that I could become such a slave
+to a passion. Mary, say that you will wait again. Try it once more. I
+would not ask for this, but that you have told me that there was no
+one else."</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly, there is no one else."</p>
+
+<p>"Then let me wait again. It can do you no harm. If there should come
+any man more fortunate than I am, you can tell me, and I shall know
+that it is over. I ask no sacrifice from you, and no pledge; but I
+give you mine. I shall not change."</p>
+
+<p>"There must be no such promise, Mr. Gilmore."</p>
+
+<p>"But there is the promise. I certainly shall not change. When three
+months are over I will come to you again."</p>
+
+<p>She tried to think whether she was bound to tell him that her answer
+must be taken as final, or whether she might allow the matter to
+stand as he proposed, with some chance of a result that might be good
+for him. On one point she was quite sure,&mdash;that if she left him now,
+with an understanding that he should again renew his offer after a
+period of three months, she must go away from Bullhampton. If there
+was any possibility that she should learn to love him, such feeling
+would arise within her more quickly in his absence than in his
+presence. She would go home to Loring, and try to bring herself to
+accept him.</p>
+
+<p>"I think," she said, "that what we now say had better be the last of
+it."</p>
+
+<p>"It shall not be the last of it. I will try again. What is there that
+I can do, so that I may make myself worthy of you?"</p>
+
+<p>"It is no question of worthiness, Mr. Gilmore. Who can say how his
+heart is moved,&mdash;and why? I shall go home to Loring; and you may be
+sure of this, that if there be anything that you should hear of me, I
+will let you know."</p>
+
+<p>Then he took her hand in his own, held it for a while, pressed it to
+his lips, and left her. She was by no means contented with herself,
+and, to tell the truth, was ashamed to let her friend know what she
+had done. And yet how could she have answered him in other words? It
+might be that she could teach herself to be contented with the amount
+of regard which she entertained for him. It might be that she could
+persuade herself to be his wife; and if so, why should he not have
+the chance,&mdash;the chance which he professed that he was so anxious to
+retain? He had paid her the greatest compliment which a man can pay a
+woman, and she owed him everything,&mdash;except herself. She was hardly
+sure even now that if the proposition had come to her by letter the
+answer might not have been of a different nature.</p>
+
+<p>As soon as he was gone she went upstairs to the nursery, and thence
+to Mrs. Fenwick's bedroom. Flo was there, but Flo was soon dismissed.
+Mary began her story instantly, before a question could be asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Janet," she said, "I am going home&mdash;at once."</p>
+
+<p>"Why so?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because it is best. Nothing more is settled than was settled before.
+When he asks me whether he may come again, how can I say that he may
+not? What can I say, except that as far I can see now, I cannot be
+his wife?"</p>
+
+<p>"You have not accepted him, then?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"I believe that you would, if he had asked you last night."</p>
+
+<p>"Most certainly I should not. I may doubt when I am talking behind
+his back; but when I meet him face to face I cannot do it."</p>
+
+<p>"I think you have been wrong,&mdash;very wrong and very foolish."</p>
+
+<p>"In not taking a man I do not love?" said Mary.</p>
+
+<p>"You do love him; but you are longing for you do not know what; some
+romance,&mdash;some grand passion,&mdash;something that will never come."</p>
+
+<p>"Shall I tell you what I want?"</p>
+
+<p>"If you please."</p>
+
+<p>"A feeling such as you have for Frank. You are my model; I want
+nothing beyond that."</p>
+
+<p>"That comes after marriage. Frank was very little to me till we were
+man and wife. He'll tell you the same. I don't know whether I didn't
+almost dislike him when I married him."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Janet!"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly the sort of love you are thinking of comes
+afterwards;&mdash;when the interests of two people are the same. Frank was
+very well as a lover."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't I remember it?"</p>
+
+<p>"You were a child."</p>
+
+<p>"I was fifteen; and don't I remember how all the world used to change
+for you when he was coming? There wasn't a ribbon you wore but you
+wore it for him; you dressed yourself in his eyes; you lived by his
+thoughts."</p>
+
+<p>"That was all after I was engaged. If you would accept Harry Gilmore,
+you would do just the same."</p>
+
+<p>"I must be sure that it would be so. I am now almost sure that it
+would not."</p>
+
+<p>"And why do you want to go home?"</p>
+
+<p>"That he may not be pestered by having me near him. I think it will
+be better for him that I should go."</p>
+
+<p>"And he is to ask you again?"</p>
+
+<p>"He says that he will&mdash;in three months. But you should tell him that
+it will be better that he should not. I would advise him to
+travel,&mdash;if I were his friend, like you."</p>
+
+<p>"And leave all his duties, and his pleasures, and his house, and his
+property, because of your face and figure, my dear! I don't think any
+woman is worth so much to a man."</p>
+
+<p>Mary bit her lips in sorrow for what she had said. "I was thinking of
+his own speech about himself, Janet, not of my worth. It does not
+astonish you more than it does me that such a man as Mr. Gilmore
+should be perplexed in spirit for such a cause. But he says that he
+is perplexed."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course he is perplexed, and of course I was in joke. Only it does
+seem so hard upon him! I should like to shake you till you fell into
+his arms. I know it would be best for you. You will go on examining
+your own feelings and doubting about your heart, and waiting for
+something that will never come till you will have lost your time.
+That is the way old maids are made. If you married Harry, by the time
+your first child was born you would think that he was Jupiter,&mdash;just
+as I think that Frank is."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Fenwick owned, however, that as matters stood at present, it
+would be best that Mary should return home; and letters were written
+that afternoon to say that she would be at Loring by the middle of
+next week.</p>
+
+<p>The Vicar was not seen till dinner-time, and then he came home in
+considerable perplexity of spirit. It was agreed between the two
+women that the fate of Harry Gilmore, as far as it had been decided,
+should be told to Mr. Fenwick by his wife; and she, though she was
+vexed, and almost angry with Mary, promised to make the best of it.</p>
+
+<p>"She'll lose him at last; that'll be the end of it," said the parson,
+as he scoured his face with a towel after washing it.</p>
+
+<p>"I never saw a man so much in love in my life," said Mrs. Fenwick.</p>
+
+<p>"But iron won't remain long at red heat," said he. "What she says
+herself would be the best for him. He'll break up and go away for a
+time, and then, when he comes back, there'll be somebody else. She'll
+live to repent it."</p>
+
+<p>"When she's away from him there may be a change."</p>
+
+<p>"Fiddlestick!" said the parson.</p>
+
+<p>Mary, when she met him before dinner, could see that he was angry
+with her, but she bore it with the utmost meekness. She believed of
+herself that she was much to blame in that she could not fall in love
+with Harry Gilmore. Mrs. Fenwick had also asked a question or two
+about Sam Brattle during the dressing of her husband; but he had
+declined to say anything on that subject till they two should be
+secluded together for the night.</p>
+
+
+<p><a name="c5" id="c5"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>CHAPTER V.</h3>
+<h4>THE MILLER.<br />&nbsp;</h4>
+
+
+<p>Mr. Fenwick reached Brattle's mill about two o'clock in the day.
+During the whole morning, while saying comfortable words to old
+women, and gently rebuking young maidens, he had been thinking of Sam
+Brattle and his offences. He had not been in the parish very long,
+not over five or six years, but he had been there long enough to see
+Sam grow out of boyhood into manhood; and at his first coming to the
+parish, for the first two or three years, the lad had been a
+favourite with him. Young Brattle could run well, leap well, fish
+well, and do a good turn of work about his father's mill. And he
+could also read and write, and cast accounts, and was a clever
+fellow. The parson, though he had tried his hand with energy at
+making the man, had, perhaps, done something towards marring him; and
+it may be that some feeling of this was on Mr. Fenwick's conscience.
+A gentleman's favourite in a country village, when of Sam Brattle's
+age, is very apt to be spoiled by the kindness that is shown to him.
+Sam had spent many a long afternoon fishing with the parson, but
+those fishing days were now more than two years gone by. It had been
+understood that Sam was to assist his father at the mill; and much
+good advice as to his trade the lad had received from Mr. Fenwick.
+There ought to be no more fishing for the young miller, except on
+special holiday occasions,&mdash;no more fishing, at least, during the
+hours required for milling purposes. So Mr. Fenwick had said
+frequently. Nevertheless the old miller attributed his son's idleness
+in great part to the parson's conduct, and he had so told the parson
+more than once. Of late Sam Brattle had certainly not been a good
+son, had neglected his work, disobeyed his father, and brought
+trouble on a household which had much suffering to endure
+independently of that which he might bring upon it.</p>
+
+<p>Jacob Brattle was a man at this time over sixty-five years of age,
+and every year of the time had been spent in that mill. He had never
+known another occupation or another home, and had very rarely slept
+under another roof. He had married the daughter of a neighbouring
+farmer, and had had some twelve or fourteen children. There were at
+this time six still living. He himself had ever been a hardworking,
+sober, honest man. But he was cross-grained, litigious, moody, and
+tyrannical. He held his mill and about a hundred acres of adjoining
+meadow land at a rent in which no account was taken either of the
+building or of the mill privileges attached to it. He paid simply for
+the land at a rate per acre, which, as both he and his landlord well
+knew, would make it acceptable on the same terms to any farmer in the
+parish; and neither for his mill, nor for his land, had he any lease,
+nor had his father or his grandfather had leases before him. Though
+he was a clever man in his way, he hardly knew what a lease was. He
+doubted whether his landlord could dispossess him as long as he paid
+his rent, but he was not sure. But of this he thought he was
+sure,&mdash;that were Mr. Gilmore to attempt to do such a thing, all
+Wiltshire would cry out against the deed, and probably the heavens
+would fall and crush the doer. He was a man with an unlimited love of
+justice; but the justice which he loved best was justice to himself.
+He brooded over injuries done to him,&mdash;injuries real or
+fancied,&mdash;till he taught himself to wish that all who hurt him might
+be crucified for the hurt they did to him. He never forgot, and never
+wished to forgive. If any prayer came from him, it was a prayer that
+his own heart might be so hardened that when vengeance came in his
+way he might take it without stint against the trespasser of the
+moment. And yet he was not a cruel man. He would almost despise
+himself, because when the moment for vengeance did come, he would
+abstain from vengeance. He would dismiss a disobedient servant with
+curses which would make one's hair stand on end, and would hope
+within his heart of hearts that before the end of the next week the
+man with his wife and children might be in the poorhouse. When the
+end of the next week came, he would send the wife meat, and would
+give the children bread, and would despise himself for doing so. In
+matters of religion he was an old Pagan, going to no place of
+worship, saying no prayer, believing in no creed,&mdash;with some vague
+idea that a supreme power would bring him right at last, if he worked
+hard, robbed no one, fed his wife and children, and paid his way. To
+pay his way was the pride of his heart; to be paid on his way was its
+joy.</p>
+
+<p>In that matter of his quarrel with his landlord he was very bitter.
+The Squire's father some fifteen years since had given to the miller
+a verbal promise that the house and mill should be repaired. The old
+Squire had not been a good man of business, and had gone on with his
+tenants very much as he had found them, without looking much into the
+position of each. But he had, no doubt, said something that amounted
+to a promise on his own account as to these repairs. He had died soon
+after, and the repairs had not been effected. A year after his death
+an application,&mdash;almost a demand,&mdash;was made upon our Squire by the
+miller, and the miller had been wrathful even when the Squire said
+that he would look into it. The Squire did look into it, and came to
+the conclusion that as he received no rent at all for the house and
+mill, and as his own property would be improved if the house and mill
+were made to vanish, and as he had no evidence whatever of any
+undertaking on his father's part, as any such promise on his father's
+part must simply have been a promise of a gift of money out of his
+own pocket, and further as the miller was impudent, he would not
+repair the mill. Ultimately he offered &pound;20 towards the repairs, which
+the miller indignantly refused. Readers will be able to imagine how
+pretty a quarrel there would thus be between the landlord and his
+tenant. When all this was commencing,&mdash;at the time, that is, of the
+old Squire's death,&mdash;Brattle had the name of being a substantial
+person; but misfortune had come upon him; doctors' bills had been
+very heavy, his children had drained his resources from him, and it
+was now known that it set him very hard to pay his way. In regard to
+the house and the mill, some absolutely essential repairs had been
+done at his own costs; but the &pound;20 had never been taken.</p>
+
+<p>In some respects the man's fortune in life had been good. His wife
+was one of those loving, patient, self-denying, almost heavenly human
+beings, one or two of whom may come across one's path, and who, when
+found, are generally found in that sphere of life to which this woman
+belonged. Among the rich there is that difficulty of the needle's
+eye; among the poor there is the difficulty of the hardness of their
+lives. And the miller loved this woman with a perfect love. He hardly
+knew that he loved her as he did. He could be harsh to her and
+tyrannical. He could say cutting words to her. But at any time in his
+life he would have struck over the head, with his staff, another man
+who should have said a word to hurt her. They had lost many children;
+but of the six who remained, there were four of whom they might be
+proud. The eldest was a farmer, married and away, doing well in a far
+part of the county, beyond Salisbury, on the borders of Hampshire.
+The father in his emergencies had almost been tempted to ask his son
+for money; but hitherto he had refrained. A daughter was married to a
+tradesman at Warminster, and was also doing well. A second son who
+had once been sickly and weak, was a scholar in his way, and was now
+a schoolmaster, also at Warminster, and in great repute with the
+parson of the parish there. There was a second daughter, Fanny, at
+home, a girl as good as gold, the glory and joy and mainstay of her
+mother, whom even the miller could not scold,&mdash;whom all Bullhampton
+loved. But she was a plain girl, brown, and somewhat hard-visaged;&mdash;a
+morsel of fruit as sweet as any in the garden, but one that the eye
+would not select for its outside grace, colour, and roundness. Then
+there were the two younger. Of Sam, the youngest of all, who was now
+twenty-one, something has already been said. Between him and Fanny
+there was,&mdash;perhaps it will be better to say there had been,&mdash;another
+daughter. Of all the flock Carry had been her father's darling. She
+had not been brown or hard-visaged. She was such a morsel of fruit as
+men do choose, when allowed to range and pick through the whole
+length of the garden wall. Fair she had been, with laughing eyes, and
+floating curls; strong in health, generous in temper, though now and
+again with something of her father's humour. To her mother's eye she
+had never been as sweet as Fanny; but to her father she had been as
+bright and beautiful as the harvest moon. Now she was a thing,
+somewhere, never to be mentioned! Any man who would have named her to
+her father's ears, would have encountered instantly the force of his
+wrath. This was so well known in Bullhampton that there was not one
+who would dare to suggest to him even that she might be saved. But
+her mother prayed for her daily, and her father thought of her
+always. It was a great lump upon him, which he must bear to his
+grave; and for which there could be no release. He did not know
+whether it was his mind, his heart, or his body that suffered. He
+only knew that it was there,&mdash;a load that could never be lightened.
+What comfort was it to him now, that he had beaten a miscreant to
+death's door&mdash;that he, with his old hands, had nearly torn the wretch
+limb from limb&mdash;that he had left him all but lifeless, and had walked
+off scatheless, nobody daring to put a finger on him? The man had
+been pieced up by some doctor, and was away in Asia, in Africa, in
+America&mdash;soldiering somewhere. He had been a lieutenant in those
+days, and was probably a lieutenant still. It was nothing to old
+Brattle where he was. Had he been able to drink the fellow's blood to
+the last drop, it would not have lightened his load an ounce. He knew
+that it was so now. Nothing could lighten it;&mdash;not though an angel
+could come and tell him that his girl was a second Magdalen. The
+Brattles had ever held up their heads. The women, at least, had
+always been decent.</p>
+
+<p>Jacob Brattle, himself, was a low, thickset man, with an appearance
+of great strength, which was now submitting itself, very slowly, to
+the hand of time. He had sharp green eyes, and shaggy eyebrows, with
+thin lips, and a square chin, a nose which, though its shape was
+aquiline, protruded but little from his face. His forehead was low
+and broad, and he was seldom seen without a flat hat upon his head.
+His hair and very scanty whiskers were gray; but, then too, he was
+gray from head to foot. The colour of his trade had so clung to him,
+that no one could say whether that grayish whiteness of his face came
+chiefly from meal or from sorrow. He was a silent, sad, meditative
+man, thinking always of the evil things that had been done to him.</p>
+
+
+<p><a name="c6" id="c6"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>CHAPTER VI.</h3>
+<h4>BRATTLE'S MILL.<br />&nbsp;</h4>
+
+
+<p>When Mr. Fenwick reached the mill, he found old Brattle sitting alone
+on a fixed bench in front of the house door with a pipe in his mouth.
+Mary Lowther was quite right in saying that the mill, in spite of its
+dilapidations,&mdash;perhaps by reason of them,&mdash;was as pretty as anything
+in Bullhampton. In the first place it was permeated and surrounded by
+cool, bright, limpid little streams. One of them ran right through
+it, as it were, passing between the dwelling-house and the mill, and
+turning the wheel, which was there placed. This course was, no doubt,
+artificial, and the water ran more rapidly in it than it did in the
+neighbouring streamlets. There were sluice-gates, too, by which it
+could be altogether expelled, or kept up to this or that height; and
+it was a river absolutely under man's control, in which no water-god
+could take delight. But there were other natural streams on each side
+of the building, the one being the main course of the Avon, and the
+other some offspring of a brooklet, which joined its parent two
+hundred yards below, and fifty yards from the spot at which the
+ill-used working water was received back into its mother's idle
+bosom. Mill and house were thatched, and were very low. There were
+garrets in the roof, but they were so shaped that they could hardly
+be said to have walls to them at all, so nearly were they contained
+by the sloping roof. In front of the building there ran a
+road,&mdash;which after all was no more than a private lane. It crossed
+the smaller stream and the mill-run by two wooden bridges; but the
+river itself had been too large for the bridge-maker's efforts, and
+here there was a ford, with stepping-stones for foot passengers. The
+banks on every side were lined with leaning willows, which had been
+pollarded over and over again, and which with their light-green wavy
+heads gave the place, from a distance, the appearance of a grove.
+There was a little porch in front of the house, and outside of that a
+fixed seat, with a high back, on which old Brattle was sitting when
+the parson accosted him. He did not rise when Mr. Fenwick addressed
+him; but he intended no want of courtesy by not doing so. He was on
+his legs at business during nearly the whole of the day, and why
+should he not rest his old limbs during the few mid-day minutes which
+he allowed himself for recreation?</p>
+
+<p>"I thought I should catch you idle just at this moment," said the
+clergyman.</p>
+
+
+<div class="center"><a name="il3" id="il3"></a>
+<table style="margin: 0 auto" cellpadding="4px">
+  <tr>
+    <td align="center">
+      <a href="images/il3.jpg">
+      <img src="images/il3-t.jpg" width="325"
+      alt='"I thought I should catch you
+      idle just at this moment,"
+      said the clergyman."' /></a>
+    </td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="center">
+      <span class="caption">"I thought I should catch you idle just<br />
+      at this moment," said the clergyman.<br />
+      Click to <a href="images/il3.jpg">ENLARGE</a></span>
+    </td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>"Like enough, Muster Fenwick," said the miller; "I be idle at times,
+no doubt."</p>
+
+<p>"It would be a bad life if you did not,&mdash;and a very short one too.
+It's hot walking, I can tell you, Mr. Brattle. If it goes on like
+this, I shall want a little idle time myself, I fear. Is Sam here?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, Muster Fenwick, Sam is not here."</p>
+
+<p>"Nor has been this morning, I suppose?"</p>
+
+<p>"He's not here now, if you're wanting him."</p>
+
+<p>This the old man said in a tone that seemed to signify some offence,
+or at least a readiness to take offence if more were said to him
+about his son. The clergyman did not sit down, but stood close over
+the father, looking down upon him; and the miller went on with his
+pipe gazing into the clear blue sky.</p>
+
+<p>"I do want him, Mr. Brattle." Then he stopped, and there was a pause.
+The miller puffed his pipe, but said not a word. "I do want him. I
+fear, Mr. Brattle, he's not coming to much good."</p>
+
+<p>"Who said as he was? I never said so. The lad'd have been well enough
+if other folks would have let him be."</p>
+
+<p>"I know what you mean, Mr. Brattle."</p>
+
+<p>"I usually intend folks to know what I mean, Muster Fenwick. What's
+the good o' speaking else? If nobody hadn't a meddled with the lad,
+he'd been a good lad. But they did, and he ain't. That's all about
+it."</p>
+
+<p>"You do me a great injustice, but I'm not going to argue that with
+you now. There would be no use in it. I've come to tell you I fear
+that Sam was at no good last night."</p>
+
+<p>"That's like enough."</p>
+
+<p>"I had better tell you the truth at once. He was about my place with
+two ruffians."</p>
+
+<p>"And you wants to take him afore the magistrate?"</p>
+
+<p>"I want nothing of the kind. I would make almost any sacrifice
+rather. I had him yesterday night by the collar of the coat, and I
+let him go free."</p>
+
+<p>"If he couldn't shake himself free o' you, Muster Fenwick, without
+any letting in the matter, he ain't no son of mine."</p>
+
+<p>"I was armed, and he couldn't. But what does that matter? What does
+matter is this;&mdash;that they who were with him were thoroughly bad
+fellows. Was he at home last night?"</p>
+
+<p>"You'd better ax his mother, Muster Fenwick. The truth is, I don't
+care much to be talking of him at all. It's time I was in the mill, I
+believe. There's no one much to help me now, barring the hired man."
+So saying, he got up and passed into the mill without making the
+slightest form of salutation.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Fenwick paused for a minute, looking after the old man, and then
+went into the house. He knew very well that his treatment from the
+women would be very different to that which the miller had vouchsafed
+to him; but on that very account it would be difficult for him to
+make his communication. He had, however, known all this before he
+came. Old Brattle would, quite of course, be silent, suspicious, and
+uncivil. It had become the nature of the man to be so, and there was
+no help for it. But the two women would be glad to see him,&mdash;would
+accept his visit as a pleasure and a privilege; and on this account
+he found it to be very hard to say unpleasant words to them. But the
+unpleasant words must be spoken. Neither in duty nor in kindness
+could he know what he had learned last night, and be silent on this
+matter to the young man's family. He entered the house, and turned
+into the large kitchen or keeping-room on the left, in which the two
+women were almost always to be found. This was a spacious, square,
+low apartment, in which there was a long grate with various
+appurtenances for boiling, roasting, and baking. It was an
+old-fashioned apparatus, but Mrs. Brattle thought it to be infinitely
+more commodious than any of the newer-fangled ranges which from time
+to time she had been taken to see. Opposite to the fire-place there
+was a small piece of carpet, without which the stone floor would
+hardly have looked warm and comfortable. On the outer corner of this,
+half facing the fire, and half on one side of it, was an old oak
+arm-chair, made of oak throughout, but with a well-worn cushion on
+the seat of it, in which it was the miller's custom to sit when the
+work of the day was done. In this chair no one else would ever sit,
+unless Sam would do so occasionally, in bravado, and as a protest
+against his father's authority. When he did so his mother would be
+wretched, and his sister lately had begged him to desist from the
+sacrilege. Close to this was a little round deal table, on which
+would be set the miller's single glass of gin and water, which would
+be made to last out the process of his evening smoking, and the
+candle, by the light of which, and with the aid of a huge pair of
+tortoise-shell spectacles, his wife would sit and darn her husband's
+stockings. She also had her own peculiar chair in this corner, but
+she had never accustomed herself to the luxury of arms to lean on,
+and had no cushion for her own comfort. There were various dressers,
+tables, and sideboards round the room, and a multiplicity of dishes,
+plates, and bowls, all standing in their proper places. But though
+the apartment was called a kitchen,&mdash;and, in truth, the cookery for
+the family was done here,&mdash;there was behind it, opening out to the
+rear, another kitchen in which there was a great boiler, and a huge
+oven never now used. The necessary but unsightly doings of kitchen
+life were here carried on, out of view. He, indeed, would have been
+fastidious who would have hesitated, on any score of cleanliness or
+niceness, to sit and eat at the long board on which the miller's
+dinner was daily served, or would have found it amiss to sit at that
+fire and listen to the ticking of the great mahogany-cased clock,
+which stood in the corner of the room. On the other side of the broad
+opening passage Mrs. Brattle had her parlour. Doubtless this parlour
+added something to the few joys of her life; though how it did so, or
+why she should have rejoiced in it, it would be very difficult to
+say. She never entered it except for the purpose of cleaning and
+dusting. But it may be presumed that it was a glory to her to have a
+room carpeted, with six horsehair chairs, and a round table, and a
+horsehair sofa, and an old mirror over the fireplace, and a piece of
+worsted-work done by her daughter and framed like a picture, hanging
+up on one of the walls. But there must have come from it, we should
+say, more of regret than of pleasure; for when that room was first
+furnished, under her own auspices, and when those horsehair chairs
+were bought with a portion of her own modest dowry, doubtless she had
+intended that these luxuries should be used by her and hers. But they
+never had been so used. The day for using them had never come. Her
+husband never, by any chance, entered the apartment. To him probably,
+even in his youth, it had been a woman's gewgaw, useless, but
+allowable as tending to her happiness. Now the door was never even
+opened before his eye. His last interview with Carry had been in that
+room,&mdash;when he had laid his curse upon her, and bade her begone
+before his return, so that his decent threshold should be no longer
+polluted by her vileness.</p>
+
+<p>On this side of the house there was a cross passage, dividing the
+front rooms from the back. At the end of this, looking to the front
+so as to have the parlour between it and the house-door, was the
+chamber in which slept Brattle and his wife. Here all those children
+had been born who had brought upon the household so many joys and so
+much sorrow. And behind, looking to the back on to the little plot of
+vegetables which was called the garden,&mdash;a plot in which it seemed
+that cabbages and gooseberry bushes were made to alternate,&mdash;there
+was a large store-room, and the chamber in which Fanny slept,&mdash;now
+alone, but which she had once shared with four sisters. Carry was the
+last one that had left her; and now Fanny hardly dared to name the
+word sister above her breath. She could speak, indeed, of Sister Jay,
+the wife of the prosperous ironmonger at Warminster; but of sisters
+by their Christian names no mention was ever made.</p>
+
+<p>Upstairs there were garrets, one of which was inhabited by Sam, when
+he chose to reside at home; and another by the red-armed country
+lass, who was maid-of-all-work at Brattle Mill. When it has also been
+told that below the cabbage-plot there was an orchard, stretching
+down to the junction of the waters, the description of Brattle Mill
+will have been made.</p>
+
+
+<p><a name="c7" id="c7"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>CHAPTER VII.</h3>
+<h4>THE MILLER'S WIFE.<br />&nbsp;</h4>
+
+
+<p>When Mr. Fenwick entered the kitchen, Mrs. Brattle was sitting there
+alone. Her daughter was away, disposing of the remnants and utensils
+of the dinner-table. The old lady, with her spectacles on her nose,
+was sitting as usual with a stocking over her left arm. On the round
+table was a great open Bible, and, lying on the Bible, were sundry
+large worsted hose, which always seemed to Mr. Fenwick as though they
+must have undarned themselves as quickly as they were darned. Her
+Bible and her stockings furnished the whole of Mrs. Brattle's
+occupation from her dinner to her bed. In the morning, she would
+still occupy herself in matters of cookery, would peel potatoes, and
+prepare apples for puddings, and would look into the pot in which the
+cabbage was being boiled. But her stockings and her Bible shared
+together the afternoons of her week-days. On the Sundays there would
+only be the Bible, and then she would pass many hours of the day
+asleep. On every other Sunday morning she still walked to church and
+back,&mdash;going there always alone. There was no one now to accompany
+her. Her husband never went,&mdash;never had gone,&mdash;to church, and her son
+now had broken away from his good practices. On alternate mornings
+Fanny went, and also on every Sunday afternoon. Wet or dry, storm or
+sunshine, she always went; and her father, who was an old Pagan,
+loved her for her zeal. Mrs. Brattle was a slight-made old woman,
+with hair almost white peering out modestly from under her clean cap,
+dressed always in a brown stuff gown that never came down below her
+ankle. Her features were still pretty, small, and d&eacute;bonnaire, and
+there was a sweetness in her eyes that no observer could overlook.
+She was a modest, pure, high-minded woman,&mdash;whom we will not call a
+lady, because of her position in life, and because she darned
+stockings in a kitchen. In all other respects she deserved the name.</p>
+
+<p>"I heard your voice outside with the master," she said, rising from
+her chair to answer the parson's salutation, and putting down her
+stockings first, and then her spectacles upon the book, so that the
+Bible was completely hidden; "and I knew you would not go without
+saying a word to the old woman."</p>
+
+<p>"I believe I came mostly to see you to-day, Mrs. Brattle."</p>
+
+<p>"Did you then? It's kind of you, I'm sure, Mr. Fenwick, this hot
+weather,&mdash;and you with so many folk to mind too. Will you take an
+apple, Mr. Fenwick? I don't know that we've anything else to offer,
+but the quarantines are rare this year, they say;&mdash;though, no doubt,
+you have them better at the Vicarage?"</p>
+
+<p>Fenwick took a large, red apple from the dresser, and began to munch,
+it, declaring that they had none such in their orchard. And then,
+when the apple was finished, he had to begin his story.</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Brattle, I'm sorry that I have something to say that will vex
+you."</p>
+
+<p>"Eh, Mr. Fenwick! Bad news? 'Deed and I think there's but little good
+news left to us now,&mdash;little that comes from the tongues of men. It's
+bad news that is always coming here. Mr. Fenwick,&mdash;what is it, sir?"</p>
+
+<p>Then he repeated the question he had before put to the miller about
+Sam. Where was Sam last night?&mdash;She only shook her head. Did he sleep
+at home?&mdash;She shook her head again. Had he breakfasted at home?</p>
+
+<p>"'Deed no, sir. I haven't set eyes on him since before yesterday."</p>
+
+<p>"But how does he live? His father does not give him money, I
+suppose?"</p>
+
+<p>"There's little enough to give him, Mr. Fenwick. When he is at the
+mill his father do pay him a some'at over and above his keep. It
+isn't much, sir. Young men must have a some'at in their pockets at
+times."</p>
+
+<p>"He has too much in his pockets, I fear. I wish he had nothing, so
+that he needs must come home for his meals. He works at the mill,
+doesn't he?"</p>
+
+<p>"At times, sir; and there isn't a lad in all Bullumpton,"&mdash;for so the
+name was ordinarily pronounced,&mdash;"who can do a turn of work to beat
+him."</p>
+
+<p>"Do he and his father agree pretty well?"</p>
+
+<p>"At times, sir. Times again his father don't say much to him. The
+master ain't given to much talking in the mill, and Sam, when he's
+there, works with a will. There's times when his father softens down
+to him, and then to see 'em, you'd think they was all in all to each
+other. There's a stroke of the master about Sam hisself, at times,
+Mr. Fenwick, and the old man's eyes gladden to see it. There's none
+so near his heart now as poor Sam."</p>
+
+<p>"If he were as honest a man as his father, I could forgive all the
+rest," said Mr. Fenwick slowly, meaning to imply that he was not
+there now to complain of church observances neglected, or of small
+irregularities of life. The paganism of the old miller had often been
+the subject of converse between the parson and Mrs. Brattle, it being
+a matter on which she had many an unhappy thought. He, groping darkly
+among subjects which he hardly dared to touch in her presence lest he
+should seem to unteach that in private which he taught in public, had
+subtlely striven to make her believe that though she, through her
+faith, would be saved, he, the husband, might yet escape that doom of
+everlasting fire, which to her was so stern a reality that she
+thought of its fury with a shudder whenever she heard of the world's
+wickedness. When Parson Fenwick had first made himself intimate at
+the mill Mrs. Brattle had thought that her husband's habits of life
+would have been to him as wormwood and gall,&mdash;that he would be unable
+not to chide, and well she knew that her husband would bear no
+chiding. By degrees she had come to understand that this new parson
+was one who talked more of life with its sorrows, and vices, and
+chances of happiness, and possibilities of goodness, than he did of
+the requirements of his religion. For herself inwardly she had
+grieved at this, and, possibly, also for him; but, doubtless, there
+had come to her some comfort, which she did not care to analyse, from
+the manner in which "the master," as she called him, Pagan as he was,
+had been treated by her clergyman. She wondered that it should be so,
+but yet it was a relief to her to know that God's messenger should
+come to her, and yet say never a word of his message to that hard
+lord, whom she so feared and so loved, and who was, as she well knew,
+too stubborn to receive it. And Fenwick had spoken,&mdash;still spoke to
+her, so tenderly of her erring, fallen child, never calling her a
+castaway, talking of her as Carry, who might yet be worthy of
+happiness here and of all joy hereafter; that when she thought of him
+as a minister of God, whose duty it was to pronounce God's threats to
+erring human beings, she was almost alarmed. She could hardly
+understand his leniency,&mdash;his abstinence from reproof; but
+entertained a vague, wandering, unformed wish that, as he never
+opened the vials of his wrath on them, he would pour it out upon
+her,&mdash;on her who would bear it for their sake so meekly. If there was
+such a wish it was certainly doomed to disappointment. At this moment
+Fanny came in and curtseyed as she gave her hand to the parson.</p>
+
+<p>"Was Sam at home last night, Fan?" asked the mother, in a sad, low
+voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, mother. He slept in his bed."</p>
+
+<p>"You are sure?" said the parson.</p>
+
+<p>"Quite sure. I heard him this morning as he went out. It was about
+five. He spoke to me, and I answered him."</p>
+
+<p>"What did he say?"</p>
+
+<p>"That he must go over to Lavington, and wouldn't be home till
+nightfall. I told him where he would find bread and cheese, and he
+took it."</p>
+
+<p>"But you didn't see him last night?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, sir. He comes in at all hours, when he pleases. He was at dinner
+before yesterday, but I haven't seen him since. He didn't go nigh the
+mill after dinner that day."</p>
+
+<p>Then Mr. Fenwick considered how much he would tell to the mother and
+sister, and how much he would keep back. He did not in his heart
+believe that Sam Brattle had intended to enter his house and rob it;
+but he did believe that the men with whom Sam was associated were
+thieves and housebreakers. If these men were prowling about
+Bullhampton it was certainly his duty to have them arrested if
+possible, and to prevent probable depredations, for his neighbours'
+sake as well as for his own. Nor would he be justified in neglecting
+this duty with the object of saving Sam Brattle. If only he could
+entice Sam away from them, into his own hands, under the power of his
+tongue,&mdash;there might probably be a chance.</p>
+
+<p>"You think he'll be home to-night?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"He said he would," replied Fanny, who knew that she could not answer
+for her brother's word.</p>
+
+<p>"If he does, bid him come to me. Make him come to me! Tell him that I
+will do him no harm. God knows how truly it is my object to do him
+good."</p>
+
+<p>"We are sure of that, sir," said the mother.</p>
+
+<p>"He need not be afraid that I will preach to him. I will only talk to
+him, as I would to a younger brother."</p>
+
+<p>"But what is it that he has done, sir?"</p>
+
+<p>"He has done nothing that I know. There;&mdash;I will tell you the whole.
+I found him prowling about my garden at near midnight, yesterday. Had
+he been alone I should have thought nothing of it. He thinks he owes
+me a grudge for speaking to his father; and had I found him paying it
+by filling his pockets with fruit, I should only have told him that
+it would be better that he should come and take it in the morning."</p>
+
+<p>"But he wasn't&mdash;stealing?" asked the mother.</p>
+
+<p>"He was doing nothing; neither were the men. But they were
+blackguards, and he was in bad hands. He could not have been in
+worse. I had a tussle with one of them, and I am sure the man was
+hurt. That, however, has nothing to do with it. What I desire is to
+get a hold of Sam, so that he may be rescued from the hands of such
+companions. If you can make him come to me, do so."</p>
+
+<p>Fanny promised, and so did the mother; but the promise was given in
+that tone which seemed to imply that nothing should be expected from
+its performance. Sam had long been deaf to the voices of the women of
+his family, and, when his father's anger would be hot against him, he
+would simply go, and live where and how none of them knew. Among such
+men and women as the Brattles, parental authority must needs lie much
+lighter than it does with those who are wont to give much and to
+receive much. What obedience does the lad owe who at eighteen goes
+forth and earns his own bread? What is it to him that he has not yet
+reached man's estate? He has to do a man's work, and the price of it
+is his own, in his hands, when he has earned it. There is no curse
+upon the poor heavier than that which comes from the early breach of
+all ties of duty between fathers and their sons, and mothers and
+their daughters.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Fenwick, as he passed out of the miller's house, saw Jacob
+Brattle at the door of the mill. He was tugging along some load,
+pulling it in at the door, and prevailing against the weakness of his
+age by the force of his energy. The parson knew that the miller saw
+him, but the miller took no notice,&mdash;looked rather as though he did
+not wish to be observed,&mdash;and so the parson went on. When at home he
+postponed his account of what had taken place till he should be alone
+with his wife; but at night he told her the whole story.</p>
+
+<p>"The long and the short of it is, Master Sam will turn to
+housebreaking, if somebody doesn't get hold of him."</p>
+
+<p>"To housebreaking, Frank?"</p>
+
+<p>"I believe that he is about it."</p>
+
+<p>"And were they going to break in here?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think he was. I don't believe he was so minded then. But he
+had shown them the way in, and they were looking about on their own
+scores. Don't you frighten yourself. What with the constable and the
+life-preserver, we'll be safe. I've a big dog coming, a second
+Bone'm. Sam Brattle is in more danger, I fear, than the silver
+forks."</p>
+
+<p>But, in spite of the cheeriness of his speech, the Vicar was anxious,
+and almost unhappy. After all that occurred in reference to himself
+and to Sam Brattle,&mdash;their former intimacies, the fish they had
+caught together, the rats they had killed together, the favour which
+he, the parson of the parish, had shown to this lad, and especially
+after the evil things which had been said of himself because of this
+friendship on his part for one so much younger than himself, and so
+much his inferior in rank,&mdash;it would be to him a most grievous
+misfortune should he be called upon to acknowledge publicly Sam
+Brattle's iniquity, and more grievous still, if the necessity should
+be forced upon him of bringing Sam to open punishment. Fenwick knew
+well that diverse accusations had been made against him in the parish
+regarding Sam. The Marquis of Trowbridge had said a word. Mr.
+Puddleham had said many words. The old miller himself had growled.
+Even Gilmore had expressed disapprobation. The Vicar, in his pride,
+had turned a deaf ear to them all. He began to fear now that possibly
+he had been wrong in the favours shown to Sam Brattle.</p>
+
+
+<p><a name="c8" id="c8"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>CHAPTER VIII.</h3>
+<h4>THE LAST DAY.<br />&nbsp;</h4>
+
+
+<p><img class="left" src="images/ch8a.jpg" width="310" alt="Illustration" />
+The parson's visit to the mill was on a Saturday. The next Sunday
+passed by very quietly, and nothing was seen of Mr. Gilmore at the
+Vicarage. He was at church, and walked with the two ladies from the
+porch to their garden gate, but he declined Mrs. Fenwick's invitation
+to lunch, and was not seen again on that day. The parson had sent
+word to Fanny Brattle during the service to stop a few minutes for
+him, and had learned from her that Sam had not been at home last
+night. He had also learned, before the service that morning, that
+very early on the Saturday, probably about four o'clock, two men had
+passed through Paul's Hinton with a huxter's cart and a pony. Now
+Paul's Hinton, or Hinton Saint Paul's as it should be properly
+called, was a long straggling village, six miles from Bullhampton,
+and half-way on the road to Market Lavington, to which latter place
+Sam had told his sister that he was going. Putting these things
+together, Mr. Fenwick did not in the least doubt but the two men in
+the cart were they who had been introduced to his garden by young
+Brattle.</p>
+
+<p>"I only hope," said the parson, "that there's a good surgeon at
+Market Lavington. One of the gentlemen in that cart must have wanted
+him, I take it." Then he thought that it might, perhaps, be worth his
+while to trot over to Lavington in the course of the week, and make
+inquiries.</p>
+
+<p>On the Wednesday Mary Lowther was to go back to Loring. This seemed
+like a partial break-up of their establishment, both to the parson
+and his wife. Fenwick had made up his mind that Mary was to be his
+nearest neighbour for life, and had fallen into the way of treating
+her accordingly, telling her of things in the parish as he might have
+done to the Squire's wife, presuming the Squire's wife to have been
+on the best possible terms with him. He now regarded Mary as being
+almost an impostor. She had taken him in and obtained his confidence
+under false pretences. It was true that she might still come and fill
+the place that he had appointed for her. He rather thought that at
+last she would do so. But he was angry with her because she
+hesitated. She was creating an unnecessary disturbance among them.
+She had, he thought, been now wooed long enough, and, as he told his
+wife more than once, was making an ass of herself. Mrs. Fenwick was
+not quite so hard in her judgment, but she also was tempted to be a
+little angry. She loved her friend Mary a great deal better than she
+loved Mr. Gilmore, but she was thoroughly convinced that Mary could
+not do better than accept a man whom she owned that she liked,&mdash;whom
+she, at any rate, liked so well that she had not as yet rejected him.
+Therefore, although Mary was going, they were, both of them, rather
+savage with her.</p>
+
+<p>The Monday passed by, also very quietly, and Mr. Gilmore did not come
+to them, but he had sent a note to tell them that he would walk down
+on the Tuesday evening to say good-bye to Miss Lowther. Early on the
+Wednesday Mr. Fenwick was to drive her to Westbury, whence the
+railway would take her round by Chippenham and Swindon to Loring. On
+the Tuesday morning she was very melancholy. Though she knew that it
+was right to go away, she greatly regretted that it was necessary.
+She was angry with herself for not having better known her own mind,
+and though she was quite sure that were Mr. Gilmore to repeat his
+offer to her that moment, she would not accept it, nevertheless she
+thought ill of herself because she would not do so. "I do believe,"
+she said to herself, "that I shall never like any man better." She
+knew well enough that if she was never brought to love any man, she
+never ought to marry any man; but she was not quite sure whether
+Janet was not right in telling her that she had formed erroneous
+notions of the sort of love she ought to feel for the man whom she
+should resolve to accept. Perhaps it was true that that kind of
+adoration which Janet entertained for her husband was a feeling which
+came after marriage&mdash;a feeling which would spring up in her own heart
+as soon as she was the man's own wife, the mistress of his house, the
+mother of his children, the one human being for whose welfare he was
+solicitous beyond that of all others. And this man did love her. She
+had no doubt about that. And she was unhappy, too, because she felt
+that she had offended his friends, and that they thought that she was
+not treating their friend well.</p>
+
+<p>"Janet," she said, as they were again sitting out on the lawn, on
+that Tuesday afternoon, "I am almost sorry that I came here at all."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't say that, dear."</p>
+
+<p>"I have spent some of the happiest days of my life here, but the
+visit, on the whole, has been unfortunate. I am going away in
+disgrace. I feel that so acutely."</p>
+
+<p>"What nonsense! How are you in disgrace?"</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Fenwick and you think that I have behaved badly. I know you do,
+and I feel it so strongly! I think so much of him, and believe him to
+be so good, and so wise, and so understanding,&mdash;he knows what people
+should do, and should be, so well,&mdash;that I cannot doubt that I have
+been wrong if he thinks so."</p>
+
+<p>"He only wishes that you could have made up your mind to marry a most
+worthy man, who is his friend, and who, by marrying you, would have
+fixed you close to us. He wishes it still, and so do I."</p>
+
+<p>"But he thinks that I have been&mdash;have been mopish, and
+lack-a-daisical, and&mdash;and&mdash;almost untrue. I can hear it in the tone
+of his voice, and see it in his eye. I can tell it from the way he
+shakes hands with me in the morning. He is such a true man that I
+know in a moment what he means at all times. I am going away under
+his displeasure, and I wish I had never come."</p>
+
+<p>"Return as Mrs. Gilmore, and all his displeasure will disappear."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, because he would forgive me. He would say to himself that, as I
+had repented, I might be taken back to his grace; but as things are
+at present he condemns me. And so do you."</p>
+
+<p>"If you ask me, Mary, I must tell the truth. I don't think you know
+your own mind."</p>
+
+<p>"Suppose I don't, is that disgraceful?"</p>
+
+<p>"But there comes a time when a girl should know her own mind. You are
+giving this poor fellow an enormous deal of unnecessary trouble."</p>
+
+<p>"I have known my own mind so far as to tell him that I could not
+marry him."</p>
+
+<p>"As far as I understand, Mary, you have always told him to wait a
+little longer."</p>
+
+<p>"I have never asked him to wait, Janet;&mdash;never. It is he who says
+that he will wait; and what can I answer when he says so? All the
+same I don't mean to defend myself. I do believe that I have been
+wrong, and I wish that I had never come here. It sounds ungrateful,
+but I do. It is so dreadful to feel that I have incurred the
+displeasure of people that I love so dearly."</p>
+
+<p>"There is no displeasure, Mary; the word is a good deal too strong. I
+wonder what you'll think of all this when the parson and his wife
+come up on future Sundays to dine with the Squire and his lady. I
+have long since made up my mind that when afternoon service is over,
+we ought to go up and be made much of at the Privets; and you're
+putting all this off till I'm an old woman&mdash;for a chimera. It's about
+our Sunday dinners that I'm angry. Flo, my darling, what a face you
+have got. Do come and sit still for a few minutes, or you'll be in a
+fever." While Mrs. Fenwick was wiping her girl's brow, and smoothing
+her ringlets, Mary walked off to the orchard by herself. There was a
+broad green path which made the circuit of it, and she took the round
+twice, pausing at the bottom to look at the spot from which she had
+tumbled into the river. What a trouble she had been to them all! She
+was thoroughly dissatisfied with herself; especially so because she
+had fallen into those very difficulties which from early years she
+had resolved that she would avoid. She had made up her mind that she
+would not flirt, that she would never give a right to any man&mdash;or to
+any woman&mdash;to call her a coquette; that if love and a husband came in
+her way she would take them thankfully, and that if they did not, she
+would go on her path quietly, if possible, feeling no uneasiness, and
+certainly showing none, because the joys of a married life did not
+belong to her. But now she had gotten herself into a mess, and she
+could not tell herself that it was not her own fault. Then she
+resolved again that in future she would go right. It could not but be
+that a woman could keep herself from floundering in these messes of
+half-courtship,&mdash;of courtship on one side, and doubt on the
+other,&mdash;if she would persistently adhere to some safe rule. Her
+rejection of Mr. Gilmore ought to have been unhesitating and certain
+from the first. She was sure of that now. She had been guilty of an
+absurdity in supposing that because the man had been in earnest,
+therefore she had been justified in keeping him in suspense, for his
+own sake. She had been guilty of an absurdity, and also of great
+self-conceit. She could do nothing now but wait till she should hear
+from him,&mdash;and then answer him steadily. After what had passed she
+could not go to him and declare that it was all over. He was coming
+to-night, and she was nearly sure that he would not say a word to her
+on the subject. If he did,&mdash;if he renewed his offer,&mdash;then she would
+speak out. It was hardly possible that he should do so, and therefore
+the trouble which she had created must remain.</p>
+
+<p>As she thus resolved, she was leaning over the gate looking into the
+churchyard, not much observing the graves or the monuments or the
+beautiful old ivy-covered tower, or thinking of the dead that were
+lying there, or of the living who prayed there; but swearing to
+herself that for the rest of her life she would keep clear of, what
+she called, girlish messes. Like other young ladies she had read much
+poetry and many novels; but her sympathies had never been with young
+ladies who could not go straight through with their love affairs,
+from the beginning to the end, without flirtation of either an inward
+or an outward nature. Of all her heroines, Rosalind was the one she
+liked the best, because from the first moment of her passion she knew
+herself and what she was about, and loved her lover right heartily.
+Of all girls in prose or poetry she declared that Rosalind was the
+least of a flirt. She meant to have the man, and never had a doubt
+about it. But with such a one as Flora MacIvor she had no
+patience;&mdash;a girl who did and who didn't, who would and who wouldn't,
+who could and who couldn't, and who of all flirts was to her the most
+nauseous! As she was taking herself to task, accusing herself of
+being a Flora without the poetry and romance to excuse her, Mr.
+Fenwick came round from Farmer Trumbull's side of the church, and got
+over the stile into the churchyard.</p>
+
+
+<div class="center"><a name="il4" id="il4"></a>
+<table style="margin: 0 auto" cellpadding="4px">
+  <tr>
+    <td align="center">
+      <a href="images/il4.jpg">
+      <img src="images/il4-t.jpg" height="500"
+      alt="Mr. Fenwick came round from Farmer Trumbull's
+      side of the church, and got over the stile
+      into the churchyard." /></a>
+    </td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="center">
+      <span class="caption">Mr. Fenwick came round from Farmer
+      Trumbull's side<br />
+      of the church, and got over the stile into the churchyard.<br />
+      Click to <a href="images/il4.jpg">ENLARGE</a></span>
+    </td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>"What, Mary, is that you gazing in so intently among your brethren
+that were?"</p>
+
+<p>"I was not thinking of them," she said, with a smile. "My mind was
+intent on some of my brethren that are." Then there came a thought
+across her, and she made a sudden decision. "Mr. Fenwick," she said,
+"would you mind walking up and down the churchyard with me once or
+twice? I have something to say to you, and I can say it now so well."
+He opened the gate for her, and she joined him. "I want to beg your
+pardon, and to get you to forgive me. I know you have been angry with
+me."</p>
+
+<p>"Hardly angry,&mdash;but vexed. As you ask me so frankly and prettily, I
+will forgive you. There is my hand upon it. All evil thoughts against
+you shall go out of my head. I shall still have my wishes, but I will
+not be cross with you."</p>
+
+<p>"You are so good, and so clearly honest. I declare I think Janet the
+happiest woman that I ever heard of."</p>
+
+<p>"Come, come; I didn't bargain for this kind of thing when I allowed
+myself to be brought in here."</p>
+
+<p>"But it is so. I did not stop you for that, however, but to
+acknowledge that I have been wrong, and to ask you to pardon me."</p>
+
+<p>"I will. I do. If there has been anything amiss, it shall not be
+looked on again as amiss. But there has been only one thing amiss."</p>
+
+<p>"And, Mr. Fenwick, will you do this for me? Will you tell him that I
+was foolish to say that he might wait? Why should he wait? Of course
+he should not wait. When I am gone, tell him so, and beg him to make
+an end of it. I had not thought of it properly, or I would not have
+allowed him to be tormented."</p>
+
+<p>There was a pause after this, during which they walked half the
+length of the path in silence. "No, Mary," he said, after a while; "I
+will not tell him that."</p>
+
+<p>"Why not, Mr. Fenwick?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because it will not be for his good, or for mine, or for Janet's,
+or, as I believe, for yours."</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed, it will, for the good of us all."</p>
+
+<p>"I think, Mary, you do not quite understand. There is not one among
+us who does not wish that you should come here and be one of us; a
+real, right down Bullompton 'ooman, as they say in the village. I
+want you to be my wife's dearest friend, and my own nearest
+neighbour. There is no man in the world whom I love as I do Harry
+Gilmore, and I want you to be his wife. I have said to myself and to
+Janet a score of times that you certainly would be so sooner or
+later. My wrath has not come from your bidding him to wait, but from
+your coldness in not taking him without waiting. You should remember
+that we grow gray very quickly, Mary."</p>
+
+<p>Here was the old story again,&mdash;the old story as she had heard it from
+Harry Gilmore, but told as she had never expected to hear it from the
+lips of Frank Fenwick. It amounted to this; that even he, Frank
+Fenwick, bade her wait and try. But she had formed her resolution,
+and she was not going to be turned aside, even by Frank Fenwick; "I
+had thought that you would help me," she said, very slowly.</p>
+
+<p>"So I will, with all my heart, towards the keys of the store closets
+of the Privets, but not a step the other way. It has to be, Mary. He
+is too much in earnest, and too good, and too fit for the place to
+which he aspires, to miss his object. Come, we'll go in. Mind, you
+and I are one again, let it go how it may. I will own that I have
+been vexed for the last two days,&mdash;have been in a humour unbecoming
+your departure to-morrow. I throw all that behind me. You and I are
+dear friends,&mdash;are we not?"</p>
+
+<p>"I do hope so, Mr. Fenwick?"</p>
+
+<p>"There shall be no feather moulted between us. But as to operating
+between you and Harry, with the view of keeping you apart, I decline
+the commission. It is my assured belief that sooner or later he will
+be your husband. Now we will go up to Janet, who will begin to think
+herself a Penelope, if we desert her much longer."</p>
+
+<p>Immediately after this Mary went up to dress for dinner. Should she
+make up her mind to give way, and put on the blue ribbons which he
+loved so well? She thought that she could tell him at once, if she
+made up her mind in that direction. It would not, perhaps, be very
+maidenly, but anything would be better than suspense,&mdash;than torment
+to him. Then she took out her blue ribbons, and tried to go through
+that ceremony of telling him. It was quite impossible. Were she to do
+so, she would know no happiness again in this world, or probably in
+the other. To do the thing, it would be necessary that she should lie
+to him.</p>
+
+<p>She came down in a simple white dress, without any ribbons, in just
+the dress which she would have worn had Mr. Gilmore not been coming.
+At dinner they were very merry. The word of command had gone forth
+from Frank that Mary was to be forgiven, and Janet of course obeyed.
+The usual courtesies of society demand that there shall be
+civility&mdash;almost flattering civility&mdash;from host to guest, and from
+guest to host; and yet how often does it occur that in the midst of
+these courtesies there is something that tells of hatred, of
+ridicule, or of scorn! How often does it happen that the guest knows
+that he is disliked, or the host knows that he is a bore! In the last
+two days Mary had felt that she was not cordially a welcome guest.
+She had felt also that the reason was one against which she could not
+contend. Now all that, at least, was over. Frank Fenwick's manner had
+never been pleasanter to her than it was on this occasion, and Janet
+followed the suit which her lord led.</p>
+
+<p>They were again on the lawn between eight and nine o'clock when Harry
+Gilmore came up to them. He was gracious enough in his salutation to
+Mary Lowther, but no indifferent person would have thought that he
+was her lover. He talked chiefly to Fenwick, and when they went in to
+tea did not take a place on the sofa beside Mary. But after a while
+he said something which told them all of his love.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you think I've been doing to-day, Frank?"</p>
+
+<p>"Getting your wheat down, I should hope."</p>
+
+<p>"We begin that to-morrow. I never like to be quite the earliest at
+that work, or yet the latest."</p>
+
+<p>"Better be a day too early than a day too late, Harry."</p>
+
+<p>"Never mind about that. I've been down with old Brattle."</p>
+
+<p>"And what have you been doing with him?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm half ashamed, and yet I fancy I'm right."</p>
+
+<p>As he said this he looked across to Mary Lowther, who no doubt was
+watching every turn of his face from the corner of her eye. "I've
+just been and knocked under, and told him that the old place shall be
+put to rights."</p>
+
+<p>"That's your doing, Mary," said Mrs. Fenwick, injudiciously.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no; I'm sure it is not. Mr. Gilmore would only do such a thing
+as that because it is proper."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know about it's being proper," said he. "I'm not quite sure
+whether it is or not. I shall never get any interest for my money."</p>
+
+<p>"Interest for one's money is not everything," said Mrs. Fenwick.</p>
+
+<p>"Nevertheless, when one builds houses for other people to live in,
+one has to look to it," said the parson.</p>
+
+<p>"People say it's the prettiest spot in the parish," continued Mr.
+Gilmore, "and as such it shouldn't be let go to ruin." Janet remarked
+afterwards to her husband that Mary Lowther had certainly declared
+that it was the prettiest spot in the parish, but that, as far as her
+knowledge went, nobody else had ever said so. "And then, you see,
+when I refused to spend money upon it, old Brattle had money of his
+own, and it was his business to do it."</p>
+
+<p>"He hasn't much now, I fear," said Mr. Fenwick.</p>
+
+<p>"I fear not. His family has been very heavy on him. He paid money to
+put two of his boys into trade who died afterwards, and then for
+years he had either doctors or undertakers about the place. So I just
+went down to him and told him I would do it."</p>
+
+<p>"And how did he take it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Like a bear, as he is. He would hardly speak to me, but went away
+into the mill, telling me that I might settle it all with his wife.
+It's going to be done, however. I shall have the estimate next week,
+and I suppose it will cost me two or three hundred pounds. The mill
+is worse than the house, I take it."</p>
+
+<p>"I am so glad it is to be done," said Mary. After that Mr. Gilmore
+did not in the least begrudge his two or three hundred pounds. But he
+said not a word to Mary, just pressed her hand at parting, and left
+her subject to a possibility of a reversal of her sentence at the end
+of the stated period.</p>
+
+<p>On the next morning Mr. Fenwick drove her in his little open phaeton
+to the station at Westbury. "You are to come back to us, you know,"
+said Mrs. Fenwick, "and remember how anxiously I am waiting for my
+Sunday dinners." Mary said not a word, but as she was driven round in
+front of the church she looked up at the dear old tower, telling
+herself that, in all probability, she would never see it again.</p>
+
+<p>"I have just one thing to say, Mary," said the parson, as he walked
+up and down the platform with her at Westbury; "you are to remember
+that, whatever happens, there is always a home for you at Bullhampton
+when you choose to come to it. I am not speaking of the Privets now,
+but of the Vicarage."</p>
+
+<p>"How very good you are to me!"</p>
+
+<p>"And so are you to us. Dear friends should be good to each other. God
+bless you, dear." From thence she made her way home to Loring by
+herself.</p>
+
+
+<p><a name="c9" id="c9"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>CHAPTER IX.</h3>
+<h4>MISS MARRABLE.<br />&nbsp;</h4>
+
+
+<p>Whatever may be the fact as to the rank and proper calling of
+Bullhampton, there can be no doubt that Loring is a town. There is a
+market-place, and a High Street, and a Board of Health, and a Paragon
+Crescent, and a Town Hall, and two different parish churches, one
+called St. Peter Lowtown, and the other St. Botolph's Uphill, and
+there are Uphill Street, and Lowtown Street, and various other
+streets. I never heard of a mayor of Loring, but, nevertheless, there
+is no doubt as to its being a town. Nor did it ever return members to
+Parliament; but there was once, in one of the numerous bills that
+have been proposed, an idea of grouping it with Cirencester and
+Lechlade. All the world of course knows that this was never done; but
+the transient rumour of it gave the Loringites an improved position,
+and justified that little joke about a live dog being better than a
+dead lion, with which the parson at Bullhampton regaled Miss Lowther
+at the time.</p>
+
+<p>All the fashion of Loring dwelt, as a matter of course, at Uphill.
+Lowtown was vulgar, dirty, devoted to commercial and manufacturing
+purposes, and hardly owned a single genteel private house. There was
+the parsonage, indeed, which stood apart from its neighbours, inside
+great tall slate-coloured gates, and which had a garden of its own.
+But except the clergyman, who had no choice in the matter, nobody who
+was anybody lived at Lowtown. There were three or four factories
+there,&mdash;in and out of which troops of girls would be seen passing
+twice a day, in their ragged, soiled, dirty mill dresses, all of whom
+would come out on Sunday dressed with a magnificence that would lead
+one to suppose that trade at Loring was doing very well. Whether
+trade did well or ill, whether wages were high or low, whether
+provisions were cheap in price, whether there were peace or war
+between capital and labour, still there was the Sunday magnificence.
+What a blessed thing it is for women,&mdash;and for men too
+certainly,&mdash;that there should be a positive happiness to the female
+sex in the possession, and in exhibiting the possession, of bright
+clothing! It is almost as good for the softening of manners, and the
+not permitting of them to be ferocious, as is the faithful study of
+the polite arts. At Loring the manners of the mill hands, as they
+were called, were upon the whole good,&mdash;which I believe was in a
+great degree to be attributed to their Sunday magnificence.</p>
+
+<p>The real West-end of Loring was understood by all men to lie in
+Paragon Crescent, at the back of St. Botolph's Church. The whole of
+this Crescent was built, now some twenty years ago, by Mrs. Fenwick's
+father, who had been clever enough to see that as mills were made to
+grow in the low town, houses for wealthy people to live in ought to
+be made to grow in the high town. He therefore built the Paragon, and
+a certain small row of very pretty houses near the end of the
+Paragon, called Balfour Place,&mdash;and had done very well, and had made
+money; and now lay asleep in the vaults below St. Botolph's Church.
+No inconsiderable proportion of the comfort of Bullhampton parsonage
+is due to Mr. Balfour's success in that achievement of Paragon
+Crescent. There were none of the family left at Loring. The widow had
+gone away to live at Torquay with a sister, and the only other child,
+another daughter, was married to that distinguished barrister on the
+Oxford circuit, Mr. Quickenham. Mr. Quickenham and our friend the
+parson were very good friends; but they did not see a great deal of
+each other, Mr. Fenwick not going up very often to London, and Mr.
+Quickenham being unable to use the Vicarage of Bullhampton when on
+his own circuit. As for the two sisters, they had very strong ideas
+about their husbands' professions; Sophia Quickenham never hesitating
+to declare that one was life, and the other stagnation; and Janet
+Fenwick protesting that the difference to her seemed to be almost
+that between good and evil. They wrote to each other perhaps once a
+quarter. But the Balfour family was in truth broken up.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Marrable, Mary Lowther's aunt, lived, of course, at Uphill; but
+not in the Crescent, nor yet in Balfour Place. She was an old lady
+with very modest means, whose brother had been rector down at St.
+Peter's, and she had passed the greatest part of her life within
+those slate-coloured gates. When he died, and when she, almost
+exactly at the same time, found that it would be expedient that she
+should take charge of her niece, Mary, she removed herself up to a
+small house in Botolph Lane, in which she could live decently on her
+&pound;300 a year. It must not be surmised that Botolph Lane was a squalid
+place, vile, or dirty, or even unfashionable. It was narrow and old,
+having been inhabited by decent people long before the Crescent, or
+even Mr. Balfour himself, had been in existence; but it was narrow
+and old, and the rents were cheap, and here Miss Marrable was able to
+live, and occasionally to give tea-parties, and to provide a
+comfortable home for her niece, within the limits of her income. Miss
+Marrable was herself a lady of very good family, the late Sir Gregory
+Marrable having been her uncle; but her only sister had married a
+Captain Lowther, whose mother had been first cousin to the Earl of
+Periwinkle; and therefore on her own account, as well as on that of
+her niece, Miss Marrable thought a good deal about blood. She was one
+of those ladies,&mdash;now few in number,&mdash;who within their heart of
+hearts conceive that money gives no title to social distinction, let
+the amount of money be ever so great, and its source ever so
+stainless. Rank to her was a thing quite assured and ascertained, and
+she had no more doubt as to her own right to pass out of a room
+before the wife of a millionaire than she had of the right of a
+millionaire to spend his own guineas. She always addressed an
+attorney by letter as Mister, raising up her eyebrows when appealed
+to on the matter, and explaining that an attorney is not an esquire.
+She had an idea that the son of a gentleman, if he intended to
+maintain his rank as a gentleman, should earn his income as a
+clergyman, or as a barrister, or as a soldier, or as a sailor. Those
+were the professions intended for gentlemen. She would not absolutely
+say that a physician was not a gentleman, or even a surgeon; but she
+would never allow to physic the same absolute privileges which, in
+her eyes, belonged to law and the church. There might also possibly
+be a doubt about the Civil Service and Civil Engineering; but she had
+no doubt whatever that when a man touched trade or commerce in any
+way he was doing that which was not the work of a gentleman. He might
+be very respectable, and it might be very necessary that he should do
+it; but brewers, bankers, and merchants, were not gentlemen, and the
+world, according to Miss Marrable's theory, was going astray, because
+people were forgetting their landmarks.</p>
+
+<p>As to Miss Marrable herself nobody could doubt that she was a lady;
+she looked it in every inch. There were not, indeed, many inches of
+her, for she was one of the smallest, daintiest, little old women
+that ever were seen. But now, at seventy, she was very pretty, quite
+a woman to look at with pleasure. Her feet and hands were exquisitely
+made, and she was very proud of them. She wore her own grey hair of
+which she showed very little, but that little was always exquisitely
+nice. Her caps were the perfection of caps. Her green eyes were
+bright and sharp, and seemed to say that she knew very well how to
+take care of herself. Her mouth, and nose, and chin, were all
+well-formed, small, shapely, and concise, not straggling about her
+face as do the mouths, noses, and chins of some old ladies&mdash;ay, and
+of some young ladies also. Had it not been that she had lost her
+teeth, she would hardly have looked to be an old woman. Her health
+was perfect. She herself would say that she had never yet known a
+day's illness. She dressed with the greatest care, always wearing
+silk at and after luncheon. She dressed three times a day, and in the
+morning would come down in what she called a merino gown. But then,
+with her, clothes never seemed to wear out. Her motions were so
+slight and delicate, that the gloss of her dresses would remain on
+them when the gowns of other women would almost have been worn to
+rags. She was never seen of an afternoon or evening without gloves,
+and her gloves were always clean and apparently new. She went to
+church once on Sundays in winter, and twice in summer, and she had a
+certain very short period of each day devoted to Bible reading; but
+at Loring she was not reckoned to be among the religious people.
+Indeed, there were those who said that she was very worldly-minded,
+and that at her time of life she ought to devote herself to other
+books than those which were daily in her hands. Pope, Dryden, Swift,
+Cowley, Fielding, Richardson, and Goldsmith, were her authors. She
+read the new novels as they came out, but always with critical
+comparisons that were hostile to them. Fielding, she said, described
+life as it was; whereas Dickens had manufactured a kind of life that
+never had existed, and never could exist. The pathos of Esmond was
+very well, but Lady Castlemaine was nothing to Clarissa Harlowe. As
+for poetry, Tennyson, she said, was all sugar-candy; he had neither
+the common sense, nor the wit, nor, as she declared, to her ear the
+melody of Pope. All the poets of the present century, she declared,
+if put together, could not have written the Rape of the Lock. Pretty
+as she was, and small, and nice, and lady-like, I think she liked her
+literature rather strong. It is certain that she had Smollett's
+novels in a cupboard up-stairs, and it was said that she had been
+found reading one of Wycherley's plays.</p>
+
+<p>The strongest point in her character was her contempt of money. Not
+that she had any objection to it, or would at all have turned up her
+nose at another hundred a year had anybody left to her such an
+accession of income; but that in real truth she never measured
+herself by what she possessed, or others by what they possessed. She
+was as grand a lady to herself, eating her little bit of cold mutton,
+or dining off a tiny sole, as though she sat at the finest banquet
+that could be spread. She had no fear of economies, either before her
+two handmaids or anybody else in the world. She was fond of her tea,
+and in summer could have cream for twopence; but when cream became
+dear, she saved money and had a pen'north of milk. She drank two
+glasses of Marsala every day, and let it be clearly understood that
+she couldn't afford sherry. But when she gave a tea-party, as she
+did, perhaps, six or seven times a year, sherry was always handed
+round with cake before the people went away. There were matters in
+which she was extravagant. When she went out herself she never took
+one of the common street flies, but paid eighteen pence extra to get
+a brougham from the Dragon. And when Mary Lowther,&mdash;who had only
+fifty pounds a year of her own, with which she clothed herself and
+provided herself with pocket-money,&mdash;was going to Bullhampton, Miss
+Marrable actually proposed to her to take one of the maids with her.
+Mary, of course, would not hear of it, and said that she should just
+as soon think of taking the house; but Miss Marrable had thought that
+it would, perhaps, not be well for a girl so well-born as Miss
+Lowther to go out visiting without a maid. She herself very rarely
+left Loring, because she could not afford it; but when, two summers
+back, she did go to Weston-super-Mare for a fortnight, she took one
+of the girls with her.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Marrable had heard a great deal about Mr. Gilmore. Mary, indeed,
+was not inclined to keep secrets from her aunt, and her very long
+absence,&mdash;so much longer than had at first been intended,&mdash;could
+hardly have been sanctioned unless some reason had been given. There
+had been many letters on the subject, not only between Mary and her
+aunt, but between Mrs. Fenwick and her very old friend Miss Marrable.
+Of course these latter letters had spoken loudly the praises of Mr.
+Gilmore, and Miss Marrable had become quite one of the Gilmore
+faction. She desired that her niece should marry; but that she should
+marry a gentleman. She would have infinitely preferred to see Mary an
+old maid, than to hear that she was going to give herself to any
+suitor contaminated by trade. Now Mr. Gilmore's position was exactly
+that which Miss Marrable regarded as being the best in England. He
+was a country gentleman, living on his own acres, a justice of the
+peace, whose father and grandfather and great-grandfather had
+occupied exactly the same position. Such a marriage for Mary would be
+quite safe; and in those days one did hear so often of girls making,
+she would not say improper marriages, but marriages which in her eyes
+were not fitting! Mr. Gilmore, she thought, exactly filled that
+position which entitled a gentleman to propose marriage to such a
+lady as Mary Lowther.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, my dear, I am glad to have you back again. Of course I have
+been a little lonely, but I bear that kind of thing better than most
+people. Thank God, my eyes are good."</p>
+
+<p>"You are looking so well, Aunt Sarah!"</p>
+
+<p>"I am well. I don't know how other women get so much amiss; but God
+has been very good to me."</p>
+
+<p>"And so pretty," said Mary, kissing her.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear, it's a pity you're not a young gentleman."</p>
+
+<p>"You are so fresh and nice, aunt. I wish I could always look as you
+do."</p>
+
+<p>"What would Mr. Gilmore say?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Mr. Gilmore, Mr. Gilmore, Mr. Gilmore! I am so weary of Mr.
+Gilmore."</p>
+
+<p>"Weary of him, Mary?"</p>
+
+<p>"Weary of myself because of him&mdash;that is what I mean. He has behaved
+always well, and I am not at all sure that I have. And he is a
+perfect gentleman. But I shall never be Mrs. Gilmore, Aunt Sarah."</p>
+
+<p>"Janet says that she thinks you will."</p>
+
+<p>"Janet is mistaken. But, dear aunt, don't let us talk about it at
+once. Of course you shall hear everything in time, but I have had so
+much of it. Let us see what new books there are. Cast Iron! You don't
+mean to say you have come to that?"</p>
+
+<p>"I shan't read it."</p>
+
+<p>"But I will, aunt. So it must not go back for a day or two. I do love
+the Fenwicks, dearly, dearly, both of them. They are almost, if not
+quite, perfect. And yet I am glad to be at home."</p>
+
+
+<p><a name="c10" id="c10"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>CHAPTER X.</h3>
+<h4>CRUNCH'EM CAN'T BE HAD.<br />&nbsp;</h4>
+
+
+<p>Mr. Fenwick had intended to have come home round by Market Lavington,
+after having deposited Miss Lowther at the Westbury Station, with the
+view of making some inquiry respecting the gentleman with the hurt
+shoulder; but he had found the distance to be too great, and had
+abandoned the idea. After that there was not a day to spare till the
+middle of the next week; so that it was nearly a fortnight after the
+little scene at the corner of the Vicarage garden wall before he
+called upon the Lavington constable and the Lavington doctor. From
+the latter he could learn nothing. No such patient had been to him.
+But the constable, though he had not seen the two men, had heard of
+them. One was a man who in former days had frequented Lavington,
+Burrows by name, generally known as Jack the Grinder, who had been in
+every prison in Wiltshire and Somersetshire, but who had not,&mdash;so
+said the constable,&mdash;honoured Lavington for the last two years, till
+this his last appearance. He had, however, been seen there in company
+with another man, and had evidently been in a condition very unfit
+for work. He had slept one night at a low public-house, and had then
+moved on. The man had complained of a fall from the cart, and had
+declared that he was black and blue all over; but it seemed to be
+clear that he had no broken bones. Mr. Fenwick therefore was all but
+convinced that Jack the Grinder was the gentleman with whom he had
+had the encounter, and that the grinder's back had withstood that
+swinging blow from the life-preserver. Of the Grinder's companions
+nothing could be learned. The two men had taken the Devizes road out
+of Lavington, and beyond that nothing was known of them. When the
+parson mentioned Sam Brattle's name in a whisper, the Lavington
+constable shook his head. He knew all about old Jacob Brattle. A very
+respectable party was old Mr. Brattle in the constable's opinion.
+Nevertheless the constable shook his head when Sam Brattle's name was
+mentioned. Having learned so much, the parson rode home.</p>
+
+<p>Two days after this, on a Friday, Fenwick was sitting after breakfast
+in his study, at work on his sermon for next Sunday, when he was told
+that old Mrs. Brattle was waiting to see him. He immediately got up,
+and found his own wife and the miller's seated in the hall. It was
+not often that Mrs. Brattle made her way to the Vicarage, but when
+she did so she was treated with great consideration. It was still
+August, and the weather was very hot, and she had walked up across
+the water mead, and was tired. A glass of wine and a biscuit were
+pressed upon her, and she was encouraged to sit and say a few
+indifferent words, before she was taken into the study and told to
+commence the story which had brought her so far. And there was a most
+inviting topic for conversation. The mill and the mill premises were
+to be put in order by the landlord. Mrs. Brattle affected to be
+rather dismayed than otherwise by the coming operations. The mill
+would have lasted their time, she thought, "and as for them as were
+to come after them,&mdash;well! she didn't know. As things was now,
+perhaps, it might be that after all Sam would have the mill." But the
+trouble occasioned by the workmen would be infinite. How were they to
+live in the mean time, and where were they to go? It soon appeared,
+however, that all this had been already arranged. Milling must of
+course be stopped for a month or six weeks. "Indeed, sir, feyther
+says that there won't be no more grinding much before winter." But
+the mill was to be repaired first, and then, when it became
+absolutely necessary to dismantle the house, they were to endeavour
+to make shift, and live in the big room of the mill itself, till
+their furniture should be put back again. Mrs. Fenwick, with ready
+good nature, offered to accommodate Mrs. Brattle and Fanny at the
+Vicarage; but the old woman declined with many protestations of
+gratitude. She had never left her old man yet, and would not do so
+now. The weather would be mild for awhile, and she thought that they
+could get through. By this time the glass of wine had been sipped to
+the bottom, and the parson, mindful of his sermon, had led the
+visitor into his study. She had come to tell that Sam at last had
+returned home.</p>
+
+<p>"Why didn't you bring him up with you, Mrs. Brattle?" Here was a
+question to ask of an old lady, whose dominion over her son was
+absolutely none! Sam had become so frightfully independent that he
+hardly regarded the word of his father, who was a man pre-eminently
+capable of maintaining authority, and would no more do a thing
+because his mother told him than because the wind whistled.</p>
+
+<p>"I axed him to come up, not just with me, but of hisself, Mr.
+Fenwick; but he said as how you would know where to find him if you
+wanted him."</p>
+
+<p>"That's just what I don't know. However, if he's there now I'll go to
+him. It would have been better far that he should have come to me."</p>
+
+<p>"I told 'un so, Mr. Fenwick, I did, indeed."</p>
+
+<p>"It does not signify. I will go to him; only it cannot be to-day, as
+I have promised to take my wife over to Charlicoats. But I'll come
+down immediately after breakfast to-morrow. You think he'll be still
+there?"</p>
+
+<p>"I be sure he will, Mr. Fenwick. He and feyther have taken on again,
+till it's beautiful to see. There was none of 'em feyther ever loved
+like he,&mdash;only one." Thereupon the poor woman burst out into tears,
+and covered her face with her handkerchief. "He never makes half so
+much account of my Fan, that never had a fault belonging to her."</p>
+
+<p>"If Sam will stick to that it will be well for him."</p>
+
+<p>"He's taken up extraordinary with the repairs, Mr. Fenwick. He's in
+and about and over the place, looking to everything; and feyther says
+he knows so much about it, he b'lieves the boy could do it all out o'
+his own head. There's nothing feyther ever liked so much as folks to
+be strong and clever."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps the Squire's tradesmen won't like all that. Is Mitchell
+going to do it?"</p>
+
+<p>"It ain't a doing in that way, Mr. Fenwick. The Squire is allowing
+&pound;200, and feyther is to get it done. Mister Mitchell is to see that
+it's done proper, no doubt."</p>
+
+<p>"And now tell me, Mrs. Brattle, what has Sam been about all the time
+that he was away?"</p>
+
+<p>"That's just what I cannot tell you, Mr. Fenwick."</p>
+
+<p>"Your husband has asked him, I suppose?"</p>
+
+<p>"If he has, he ain't told me, Mr. Fenwick. I don't care to come
+between them with hints and jealousies, suspecting like. Our Fan says
+he's been out working somewhere Lavington way; but I don't know as
+she knows."</p>
+
+<p>"Was he decent looking when he came home?"</p>
+
+<p>"He wasn't much amiss, Mr. Fenwick. He has that way with him that he
+most always looks decent;&mdash;don't he, sir?"</p>
+
+<p>"Had he any money?"</p>
+
+<p>"He had a some'at, because when he was working, moving the big lumber
+as though for bare life, he sent one of the boys for beer, and I
+see'd him give the boy the money."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sorry for it. I wish he'd come back without a penny, and with
+hunger like a wolf in his stomach, and with his clothes all rags, so
+that he might have had a taste of the suffering of a vagabond's
+life."</p>
+
+<p>"Just like the Prodigal Son, Mr. Fenwick?"</p>
+
+<p>"Just like the Prodigal Son. He would not have come back to his
+father had he not been driven by his own vices to live with the
+swine." Then, seeing the tears coming down the poor mother's cheeks,
+he added in a kinder voice, "Perhaps it may be all well as it is. We
+will hope so at least, and to-morrow I will come down and see him.
+You need not tell him that I am coming, unless he should ask where
+you have been." Then Mrs. Brattle took her leave, and the parson
+finished his sermon.</p>
+
+<p>That afternoon he drove his wife across the county to visit certain
+friends at Charlicoats, and, both going and coming, could not keep
+himself from talking about the Brattles. In the first place, he
+thought that Gilmore was wrong not to complete the work himself.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course he'll see that the money is spent and all that, and no
+doubt in this way he may get the job done twenty or thirty pounds
+cheaper; but the Brattles have not interest enough in the place to
+justify it."</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose the old man liked it best so."</p>
+
+<p>"The old man shouldn't have been allowed to have his way. I am in an
+awful state of alarm about Sam. Much as I like him,&mdash;or at any rate
+did like him,&mdash;I fear he is going, or perhaps has gone, to the dogs.
+That those two men were housebreakers is as certain as that you sit
+there; and I cannot doubt but that he has been with them over at
+Lavington or Devizes, or somewhere in that country."</p>
+
+<p>"But he may, perhaps, never have joined them in anything of that
+kind."</p>
+
+<p>"A man is known by his companions. I would not have believed it if I
+had not found him with the men, and traced him and them about the
+county together. You see that this fellow whom they call the Grinder
+was certainly the man I struck. I tracked him to Lavington, and there
+he was complaining of being sore all over his body. I don't wonder
+that he was sore. He must be made like a horse to be no worse than
+sore. Well, then, that man and Sam were certainly in our garden
+together."</p>
+
+<p>"Give him a chance, Frank."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course, I will give him a chance. I will give him the very best
+chance I can. I would do anything to save him,&mdash;but I can't help
+knowing what I know."</p>
+
+<p>He had made very little to his wife of the danger of the Vicarage
+being robbed, but he could not but feel that there was danger. His
+wife had brought with her, among other plenishing for their
+household, a considerable amount of handsome plate, more than is,
+perhaps, generally to be found in country parsonages, and no doubt
+this fact was known, at any rate, to Sam Brattle. Had the men simply
+intended to rob the garden, they would not have run the risk of
+coming so near to the house windows. But then it certainly was true
+that Sam was not showing them the way. The parson did not quite know
+what to think about it, but it was clearly his duty to be on his
+guard.</p>
+
+<p>That same evening he sauntered across the corner of the churchyard to
+his neighbour the farmer. Looking out warily for Bone'm, he stood
+leaning upon the farm gate. Bone'm was not to be seen or heard, and
+therefore he entered, and walked up to the back door, which indeed
+was the only door for entrance or egress that was ever used. There
+was a front door opening into a little ragged garden, but this was as
+much a fixture as the wall. As he was knocking at the back door, it
+was opened by the farmer himself. Mr. Fenwick had called to inquire
+whether his friend had secured for him,&mdash;as half promised,&mdash;the
+possession of a certain brother of Bone'm's, who was supposed to be
+of a very pugnacious disposition in the silent watches of the night.</p>
+
+<p>"It's no go, parson."</p>
+
+<p>"Why not, Mr. Trumbull?"</p>
+
+<p>"The truth is, there be such a deal of talk o' thieves about the
+country, that no one likes to part with such a friend as that. Muster
+Crickly, over at Imber, he have another big dog it's true, a reg'lar
+mastiff, but he do say that Crunch'em be better than the mastiff, and
+he won't let 'un go, parson,&mdash;not for love nor money. I wouldn't let
+Bone'm go, I know; not for nothing." Then Mr. Fenwick walked back to
+the Vicarage, and was half induced to think that as Crunch'em was not
+to be had, it would be his duty to sit up at night, and look after
+the plate box himself.</p>
+
+
+<p><a name="c11" id="c11"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>CHAPTER XI.</h3>
+<h4>DON'T YOU BE AFEARD ABOUT ME.<br />&nbsp;</h4>
+
+
+<p>On the following morning Mr. Fenwick walked down to the mill. There
+was a path all along the river, and this was the way he took. He
+passed different points as he went, and he thought of the trout he
+had caught there, or had wished to catch, and he thought also how
+often Sam Brattle had been with him as he had stood there delicately
+throwing his fly. In those days Sam had been very fond of him, had
+thought it to be a great thing to be allowed to fish with the parson,
+and had been reasonably obedient. Now Sam would not even come up to
+the Vicarage when he was asked to do so. For more than a year after
+the close of those amicable relations the parson had behaved with
+kindness and almost with affection to the lad. He had interceded with
+the Squire when Sam was accused of poaching,&mdash;had interceded with the
+old miller when Sam had given offence at home,&mdash;and had even
+interceded with the constable when there was a rumour in the wind of
+offences something worse than these. Then had come the occasion on
+which Mr. Fenwick had told the father that unless the son would
+change his course evil would come of it; and both father and son had
+taken this amiss. The father had told the parson to his face that he,
+the parson, had led his son astray; and the son in his revenge had
+brought housebreakers down upon his old friend's premises.</p>
+
+<p>"One hasn't to do it for thanks," said Mr. Fenwick, as he became a
+little bitter while thinking of all this. "I'll stick to him as long
+as I can, if it's only for the old woman's sake,&mdash;and for the poor
+girl whom we used to love." Then he thought of a clear, sweet, young
+voice that used to be so well known in his village choir, and of the
+heavy curls, which it was a delight to him to see. It had been a
+pleasure to him to have such a girl as Carry Brattle in his church,
+and now Carry Brattle was gone utterly, and would probably never be
+seen in a church again. These Brattles had suffered much, and he
+would bear with them, let the task of doing so be ever so hard.</p>
+
+<p>The sound of workmen was to be already heard as he drew near to the
+mill. There were men there pulling the thatch off the building, and
+there were carts and horses bringing laths, lime, bricks, and timber,
+and taking the old rubbish away. As he crossed quickly by the
+slippery stones he saw old Jacob Brattle standing before the mill
+looking on, with his hands in his breeches pockets. He was too old to
+do much at such work as this,&mdash;work to which he was not
+accustomed&mdash;and was looking up in a sad melancholy way, as though it
+were a work of destruction, and not one of reparation.</p>
+
+<p>"We shall have you here as smart as possible before long, Mr.
+Brattle," said the parson.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know much about smart, Muster Fenwick. The old place was
+a'most tumbling down,&mdash;but still it would have lasted out my time,
+I'm thinking. If t' Squire would 'a done it fifteen years ago, I'd 'a
+thanked un; but I don't know what to say about it now, and this time
+of year and all, just when the new grist would be coming in. If t'
+Squire would 'a thought of it in June, now. But things is
+contrary&mdash;a'most allays so." After this speech, which was made in a
+low, droning voice, bit by bit, the miller took himself off and went
+into the house.</p>
+
+<p>At the back of the mill, perched on an old projecting beam, in the
+midst of dust and dirt, assisting with all the energy of youth in the
+demolition of the roof, Mr. Fenwick saw Sam Brattle. He perceived at
+once that Sam had seen him; but the young man immediately averted his
+eyes and went on with his work. The parson did not speak at once, but
+stepped over the ruins around him till he came immediately under the
+beam in question. Then he called to the lad, and Sam was constrained
+to answer "Yes, Mr. Fenwick, I am here;&mdash;hard at work, as you see."</p>
+
+<p>"I do see it, and wish you luck with your job. Spare me ten minutes,
+and come down and speak to me."</p>
+
+<p>"I am in such a muck now, Mr. Fenwick, that I do wish to go on with
+it, if you'll let me."</p>
+
+<p>But Mr. Fenwick, having taken so much trouble to get at the young
+man, was not going to be put off in this way. "Never mind your muck
+for a quarter of an hour," he said. "I have come here on purpose to
+find you, and I must speak to you."</p>
+
+<p>"Must!" said Sam, looking down with a very angry lower on his face.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes,&mdash;must. Don't be a fool now. You know that I do not wish to
+injure you. You are not such a coward as to be afraid to speak to me.
+Come down."</p>
+
+<p>"Afeard! Who talks of being afeard? Stop a moment, Mr. Fenwick, and
+I'll be with you;&mdash;not that I think it will do any good." Then slowly
+he crept back along the beam and came down through the interior of
+the building. "What is it, Mr. Fenwick? Here I am. I ain't a bit
+afeard of you at any rate."</p>
+
+<p>"Where have you been the last fortnight, Sam?"</p>
+
+<p>"What right have you to ask me, Mr. Fenwick?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have the right of old friendship, and perhaps also some right from
+my remembrance of the last place in which I saw you. What has become
+of that man, Burrows?"</p>
+
+<p>"What Burrows?"</p>
+
+<p>"Jack the Grinder, whom I hit on the back the night I made you
+prisoner. Do you think that you were doing well in being in my garden
+about midnight in company with such a fellow as that,&mdash;one of the
+most notorious jailbirds in the county? Do you know that I could have
+had you arrested and sent to prison at once?"</p>
+
+<p>"I know you couldn't&mdash;do nothing of the kind."</p>
+
+<p>"You know this, Sam,&mdash;that I've no wish to do it; that nothing would
+give me more pain than doing it. But you must feel that if we should
+hear now of any depredation about the county, we couldn't,&mdash;I at
+least could not,&mdash;help thinking of you. And I am told that there will
+be depredations, Sam. Are you concerned in these matters?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, I am not," said Sam, doggedly.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you disposed to tell me why you were in my garden, and why those
+men were with you?"</p>
+
+<p>"We were down in the churchyard, and the gate was open, and so we
+walked up;&mdash;that was all. If we'd meant to do anything out of the way
+we shouldn't 'a come like that, nor yet at that hour. Why, it worn't
+midnight, Mr. Fenwick."</p>
+
+<p>"But why was there such a man as Burrows with you? Do you think he
+was fit company for you, Sam?"</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose a chap may choose his own company, Mr. Fenwick?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, he may, and go to the gallows because he chooses it, as you are
+doing."</p>
+
+<p>"Very well; if that's all you've got to say to me, I'll go back to my
+work."</p>
+
+<p>"Stop one moment, Sam. That is not quite all. I caught you the other
+night where you had no business to be, and for the sake of your
+father and mother, and for old recollections, I let you go. Perhaps I
+was wrong, but I don't mean to hark back upon that again."</p>
+
+<p>"You are a-harking back on it, ever so often."</p>
+
+<p>"I shall take no further steps about it."</p>
+
+<p>"There ain't no steps to be taken, Mr. Fenwick."</p>
+
+<p>"But I see that you intend to defy me, and therefore I am bound to
+tell you that I shall keep my eye upon you."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you be afeard about me, Mr. Fenwick."</p>
+
+<p>"And if I hear of those fellows, Burrows and the other, being about
+the place any more, I shall give the police notice that they are
+associates of yours. I don't think so badly of you yet, Sam, as to
+believe you would bring your father's grey hairs with sorrow to the
+grave by turning thief and housebreaker; but when I hear of your
+being away from home, and nobody knowing where you are, and find that
+you are living without decent employment, and prowling about at
+nights with robbers and cut-throats, I cannot but be afraid. Do you
+know that the Squire recognised you that night as well as I?"</p>
+
+<p>"The Squire ain't nothing to me, and if you've done with me now, Mr.
+Fenwick, I'll go back to my work." So saying, Sam Brattle again
+mounted up to the roof, and the parson returned discomfited to the
+front of the building. He had not intended to see any of the family,
+but, as he was crossing the little bridge, meaning to go home round
+by the Privets, he was stopped by Fanny Brattle.</p>
+
+<p>"I hope it will be all right now, Mr. Fenwick," the girl said.</p>
+
+
+<div class="center"><a name="il5" id="il5"></a>
+<table style="margin: 0 auto" cellpadding="4px">
+  <tr>
+    <td align="center">
+      <a href="images/il5.jpg">
+      <img src="images/il5-t.jpg" width="325"
+      alt='"I hope it will be all right now,
+      Mr. Fenwick," the girl said.' /></a>
+    </td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="center">
+      <span class="caption">"I hope it will be all right now,
+      Mr. Fenwick," the girl said.<br />
+      Click to <a href="images/il5.jpg">ENLARGE</a></span>
+    </td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>"I hope so too, Fanny. But you and your mother should keep an eye on
+him, so that he may know that his goings and comings are noticed. I
+dare say it will be all right as long as the excitement of these
+changes is going on; but there is nothing so bad as that he should be
+in and out of the house at nights and not feel that his absence is
+noticed. It will be better always to ask him, though he be ever so
+cross. Tell your mother I say so."</p>
+
+
+<p><a name="c12" id="c12"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>CHAPTER XII.</h3>
+<h4>BONE'M AND HIS MASTER.<br />&nbsp;</h4>
+
+
+<p>After leaving the mill Mr. Fenwick went up to the Squire, and, in
+contradiction, as it were, of all the hard things that he had said to
+Sam Brattle, spoke to the miller's landlord in the lad's favour. He
+was hard at work now, at any rate; and seemed inclined to stick to
+his work. And there had been an independence about him which the
+parson had half liked, even while he had been offended at it. Gilmore
+differed altogether from his friend. "What was he doing in your
+garden? What was he doing hidden in Trumbull's hedge? When I see
+fellows hiding in ditches at night, I don't suppose that they're
+after much good." Mr. Fenwick made some lame apology, even for these
+offences. Sam had, perhaps, not really known the extent of the
+iniquity of the men with whom he had associated, and had come up the
+garden probably with a view to the fruit. The matter was discussed at
+great length, and the Squire at last promised that he would give Sam
+another chance in regard to his own estimation of the young man's
+character.</p>
+
+<p>On that same evening,&mdash;or, rather, after the evening was over, for it
+was nearly twelve o'clock at night,&mdash;Fenwick walked round the garden
+and the orchard with his wife. There was no moon now, and the night
+was very dark. They stopped for a minute at the wicket leading into
+the churchyard, and it was evident to them that Bone'm, from the
+farmyard at the other side of the church, had heard them, for he
+commenced a low growl, with which the parson was by this time well
+acquainted.</p>
+
+<p>"Good dog, good dog," said the parson, in a low voice. "I wish we had
+his brother, I know."</p>
+
+<p>"He would only be tearing the maids and biting the children," said
+Mrs. Fenwick. "I hate having a savage beast about."</p>
+
+<p>"But it would be so nice to catch a burglar and crunch him. I feel
+almost bloodthirsty since I hit that fellow with the life-preserver,
+and find that I didn't kill him."</p>
+
+<p>"I know, Frank, you're thinking about these thieves more than you
+like to tell me."</p>
+
+<p>"I was thinking just then, that if they were to come and take all the
+silver it wouldn't do much harm. We should have to buy German plate,
+and nobody would know the difference."</p>
+
+<p>"Suppose they murdered us all?"</p>
+
+<p>"They never do that now. The profession is different from what it
+used to be. They only go where they know they can find a certain
+amount of spoil, and where they can get it without much danger. I
+don't think housebreakers ever cut throats in these days. They're too
+fond of their own." Then they both agreed that if these rumours of
+housebreakings were continued, they would send away the plate some
+day to be locked up in safe keeping at Salisbury. After that they
+went to bed.</p>
+
+<p>On the next morning, the Sunday morning, at a few minutes before
+seven, the parson was awakened by his groom at his bedroom door.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it, Roger?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"For the love of God, sir, get up! They've been and murdered Mr.
+Trumbull."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Fenwick, who heard the tidings, screamed; and Mr. Fenwick was
+out of bed and into his trousers in half a minute. In another half
+minute Mrs. Fenwick, clothed in her dressing-gown, was up-stairs
+among her children. No doubt she thought that as soon as the poor
+farmer had been despatched, the murderers would naturally pass on
+into her nursery. Mr. Fenwick did not believe the tidings. If a man
+be hurt in the hunting-field, it is always said that he's killed. If
+the kitchen flue be on fire, it is always said that the house is
+burned down. Something, however, had probably happened at Farmer
+Trumbull's; and down went the parson across the garden and orchard,
+and through the churchyard, as quick as his legs would carry him. In
+the farmyard he found quite a crowd of men, including the two
+constables and three or four of the leading tradesmen in the village.
+The first thing that he saw was the dead body of Bone'm, the dog. He
+was stiff and stark, and had been poisoned.</p>
+
+<p>"How's Mr. Trumbull?" he asked, of the nearest by-stander.</p>
+
+<p>"Laws, parson, ain't ye heard?" said the man. "They've knocked his
+skull open with a hammer, and he's as dead&mdash;as dead."</p>
+
+<p>Hearing this, the parson turned round, and made his way into the
+house. There was not a doubt about it. The farmer had been murdered
+during the night, and his money carried off. Upstairs Mr. Fenwick
+made his way to the farmer's bedroom, and there lay the body. Mr.
+Crittenden, the village doctor, was there; and a crowd of men, and an
+old woman or two. Among the women was Trumbull's sister, the wife of
+a neighbouring farmer, who, with her husband, a tenant of Mr.
+Gilmore's, had come over just before the arrival of Mr. Fenwick. The
+body had been found on the stairs, and it was quite clear that the
+farmer had fought desperately with the man or men before he had
+received the blow which despatched him.</p>
+
+<p>"I told 'um how it be,&mdash;I did, I did, when he would 'a all that money
+by 'um." This was the explanation given by Mr. Trumbull's sister,
+Mrs. Boddle.</p>
+
+<p>It seemed that Trumbull had had in his possession over a hundred and
+fifty pounds, of which the greater part was in gold, and that he kept
+this in a money-box in his bedroom. One of the two women who lived in
+his service,&mdash;he himself had been a widower without
+children,&mdash;declared that she had always known that at night he took
+the box out of his cupboard into bed with him. She had seen it there
+more than once when she had taken him up drinks when he was unwell.
+When first interrogated, she declared that she did not remember, at
+that moment, that she had ever told anybody; she thought she had
+never told anybody; at last, she would swear that she had never
+spoken a word about it to a single soul. She was supposed to be a
+good girl, had come of decent people, and was well known by Mr.
+Fenwick, of whose congregation she was one. Her name was Agnes Pope.
+The other servant was an elderly woman, who had been in the house all
+her life, but was unfortunately deaf. She had known very well about
+the money, and had always been afraid about it; had very often spoken
+to her master about it, but never a word to Agnes. She had been woken
+in the night,&mdash;that was, as it turned out, about
+2 <span class="smallcaps">a.m.</span>,&mdash;by the girl
+who slept with her, and who declared that she had heard a great
+noise, as of somebody tumbling,&mdash;a very great noise indeed, as though
+there were ever so many people tumbling. For a long time, for perhaps
+an hour, they had lain still, being afraid to move. Then the elder
+woman had lighted a candle, and gone down from the garret in which
+they slept. The first thing she saw was the body of her master, in
+his shirt, upon the stairs. She had then called up the only other
+human being who slept on the premises, a shepherd, who had lived for
+thirty years with Trumbull. This man had thrown open the house, and
+had gone for assistance, and had found the body of the dead dog in
+the yard.</p>
+
+<p>Before nine o'clock the facts, as they have been told, were known
+everywhere, and the Squire was down on the spot. The man,&mdash;or, as it
+was presumed, men,&mdash;had entered by the unaccustomed front door, which
+was so contrived as to afford the easiest possible mode of getting
+into the house; whereas, the back door, which was used by everybody,
+had been bolted and barred with all care. The men must probably have
+entered by the churchyard and the back gate of the farmyard, as that
+had been found to be unlatched, whereas the gate leading out on to
+the road had been found closed. The farmer himself had always been
+very careful to close both these gates when he let out Bone'm before
+going to bed. Poor Bone'm had been enticed to his death by a piece of
+poisoned meat, thrown to him probably some considerable time before
+the attack was made.</p>
+
+<p>Who were the murderers? That of course was the first question. It
+need hardly be said with how sad a heart Mr. Fenwick discussed this
+matter with the Squire. Of course inquiry must be made of the manner
+in which Sam Brattle had passed the night. Heavens! how would it be
+with that poor family if he had been concerned in such an affair as
+this! And then there came across the parson's mind a remembrance that
+Agnes Pope and Sam Brattle had been seen by him together, on more
+Sundays than one. In his anxiety, and with much imprudence, he went
+to the girl and questioned her again.</p>
+
+<p>"For your own sake, Agnes, tell me, are you sure you never mentioned
+about the money-box to&mdash;Sam Brattle?"</p>
+
+<p>The girl blushed and hesitated, and then said that she was quite sure
+she never had. She didn't think she had ever said ten words to Sam
+since she knew about the box.</p>
+
+<p>"But five words would be sufficient, Agnes."</p>
+
+<p>"Then them five words was never spoke, sir," said the girl. But still
+she blushed, and the parson thought that her manner was not in her
+favour.</p>
+
+<p>It was necessary that the parson should attend to his church; but the
+Squire, who was a magistrate, went down with the two constables to
+the mill. There they found Sam and his father, with Mrs. Brattle and
+Fanny. No one went to the church from the mill on that day. The news
+had reached them of the murder, and they all felt,&mdash;though no one of
+them had so said to any other,&mdash;that something might in some way
+connect them with the deed that had been done. Sam had hardly spoken
+since he had heard of Mr. Trumbull's death; though when he saw that
+his father was perfectly silent, as one struck with some sudden
+dread, he bade the old man hold up his head and fear nothing. Old
+Brattle, when so addressed, seated himself in his arm-chair, and
+there remained without a word till the magistrate with the constables
+were among them.</p>
+
+<p>There were not many at church, and Mr. Fenwick made the service very
+short. He could not preach the sermon which he had prepared, but said
+a few words on the terrible catastrophe which had occurred so near to
+them. This man who was now lying within only a few yards of them,
+with his brains knocked out, had been alive among them, strong and in
+good health, yesterday evening! And there had come into their
+peaceful village miscreants who had been led on from self-indulgence
+to idleness, and from idleness to theft, and from theft to murder! We
+all know the kind of words which the parson spoke, and the thrill of
+attention with which they would be heard. Here was a man who had been
+close to them, and therefore the murder came home to them all, and
+filled them with an excitement which, alas! was not probably without
+some feeling of pleasure. But the sermon, if sermon it could be
+called, was very short; and when it was over, the parson also hurried
+down to the mill.</p>
+
+<p>It had already been discovered that Sam Brattle had certainly been
+out during the night. He had himself denied this at first, saying,
+that though he had been the last to go to bed, he had gone to bed
+about eleven, and had not left the mill-house till late in the
+morning;&mdash;but his sister had heard him rise, and had seen his body
+through the gloom as he passed beneath the window of the room in
+which she slept. She had not heard him return, but, when she arose at
+six, had found out that he was then in the house. He manifested no
+anger against her when she gave this testimony, but acknowledged that
+he had been out, that he had wandered up to the road, and explained
+his former denial frankly,&mdash;or with well-assumed frankness,&mdash;by
+saying that he would, if possible, for his father's and mother's
+sake, have concealed the fact that he had been away,&mdash;knowing that
+his absence would give rise to suspicions which would well-nigh break
+their hearts. He had not, however,&mdash;so he said,&mdash;been any nearer to
+Bullhampton than the point of the road opposite to the lodge of
+Hampton Privets, from whence the lane turned down to the mill. What
+had he been doing down there? He had done nothing, but sat and smoked
+on a stile by the road side. Had he seen any strangers? Here he
+paused, but at last declared that he had seen none, but had heard the
+sound of wheels and of a pony's feet upon the road. The vehicle,
+whatever it was, must have passed on towards Bullhampton just before
+he reached the road. Had he followed the vehicle? No;&mdash;he had thought
+of doing so, but had not. Could he guess who was in the vehicle? By
+this time many surmises had been made aloud as to Jack the Grinder
+and his companion, and it had become generally known that the parson
+had encountered two such men in his own garden some nights
+previously. Sam, when he was pressed, said that the idea had come
+into his mind that the vehicle was the Grinder's cart. He had no
+knowledge, he said, that the man was coming to Bullhampton on that
+night;&mdash;but the man had said in his hearing, that he would like to
+strip the parson's peaches. He was asked also about Farmer Trumbull's
+money. He declared that he had never heard that the farmer kept money
+in the house. He did know that the farmer was accounted to be a very
+saving man,&mdash;but that was all that he knew. He was as much surprised,
+he said, as any of them at what had occurred. Had the men turned the
+other way and robbed the parson he would have been less surprised. He
+acknowledged that he had called the parson a turn-coat and a meddling
+tell-tale, in the presence of these men.</p>
+
+<p>All this ended of course in Sam's arrest. He had himself seen from
+the first that it would be so, and had bade his mother take comfort
+and hold up her head. "It won't be for long, mother. I ain't got any
+of the money, and they can't bring it nigh me." He was taken away to
+be locked up at Heytesbury that night, in order that he might be
+brought before the bench of magistrates which would sit at that place
+on Tuesday. Squire Gilmore for the present committed him.</p>
+
+<p>The parson remained for some time with the old man and his wife after
+Sam was gone, but he soon found that he could be of no service by
+doing so. The miller himself would not speak, and Mrs. Brattle was
+utterly prostrated by her husband's misery.</p>
+
+<p>"I do not know what to say about it," said Mr. Fenwick to his wife
+that night. "The suspicion is very strong; but I cannot say that I
+have an opinion one way or the other." There was no sermon in
+Bullhampton Church on that Sunday afternoon.</p>
+
+
+<p><a name="c13" id="c13"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>CHAPTER XIII.</h3>
+<h4>CAPTAIN MARRABLE AND HIS FATHER.<br />&nbsp;</h4>
+
+
+<p>Only that it is generally conceived that in such a history as is this
+the writer of the tale should be able to make his points so clear by
+words that no further assistance should be needed, I should be
+tempted here to insert a properly illustrated pedigree tree of the
+Marrable family. The Marrable family is of very old standing in
+England, the first baronet having been created by James I., and there
+having been Marrables,&mdash;as is well known by all attentive readers of
+English history,&mdash;engaged in the Wars of the Roses, and again others
+very conspicuous in the religious persecutions of the children of
+Henry VIII. I do not know that they always behaved with consistency;
+but they held their heads up after a fashion, and got themselves
+talked of, and were people of note in the country. They were
+cavaliers in the time of Charles I. and of Cromwell,&mdash;as became men
+of blood and gentlemen,&mdash;but it is not recorded of them that they
+sacrificed much in the cause; and when William III. became king they
+submitted with a good grace to the new order of things. A certain Sir
+Thomas Marrable was member for his county in the reigns of George I.
+and George II., and enjoyed a lucrative confidence with Walpole. Then
+there came a blustering, roystering Sir Thomas, who, together with a
+fine man and gambler as a heir, brought the property to rather a low
+ebb; so that when Sir Gregory, the grandfather of our Miss Marrable,
+came to the title in the early days of George III. he was not a rich
+man. His two sons, another Sir Gregory and a General Marrable, died
+long before the days of which we are writing,&mdash;Sir Gregory in 1815,
+and the General in 1820. That Sir Gregory was the second of the
+name,&mdash;the second at least as mentioned in these pages. He had been
+our Miss Marrable's uncle, and the General had been her father, and
+the father of Mrs. Lowther,&mdash;Mary's mother. A third Sir Gregory was
+reigning at the time of our story, a very old gentleman with one
+single son,&mdash;a fourth Gregory. Now the residence of Sir Gregory was
+at Dunripple Park, just on the borders of Warwickshire and
+Worcestershire, but in the latter county. The property was
+small,&mdash;for a country gentleman with a title,&mdash;not much exceeding
+&pound;3000 a year; and there was no longer any sitting in Parliament, or
+keeping of race-horses, or indeed any season in town for the present
+race of Marrables. The existing Sir Gregory was a very quiet man, and
+his son and only child, a man now about forty years of age, lived
+mostly at home, and occupied himself with things of antiquity. He was
+remarkably well read in the history of his own country, and it had
+been understood for the last twenty years by the Antiquarian,
+Arch&aelig;ological, and other societies that he was the projector of a new
+theory about Stonehenge, and that his book on the subject was almost
+ready. Such were the two surviving members of the present senior
+branch of the family. But Sir Gregory had two brothers,&mdash;the younger
+of the two being Parson John Marrable, the present rector of St.
+Peter's Lowtown and the occupier of the house within the heavy
+slate-coloured gates, where he lived a bachelor life, as had done
+before him his cousin the late rector;&mdash;the elder being a certain
+Colonel Marrable. The Colonel Marrable again had a son, who was a
+Captain Walter Marrable,&mdash;and after him the confused reader shall be
+introduced to no more of the Marrable family. The enlightened reader
+will have by this time perceived that Miss Mary Lowther and Captain
+Walter Marrable were second cousins; and he will also have perceived,
+if he has given his mind fully to the study, that the present Parson
+John Marrable had come into the living after the death of a cousin of
+the same generation as himself,&mdash;but of lower standing in the family.
+It was so; and by this may be seen how little the Sir Gregory of the
+present day had been able to do for his brother, and perhaps it may
+also be imagined from this that the present clergyman at Loring
+Lowtown had been able to do very little for himself. Nevertheless, he
+was a kindly-hearted, good, sincere old man,&mdash;not very bright,
+indeed, nor peculiarly fitted for preaching the gospel, but he was
+much liked, and he kept a curate, though his income out of the living
+was small. Now it so happened that Captain Marrable,&mdash;Walter
+Marrable,&mdash;came to stay with his uncle the parson about the same time
+that Mary Lowther returned to Loring.</p>
+
+<p>"You remember Walter, do you not?" said Miss Marrable to her niece.</p>
+
+<p>"Not the least in the world. I remember there was a Walter when I was
+at Dunripple. But that was ten years ago, and boy cousins and girl
+cousins never fraternise."</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose he was nearly a young man then, and you were a child?"</p>
+
+<p>"He was still at school, though just leaving it. He is seven years
+older than I am."</p>
+
+<p>"He is coming to stay with Parson John."</p>
+
+<p>"You don't say so, aunt Sarah? What will such a man as Captain
+Marrable do at Loring?"</p>
+
+<p>Then aunt Sarah explained all that she knew, and perhaps suggested
+more than she knew. Walter Marrable had quarrelled with his father,
+the Colonel,&mdash;with whom, indeed, everybody of the name of Marrable
+had always been quarrelling, and who was believed by Miss Marrable to
+be the very&mdash;mischief himself. He was a man always in debt, who had
+broken his wife's heart, who lived with low company and disgraced the
+family, who had been more than once arrested, on whose behalf all the
+family interest had been expended, so that nobody else could get
+anything, and who gambled and drank and did whatever wicked things a
+wicked old colonel living at Portsmouth could do. And indeed,
+hitherto, Miss Marrable had entertained opinions hardly more
+charitable respecting the son than she had done in regard to the
+father. She had disbelieved in this branch of the Marrables
+altogether. Captain Marrable had lived with his father a good
+deal,&mdash;at least, so she had understood,&mdash;and therefore could not but
+be bad. And, moreover, our Miss Sarah Marrable had, throughout her
+whole life, been somewhat estranged from the elder branches of the
+family. Her father, Walter, had been,&mdash;so she thought,&mdash;injured by
+his brother Sir Gregory, and there had been some law proceedings, not
+quite amicable, between her brother the parson, and the present Sir
+Gregory. She respected Sir Gregory as the head of the family, but she
+never went now to Dunripple, and knew nothing of Sir Gregory's heir.
+Of the present Parson John she had thought very little before he had
+come to Loring. Since he had been living there she had found that
+blood was thicker than water,&mdash;as she would say,&mdash;and they two were
+intimate. When she heard that Captain Marrable was coming, because he
+had quarrelled with his father, she began to think that perhaps it
+might be as well that she should allow herself to meet this new
+cousin.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you think of your cousin, Walter?" the old clergyman said to
+his nephew, one evening, after the two ladies, who had been dining at
+the Rectory, had left them. It was the first occasion on which Walter
+Marrable had met Mary since his coming to Loring.</p>
+
+<p>"I remember her as well as if it were yesterday, at Dunripple. She
+was a little girl then, and I thought her the most beautiful little
+girl in the world."</p>
+
+<p>"We all think her very beautiful still."</p>
+
+<p>"So she is; as lovely as ever she can stand. But she does not seem to
+have much to say for herself. I remember when she was a little girl
+she never would speak."</p>
+
+<p>"I fancy she can talk when she pleases, Walter. But you mustn't fall
+in love with her."</p>
+
+<p>"I won't, if I can help it."</p>
+
+<p>"In the first place I think she is as good as engaged to a fellow
+with a very pretty property in Wiltshire, and in the next place she
+hasn't got&mdash;one shilling."</p>
+
+<p>"There is not much danger. I am not inclined to trouble myself about
+any girl in my present mood, even if she had the pretty property
+herself, and wasn't engaged to anybody. I suppose I shall get over it
+some day, but I feel just at present as though I couldn't say a kind
+word to a human being."</p>
+
+<p>"Psha! psha! that's nonsense, Walter. Take things coolly. They're
+more likely to come right, and they won't be so troublesome, even if
+they don't." Such was the philosophy of Parson John,&mdash;for the sake of
+digesting which the captain lit a cigar, and went out to smoke it,
+standing at one of the open slate-coloured gates.</p>
+
+<p>It was said in the first chapter of this story that Mr. Gilmore was
+one of the heroes whose deeds the story undertakes to narrate, and a
+hint was perhaps expressed that of all the heroes he was the
+favourite. Captain Marrable is, however, another hero, and, as such,
+some word or two must be said of him. He was a better-looking man,
+certainly, than Mr. Gilmore, though perhaps his personal appearance
+did not at first sight give to the observer so favourable an idea of
+his character as did that of the other gentleman. Mr. Gilmore was to
+be read at a glance as an honest, straightforward, well-behaved
+country squire, whose word might be taken for anything, who might,
+perhaps, like to have his own way, but who could hardly do a cruel or
+an unfair thing. He was just such a man to look at as a prudent
+mother would select as one to whom she might entrust her daughter
+with safety. Now Walter Marrable's countenance was of a very
+different die. He had served in India, and the naturally dark colour
+of his face had thus become very swarthy. His black hair curled round
+his head, but the curls on his brow were becoming very thin, as
+though age were already telling on them, and yet he was four or five
+years younger than Mr. Gilmore. His eyebrows were thick and heavy,
+and his eyes seemed to be black. They were eyes which were used
+without much motion; and when they were dead set, as they were not
+unfrequently, it would seem as though he were defying those on whom
+he looked. Thus he made many afraid of him, and many who were not
+afraid of him, disliked him because of a certain ferocity which
+seemed to characterise his face. He wore no beard beyond a heavy
+black moustache, which quite covered his upper lip. His nose was long
+and straight, his mouth large, and his chin square. No doubt he was a
+handsome man. And he looked to be a tall man, though in truth he
+lacked two full inches of the normal six feet. He was broad across
+the chest, strong on his legs, and was altogether such a man to look
+at that few would care to quarrel with him, and many would think that
+he was disposed to quarrel. Of his nature he was not quarrelsome; but
+he was a man who certainly had received much injury. It need not be
+explained at length how his money affairs had gone wrong with him. He
+should have inherited, and, indeed, did inherit, a fortune from his
+mother's family, of which his father had contrived absolutely to rob
+him. It was only within the last month that he had discovered that
+his father had succeeded in laying his hands on certainly the bulk of
+his money, and it might be upon all. Words between them had been very
+bitter. The father, with a cigar between his teeth, had told his son
+that this was the fortune of war, that if justice had been done him
+at his marriage, the money would have been his own, and that by
+<span class="nowrap">G&mdash;&mdash;</span>
+he was very sorry, and couldn't say anything more. The son had called
+the father a liar and a swindler,&mdash;as, indeed, was the truth, though
+the son was doubtless wrong to say so to the author of his being. The
+father had threatened the son with his horsewhip; and so they had
+parted, within ten days of Walter Marrable's return from India.</p>
+
+<p>Walter had written to his two uncles, asking their advice as to
+saving the wreck, if anything might be saved. Sir Gregory had written
+back to say that he was an old man, that he was greatly grieved at
+the misunderstanding, and that Messrs. Block and Curling were the
+family lawyers. Parson John invited his nephew to come down to Loring
+Lowtown. Captain Marrable went to Block and Curling, who were by no
+means consolatory, and accepted his uncle's invitation.</p>
+
+<p>It was but three days after the first meeting between the two
+cousins, that they were to be seen one evening walking together along
+the banks of the Lurwell, a little river which at Loring sometimes
+takes the appearance of a canal, and sometimes of a natural stream.
+But it is commercial, having connection with the Kennet and Avon
+navigation; and long, slow, ponderous barges, with heavy, dirty,
+sleepy bargemen, and rickety, ill-used barge-horses, are common in
+the neighbourhood. In parts it is very pretty, as it runs under the
+chalky downs, and there are a multiplicity of locks, and the turf of
+the sheep-walks comes up to the towing path; but in the close
+neighbourhood of the town the canal is straight and uninteresting;
+the ground is level, and there is a scattered community of small,
+straight-built light-brick houses, which are in themselves so ugly
+that they are incompatible with anything that is pretty in landscape.</p>
+
+<p>Parson John, always so called to distinguish him from the late
+parson, his cousin, who had been the Rev. James Marrable, had taken
+occasion, on behalf of his nephew, to tell the story of his wrong to
+Miss Marrable, and by Miss Marrable it had been told to Mary. To both
+these ladies the thing seemed to be so horrible,&mdash;the idea that a
+father should have robbed his son,&mdash;that the stern ferocity of the
+slow-moving eyes was forgiven, and they took him to their hearts, if
+not for love, at least for pity. Twenty thousand pounds ought to have
+become the property of Walter Marrable, when some maternal relative
+had died. It had seemed hard that the father should have none of it,
+and, on the receipt in India of representations from the Colonel,
+Walter had signed certain fatal papers, the effect of which was that
+the father had laid his hands on pretty nearly the whole, if not on
+the whole, of the money, and had caused it to vanish. There was now a
+question whether some five thousand pounds might not be saved. If so,
+Walter would stay in England; if not, he would exchange and go back
+to India; "or," as he said himself, "to the Devil."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't speak of it in that way," said Mary.</p>
+
+<p>"The worst of it is," said he "that I am ashamed of myself for being
+so absolutely cut up about money. A man should be able to bear that
+kind of thing; but this hits one all round."</p>
+
+<p>"I think you bear it very well."</p>
+
+<p>"No, I don't. I didn't bear it well when I called my father a
+swindler. I didn't bear it well when I swore that I would put him in
+prison for robbing me. I don't bear it well now, when I think of it
+every moment. But I do so hate India, and I had so absolutely made up
+my mind never to return. If it hadn't been that I knew that this
+fortune was to be mine, I could have saved money, hand over hand."</p>
+
+<p>"Can't you live on your pay here?"</p>
+
+<p>"No!" He answered her almost as though he were angry with her. "If I
+had been used all my life to the strictest economies, perhaps I might
+do so. Some men do, no doubt; but I am too old to begin it. There is
+the choice of two things,&mdash;to blow my brains out, or go back."</p>
+
+<p>"You are not such a coward as that."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know. I ain't sure that it would be cowardice. If there were
+anybody I could injure by doing it, it would be cowardly."</p>
+
+<p>"The family," suggested Mary.</p>
+
+<p>"What does Sir Gregory care for me? I'll show you his letter to me
+some day. I don't think it would be cowardly at all to get away from
+such a lot."</p>
+
+<p>"I am sure you won't do that, Captain Marrable."</p>
+
+<p>"Think what it is to know that your father is a swindler. Perhaps
+that is the worst of it all. Fancy talking or thinking of one's
+family after that. I like my uncle John. He is very kind, and has
+offered to lend me &pound;150, which I'm sure he can't afford to lose, and
+which I am too honest to take. But even he hardly sees it. He calls
+it a misfortune, and I've no doubt would shake hands with his brother
+to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p>"So would you, if he were really sorry."</p>
+
+<p>"No, Mary; nothing on earth shall ever induce me to set my eyes on
+him again willingly. He has destroyed all the world for me. He should
+have had half of it without a word. When he used to whine to me in
+his letters, and say how cruelly he had been treated, I always made
+up my mind that he should have half the income for life. It was
+because he should not want till I came home that I enabled him to do
+what he has done. And now he has robbed me of every cursed shilling!
+I wonder whether I shall ever get my mind free from it."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course you will."</p>
+
+<p>"It seems now that my heart is wrapped in lead." As they were coming
+home she put her hand upon his arm, and asked him to promise her to
+withdraw that threat.</p>
+
+<p>"Why should I withdraw it? Who cares for me?"</p>
+
+<p>"We all care. My aunt cares. I care."</p>
+
+<p>"The threat means nothing, Mary. People who make such threats don't
+carry them out. Of course I shall go on and endure it. The worst of
+all is, that the whole thing makes me so unmanly,&mdash;makes such a beast
+of me. But I'll try to get over it."</p>
+
+<p>Mary Lowther thought that, upon the whole, he bore his misfortune
+very well.</p>
+
+
+<p><a name="c14" id="c14"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>CHAPTER XIV.</h3>
+<h4>COUSINHOOD.<br />&nbsp;</h4>
+
+
+<p>Mary Lowther and her cousin had taken their walk together on Monday
+evening, and on the next morning she received the following letter
+from Mrs. Fenwick. When it reached her she had as yet heard nothing
+of the Bullhampton tragedy.<br />&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+<blockquote>
+<p class="jright">Vicarage, Monday, Sept. 1, 186&mdash;.</p>
+
+<p class="noindent"><span class="smallcaps">Dearest Mary</span>,</p>
+
+<p>I suppose you will have heard before you get this of the
+dreadful murder that has taken place here, and which has
+so startled and horrified us, that we hardly know what we
+are doing even yet. It is hard to say why a thing should
+be worse because it is close, but it certainly is so. Had
+it been in the next parish, or even further off in this
+parish, I do not think that I should feel it so much, and
+then we knew the old man so well; and then, again,&mdash;which
+makes it worst of all,&mdash;we all of us are unable to get rid
+of a suspicion that one whom we knew, and was liked, has
+been a participator in the crime.</p>
+
+<p>It seems that it must have been about two o'clock on
+Sunday morning that Mr. Trumbull was killed. It was, at
+any rate, between one and three. As far as they can judge,
+they think that there must have been three men concerned.
+You remember how we used to joke about poor Mr. Trumbull's
+dog. Well, he was poisoned first,&mdash;probably an hour before
+the men got into the house. It has been discovered that
+the foolish old man kept a large sum of money by him in a
+box, and that he always took this box into bed with him.
+The woman, who lived in the house with him, used to see it
+there. No doubt the thieves had heard of this, and both
+Frank and Mr. Gilmore think that the girl, Agnes Pope,
+whom you will remember in the choir, told about it. She
+lived with Mr. Trumbull, and we all thought her a very
+good girl,&mdash;though she was too fond of that young man, Sam
+Brattle.</p>
+
+<p>They think that the men did not mean to do the murder, but
+that the old man fought so hard for his money that they
+were driven to it. His body was not in the room, but on
+the top of the stairs, and his temple had been split open
+with a blow of a hammer. The hammer lay beside him, and
+was one belonging to the house. Mr. Gilmore says that
+there was great craft in their using a weapon which they
+did not bring with them. Of course they cannot be traced
+by the hammer.</p>
+
+<p>They got off with &pound;150 in the box, and did not touch
+anything else. Everybody feels quite sure that they knew
+all about the money, and that when Mr. Gilmore saw them
+that night down at the churchyard corner, they were
+prowling about with a view of seeing how they could get
+into the farmer's house, and not into the Vicarage. Frank
+thinks that when he afterwards found them in our place,
+Sam Brattle had brought them in with a kind of wild idea
+of taking the fruit, but that the men, of their own
+account, had come round to reconnoitre the house. They
+both say that there can be no doubt about the men having
+been the same. Then comes the terrible question whether
+Sam Brattle, the son of that dear woman at the mill, has
+been one of the murderers. He had been at home all the
+previous day working very hard at the works,&mdash;which are
+being done in obedience to your orders, my dear; but he
+certainly was out on the Saturday night.</p>
+
+<p>It is very hard to get at any man's belief in such
+matters, but, as far as I can understand them, I don't
+think that either Frank or Mr. Gilmore do really believe
+that he was there. Frank says that it will go very hard
+with him, and Mr. Gilmore has committed him. The
+magistrates are to sit to-morrow at Heytesbury, and Mr.
+Gilmore will be there. He has, as you may be sure, behaved
+as well as possible, and has quite altered in his manner
+to the old people. I was at the mill this morning. Brattle
+himself would not speak to me, but I sat for an hour with
+Mrs. Brattle and Fanny. It makes it almost the more
+melancholy having all the rubbish and building things
+about, and yet the work stopped.</p>
+
+<p>Fanny Brattle has behaved so well! It was she who told
+that her brother had been out at night. Mr. Gilmore says
+that when the question was asked in his presence, she
+answered it in her own quiet, simple way, without a
+moment's doubt; but since that she has never ceased to
+assert her conviction that her brother has had nothing to
+do either with the murder or with the robbery. If it had
+not been for this, Mrs. Brattle would, I think, have sunk
+under the load. Fanny says the same thing constantly to
+her father. He scolds her, and bids her hold her tongue;
+but she goes on, and I think it has some effect even on
+him. The whole place does look such a picture of ruin! It
+would break your heart to see it. And then, when one looks
+at the father and mother, one remembers about that other
+child, and is almost tempted to ask why such misery should
+have fallen upon parents who have been honest, sober, and
+industrious. Can it really be that the man is being
+punished here on earth because he will not believe? When I
+hinted this to Frank, he turned upon me, and scolded me,
+and told me I was measuring the Almighty God with a
+foot-rule. But men were punished in the Bible because they
+did not believe. Remember the Baptist's father. But I
+never dare to go on with Frank on these matters.</p>
+
+<p>I am so full of this affair of poor Mr. Trumbull, and so
+anxious about Sam Brattle, that I cannot now write about
+anything else. I can only say that no man ever behaved
+with greater kindness and propriety than Harry Gilmore,
+who has had to act as magistrate. Poor Fanny Brattle has
+to go to Heytesbury to-morrow to give her evidence. At
+first they said that they must take the father also, but
+he is to be spared for the present.</p>
+
+<p>I should tell you that Sam himself declares that he got to
+know these men at a place where he was at work,
+brickmaking, near Devizes. He had quarrelled with his
+father, and had got a job there, with high wages. He used
+to be out at night with them, and acknowledges that he
+joined one of them, a man named Burrows, in stealing a
+brood of pea-fowl which some poulterers wanted to buy. He
+says he looked on it as a joke. Then it seems he had some
+spite against Trumbull's dog, and that this man, Burrows,
+came over here on purpose to take the dog away. This,
+according to his story, is all that he knows of the man;
+and he says that on that special Saturday night he had not
+the least idea that Burrows was at Bullhampton, till he
+heard the sound of a certain cart on the road. I tell you
+all this, as I am sure you will share our anxiety
+respecting this unfortunate young man,&mdash;because of his
+mother and sister.</p>
+
+<p>Good-bye, dearest; Frank sends ever so many loves;&mdash;and
+somebody else would send them too, if he thought that I
+would be the bearer. Try to think so well of Bullhampton
+as to make you wish to live here.&mdash;Give my kindest love to
+your aunt Sarah.</p>
+
+<p class="ind8">Your most affectionate friend,</p>
+
+<p class="ind15"><span class="smallcaps">Janet
+Fenwick</span>.<br />&nbsp;</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+
+<p>Mary was obliged to read the letter twice before she completely
+understood it. Old Mr. Trumbull murdered! Why she had known the old
+man well, had always been in the habit of speaking to him when she
+met him either at the one gate or the other of the farmyard,&mdash;had
+joked with him about Bone'm, and had heard him assert his own perfect
+security against robbers not a week before the night on which he was
+murdered! As Mrs. Fenwick had said, the truth is so much more real
+when it comes from things that are near. And then she had so often
+heard the character of Sam Brattle described,&mdash;the man who was now in
+prison as a murderer! And she herself had given lessons in singing to
+Agnes Pope, who was now in some sort accused of aiding the thieves.
+And she herself had asked Agnes whether it was not foolish for her to
+be hanging about the farmyard, outside her master's premises, with
+Sam Brattle. It was all brought very near to her!</p>
+
+<p>Before that day was over she was telling the story to Captain
+Marrable. She had of course told it to her aunt, and they had been
+discussing it the whole morning. Mr. Gilmore's name had been
+mentioned to Captain Marrable, but very little more than the name.
+Aunt Sarah, however, had already begun to think whether it might not
+be prudent to tell cousin Walter the story of the half-formed
+engagement. Mary had expressed so much sympathy with her cousin's
+wrongs, that aunt Sarah had begun to fear that that sympathy might
+lead to a tenderer feeling, and aunt Sarah was by no means anxious
+that her niece should fall in love with a gentleman whose chief
+attraction was the fact that he had been ruined by his own father,
+even though that gentleman was a Marrable himself. This danger might
+possibly be lessened if Captain Marrable were made acquainted with
+the Gilmore affair, and taught to understand how desirable such a
+match would be for Mary. But aunt Sarah had qualms of conscience on
+the subject. She doubted whether she had a right to tell the story
+without leave from Mary; and then there was in truth no real
+engagement. She knew indeed that Mr. Gilmore had made the offer more
+than once; but then she knew also that the offer had at any rate not
+as yet been accepted, and she felt that on Mr. Gilmore's account as
+well as on Mary's she ought to hold her tongue. It might indeed be
+admissible to tell to a cousin that which she would not tell to an
+indifferent young man; but, nevertheless, she could not bring herself
+to do, even with so good an object, that which she believed to be
+wrong.</p>
+
+<p>That evening Mary was again walking on the towing-path beside the
+river with her cousin Walter. She had met him now about five times,
+and there was already an intimacy between them. The idea of cousinly
+intimacy to girls is undoubtedly very pleasant; and I do not know
+whether it is not the fact that the better and the purer is the girl,
+the sweeter and the pleasanter is the idea. In America a girl may
+form a friendly intimacy with any young man she fancies, and though
+she may not be free from little jests and good-humoured joking, there
+is no injury to her from such intimacy. It is her acknowledged right
+to enjoy herself after that fashion, and to have what she calls a
+good time with young men. A dozen such intimacies do not stand in her
+way when there comes some real adorer who means to marry her and is
+able to do so. She rides with these friends, walks with them, and
+corresponds with them. She goes out to balls and picnics with them,
+and afterwards lets herself in with a latchkey, while her papa and
+mamma are a-bed and asleep, with perfect security. If there be much
+to be said against the practice, there is also something to be said
+for it. Girls on the other hand, on the continent of Europe, do not
+dream of making friendship with any man. A cousin with them is as
+much out of the question as the most perfect stranger. In strict
+families, a girl is hardly allowed to go out with her brother; and I
+have heard of mothers who thought it indiscreet that a father should
+be seen alone with his daughter at a theatre. All friendships between
+the sexes must, under such a social code, be looked forward to as
+post-nuptial joys. Here in England there is a something betwixt the
+two. The intercourse between young men and girls is free enough to
+enable the latter to feel how pleasant it is to be able to forget for
+awhile conventional restraints, and to acknowledge how joyous a thing
+it is to indulge in social intercourse in which the simple delight of
+equal mind meeting equal mind in equal talk is just enhanced by the
+unconscious remembrance that boys and girls when they meet together
+may learn to love. There is nothing more sweet in youth than this,
+nothing more natural, nothing more fitting, nothing, indeed, more
+essentially necessary for God's purposes with his creatures.
+Nevertheless, here with us, there is the restriction, and it is
+seldom that a girl can allow herself the full flow of friendship with
+a man who is not old enough to be her father, unless he is her lover
+as well as her friend. But cousinhood does allow some escape from the
+hardship of this rule. Cousins are Tom, and Jack, and George, and
+Dick. Cousins probably know all or most of your little family
+secrets. Cousins, perhaps, have romped with you, and scolded you, and
+teased you, when you were young. Cousins are almost the same as
+brothers, and yet they may be lovers. There is certainly a great
+relief in cousinhood.</p>
+
+<p>Mary Lowther had no brother. She had neither brother nor sister;&mdash;had
+since her earliest infancy hardly known any other relative save her
+aunt and old Parson John. When first she had heard that Walter
+Marrable was at Loring, the tidings gave her no pleasure whatever. It
+never occurred to her to say to herself: "Now I shall have one who
+may become my friend, and be to me perhaps almost a brother?" What
+she had hitherto heard of Walter Marrable had not been in his favour.
+Of his father she had heard all that was bad, and she had joined the
+father and the son together in what few ideas she had formed
+respecting them. But now, after five interviews, Walter Marrable was
+her dear cousin, with whom she sympathised, of whom she was proud,
+whose misfortunes were in some degree her misfortunes, to whom she
+thought she could very soon tell this great trouble of her life about
+Mr. Gilmore, as though he were indeed her brother. And she had
+learned to like his dark staring eyes, which now always seemed to be
+fixed on her with something of real regard. She liked them the
+better, perhaps, because there was in them so much of real
+admiration; though if it were so, Mary knew nothing of such liking
+herself. And now at his bidding she called him Walter. He had
+addressed her by her Christian name at first, as a matter of course,
+and she had felt grateful to him for doing so. But she had not dared
+to be so bold with him, till he had bade her do so, and now she felt
+that he was a cousin indeed. Captain Marrable was at present waiting,
+not with much patience, for tidings from Block and Curling. Would
+that &pound;5000 be saved for him, or must he again go out to India and be
+heard of no more at home in his own England? Mary was not so
+impatient as the Captain, but she also was intensely interested in
+the expected letters. On this day, however, their conversation
+chiefly ran on the news which Mary had that morning heard from
+Bullhampton.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose you feel sure," said the Captain, "that young Sam Brattle
+was one of the murderers?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh no, Walter."</p>
+
+<p>"Or at least one of the thieves?"</p>
+
+<p>"But both Mr. Fenwick and Mr. Gilmore think that he is innocent."</p>
+
+<p>"I do not gather that from what your friend says. She says that she
+thinks that they think so. And then it is clear that he was hanging
+about the place before with the very men who have committed the
+crime; and that there was a way in which he might have heard and
+probably had heard of the money; and then he was out and about that
+very night."</p>
+
+<p>"Still I can't believe it. If you knew the sort of people his father
+and mother are." Captain Marrable could not but reflect that, if an
+honest gentleman might have a swindler for his father, an honest
+miller might have a thief for his son. "And then if you saw the place
+at which they live! I have a particular interest about it."</p>
+
+<p>"Then the young man, of course, must be innocent."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't laugh at me, Walter."</p>
+
+<p>"Why is the place so interesting to you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I can hardly tell you why. The father and the mother are interesting
+people, and so is the sister. And in their way they are so good! And
+they have had great troubles,&mdash;very great troubles. And the place is
+so cool and pretty, all surrounded by streams and old pollard
+willows, with a thatched roof that comes in places nearly to the
+ground; and then the sound of the mill wheel is the pleasantest sound
+I know anywhere."</p>
+
+<p>"I will hope he is innocent, Mary."</p>
+
+<p>"I do so hope he is innocent! And then my friends are so much
+interested about the family. The Fenwicks are very fond of them, and
+Mr. Gilmore is their landlord."</p>
+
+<p>"He is the magistrate?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, he is the magistrate."</p>
+
+<p>"What sort of fellow is he?"</p>
+
+<p>"A very good sort of fellow; such a sort that he can hardly be
+better; a perfect gentleman."</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed! And has he a perfect lady for his wife?"</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Gilmore is not married."</p>
+
+<p>"What age is he?"</p>
+
+<p>"I think he is thirty-three."</p>
+
+<p>"With a nice estate and not married! What a chance you have left
+behind you, Mary!"</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think, Walter, that a girl ought to wish to marry a man
+merely because he is a perfect gentleman, and has a nice estate and
+is not yet married?"</p>
+
+<p>"They say that they generally do;&mdash;don't they?"</p>
+
+<p>"I hope you don't think so. Any girl would be very fortunate to marry
+Mr. Gilmore&mdash;if she loved him."</p>
+
+<p>"But you don't?"</p>
+
+<p>"You know I am not talking about myself, and you oughtn't to make
+personal allusions."</p>
+
+<p>These cousinly walks along the banks of the Lurwell were not probably
+favourable to Mr. Gilmore's hopes.</p>
+
+
+<p><a name="c15" id="c15"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>CHAPTER XV.</h3>
+<h4>THE POLICE AT FAULT.<br />&nbsp;</h4>
+
+
+<p><img class="left" src="images/ch15a.jpg" width="310" alt="Illustration" />
+The magistrates sat at Heytesbury on the Tuesday, and Sam Brattle was
+remanded. An attorney thus was employed on his behalf by Mr. Fenwick.
+The parson on the Monday evening had been down at the mill, and had
+pressed strongly on the old miller the necessity of getting some
+legal assistance for his son. At first Mr. Brattle was stern,
+immovable, and almost dumb. He sat on the bench outside his door,
+with his eyes fixed on the dismantled mill, and shook his head
+wearily, as though sick and sore with the words that were being
+addressed to him. Mrs. Brattle the while stood in the doorway, and
+listened without uttering a sound. If the parson could not prevail,
+it would be quite out of the question that any word of hers should do
+good. There she stood, wiping the tears from her eyes, looking on
+wishfully, while her husband did not even know that she was there. At
+last he rose from his seat, and hallooed to her. "Maggie," said he,
+"Maggie." She stepped forward, and put her hand upon his shoulder.
+"Bring me down the purse, mother," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"There will be nothing of that kind wanted," said the parson.</p>
+
+<p>"Them gentlemen don't work for such as our boy for nothin'," said the
+miller. "Bring me the purse, mother, I say. There ar'n't much in it,
+but there's a few guineas as 'll do for that, perhaps. As well pitch
+'em away that way as any other."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Fenwick, of course, declined to take the money. He would make the
+lawyer understand that he would be properly paid for his trouble, and
+that for the present would suffice. Only, as he explained, it was
+expedient that he should have the father's authority. Should any
+question on the matter arise, it would be bettor for the young man
+that he should be defended by his father's aid than by that of a
+stranger. "I understand, Mr. Fenwick," said the old man,&mdash;"I
+understand; and it's neighbourly of you. But it'd be better that
+you'd just leave us alone to go out like the snuff of a candle."</p>
+
+<p>"Father," said Fanny, "I won't have you speak in that way, making out
+our Sam to be guilty before ere a one else has said so."</p>
+
+<p>The miller shook his head again, but said nothing further, and the
+parson, having received the desired authority, returned to the
+Vicarage.</p>
+
+<p>The attorney had been employed, and Sam had been remanded. There was
+no direct evidence against him, and nothing could be done until the
+other men should be taken, for whom they were seeking. The police had
+tracked the two men back to a cottage, about fifteen miles distant
+from Bullhampton, in which lived an old woman, who was the mother of
+the Grinder. With Mrs. Burrows they found a young woman who had
+lately come to live there, and who was said in the neighbourhood to
+be the Grinder's wife.</p>
+
+<p>But nothing more could be learned of the Grinder than that he had
+been at the cottage on the Sunday morning, and had gone away,
+according to his wont. The old woman swore that he slept there the
+whole of Saturday night, but of course the policemen had not believed
+her statement. When does any policeman ever believe anything? Of the
+pony and cart the old woman declared she knew nothing. Her son had no
+pony, and no cart, to her knowing. Then she went on to declare that
+she knew very little about her son, who never lived with her; and
+that she had only taken in the young woman out of charity, about two
+weeks since. The mother did not for a moment pretend that her son was
+an honest man, getting his bread after an honest fashion. The
+Grinder's mode of life was too well known for even a mother to
+attempt to deny it. But she pretended that she was very honest
+herself, and appealed to sundry brandy-balls and stale biscuits in
+her window, to prove that she lived after a decent, honest,
+commercial fashion.</p>
+
+<p>Sam was of course remanded. The head constable of the district asked
+for a week more to make fresh inquiry, and expressed a very strong
+opinion that he would have the Grinder and his friend by the heels
+before the week should be over. The Heytesbury attorney made a feeble
+request that Sam might be released on bail, as there was not,
+according to his statement, "the remotest shadow of a tittle of
+evidence against him." But poor Sam was sent back to gaol, and there
+remained for that week. On the next Tuesday the same scene was
+re-enacted. The Grinder had not been taken, and a further remand was
+necessary. The face of the head constable was longer on this occasion
+than it had been before, and his voice less confident. The Grinder,
+he thought, must have caught one of the early Sunday trains, and made
+his way to Birmingham. It had been ascertained that he had friends at
+Birmingham. Another remand was asked for a week, with an
+understanding that at the end of the week it should be renewed if
+necessary. The policeman seemed to think that by that time, unless
+the Grinder were below the sod, his presence above it would certainly
+be proved. On this occasion the Heytesbury attorney made a very loud
+demand for Sam's liberation, talking of habeas corpus, and the
+injustice of carceration without evidence of guilt. But the
+magistrates would not let him go. "When I'm told that the young man
+was seen hiding in a ditch close to the murdered man's house, only a
+few days before the murder, is that no evidence against him, Mr.
+Jones?" said Sir Thomas Charleys, of Charlicoats.</p>
+
+<p>"No evidence at all, Sir Thomas. If I had been found asleep in the
+ditch, that would have been no evidence against me."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, it would, very strong evidence; and I would have committed you
+on it, without hesitation, Mr. Jones."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Jones made a spirited rejoinder to this; but it was of no use,
+and poor Sam was sent back to gaol for the third time.</p>
+
+<p>For the first ten days after the murder nothing was done as to the
+works at the mill. The men who had been employed by Brattle ceased to
+come, apparently of their own account, and everything was lying there
+just in the state in which the men had left the place on the Saturday
+night. There was something inexpressibly sad in this, as the old man
+could not even make a pretence of going into the mill for employment,
+and there was absolutely nothing to which he could put his hands, to
+do it. When ten days were over, Gilmore came down to the mill, and
+suggested that the works should be carried on and finished by him. If
+the mill were not kept at work, the old man could not live, and no
+rent would be paid. At any rate, it would be better that this great
+sorrow should not be allowed so to cloud everything as to turn
+industry into idleness, and straitened circumstances into absolute
+beggary. But the Squire found it very difficult to deal with the
+miller. At first old Brattle would neither give nor withhold his
+consent. When told by the Squire that the property could not be left
+in that way, he expressed himself willing to go out into the road,
+and lay himself down and die there;&mdash;but not until the term of his
+holding was legally brought to a close. "I don't know that I owe any
+rent over and beyond this Michaelmas as is coming, and there's the
+hay on the ground yet." Gilmore, who was very patient, assured him
+that he had no wish to allude to rent; that there should be no
+question of rent even when the day came, if at that time money was
+scarce. But would it not be better that the mill, at least, should be
+put in order?</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed it will, Squire," said Mrs. Brattle. "It is the idleness that
+is killing him."</p>
+
+<p>"Hold your jabbering tongue," said the miller, turning round upon her
+fiercely. "Who asked you? I will see to it myself, Squire, to-morrow
+or next day."</p>
+
+<p>After two or three further days of inaction at the mill the Squire
+came again, bringing the parson with him; and they did manage to
+arrange between them that the repairs should be at once continued.
+The mill should be completed; but the house should be left till next
+summer. As to Brattle himself, when he had been once persuaded to
+yield the point, he did not care how much they pulled down, or how
+much they built up. "Do it as you will," he said; "I ain't nobody
+now. The women drives me about my own house as if I hadn't a'most no
+business there." And so the hammers and trowels were heard again; and
+old Brattle would sit perfectly silent, gazing at the men as they
+worked. Once, as he saw two men and a boy shifting a ladder, he
+turned round, with a little chuckle to his wife, and said, "Sam'd 'a
+see'd hisself <span class="nowrap">d&mdash;&mdash;d,</span>
+afore he'd 'a asked another chap to help him
+with such a job as that."</p>
+
+<p>As Mrs. Brattle told Mrs. Fenwick afterwards, he had one of the two
+erring children in his thoughts morning, noon, and night. "When I
+tell 'un of George,"&mdash;who was the farmer near Fordingbridge,&mdash;"and of
+Mrs. Jay,"&mdash;who was the ironmonger's wife at Warminster,&mdash;"he won't
+take any comfort in them," said Mrs. Brattle. "I don't think he cares
+for them, just because they can hold their own heads up."</p>
+
+<p>At the end of three weeks the Grinder was still missing; and others
+besides Mr. Jones, the attorney, were beginning to say that Sam
+Brattle should be let out of prison. Mr. Fenwick was clearly of
+opinion that he should not be detained, if bail could be forthcoming.
+The Squire was more cautious, and said that it might well be that his
+escape would render it impossible for the police even to get on the
+track of the real murderers. "No doubt, he knows more than he has
+told," said Gilmore, "and will probably tell it at last. If he be let
+out, he will tell nothing." The police were all of opinion that Sam
+had been present at the murder, and that he should be kept in custody
+till he was tried. They were very sharp in their man&oelig;uvres to get
+evidence against him. His boot, they had said, fitted a footstep
+which had been found in the mud in the farm-yard. The measure had
+been taken on the Sunday. That was evidence. Then they examined Agnes
+Pope over and over again, and extracted from the poor girl an
+admission that she loved Sam better than anything in the whole wide
+world. If he were to be in prison, she would not object to go to
+prison with him. If he were to be hung, she would wish to be hung
+with him. She had no secret she would not tell him. But, as a matter
+of fact,&mdash;so she swore over and over again,&mdash;she had never told him a
+word about old Trumbull's box. She did not think she had ever told
+any one; but she would swear on her death-bed that she had never told
+Sam Brattle. The head constable declared that he had never met a more
+stubborn or a more artful young woman. Sir Thomas Charleys was
+clearly of opinion that no bail should be accepted. Another week of
+remand was granted with the understanding that, if nothing of
+importance was elicited by that time, and if neither of the other two
+suspected men were then in custody, Sam should be allowed to go at
+large upon bail&mdash;a good, substantial bail, himself in &pound;400, and his
+bailsmen in &pound;200 each.</p>
+
+<p>"Who'll be his bailsmen?" said the Squire, coming away with his
+friend the parson from Heytesbury.</p>
+
+<p>"There will be no difficulty about that, I should say."</p>
+
+<p>"But who will they be,&mdash;his father for one?"</p>
+
+<p>"His brother George, and Jay, at Warminster, who married his sister,"
+said the parson.</p>
+
+<p>"I doubt them both," said the Squire.</p>
+
+<p>"He sha'n't want for bail. I'll be one myself, sooner. He shall have
+bail. If there's any difficulty, Jones shall bail him; and I'll see
+Jones safe through it. He sha'n't be persecuted in that way."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think anybody has attempted to persecute him, Frank."</p>
+
+<p>"He will be persecuted if his own brothers won't come forward to help
+him. It isn't that they have looked into the matter, and that they
+think him guilty; but that they go just the way they're told to go,
+like sheep. The more I think of it, the more I feel that he had
+nothing to do with the murder."</p>
+
+<p>"I never knew a man change his opinion so often as you do," said
+Gilmore.</p>
+
+<p>During three weeks the visits made by Head Constable Toffy to the
+cottage in which Mrs. Burrows lived were much more frequent than were
+agreeable to that lady. This cottage was about four miles from
+Devizes, and on the edge of a common, about half a mile from the high
+road which leads from that town to Marlborough. There is, or was a
+year or two back, a considerable extent of unenclosed land
+thereabouts, and on a spot called Pycroft Common there was a small
+collection of cottages, sufficient to constitute a hamlet of the
+smallest class. There was no house there of greater pretensions than
+the very small beershop which provided for the conviviality of the
+Pycroftians; and of other shops there was none, save a baker's, the
+owner of which seldom had much bread to sell, and the establishment
+for brandy-balls, which was kept by Mrs. Burrows. The inhabitants
+were chiefly labouring men, some of whom were in summer employed in
+brick making; and there was an idea abroad that Pycroft generally was
+not sustained by regular labour and sober industry. Rents, however,
+were paid for the cottages, or the cottagers would have been turned
+adrift; and Mrs. Burrows had lived in hers for five or six years, and
+was noted in the neighbourhood for her outward neatness and attention
+to decency. In the summer there were always half-a-dozen large
+sunflowers in the patch of ground called a garden, and there was a
+rose-tree, and a bush of honeysuckle over the door, and an alder
+stump in a corner, which would still put out leaves and bear berries.
+When Head Constable Toffy visited her there would be generally a few
+high words, for Mrs. Burrows was by no means unwilling to let it be
+known that she objected to morning calls from Mr. Toffy.</p>
+
+<p>It has been already said that at this time Mrs. Burrows did not live
+alone. Residing with her was a young woman, who was believed by Mr.
+Toffy to be the wife of Richard Burrows, alias the Grinder. On his
+first visit to Pycroft no doubt, Mr. Toffy was mainly anxious to
+ascertain whether anything was known by the old woman as to her son's
+whereabouts, but the second, third, and fourth visits were made
+rather to the younger than to the older woman. Toffy had probably
+learned in his wide experience that a man of the Grinder's nature
+will generally place more reliance on a young woman than on an old;
+and that the young woman will, nevertheless, be more likely to betray
+confidence than the older,&mdash;partly from indiscretion, and partly,
+alas! from treachery. But, if the presumed Mrs. Burrows, junior, knew
+aught of the Grinder's present doings, she was neither indiscreet nor
+treacherous. Mr. Toffy could get nothing from her. She was sickly,
+weak, sullen, and silent. "She didn't think it was her business to
+say where she had been living before she came to Pycroft. She hadn't
+been living with any husband, and had got no husband that she knew
+of. If she had she wasn't going to say so. She hadn't any children,
+and she didn't know what business he had to ask her. She came from
+Lunnun. At any rate, she came from there last, and she didn't know
+what business he had to ask her where she came from. What business
+was it of his to be asking what her name was? Her name was Anne
+Burrows, if he liked to call her so. She wouldn't answer him any more
+questions. No; she wouldn't say what her name was before she was
+married."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Toffy had his reasons for interrogating this poor woman, but he
+did not for a while let any one know what those reasons were. He
+could not, however, obtain more information than what is contained in
+the answers above given, which were, for the most part, true. Neither
+the mother nor the younger woman knew where was to be found, at the
+present moment, that hero of adventure who was called the Grinder,
+and all the police of Wiltshire began to fear that they were about to
+be outwitted.</p>
+
+<p>"You never were at Bullhampton with your husband, I suppose?" asked
+Mr. Toffy.</p>
+
+<p>"Never," said the supposed Grinder's wife; "but what does it matter
+to you where I was?"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't answer him never another word," said old Mrs. Burrows.</p>
+
+<p>"I won't," said the other.</p>
+
+<p>"Were you ever at Bullhampton at all?" asked Mr. Toffy.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh dear, oh dear," said the younger woman.</p>
+
+<p>"I think you must have been there once," said Mr. Toffy.</p>
+
+<p>"What business is it of yourn?" demanded Mrs. Burrows, senior. "Drat
+you; get out of this. You ain't no right here, and you shan't stay
+here. If you ain't out of this, I'll brain yer. I don't care for
+perlice nor anything. We ain't done nothing. If he did smash the
+gen'leman's head, we didn't do it; neither she nor me."</p>
+
+<p>"All the same, I think that Mrs. Burrows has been at Bullhampton,"
+said the policeman.</p>
+
+<p>Not another word after this was said by Mrs. Burrows, junior, so
+called, and constable Toffy soon took his departure. He was
+convinced, at any rate, of this;&mdash;that wherever the murderers might
+be, the man or men who had joined Sam Brattle in the murder,&mdash;for of
+Sam's guilt he was quite convinced,&mdash;neither the mother, nor the
+so-called wife knew of their whereabouts. He, in his heart, condemned
+the constabulary of Warwickshire, of Gloucestershire, of
+Worcestershire, and of Somersetshire, because the Grinder was not
+taken. Especially he condemned the constabulary of Warwickshire,
+feeling almost sure that the Grinder was in Birmingham. If the
+constabulary in those counties would only do their duty as they in
+Wiltshire did theirs, the Grinder and his associates would soon be
+taken. But by him nothing further could be learned, and Mr. Toffy
+left Pycroft Common with a heavy heart.</p>
+
+
+<p><a name="c16" id="c16"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>CHAPTER XVI.</h3>
+<h4>MISS LOWTHER ASKS FOR ADVICE.<br />&nbsp;</h4>
+
+
+<p>All these searchings for the murderers of Mr. Trumbull, and these
+remandings of Sam Brattle, took place in the month of September, and
+during that same month the energy of other men of law was very keenly
+at work on a widely different subject. Could Messrs. Block and
+Curling assure Captain Marrable that a portion of his inheritance
+would be saved for him, or had that graceless father of his in very
+truth seized upon it all? There was no shadow of doubt but that if
+aught was spared, it had not been spared through any delicacy on the
+part of the Colonel. The Colonel had gone to work, paying creditors
+who were clamorous against him, the moment he had got his hand upon
+the money, and had gone to work also gambling, and had made
+assignments of money, and done his very best to spend the whole. But
+there was a question whether a certain sum of &pound;5000, which seemed to
+have got into the hands of a certain lady who protested that she
+wanted it very badly, might not be saved. Messrs. Block and Curling
+thought that it might, but were by no means certain. It probably
+might be done, if the Captain would consent to bring the matter
+before a jury; in which case the whole story of the father's iniquity
+must, of course, be proved. Or it might be that by threatening to do
+this, the lady's friends would relax their grasp on receiving a
+certain present out of the money.</p>
+
+<p>"We would offer them &pound;50, and perhaps they would take &pound;500," said
+Messrs. Block and Curling.</p>
+
+<p>All this irritated the Captain. He was intensely averse to any law
+proceedings by which the story should be made public.</p>
+
+<p>"I won't pretend that it is on my father's account," said he to his
+uncle. Parson John shrugged his shoulders, and shook his head,
+meaning to imply that it certainly was a bad case, but that as
+Colonel Marrable was a Marrable, he ought to be spared, if possible.
+"It is on my own account," continued the Captain, "and partly,
+perhaps, on that of the family. I would endure anything rather than
+have the filth of the transaction flooded through the newspapers. I
+should never be able to join my mess again if I did that."</p>
+
+<p>"Then you'd better let Block and Curling compromise and get what they
+can," said Parson John, with an indifferent and provoking tone, which
+clearly indicated that he would regard the matter when so settled as
+one arranged amicably and pleasantly between all the parties. His
+uncle's calmness and absence of horror at the thing that had been
+done was very grievous to Captain Marrable.</p>
+
+<p>"Poor Wat!" the parson had once said, speaking of his wicked brother;
+"he never could keep two shillings together. It's ever so long since
+I had to determine that nothing on earth should induce me to let him
+have half-a-crown. I must say that he did not take it amiss when I
+told him."</p>
+
+<p>"Why should he have wanted half-a-crown from you?"</p>
+
+<p>"He was always one of those thirsty sandbags that swallow small drops
+and large alike. He got &pound;10,000 out of poor Gregory about the time
+that you were born, and Gregory is fretting about it yet."</p>
+
+<p>"What kills me is the disgrace of it," said the young man.</p>
+
+<p>"It would be disagreeable to have it in the newspapers," said Parson
+John. "And then he was such a pleasant fellow, and so handsome. I
+always enjoyed his society when once I had buttoned up my breeches'
+pocket."</p>
+
+<p>Yet this man was a clergyman, preaching honesty and moral conduct,
+and living fairly well up to his preaching, too, as far as he himself
+was concerned! The Captain almost thought that the earth and skies
+should be brought together, and the clouds clap with thunder, and the
+mountains be riven in twain at the very mention of his father's
+wickedness. But then sins committed against oneself are so much more
+sinful than any other sins.</p>
+
+<p>The Captain had much more sympathetic listeners in Uphill Lane; not
+that either of the ladies there spoke severely against his father,
+but that they entered more cordially into his own distresses. If he
+could save even &pound;4500 out of the wreck, the interest on the money
+would enable him to live at home in his regiment. If he could get
+&pound;4000 he would do it.</p>
+
+<p>"With &pound;150 per annum," he said, "I could just hold my head up and get
+along. I should have to give up all manner of things; but I would
+never cry about that."</p>
+
+<p>Then, again, he would declare that the one thing necessary for his
+happiness was, that he should get the whole business of the money off
+his mind. "If I could have it settled, and have done with it," said
+he, "I should be at ease."</p>
+
+<p>"Quite right, my dear," said the old lady. "My idea about money is
+this, that whether you have much or little, you should make your
+arrangements so that it be no matter of thought to you. Your money
+should be just like counters at a round game with children, and
+should mean nothing. It comes to that when you once get things on a
+proper footing."</p>
+
+<p>They thus became very intimate, the two ladies in Uphill Lane and the
+Captain from his uncle's parsonage in the Lowtown; and the intimacy
+on his part was quite as strong with the younger as with the elder
+relative,&mdash;quite as strong, and no doubt more pleasant. They walked
+together constantly, as cousins may walk, and they discussed every
+turn that took place in the correspondence with Messrs. Block and
+Curling. Captain Marrable had come to his uncle's house for a week or
+ten days, but had been pressed to remain on till this business should
+be concluded. His leave of absence lasted till the end of November,
+and might be prolonged if he intended to return to India. "Stay here
+till the end of November," said Parson John. "What's the use of
+spending your money at a London hotel? Only don't fall in love with
+cousin Mary." So the Captain did stay, obeying one half of his
+uncle's advice, and promising obedience to the other half.</p>
+
+<p>Aunt Sarah also had her fears about the falling in love, and spoke a
+prudent word to Mary. "Mary, dear," she said, "you and Walter are as
+loving as turtle doves."</p>
+
+<p>"I do like him so much," said Mary, boldly.</p>
+
+<p>"So do I, my dear. He is a gentleman, and clever, and, upon the
+whole, he bears a great injury well. I like him. But I don't think
+people ought to fall in love when there is a strong reason against
+it."</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly not, if they can help it."</p>
+
+<p>"Pshaw! That's missish nonsense, Mary, and you know it. If a girl
+were to tell me she fell in love because she couldn't help it, I
+should tell her that she wasn't worth any man's love."</p>
+
+<p>"But what's your reason, Aunt Sarah?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because it wouldn't suit Mr. Gilmore."</p>
+
+<p>"I am not bound to suit Mr. Gilmore."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know about that. And then, too, it would not suit Walter
+himself. How could he marry a wife when he has just been robbed of
+all his fortune?"</p>
+
+<p>"But I have not the slightest idea of falling in love with him. In
+spite of what I said, I do hope that I can help it. And then I feel
+to him just as though he were my brother. I've got almost to know
+what it would be to have a brother."</p>
+
+<p>In this Miss Lowther was probably wrong. She had now known her cousin
+for just a month. A month is quite long enough to realise the
+pleasure of a new lover, but it may be doubted whether the intimacy
+of a brother does not take a very much longer period for its
+creation.</p>
+
+<p>"I think if I were you," said Miss Marrable, after a pause, "that I
+would tell him about Mr. Gilmore."</p>
+
+<p>"Would you, Aunt Sarah?"</p>
+
+<p>"I think I would. If he were really your brother you would tell him."</p>
+
+<p>It was probably the case, that when Miss Marrable gave this advice,
+her opinion of Mr. Gilmore's success was greater than the
+circumstances warranted. Though there had been much said between the
+aunt and her niece about Mr. Gilmore and his offers, Mary had never
+been able quite to explain her own thoughts and feelings. She herself
+did not believe that she could be brought to accept him, and was now
+stronger in that opinion than ever. But were she to say so in
+language that would convince her aunt, her aunt would no doubt ask
+her, why then had she left the man in doubt? Though she knew that at
+every moment in which she had been called upon to act, she had
+struggled to do right, yet there hung over her a half-conviction that
+she had been weak, and almost selfish. Her dearest friends wrote to
+her and spoke to her as though she would certainly take Mr. Gilmore
+at last. Janet Fenwick wrote of it in her letters as of a thing
+almost fixed; and Aunt Sarah certainly lived as though she expected
+it. And yet Mary was very nearly sure that it could not be so. Would
+it not be better that she should write to Mr. Gilmore at once, and
+not wait till the expiration of the weary six months which he had
+specified as the time at the end of which he might renew his
+proposals? Had Aunt Sarah known all this,&mdash;had she been aware how
+very near Mary was to the writing of such a letter,&mdash;she would not
+probably have suggested that her niece should tell her cousin
+anything about Mr. Gilmore. She did think that the telling of the
+tale would make Cousin Walter understand that he should not allow
+himself to become an interloper; but the tale, if told as Mary would
+tell it, might have a very different effect.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless Mary thought that she would tell it. It would be so nice
+to consult a brother! It would be so pleasant to discuss the matter
+with some one that would sympathise with her,&mdash;with some one who
+would not wish to drive her into Mr. Gilmore's arms simply because
+Mr. Gilmore was an excellent gentleman, with a snug property! Even
+from Janet Fenwick, whom she loved dearly, she had never succeeded in
+getting the sort of sympathy that she wanted. Janet was the best
+friend in the world,&mdash;was actuated in this matter simply by a desire
+to do a good turn to two people whom she loved. But there was no
+sympathy between her and Mary in the matter.</p>
+
+<p>"Marry him," said Janet, "and you will adore him afterwards."</p>
+
+<p>"I want to adore him first," said Mary.</p>
+
+<p>So she resolved that she would tell Walter Marrable what was her
+position. They were again down on the banks of the Lurwell, sitting
+together on a slope which had been made to support some hundred yards
+of a canal, where the river itself rippled down a slightly rapid
+fall. They were seated between the canal and the river, with their
+feet towards the latter, and Walter Marrable was just lighting a
+cigar. It was very easy to bring the conversation round to the
+affairs of Bullhampton, as Sam was still in prison, and Janet's
+letters were full of the mystery which shrouded the murder of Mr.
+Trumbull.</p>
+
+<p>"By the bye," said she, "I have something to tell you about Mr.
+Gilmore."</p>
+
+<p>"Tell away," said he, as he turned the cigar round in his mouth, to
+complete the lighting of the edges in the wind.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, but I shan't, unless you will interest yourself. What I am going
+to tell you ought to interest you."</p>
+
+<p>"He has made you a proposal of marriage?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"I knew it."</p>
+
+<p>"How could you know it? Nobody has told you."</p>
+
+<p>"I felt sure of it from the way in which you speak of him. But I
+thought also that you had refused him. Perhaps I was wrong there?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"You have refused him?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't see that there is very much of a story to be told, Mary."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't be so unkind, Walter. There is a story, and one that troubles
+me. If it were not so I should not have proposed to tell you. I
+thought that you would give me advice, and tell me what I ought to
+do."</p>
+
+<p>"But if you have refused him, you have done so,&mdash;no doubt
+rightly,&mdash;without my advice; and I am too late in the field to be of
+any service."</p>
+
+<p>"You must let me tell my own story, and you must be good to me while
+I do so. I think I shouldn't tell you if I hadn't almost made up my
+mind; but I shan't tell you which way, and you must advise me. In the
+first place, though I did refuse him, the matter is still open, and
+he is to ask me again, if he pleases."</p>
+
+<p>"He has your permission for that?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well,&mdash;yes. I hope it wasn't wrong. I did so try to be right."</p>
+
+<p>"I do not say you were wrong."</p>
+
+<p>"I like him so much, and think him so good, and do really feel that
+his affection is so great an honour to me, that I could not answer
+him as though I were quite indifferent to him."</p>
+
+<p>"At any rate, he is to come again?"</p>
+
+<p>"If he pleases."</p>
+
+<p>"Does he really love you?"</p>
+
+<p>"How am I to say? But that is missish and untrue. I am sure he loves
+me."</p>
+
+<p>"So that he will grieve to lose you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I know he will grieve. I ought not to say so. But I know he will."</p>
+
+<p>"You ought to tell the truth, as you believe it. And you
+yourself,&mdash;do you love him?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know. I do love him; but if I heard he was going to marry
+another girl to-morrow it would make me very happy."</p>
+
+<p>"Then you can't love him?"</p>
+
+<p>"I feel as though I should think the same of any man who wanted to
+marry me. But let me go on with my story. Everybody I care for wishes
+me to take him. I know that Aunt Sarah feels quite sure that I shall
+at last, and that she thinks I ought to do so at once. My friend,
+Janet Fenwick, cannot understand why I should hesitate, and only
+forgives me because she is sure that it will come right, in her way,
+some day. Mr. Fenwick is just the same, and will always talk to me as
+though it were my fate to live at Bullhampton all my life."</p>
+
+<p>"Is not Bullhampton a nice place?"</p>
+
+<p>"Very nice; I love the place."</p>
+
+<p>"And Mr. Gilmore is rich?"</p>
+
+<p>"He is quite rich enough. Fancy my inquiring about that, with just
+&pound;1200 for my fortune."</p>
+
+<p>"Then why, in God's name, don't you accept him?"</p>
+
+<p>"You think I ought?"</p>
+
+<p>"Answer my question;&mdash;why do you not?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because&mdash;I do not love him&mdash;as I should hope to love my husband."</p>
+
+<p>After this Captain Marrable, who had been looking her full in the
+face while he had been asking these questions, turned somewhat away
+from her, as though the conversation were over. She remained
+motionless, and was minded so to remain till he should tell her that
+it was time to move, that they might return home. He had given her no
+advice; but she presumed she was to take what had passed as the
+expression of his opinion that it was her duty to accept an offer so
+favourable and so satisfactory to the family. At any rate, she would
+say nothing more on the subject till he should address her. Though
+she loved him dearly as her cousin, yet she was, in some slight
+degree, afraid of him. And now she was not sure but that he was
+expressing towards her, by his anger, some amount of displeasure at
+her weakness and inconsistency. After a while he turned round
+suddenly, and took her by the hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Mary!" he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Walter!"</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean to do, after all?"</p>
+
+<p>"What ought I to do?"</p>
+
+<p>"What ought you to do? You know what you ought to do. Would you marry
+a man for whom you have no more regard than you have for this stick,
+simply because he is persistent in asking you? No more than you have
+for this stick, Mary. What sort of a feeling must it be, when you say
+that you would willingly see him married to any other girl to-morrow?
+Can that be love?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have never loved any one better."</p>
+
+<p>"And never will?"</p>
+
+<p>"How can I say? It seems to me that I haven't got the feeling that
+other girls have. I want some one to love me;&mdash;I do. I own that. I
+want to be first with some one; but I have never found the one yet
+that I cared for."</p>
+
+<p>"You had better wait till you find him," said he, raising himself up
+on his arm. "Come, let us get up and go home. You have asked me for
+my advice, and I have given it you. Do not throw yourself away upon a
+man because other people ask you, and because you think you might as
+well oblige them and oblige him. If you do, you will soon live to
+repent it. What would you do, if after marrying this man you found
+there was some one you could love?"</p>
+
+<p>"I do not think it would come to that, Walter."</p>
+
+<p>"How can you tell? How can you prevent its coming to that, except by
+loving the man you do marry? You don't care two straws for Mr.
+Gilmore; and I cannot understand how you can have the courage to
+think of becoming his wife. Let us go home. You have asked my advice,
+and you've got it. If you do not take it, I will endeavour to forget
+that I gave it you."</p>
+
+<p>Of course she would take it. She did not tell him so then; but, of
+course, he should guide her. With how much more accuracy, with how
+much more delicacy of feeling had he understood her position, than
+had her other friends! He had sympathised with her at a word. He
+spoke to her sternly, severely, almost cruelly. But it was thus that
+she had longed to be spoken to by some one who would care enough for
+her, would take sufficient interest in her, to be at the trouble so
+to advise her. She would trust him as a brother, and his words should
+be sweet to her, were they ever so severe.</p>
+
+<p>They walked together home in silence, and his very manner was stern
+to her; but it might be just thus that a loving brother would carry
+himself who had counselled his sister wisely, and had not as yet been
+assured that his counsel would be taken.</p>
+
+<p>"Walter," she said, as they neared the town, "I hope you have no
+doubt about it."</p>
+
+<p>"Doubt about what, Mary?"</p>
+
+<p>"It is quite a matter of course that I shall do as you tell me."</p>
+
+
+<p><a name="c17" id="c17"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>CHAPTER XVII.</h3>
+<h4>THE MARQUIS OF TROWBRIDGE.<br />&nbsp;</h4>
+
+
+<p>By the end of September it had come to be pretty well understood that
+Sam Brattle must be allowed to go out of prison, unless something in
+the shape of fresh evidence should be brought up on the next Tuesday.
+There had arisen a very strong feeling in the county on the
+subject;&mdash;a Brattle feeling, and an anti-Brattle feeling. It might
+have been called a Bullhampton feeling and an anti-Bullhampton
+feeling, were it not that the biggest man concerned in Bullhampton,
+with certain of his hangers-on and dependents, were very clearly of
+opinion that Sam Brattle had committed the murder, and that he should
+be kept in prison till the period for hanging him might come round.
+This very big person was the Marquis of Trowbridge, under whom poor
+Farmer Trumbull had held his land, and who now seemed to think that a
+murder committed on one of his tenants was almost as bad as insult to
+himself. He felt personally angry with Bullhampton, had ideas of
+stopping his charities to the parish, and did resolve, then and
+there, that he would have nothing to do with a subscription for the
+repair of the church, at any rate for the next three years. In making
+up his mind on which subject he was, perhaps, a little influenced by
+the opinions and narratives of Mr. Puddleham, the Methodist minister
+in the village.</p>
+
+<p>It was not only that Mr. Trumbull had been murdered. So great and
+wise a man as Lord Trowbridge would, no doubt, know very well, that
+in a free country, such as England, a man could not be specially
+protected from the hands of murderers, or others, by the fact of his
+being the tenant, or dependent,&mdash;by his being in some sort the
+possession of a great nobleman. The Marquis's people were all
+expected to vote for his candidates, and would soon have ceased to be
+the Marquis's people had they failed to do so. They were constrained,
+also in many respects, by the terms of their very short leases. They
+could not kill a head of game on their farms. They could not sell
+their own hay off the land, nor, indeed, any produce other than their
+corn or cattle. They were compelled to crop their land in certain
+rotation; and could take no other lands than those held under the
+Marquis without his leave. In return for all this, they became the
+Marquis's people. Each tenant shook hands with the Marquis perhaps
+once in three years; and twice a year was allowed to get drunk at the
+Marquis's expense&mdash;if such was his taste&mdash;provided that he had paid
+his rent. If the duties were heavy, the privileges were great. So the
+Marquis himself felt; and he knew that a mantle of security, of a
+certain thickness, was spread upon the shoulders of each of his
+people by reason of the tenure which bound them together. But he did
+not conceive that this mantle would be proof against the bullet of
+the ordinary assassin, or the hammer of the outside ruffian. But here
+the case was very different. The hammer had been the hammer of no
+outside ruffian. To the best of his lordship's belief,&mdash;and in that
+belief he was supported by the constabulary of the whole county,&mdash;the
+hammer had been wielded by a man of Bullhampton,&mdash;had been wielded
+against his tenant by the son of "a person who holds land under a
+gentleman who has some property in the parish." It was thus the
+Marquis was accustomed to speak of his neighbour, Mr. Gilmore, who,
+in the Marquis's eyes, was a man not big enough to have his tenants
+called his people. That such a man as Sam Brattle should have
+murdered such a one as Mr. Trumbull, was to the Marquis an insult
+rather than an injury; and now it was to be enhanced by the release
+of the man from prison, and that by order of a bench of magistrates
+on which Mr. Gilmore sat!</p>
+
+<p>And there was more in it even than all this. It was very well known
+at Turnover Park,&mdash;the seat of Lord Trowbridge, near Westbury,&mdash;that
+Mr. Gilmore, the gentleman who held property in his lordship's parish
+of Bullhampton, and Mr. Fenwick, who was vicar of the same, were
+another Damon and Pythias. Now the ladies at Turnover, who were much
+devoted to the Low Church, had heard and doubtless believed, that our
+friend, Mr. Fenwick, was little better than an infidel. When first he
+had come into the county, they had been very anxious to make him out
+to be a High Churchman, and a story or two about a cross and a
+candlestick were fabricated for their gratification. There was at
+that time the remnant of a great fight going on between the
+Trowbridge people and another great family in the neighbourhood on
+this subject; and it would have suited the Ladies Stowte,&mdash;John
+Augustus Stowte was the Marquis of Trowbridge,&mdash;to have enlisted our
+parson among their enemies of this class; but the accusation fell so
+plump to the ground, was so impossible of support, that they were
+obliged to content themselves with knowing that Mr. Fenwick was&mdash;an
+infidel! To do the Marquis justice, we must declare that he would not
+have troubled himself on this score, if Mr. Fenwick would have
+submitted himself to become one of his people. The Marquis was master
+at home, and the Ladies Sophie and Carolina would have been proud to
+entertain Mr. Fenwick by the week together at Turnover, had he been
+willing, infidel or believer, to join that faction. But he never
+joined that faction, and he was not only the bosom friend of the
+"gentleman who owned some land in the parish;" but he was twice more
+rebellious than that gentleman himself. He had contradicted the
+Marquis flat to his face,&mdash;so the Marquis said himself,&mdash;when they
+met once about some business in the parish; and again, when, in the
+Vicar's early days in Bullhampton, some gathering for school-festival
+purposes was made in the great home field behind Farmer Trumbull's
+house, Mrs. Fenwick misbehaved herself egregiously.</p>
+
+<p>"Upon my word, she patronised us," said Lady Sophie, laughing. "She
+did, indeed! And you know what she was. Her father was just a common
+builder at Loring, who made some money by a speculation in bricks and
+mortar."</p>
+
+<p>When Lady Sophie said this she was, no doubt, ignorant of the fact
+that Mr. Balfour had been the younger son of a family much more
+ancient than her own, that he had taken a double-first at Oxford, had
+been a member of half the learned societies in Europe, and had
+belonged to two or three of the best clubs in London.</p>
+
+<p>From all this it will be seen that the Marquis of Trowbridge would be
+disposed to think ill of whatever might be done in regard to the
+murder by the Gilmore-Fenwick party in the parish. And then there
+were tales about for which there was perhaps some foundation, that
+the Vicar and the murderer had been very dear friends. It was
+certainly believed at Turnover that the Vicar and Sam Brattle had for
+years past spent the best part of their Sundays fishing together.
+There were tales of rat-killing matches in which they had been
+engaged,&mdash;originating in the undeniable fact of a certain campaign
+against rats at the mill, in which the Vicar had taken an ardent
+part. Undoubtedly the destruction of vermin, and, in regard to one
+species, its preservation for the sake of destruction,&mdash;and the
+catching of fish,&mdash;and the shooting of birds,&mdash;were things lovely in
+the Vicar's eyes. He, perhaps, did let his pastoral dignity go a
+little by the board, when he and Sam stooped together, each with a
+ferret in his hand, grovelling in the dust to get at certain
+rat-advantages in the mill. Gilmore, who had seen it, had told him of
+this. "I understand it all, old fellow," Fenwick had said to his
+friend, "and know very well I have got to choose between two things.
+I must be called a hypocrite, or else I must be one. I have no doubt
+that as years go on with me I shall see the advantage of choosing the
+latter." There were at that time frequent discussions between them on
+the same subject, for they were friends who could dare to discuss
+each other's modes of life; but the reader need not be troubled
+further now with this digression. The position which the Vicar held
+in the estimation of the Marquis of Trowbridge will probably be
+sufficiently well understood.</p>
+
+<p>The family at Turnover Park would have thought it a great blessing to
+have had a clergyman at Bullhampton with whom they could have
+cordially co-operated; but, failing this, they had taken Mr.
+Puddleham, the Methodist minister, to their arms. From Mr. Puddleham
+they learned parish facts and parish fables, which would never have
+reached them but for his assistance. Mr. Fenwick was well aware of
+this, and used to declare that he had no objection to it. He would
+protest that he could not see why Mr. Puddleham should not get along
+in the parish just as well as himself, he having, and meaning to keep
+to himself, the slight advantages of the parish church, the
+vicarage-house, and the small tithes. Of this he was quite sure, that
+Mr. Puddleham's religious teaching was better than none at all; and
+he was by no means convinced,&mdash;so he said,&mdash;that, for some of his
+parishioners, Mr. Puddleham was not a better teacher than he himself.
+He always shook hands with Mr. Puddleham, though Mr. Puddleham would
+never look him in the face, and was quite determined that Mr.
+Puddleham should not be a thorn in his side.</p>
+
+<p>In this matter of Sam Brattle's imprisonment and now intended
+liberation, tidings from the parish were doubtless conveyed by Mr.
+Puddleham to Turnover,&mdash;probably not direct, but still in such a
+manner that the great people at Turnover knew to whom they were
+indebted. Now Mr. Gilmore had certainly, from the first, been by no
+means disposed to view favourably the circumstances attaching to Sam
+Brattle on that Saturday night. When the great blow fell on the
+Brattle family, his demeanour to them was changed, and he forgave the
+miller's contumacy; but he had always thought that Sam had been
+guilty. The parson had from the first regarded the question with
+great doubt, but, nevertheless, his opinion too had at first been
+averse to Sam. Even now, when he was so resolute that Sam should be
+released, he founded his demand, not on Sam's innocence, but on the
+absence of any evidence against him.</p>
+
+<p>"He's entitled to fair play, Harry," he would say to Gilmore, "and he
+is not getting it, because there is a prejudice against him. You hear
+what that old ass, Sir Thomas, says."</p>
+
+<p>"Sir Thomas is a very good magistrate."</p>
+
+<p>"If he don't take care, he'll find himself in trouble for keeping the
+lad locked up without authority. Is there a juryman in the country
+would find him guilty because he was lying in the old man's ditch a
+week before?" In this way Gilmore also became a favourer of Sam's
+claim to be released; and at last it came to be understood that on
+the next Tuesday he would be released, unless further evidence should
+be forthcoming.</p>
+
+<p>And then it came to pass that a certain very remarkable meeting took
+place in the parish. Word was brought to Mr. Gilmore on Monday, the
+5th October, that the Marquis of Trowbridge was to be at the Church
+Farm,&mdash;poor Trumbull's farm,&mdash;on that day at noon, and that his
+lordship thought that it might be expedient that he and Mr. Gilmore
+should meet on the occasion. There was no note, but the message was
+brought by Mr. Packer, a sub-agent, one of the Marquis's people, with
+whom Mr. Gilmore was very well acquainted.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll walk down about that time, Packer," said Mr. Gilmore, "and
+shall be very happy to see his lordship."</p>
+
+<p>Now the Marquis never sat as a magistrate at the Heytesbury bench,
+and had not been present on any of the occasions on which Sam had
+been examined; nor had Mr. Gilmore seen the Marquis since the
+murder,&mdash;nor, for the matter of that, for the last twelve months. Mr.
+Gilmore had just finished breakfast when the news was brought to him,
+and he thought he might as well walk down and see Fenwick first. His
+interview with the parson ended in a promise that he, Fenwick, would
+also look in at the farm.</p>
+
+<p>At twelve o'clock the Marquis was seated in the old farmer's
+arm-chair, in the old farmer's parlour. The house was dark and
+gloomy, never having been altogether opened since the murder. With
+the Marquis was Packer, who was standing, and the Marquis was
+pretending to cast his eye over one or two books which had been
+brought to him. He had been taken all over the house; had stood
+looking at the bed where the old man lay when he was attacked, as
+though he might possibly discover, if he looked long enough,
+something that would reveal the truth; had gazed awe-struck at the
+spot on which the body had been found, and had taken occasion to
+remark to himself that the house was a good deal out of order. The
+Marquis was a man nearer seventy than sixty, but very hale, and with
+few signs of age. He was short and plump, with hardly any beard on
+his face, and short grey hair, of which nothing could be seen when he
+wore his hat. His countenance would not have been bad, had not the
+weight of his marquisate always been there; nor would his heart have
+been bad, had it not been similarly burdened. But he was a silly,
+weak, ignorant man, whose own capacity would hardly have procured
+bread for him in any trade or profession, had bread not been so
+adequately provided for him by his fathers before him.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Gilmore said he would be here at twelve, Packer?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, my lord."</p>
+
+<p>"And it's past twelve now?"</p>
+
+<p>"One minute, my lord."</p>
+
+<p>Then the peer looked again at poor old Trumbull's books.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall not wait, Packer."</p>
+
+<p>"No, my lord."</p>
+
+<p>"You had better tell them to put the horses to."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, my lord."</p>
+
+<p>But just as Packer went out into the passage for the sake of giving
+the order he met Mr. Gilmore, and ushered him into the room.</p>
+
+<p>"Ha! Mr. Gilmore; yes, I am very glad to see you, Mr. Gilmore;" and
+the Marquis came forward to shake hands with his visitor. "I thought
+it better that you and I should meet about this sad affair in the
+parish;&mdash;a very sad affair, indeed."</p>
+
+<p>"It certainly is, Lord Trowbridge; and the mystery makes it more so."</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose there is no real mystery, Mr. Gilmore? I suppose there can
+be no doubt that that unfortunate young man did,&mdash;did,&mdash;did bear a
+hand in it at least?"</p>
+
+<p>"I think that there is very much doubt, my lord."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you, indeed? I think there is none,&mdash;not the least. And all the
+police force are of the same opinion. I have considerable experiences
+of my own in these matters; but I should not venture, perhaps, to
+express my opinion so confidently, if I were not backed by the
+police. You are aware, Mr. Gilmore, that the police are&mdash;very&mdash;seldom
+wrong?"</p>
+
+<p>"I should be tempted to say that they are very seldom right&mdash;except
+when the circumstances are all under their noses."</p>
+
+<p>"I must say I differ from you entirely, Mr. Gilmore. Now, in this
+case<span class="nowrap">&mdash;"</span>
+The Marquis was here interrupted by a knock at the door, and,
+before the summons could be answered, the parson entered the room.
+And with the parson came Mr. Puddleham. The Marquis had thought that
+the parson might, perhaps, intrude; and Mr. Puddleham was in waiting
+as a make-weight, should he be wanting. When Mr. Fenwick had met the
+minister hanging about the farmyard, he had displayed not the
+slightest anger. If Mr. Puddleham chose to come in also, and make
+good his doing so before the Marquis, it was nothing to Mr. Fenwick.
+The great man looked up, as though he were very much startled and
+somewhat offended; but he did at last condescend to shake hands,
+first with one clergyman and then with the other, and to ask them to
+sit down. He explained that he had come over to make some personal
+inquiry into the melancholy matter, and then proceeded with his
+opinion respecting Sam Brattle. "From all that I can hear and see,"
+said his lordship, "I fear there can be no doubt that this murder has
+been due to the malignity of a near neighbour."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mean the poor boy that is in prison, my lord?" asked the
+parson.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course I do, Mr. Fenwick. The constabulary are of
+<span class="nowrap">opinion&mdash;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"We know that, Lord Trowbridge."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps, Mr. Fenwick, you will allow me to express my own ideas. The
+constabulary, I say, are of opinion that there is no manner of doubt
+that he was one of those who broke into my tenant's house on that
+fatal night; and, as I was explaining to Mr. Gilmore when you did us
+the honour to join us, in the course of a long provincial experience
+I have seldom known the police to be in error."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Lord Trowbridge&mdash;!"</p>
+
+<p>"If you please, Mr. Fenwick, I will go on. My time here cannot be
+long, and I have a proposition which I am desirous of making to Mr.
+Gilmore, as a magistrate acting in this part of the county. Of
+course, it is not for me to animadvert upon what the magistrates may
+do at the bench to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p>"I am sure your lordship would make no such animadversion," said Mr.
+Gilmore.</p>
+
+<p>"I do not intend it, for many reasons. But I may go so far as to say
+that a demand for the young man's release will be made."</p>
+
+<p>"He is to be released, I presume, as a matter of course," said the
+parson.</p>
+
+<p>The Marquis made no allusion to this, but went on. "If that be
+done,&mdash;and I must say that I think no such step would be taken by the
+bench at Westbury,&mdash;whither will the young man betake himself?"</p>
+
+<p>"Home to his father, of course," said the parson.</p>
+
+<p>"Back into this parish, with his paramour, to murder more of my
+tenants."</p>
+
+<p>"My lord, I cannot allow such an unjust statement to be made," said
+the parson.</p>
+
+<p>"I wish to speak for one moment; and I wish it to be remembered that
+I am addressing myself especially to your neighbour, Mr. Gilmore, who
+has done me the honour of waiting upon me here at my request. I do
+not object to your presence, Mr. Fenwick, or to that of any other
+gentleman," and the Marquis bowed to Mr. Puddleham, who had stood by
+hitherto without speaking a word; "but, if you please, I must carry
+out the purpose that has brought me here. I shall think it very sad
+indeed, if this young man be allowed to take up his residence in the
+parish after what has taken place."</p>
+
+<p>"His father has a house here," said Mr. Gilmore.</p>
+
+<p>"I am aware of the fact," said the Marquis. "I believe that the young
+man's father holds a mill from you, and some few acres of land?"</p>
+
+<p>"He has a very nice farm."</p>
+
+<p>"So be it. We will not quarrel about terms. I believe there is no
+lease?&mdash;though, of course, that is no business of mine."</p>
+
+<p>"I must say that it is not, my lord," said Mr. Gilmore, who was
+waxing wrothy and becoming very black about the brows.</p>
+
+<p>"I have just said so; but I suppose you will admit that I have some
+interest in this parish? I presume that these two gentlemen, who are
+God's ministers here, will acknowledge that it is my duty, as the
+owner of the greater part of the parish, to interfere?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly, my lord," said Mr. Puddleham.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Fenwick said nothing. He sat, or rather leant, against the edge
+of a table, and smiled. His brow was not black, like that of his
+friend; but Gilmore, who knew him, and who looked into his face,
+began to fear that the Marquis would be addressed before long in
+terms stronger than he himself, Mr. Gilmore, would approve.</p>
+
+<p>"And when I remember," continued his lordship, "that the unfortunate
+man who has fallen a victim had been for nearly half a century a
+tenant of myself and of my family, and that he was foully murdered on
+my own property,&mdash;dragged from his bed in the middle of the night,
+and ruthlessly slaughtered in this very house in which I am sitting,
+and that this has been done in a parish of which I own, I think,
+something over <span class="nowrap">two-thirds&mdash;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"Two thousand and two acres out of two thousand nine hundred and
+ten," said Mr. Puddleham.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose so. Well, Mr. Puddleham, you need not have interrupted
+me."</p>
+
+<p>"I beg pardon, my lord."</p>
+
+<p>"What I mean to say is this, Mr. Gilmore,&mdash;that you should take steps
+to prevent that young man's return among our people. You should
+explain to the father that it cannot be allowed. From what I hear, it
+would be no loss if the whole family left the parish. I am told that
+one of the daughters is a&mdash;prostitute."</p>
+
+<p>"It is too true, my lord," said Mr. Puddleham.</p>
+
+<p>The parson turned round and looked at his colleague, but said
+nothing. It was one of the principles of his life that he wouldn't
+quarrel with Mr. Puddleham; and at the present moment he certainly
+did not wish to waste his anger on so weak an enemy.</p>
+
+<p>"I think that you should look to this, Mr. Gilmore," said the
+Marquis, completing his harangue.</p>
+
+<p>"I cannot conceive, my lord, what right you have to dictate to me in
+such a matter," said Mr. Gilmore.</p>
+
+<p>"I have not dictated at all; I have simply expressed my opinion,"
+said the Marquis.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, my lord, will you allow me for a moment?" said Mr. Fenwick. "In
+the first place, if Sam Brattle could not find a home at the
+mill,&mdash;which I hope he will do for many a long year to come,&mdash;he
+should have one at the Vicarage."</p>
+
+<p>"I dare say," said the Marquis.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Puddleham held up both hands.</p>
+
+<p>"You might as well hold your tongue, Frank," said Gilmore.</p>
+
+<p>"It is a matter on which I wish to say a word or two, Harry. I have
+been appealed to as one of God's ministers here, and I acknowledge my
+responsibility. I never in my life heard any proposition more cruel
+or inhuman than that made by Lord Trowbridge. This young man is to be
+turned out because a tenant of his lordship has been murdered! He is
+to be adjudged to be guilty by us, without any trial, in the absence
+of all evidence, in opposition to the decision of the
+<span class="nowrap">magistrates&mdash;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"It is not in opposition to the magistrates, sir," said the Marquis.</p>
+
+<p>"And to be forbidden to return to his own home, simply because Lord
+Trowbridge thinks him guilty! My lord, his father's house is his own,
+to entertain whom he may please, as much as is yours. And were I to
+suggest to you to turn out your daughters, it would be no worse an
+offence than your suggesting to Mr. Brattle that he should turn out
+his son."</p>
+
+<p>"My daughters!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, your daughters, my lord."</p>
+
+<p>"How dare you mention my daughters?"</p>
+
+
+<div class="center"><a name="il6" id="il6"></a>
+<table style="margin: 0 auto" cellpadding="4px">
+  <tr>
+    <td align="center">
+      <a href="images/il6.jpg">
+      <img src="images/il6-t.jpg" width="540"
+      alt="How dare you mention my daughters?" /></a>
+    </td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="center">
+      <span class="caption">"How dare you mention my daughters?"<br />
+      Click to <a href="images/il6.jpg">ENLARGE</a></span>
+    </td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>"The ladies, I am well aware, are all that is respectable. I have not
+the slightest wish that you should ill-use them. But if you desire
+that your family concerns should be treated with reserve and
+reticence, you had better learn to treat the family affairs of others
+in the same way."</p>
+
+<p>The Marquis by this time was on his feet, and was calling for
+Packer,&mdash;was calling for his carriage and horses,&mdash;was calling on the
+very gods to send down their thunder to punish such insolence as
+this. He had never heard of the like in all his experience. His
+daughters! And then there came across his dismayed mind an idea that
+his daughters had been put upon a par with that young murderer, Sam
+Brattle,&mdash;perhaps even on a par with something worse than this. And
+his daughters were such august persons,&mdash;old and ugly, it is true,
+and almost dowerless in consequence of the nature of the family
+settlements and family expenditure. It was an injury and an insult
+that Mr. Fenwick should make the slightest allusion to his daughters;
+but to talk of them in such a way as this, as though they were mere
+ordinary human beings, was not to be endured! The Marquis had
+hitherto had his doubts, but now he was quite sure that Mr. Fenwick
+was an infidel. "And a very bad sort of infidel, too," as he said to
+Lady Carolina on his return home. "I never heard of such conduct in
+all my life," said Lord Trowbridge, walking down to his carriage.
+"Who can be surprised that there should be murderers and prostitutes
+in the parish?"</p>
+
+<p>"My lord, they don't sit under me," said Mr. Puddleham.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't care who they sit under," said his lordship.</p>
+
+<p>As they walked away together, Mr. Fenwick had just a word to say to
+Mr. Puddleham. "My friend," he said, "you were quite right about his
+lordship's acres."</p>
+
+<p>"Those are the numbers," said Mr. Puddleham.</p>
+
+<p>"I mean that you were quite right to make the observation. Facts are
+always valuable, and I am sure Lord Trowbridge was obliged to you.
+But I think you were a little wrong as to another statement."</p>
+
+<p>"What statement, Mr. Fenwick?"</p>
+
+<p>"What you said about poor Carry Brattle. You don't know it as a
+fact."</p>
+
+<p>"Everybody says so."</p>
+
+<p>"How do you know she has not married, and become an honest woman?"</p>
+
+<p>"It is possible, of course. Though as for that,&mdash;when a young woman
+has once gone <span class="nowrap">astray&mdash;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"As did Mary Magdalene, for instance!"</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Fenwick, it was a very bad case."</p>
+
+<p>"And isn't my case very bad,&mdash;and yours? Are we not in a bad
+way,&mdash;unless we believe and repent? Have we not all so sinned as to
+deserve eternal punishment?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly, Mr. Fenwick."</p>
+
+<p>"Then there can't be much difference between her and us. She can't
+deserve more than eternal punishment. If she believes and repents,
+all her sins will be white as snow."</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly, Mr. Fenwick."</p>
+
+<p>"Then speak of her as you would of any other sister or brother,&mdash;not
+as a thing that must be always vile because she has fallen once.
+Women will so speak,&mdash;and other men. One sees something of a reason
+for it. But you and I, as Christian ministers, should never allow
+ourselves to speak so thoughtlessly of sinners. Good morning, Mr.
+Puddleham."</p>
+
+
+<p><a name="c18" id="c18"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>CHAPTER XVIII.</h3>
+<h4>BLANK PAPER.<br />&nbsp;</h4>
+
+
+<p>Early in October Captain Marrable was called up to town by letters
+from Messrs. Block and Curling, and according to promise wrote
+various letters to Mary Lowther, telling her of the manner in which
+his business progressed. All of these letters were shown to Aunt
+Sarah,&mdash;and would have been shown to Parson John were it not that
+Parson John declined to read them. But though the letters were purely
+cousinly,&mdash;just such letters as a brother might write,&mdash;yet Miss
+Marrable thought that they were dangerous. She did not say so; but
+she thought that they were dangerous. Of late Mary had spoken no word
+of Mr. Gilmore; and Aunt Sarah, through all this silence, was able to
+discover that Mr. Gilmore's prospects were not becoming brighter.
+Mary herself, having quite made up her mind that Mr. Gilmore's
+prospects, so far as she was concerned, were all over, could not
+decide how and when she should communicate the resolve to her lover.
+According to her present agreement with him, she was to write to him
+at once should she accept any other offer; and was to wait for six
+months if this should not be the case. Certainly, there was no rival
+in the field, and therefore she did not quite know whether she ought
+or ought not to write at once in her present circumstances of assured
+determination. She soon told herself that in this respect also she
+would go to her new-found brother for advice. She would ask him, and
+do just as he might bid her. Had he not already proved how fit a
+person he was to give advice on such a subject?</p>
+
+<p>After an absence of ten days he came home, and nothing could exceed
+Mary's anxiety as to the tidings which he should bring with him. She
+endeavoured not to be selfish about the matter; but she could not but
+acknowledge that, even as regarded herself, the difference between
+his going to India or staying at home was so great as to affect the
+whole colour of her life. There was, perhaps, something of the
+feeling of being subject to desertion about her, as she remembered
+that in giving up Mr. Gilmore she must also give up the Fenwicks. She
+could not hope to go to Bullhampton again, at least for many a long
+day. She would be very much alone if her new brother were to leave
+her now. On the morning after his arrival he came up to them at
+Uphill, and told them that the matter was almost settled. Messrs.
+Block and Curling had declared that it was as good as settled; the
+money would be saved, and there would be, out of the &pound;20,000 which he
+had inherited, something over &pound;4000 for him; so that he need not
+return to India. He was in very high spirits, and did not speak a
+word of his father's iniquities.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Walter, what a joy!" said Mary, with the tears streaming from
+her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>He took her by both her hands, and kissed her forehead. At that
+moment Aunt Sarah was not in the room.</p>
+
+<p>"I am so very, very happy," she said, pressing her little hands
+against his.</p>
+
+<p>Why should he not kiss her? Was he not her brother? And then, before
+he went, she remembered she had something special to tell
+him;&mdash;something to ask him. Would he not walk with her that evening?
+Of course he would walk with her.</p>
+
+<p>"Mary, dear," said her aunt, putting her little arm round her niece's
+waist, and embracing her, "don't fall in love with Walter."</p>
+
+<p>"How can you say anything so foolish, Aunt Sarah?"</p>
+
+<p>"It would be very foolish to do so."</p>
+
+<p>"You don't understand how completely different it is. Do you think I
+could be so intimate with him as I am if anything of the kind were
+possible?"</p>
+
+<p>"I do not know how that may be."</p>
+
+<p>"Do not begrudge it me because I have found a cousin that I can love
+almost as I would a brother. There has never been anybody yet for
+whom I could have that sort of feeling."</p>
+
+<p>Aunt Sarah, whatever she might think, had not the heart to repeat her
+caution; and Mary, quite happy and contented with herself, put on her
+hat to run down the hill and meet her cousin at the great gates of
+the Lowtown Rectory. Why should he be dragged up the hill, to escort
+a cousin down again? This arrangement had, therefore, been made
+between them.</p>
+
+<p>For the first mile or two the talk was all about Messrs. Block and
+Curling and the money. Captain Marrable was so full of his own
+purposes, and so well contented that so much should be saved to him
+out of the fortune he had lost, that he had, perhaps, forgotten that
+Mary required more advice. But when they had come to the spot on
+which they had before sat, she bade him stop and seat himself.</p>
+
+<p>"And now what is it?" he said, as he rolled himself comfortably close
+to her side. She told her story, and explained her doubts, and asked
+for the revelations of his wisdom. "Are you quite sure about the
+propriety of this, Mary?" he said.</p>
+
+<p>"The propriety of what, Walter?"</p>
+
+<p>"Giving up a man who loves you so well, and who has so much to
+offer?"</p>
+
+<p>"What was it you said yourself? Sure! Of course I am sure. I am quite
+sure. I do not love him. Did I not tell you that there could be no
+doubt after what you said?"</p>
+
+<p>"I did not mean that my words should be so powerful."</p>
+
+<p>"They were powerful; but, independently of that, I am quite sure now.
+If I could do it myself, I should be false to him. I know that I do
+not love him." He was not looking at her where he was lying, but was
+playing with a cigar-case which he had taken out, as though he were
+about to resume his smoking. But he did not open the case, or look
+towards her, or say a word to her. Two minutes had perhaps passed
+before she spoke again. "I suppose it would be best that I should
+write to him at once?"</p>
+
+<p>"There is no one else, then, you care for, Mary?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"No one," she said, as though the question were nothing.</p>
+
+<p>"It is all blank paper with you?"</p>
+
+
+<div class="center"><a name="il7" id="il7"></a>
+<table style="margin: 0 auto" cellpadding="4px">
+  <tr>
+    <td align="center">
+      <a href="images/il7.jpg">
+      <img src="images/il7-t.jpg" height="500"
+      alt="It is all blank paper with you?" /></a>
+    </td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="center">
+      <span class="caption">"It is all blank paper with you?"<br />
+      Click to <a href="images/il7.jpg">ENLARGE</a></span>
+    </td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>"Quite blank," she said, and laughed. "Do you know, I almost think it
+always will be blank."</p>
+
+<p>"By G&mdash;&mdash;! it is not blank with me," he said, springing
+up and jumping to his feet. She stared at him, not in the least
+understanding what he meant, not dreaming even that he was about to
+tell her his love secrets in reference to another. "I wonder what you
+think I'm made of, Mary;&mdash;whether you imagine I have any affection to
+bestow?"</p>
+
+<p>"I do not in the least understand."</p>
+
+<p>"Look here, dear," and he knelt down beside her as he spoke, "it is
+simply this, that you have become to me more than all the
+world;&mdash;that I love you better than my own soul;&mdash;that your beauty
+and sweetness, and soft, darling touch, are everything to me. And
+then you come to me for advice! I can only give you one bit of advice
+now, Mary."</p>
+
+<p>"And what is that?"</p>
+
+<p>"Love me."</p>
+
+<p>"I do love you."</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, but love me and be my wife."</p>
+
+<p>She had to think of it; but she knew from the first moment that the
+thinking of it was a delight to her. She did not quite understand at
+first that her chosen brother might become her lover, with no other
+feeling than that of joy and triumph; and yet there was a
+consciousness that no other answer but one was possible. In the first
+place, to refuse him anything, asked in love, would be impossible.
+She could not say No to him. She had struggled often in reference to
+Mr. Gilmore, and had found it impossible to say Yes. There was now
+the same sort of impossibility in regard to the No. She couldn't
+blacken herself with such a lie. And yet, though she was sure of
+this, she was so astounded by his declaration, so carried off her
+legs by the alteration in her position, so hard at work within
+herself with her new endeavour to change the aspect in which she must
+look at the man, that she could not even bring herself to think of
+answering him. If he would only sit down near her for awhile,&mdash;very
+near,&mdash;and not speak to her, she thought that she would be happy.
+Everything else was forgotten. Aunt Sarah's caution, Janet Fenwick's
+anger, poor Gilmore's sorrow,&mdash;of all these she thought not at all,
+or only allowed her mind to dwell on them as surrounding trifles, of
+which it would be necessary that she, that they&mdash;they two who were
+now all in all to each other&mdash;must dispose; as they must, also, of
+questions of income, and such like little things. She was without a
+doubt. The man was her master, and had her in his keeping, and of
+course she would obey him. But she must settle her voice, and let her
+pulses become calm, and remember herself before she could tell him
+so. "Sit down again, Walter," she said at last.</p>
+
+<p>"Why should I sit?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because I ask you. Sit down, Walter."</p>
+
+<p>"No. I understand how wise you will be, and how cold; and I
+understand, too, what a fool I have been."</p>
+
+<p>"Walter, will you not come when I ask you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why should I sit?"</p>
+
+<p>"That I may try to tell you how dearly I love you."</p>
+
+<p>He did not sit, but he threw himself at her feet, and buried his face
+upon her lap. There were but few more words spoken then. When it
+comes to this, that a pair of lovers are content to sit and rub their
+feathers together like two birds, there is not much more need of
+talking. Before they had arisen, her fingers had been playing through
+his curly hair, and he had kissed her lips and cheeks as well as her
+forehead. She had begun to feel what it was to have a lover and to
+love him. She could already talk to him almost as though he were a
+part of herself, could whisper to him little words of nonsense, could
+feel that everything of hers was his, and everything of his was hers.
+She knew more clearly now even than she had done before that she had
+never loved Mr. Gilmore, and never could have loved him. And that
+other doubt had been solved for her. "Do you know," she had said, not
+yet an hour ago, "that I think it always will be blank." And now
+every spot of the canvas was covered.</p>
+
+<p>"We must go home now," she said at last.</p>
+
+<p>"And tell Aunt Sarah," he replied, laughing.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, and tell Aunt Sarah;&mdash;but not to-night. I can do nothing
+to-night but think about it. Oh, Walter, I am so happy!"</p>
+
+
+<p><a name="c19" id="c19"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>CHAPTER XIX.</h3>
+<h4>SAM BRATTLE RETURNS HOME.<br />&nbsp;</h4>
+
+
+<p>The Tuesday's magistrates' meeting had come off at Heytesbury, and
+Sam Brattle had been discharged. Mr. Jones had on this occasion
+indignantly demanded that his client should be set free without bail;
+but to this the magistrates would not assent. The attorney attempted
+to demonstrate to them that they could not require bail for the
+reappearance of an accused person, when that accused person was
+discharged simply because there was no evidence against him. But to
+this exposition of the law Sir Thomas and his brother magistrates
+would not listen. "If the other persons should at last be taken, and
+Brattle should not then be forthcoming, justice would suffer," said
+Sir Thomas. County magistrates, as a rule, are more conspicuous for
+common sense and good instincts than for sound law; and Mr. Jones
+may, perhaps, have been right in his view of the case. Nevertheless
+bail was demanded, and was not forthcoming without considerable
+trouble. Mr. Jay, the ironmonger at Warminster, declined. When spoken
+to on the subject by Mr. Fenwick, he declared that the feeling among
+the gentry was so strong against his brother-in-law, that he could
+not bring himself to put himself forward. He couldn't do it for the
+sake of his family. When Fenwick promised to make good the money
+risk, Jay declared that the difficulty did not lie there. "There's
+the Marquis, and Sir Thomas, and Squire Greenthorne, and our parson,
+all say, sir, as how he shouldn't be bailed at all. And then, sir, if
+one has a misfortune belonging to one, one doesn't want to flaunt it
+in everybody's face, sir." And there was trouble, too, with George
+Brattle from Fordingbridge. George Brattle was a prudent,
+hard-headed, hard-working man, not troubled with much sentiment, and
+caring very little what any one could say of him as long as his rent
+was paid; but he had taken it into his head that Sam was guilty, that
+he was at any rate a thoroughly bad fellow who should be turned out
+of the Brattle nest, and that no kindness was due to him. With the
+farmer, however, Mr. Fenwick did prevail, and then the parson became
+the other bondsman himself. He had been strongly advised,&mdash;by
+Gilmore, by Gilmore's uncle, the prebendary at Salisbury, and by
+others,&mdash;not to put himself forward in this position. The favour
+which he had shown to the young man had not borne good results either
+for the young man or for himself; and it would be unwise,&mdash;so said
+his friends,&mdash;to subject his own name to more remark than was
+necessary. He had so far assented as to promise not to come forward
+himself, if other bailsmen could be procured. But, when the
+difficulty came, he offered himself, and was, of necessity, accepted.</p>
+
+<p>When Sam was released, he was like a caged animal who, when liberty
+is first offered to him, does not know how to use it. He looked about
+him in the hall of the Court House, and did not at first seem
+disposed to leave it. The constable had asked him whether he had
+means of getting home, to which he replied, that "it wasn't no more
+than a walk." Dinner was offered to him by the constable, but this he
+refused, and then he stood glaring about him. After a while Gilmore
+and Fenwick came up to him, and the Squire was the first to speak.
+"Brattle," he said, "I hope you will now go home, and remain there
+working with your father for the present."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know nothing about that," said the lad, not deigning to look
+at the Squire.</p>
+
+<p>"Sam, pray go home at once," said the parson. "We have done what we
+could for you, and you should not oppose us."</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Fenwick, if you tells me to go to&mdash;to&mdash;to,"&mdash;he was going to
+mention some very bad place, but was restrained by the parson's
+presence,&mdash;"if you tells me to go anywheres, I'll go."</p>
+
+<p>"That's right. Then I tell you to go to the mill."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know as father'll let me in," said he, almost breaking into
+sobs as he spoke.</p>
+
+<p>"That he will, heartily. Do you tell him that you had a word or two
+with me here, and that I'll come up and call on him to-morrow." Then
+he put his hand into his pocket, and whispering something, offered
+the lad money. But Sam turned away, and shook his head, and walked
+off. "I don't believe that that fellow had any more to do with it
+than you or I," said Fenwick.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know what to believe," said Gilmore. "Have you heard that
+the Marquis is in the town? Greenthorne just told me so."</p>
+
+<p>"Then I had better get out of it, for Heytesbury isn't big enough for
+the two of us. Come, you've done here, and we might as well jog
+home."</p>
+
+<p>Gilmore dined at the Vicarage that evening, and of course the day's
+work was discussed. The quarrel, too, which had taken place at the
+farmhouse had only yet been in part described to Mrs. Fenwick. "Do
+you know I feel half triumphant and half frightened," Mrs. Fenwick
+said to the Squire. "I know that the Marquis is an old fool,
+imperious, conceited, and altogether unendurable when he attempts to
+interfere. And yet I have a kind of feeling that because he is a
+Marquis, and because he owns two thousand and so many acres in the
+parish, and because he lives at Turnover Park, one ought to hold him
+in awe."</p>
+
+<p>"Frank didn't hold him in awe yesterday," said the Squire.</p>
+
+<p>"He holds nothing in awe," said the wife.</p>
+
+<p>"You wrong me there, Janet. I hold you in great awe, and every lady
+in Wiltshire more or less;&mdash;and I think I may say every woman. And I
+would hold him in a sort of awe, too, if he didn't drive me beyond
+myself by his mixture of folly and pride."</p>
+
+<p>"He can do us a great deal of mischief, you know," said Mrs. Fenwick.</p>
+
+<p>"What he can do, he will do," said the parson. "He even gave me a bad
+name, no doubt; but I fancy he was generous enough to me in that way
+before yesterday. He will now declare that I am the Evil One himself,
+and people won't believe that. A continued persistent enmity, always
+at work, but kept within moderate bounds, is more dangerous
+now-a-days, than a hot fever of revengeful wrath. The Marquis can't
+send out his men-at-arms and have me knocked on the head, or cast
+into a dungeon. He can only throw mud at me, and the more he throws
+at once, the less will reach me."</p>
+
+<p>As to Sam, they were agreed that, whether he were innocent or guilty,
+the old miller should be induced to regard him as innocent, as far as
+their joint exertion in that direction might avail.</p>
+
+<p>"He is innocent before the law till he has been proved to be guilty,"
+said the Squire.</p>
+
+<p>"Then of course there can be nothing wrong in telling his father that
+he is innocent," said the lady.</p>
+
+<p>The Squire did not quite admit this, and the parson smiled as he
+heard the argument; but they both acknowledged that it would be right
+to let it be considered throughout the parish that Sam was to be
+regarded as blameless for that night's transaction. Nevertheless, Mr.
+Gilmore's mind on the subject was not changed.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you heard from Loring?" the Squire asked Mrs. Fenwick as he got
+up to leave the Vicarage.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes,&mdash;constantly. She is quite well, Mr. Gilmore."</p>
+
+<p>"I sometimes think that I'll go off and have a look at her."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sure both she and her aunt would be glad to see you."</p>
+
+<p>"But would it be wise?"</p>
+
+<p>"If you ask me, I am bound to say that I think it would not be wise.
+If I were you, I would leave her for awhile. Mary is as good as gold,
+but she is a woman; and, like other women, the more she is sought,
+the more difficult she will be."</p>
+
+<p>"It always seems to me," said Mr. Gilmore, "that to be successful in
+love, a man should not be in love at all; or, at any rate, he should
+hide it." Then he went off home alone, feeling on his heart that
+pernicious load of a burden which comes from the unrestrained longing
+for some good thing which cannot be attained. It seemed to him now
+that nothing in life would be worth a thought if Mary Lowther should
+continue to say him nay; and it seemed to him, too, that unless the
+yea were said very quickly, all his aptitudes for enjoyment would be
+worn out of him.</p>
+
+<p>On the next morning, immediately after breakfast, Mr. and Mrs.
+Fenwick walked down to the mill together. They went through the
+village, and thence by a pathway down to a little foot-bridge, and so
+along the river side. It was a beautiful October morning, the 7th of
+October, and Fenwick talked of the pheasants. Gilmore, though he was
+a sportsman, and shot rabbits and partridges about his own property,
+and went occasionally to shooting-parties at a distance, preserved no
+game. There had been some old unpleasantness about the Marquis's
+pheasants, and he had given it up. There could be no doubt that his
+property in the parish being chiefly low lying lands and water meads
+unfit for coverts, was not well disposed for preserving pheasants,
+and that in shooting he would more likely shoot Lord Trowbridge's
+birds than his own. But it was equally certain that Lord Trowbridge's
+pheasants made no scruple of feeding on his land. Nevertheless, he
+had thought it right to give up all idea of keeping up a head of game
+for his own use in Bullhampton.</p>
+
+<p>"Upon my word, if I were you, Gilmore," said the parson, as a bird
+rose from the ground close at their feet, "I should cease to be nice
+about the shooting after what happened yesterday."</p>
+
+<p>"You don't mean that you would retaliate, Frank?"</p>
+
+<p>"I think I should."</p>
+
+<p>"Is that good parson's law?"</p>
+
+<p>"It's very good squire's law. And as for that doctrine of
+non-retaliation, a man should be very sure of his own motives before
+he submits to it. If a man be quite certain that he is really
+actuated by a Christian's desire to forgive, it may be all very well;
+but if there be any admixture of base alloy in his gold, if he allows
+himself to think that he may avoid the evils of pugnacity, and have
+things go smooth for him here, and become a good Christian by the
+same process, why then I think he is likely to fall to the ground
+between two stools." Had Lord Trowbridge heard him, his lordship
+would now have been quite sure that Mr. Fenwick was an infidel.</p>
+
+<p>They had both doubted whether Sam would be found at the mill; but
+there he was, hard at work among the skeleton timbers, when his
+friends reached the place.</p>
+
+<p>"I am glad to see you at home again, Sam," said Mrs. Fenwick, with
+something, however, of an inner feeling that perhaps she might be
+saluting a murderer.</p>
+
+<p>Sam touched his cap, but did not utter a word, or look away from his
+work. They passed on amidst the heaps in front of the mill, and came
+to the porch before the cottage. Here, as had been his wont in all
+these idle days, the miller was sitting with a pipe in his mouth.
+When he saw the lady he got up and ducked his head, and then sat down
+again. "If your wife is here, I'll just step in, Mr. Brattle," said
+Mrs. Fenwick.</p>
+
+<p>"She be there, ma'am," said the miller, pointing towards the kitchen
+window with his head. So Mrs. Fenwick lifted the latch and entered.
+The parson sat himself down by the miller's side.</p>
+
+<p>"I am heartily glad, Mr. Brattle, that Sam is back with you here once
+again."</p>
+
+<p>"He be there, at work among the rest o' 'em," said the miller.</p>
+
+<p>"I saw him as I came along. I hope he will remain here now."</p>
+
+<p>"I can't say, Muster Fenwick."</p>
+
+<p>"But he intends to do so?"</p>
+
+<p>"I can't say, Muster Fenwick."</p>
+
+<p>"Would it not be well that you should ask him?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not as I knows on, Muster Fenwick."</p>
+
+<p>It was manifest enough that the old man had not spoken to his son on
+the subject of the murder, and that there was no confidence,&mdash;at
+least, no confidence that had been expressed,&mdash;between the father and
+the son. No one had as yet heard the miller utter any opinion as to
+Sam's innocence or his guilt. This of itself seemed to the clergyman
+to be a very terrible condition for two persons who were so closely
+united, and who were to live together, work together, eat together,
+and have mutual interests.</p>
+
+<p>"I hope, Mr. Brattle," he said, "that you give Sam the full benefit
+of his discharge."</p>
+
+<p>"He'll get his vittles and his bed, and a trifle of wages if he works
+for 'em."</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't mean that. I'm quite sure you wouldn't see him want a
+comfortable home, as long as you have one to give him."</p>
+
+<p>"There ain't much comfort about it now."</p>
+
+<p>"I was speaking of your own opinion of the deed that was done. My own
+opinion is that Sam had nothing to do with it."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sure I can't say, Muster Fenwick."</p>
+
+<p>"But it would be a comfort to you to think that he is innocent."</p>
+
+<p>"I ain't no comfort in talking about it,&mdash;not at all,&mdash;and I'd
+rayther not, if it's all one to you, Muster Fenwick."</p>
+
+<p>"I will not ask another question, but I'll repeat my own opinion, Mr.
+Brattle. I don't believe that he had anything more to do with the
+robbery or the murder, than I had."</p>
+
+<p>"I hope not, Muster Fenwick. Murder is a terrible crime. And now, if
+you'll tell me how much it was you paid the lawyer at
+<span class="nowrap">Heytesbury&mdash;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"I cannot say as yet. It will be some trifle. You need not trouble
+yourself about that."</p>
+
+<p>"But I mean to pay 'un, Muster Fenwick. I can pay my way as yet,
+though it's hard enough at times." The parson was obliged to promise
+that Mr. Jones's bill of charges should be sent to him, and then he
+called his wife, and they left the mill. Sam was still up among the
+timbers, and had not once come down while the visitors were in the
+cottage. Mrs. Fenwick had been more successful with the women than
+the parson had been with the father. She had taken upon herself to
+say that she thoroughly believed Sam to be innocent, and they had
+thanked her with many protestations of gratitude.</p>
+
+<p>They did not go back by the way they had come, but went up to the
+road, which they crossed, and thence to some outlying cottages which
+were not very far from Hampton Privets House. From these cottages
+there was a path across the fields back to Bullhampton, which led by
+the side of a small wood belonging to the Marquis. There was a good
+deal of woodland just here, and this special copse, called Hampton
+bushes, was known to be one of the best pheasant coverts in that part
+of the country. Whom should they meet, standing on the path, armed
+with his gun, and with his keeper behind him armed with another, than
+the Marquis of Trowbridge himself. They had heard a shot or two, but
+they had thought nothing of it, or they would have gone back to the
+road. "Don't speak," said the parson, as he walked on quickly with
+his wife on his arm. The Marquis stood and scowled; but he had the
+breeding of a gentleman, and when Mrs. Fenwick was close to him, he
+raised his hat. The parson also raised his, the lady bowed, and then
+they passed on without a word. "I had no excuse for doing so, or I
+would certainly have told him that Sam Brattle was comfortably at
+home with his father," said the parson.</p>
+
+<p>"How you do like a fight, Frank!"</p>
+
+<p>"If it's stand up, and all fair, I don't dislike it."</p>
+
+
+<p><a name="c20" id="c20"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>CHAPTER XX.</h3>
+<h4>I HAVE A JUPITER OF MY OWN NOW.<br />&nbsp;</h4>
+
+
+<p>When Mary Lowther returned home from the last walk with her cousin
+that has been mentioned, she was quite determined that she would not
+disturb her happiness on that night by the task of telling her
+engagement to her aunt. It must, of course, be told, and that at
+once; and it must be told also to Parson John; and a letter must be
+written to Janet; and another, which would be very difficult in the
+writing, to Mr. Gilmore; and she must be prepared to bear a certain
+amount of opposition from all her friends; but for the present
+moment, she would free herself from these troubles. To-morrow, after
+breakfast, she would tell her aunt. To-morrow, at lunch-time, Walter
+would come up to the lane as her accepted lover. And then, after
+lunch, after due consultation with him and with Aunt Sarah, the
+letter should be written.</p>
+
+<p>She had solved, at any rate, one doubt, and had investigated one
+mystery. While conscious of her own coldness towards Mr. Gilmore, she
+had doubted whether she was capable of loving a man, of loving him as
+Janet Fenwick loved her husband. Now she would not admit to herself
+that any woman that ever lived adored a man more thoroughly than she
+adored Walter Marrable. It was sweet to her to see and to remember
+the motions of his body. When walking by his side she could hardly
+forbear to touch him with her shoulder. When parting from him it was
+a regret to her to take her hand from his. And she told herself that
+all this had come to her in the course of one morning's walk, and
+wondered at it,&mdash;that her heart should be a thing capable of being
+given away so quickly. It had, in truth, been given away quickly
+enough, though the work had not been done in that one morning's walk.
+She had been truly honest, to herself and to others, when she said
+that her cousin Walter was and should be a brother to her; but had
+her new brother, in his brotherly confidence, told her that his heart
+was devoted to some other woman, she would have suffered a blow,
+though she would never have confessed even to herself that she
+suffered. On that evening, when she reached home, she said very
+little.</p>
+
+<p>She was so tired. Might she go to bed? "What, at nine o'clock?" asked
+Aunt Sarah.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll stay up, if you wish it," said Mary.</p>
+
+<p>But before ten she was alone in her own chamber, sitting in her own
+chair, with her arms folded, feeling, rather than thinking, how
+divine a thing it was to be in love. What could she not do for him?
+What would she not endure to have the privilege of living with him?
+What other good fortune in life could be equal to this good fortune?
+Then she thought of her relations with Mr. Gilmore, and shuddered as
+she remembered how near she had been to accepting him. "It would have
+been so wrong. And yet I did not see it! With him I am sure that it
+is right, for I feel that in going to him I can be every bit his
+own."</p>
+
+<p>So she thought, and so she dreamed; and then the morning came, and
+she had to go down to her aunt. She ate her breakfast almost in
+silence, having resolved that she would tell her story the moment
+breakfast was over. She had, over night, and while she was in bed,
+studiously endeavoured not to con any mode of telling it. Up to the
+moment at which she rose her happiness was, if possible, to be
+untroubled. But while she dressed herself, she endeavoured to arrange
+her plans. She at last came to the conclusion that she could do it
+best without any plan.</p>
+
+<p>As soon as Aunt Sarah had finished her breakfast, and just as she was
+about to proceed, according to her morning custom, down-stairs to the
+kitchen, Mary spoke. "Aunt Sarah, I have something to tell you. I may
+as well bring it out at once. I am engaged to marry Walter Marrable."
+Aunt Sarah immediately let fall the sugar-tongs, and stood
+speechless. "Dear aunt, do not look as if you were displeased. Say a
+kind word to me. I am sure you do not think that I have intended to
+deceive you."</p>
+
+<p>"No; I do not think that," said Aunt Sarah.</p>
+
+<p>"And is that all?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am very much surprised. It was yesterday that you told me, when I
+hinted at this, that he was no more to you than a cousin,&mdash;or a
+brother."</p>
+
+<p>"And so I thought; indeed I did. But when he told me how it was with
+him, I knew at once that I had only one answer to give. No other
+answer was possible. I love him better than anyone else in all the
+world. I feel that I can promise to be his wife without the least
+reserve or fear. I don't know why it should be so; but it is. I know
+I am right in this." Aunt Sarah still stood silent, meditating.
+"Don't you think I was right, feeling as I do, to tell him so? I had
+before become certain, quite, quite certain that it was impossible to
+give any other answer but one to Mr. Gilmore. Dearest aunt, do speak
+to me."</p>
+
+<p>"I do not know what you will have to live upon."</p>
+
+<p>"It is settled, you know, that he will save four or five thousand
+pounds out of his money, and I have got twelve hundred. It is not
+much, but it will be just something. Of course he will remain in the
+army, and I shall be a soldier's wife. I shall think nothing of going
+out to India, if he wishes it; but I don't think he means that. Dear
+Aunt Sarah, do say one word of congratulation."</p>
+
+<p>Aunt Sarah did not know how to congratulate her niece. It seemed to
+her that any congratulation must be false and hypocritical. To her
+thinking, it would be a most unfitting match. It seemed to her that
+such an engagement had been most foolish. She was astonished at
+Mary's weakness, and was indignant with Walter Marrable. As regarded
+Mary, though she had twice uttered a word or two, intended as a
+caution, yet she had never thought it possible that a girl so steady
+in her ordinary demeanour, so utterly averse to all flirtation, so
+little given to the weakness of feminine susceptibility, would fall
+at once into such a quagmire of indiscreet love-troubles. The caution
+had been intended, rather in regard to outward appearances, and
+perhaps with the view of preventing the possibility of some slight
+heart-scratches, than with the idea that danger of this nature was to
+be dreaded. As Mr. Gilmore was there as an acknowledged suitor,&mdash;a
+suitor, as to whose ultimate success Aunt Sarah had her strong
+opinions,&mdash;it would be well those cousinly-brotherly associations and
+confidences should not become so close as to create possible
+embarrassment. Such had been the nature of Aunt Sarah's caution; and
+now,&mdash;in the course of a week or two,&mdash;when the young people were in
+truth still strangers to each other,&mdash;when Mr. Gilmore was still
+waiting for his answer,&mdash;Mary came to her, and told her that the
+engagement was a thing completed! How could she utter a word of
+congratulation?</p>
+
+<p>"You mean, then, to say that you disapprove of it?" said Mary, almost
+sternly.</p>
+
+<p>"I cannot say that I think it wise."</p>
+
+<p>"I am not speaking of wisdom. Of course, Mr. Gilmore is very much
+richer, and all that."</p>
+
+<p>"You know, Mary, that I would not counsel you to marry a man because
+he was rich."</p>
+
+<p>"That is what you mean when you tell me I am not wise. I tried
+it,&mdash;with all the power of thought and calculation that I could give
+to it, and I found that I could not marry Mr. Gilmore."</p>
+
+<p>"I am not speaking about that now."</p>
+
+<p>"You mean that Walter is so poor, that he never should be allowed to
+marry."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't care twopence about Walter."</p>
+
+<p>"But I do, Aunt Sarah. I care more about him than all the world
+beside. I had to think for him."</p>
+
+<p>"You did not take much time to think."</p>
+
+<p>"Hardly a minute&mdash;and yet it was sufficient." Then she paused,
+waiting for her aunt; but it seemed that her aunt had nothing further
+to say. "Well," continued Mary, "if it must be so, it must. If you
+cannot wish me <span class="nowrap">joy&mdash;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"Dearest, you know well enough that I wish you all happiness."</p>
+
+<p>"This is my happiness." It seemed to the bewildered old lady that the
+whole nature of the girl was altered. Mary was speaking now as might
+have spoken some enthusiastic young female who had at last succeeded
+in obtaining for herself the possession,&mdash;more or less permanent,&mdash;of
+a young man, after having fed her imagination on novels for the last
+five years; whereas Mary Lowther had hitherto, in all moods of her
+life, been completely opposite to such feminine ways and doings.
+"Very well," continued Mary; "we will say nothing more about it at
+present. I am greatly grieved that I have incurred your displeasure;
+but I cannot wish it otherwise."</p>
+
+<p>"I have said nothing of displeasure."</p>
+
+<p>"Walter is to be up after lunch, and I will only ask that he may not
+be received with black looks. If it must be visited as a sin, let it
+be visited on me."</p>
+
+<p>"Mary, that is unkind and ungenerous."</p>
+
+<p>"If you knew, Aunt Sarah, how I have longed during the night for your
+kind voice,&mdash;for your sympathy and approval!"</p>
+
+<p>Aunt Sarah paused again for a moment, and then went down to her
+domestic duties without another word.</p>
+
+<p>In the afternoon Walter came, but Aunt Sarah did not see him. When
+Mary went to her the old lady declared that, for the present, it
+would be better so. "I do not know what to say to him at present. I
+must think of it, and speak to his uncle, and try to find out what
+had best be done."</p>
+
+<p>She was sitting as she said this up in her own room, without even a
+book in her hand; in very truth, passing an hour in an endeavour to
+decide what, in the present emergency, she ought to say or do. Mary
+stooped over her and kissed her, and the aunt returned her niece's
+caresses.</p>
+
+<p>"Do not let you and me quarrel, at any rate," said Miss Marrable.
+"Who else is there that I care for? Whose happiness is anything to me
+except yours?"</p>
+
+<p>"Then come to him, and tell him that he also shall be dear to you."</p>
+
+<p>"No; at any rate, not now. Of course you can marry, Mary, without any
+sanction from me. I do not pretend that you owe to me that obedience
+which would be due to a mother. But I cannot say,&mdash;at least, not
+yet,&mdash;that such sanction as I have to give can be given to this
+engagement. I have a dread that it will come to no good. It grieves
+me. I do not forbid you to receive him; but for the present it would
+be better that I should not see him."</p>
+
+<p>"What is her objection?" demanded Walter, with grave indignation.</p>
+
+<p>"She thinks we shall be poor."</p>
+
+<p>"Shall we ask her for anything? Of course we shall be poor. For the
+present there will be but &pound;300 a year, or thereabouts, beyond my
+professional income. A few years back, if so much had been secured,
+friends would have thought that everything necessary had been done.
+If you are afraid, <span class="nowrap">Mary&mdash;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"You know I am not afraid."</p>
+
+<p>"What is it to her, then? Of course we shall be poor,&mdash;very poor. But
+we can live."</p>
+
+<p>There did come upon Mary Lowther a feeling that Walter spoke of the
+necessity of a comfortable income in a manner very different from
+that in which he had of late been discussing the same subject ever
+since she had known him. He had declared that it was impossible that
+he should exist in England as a bachelor on his professional income,
+and yet surely he would be poorer as a married man with that &pound;300 a
+year added to it, than he would have been without it, and also
+without a wife. But what girl that loves a man can be angry with him
+for such imprudence and such inconsistency? She had already told him
+that she would be ready, if it were necessary, to go with him to
+India. She had said so before she went up to her aunt's room. He had
+replied that he hoped no such sacrifice would be demanded from her.
+"There can be no sacrifice on my part," she had replied, "unless I am
+required to give up you." Of course he had taken her in his arms and
+kissed her. There are moments in one's life in which not to be
+imprudent, not to be utterly, childishly forgetful of all worldly
+wisdom, would be to be brutal, inhuman, and devilish. "Had he told
+Parson John?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes!"</p>
+
+<p>"And what does he say?"</p>
+
+<p>"Just nothing. He raised his eyebrows, and suggested 'that I had
+changed my ideas of life.' 'So I have,' I said. 'All right!' he
+replied. 'I hope that Block and Curling won't have made any mistake
+about the &pound;5000.' That was all he said. No doubt he thinks we're two
+fools; but then one's folly won't embarrass him."</p>
+
+<p>"Nor will it embarrass Aunt Sarah," said Mary.</p>
+
+<p>"But there is this difference. If we come to grief, Parson John will
+eat his dinner without the slightest interference with his appetite
+from our misfortunes; but Aunt Sarah would suffer on your account."</p>
+
+<p>"She would, certainly," said Mary.</p>
+
+<p>"But we will not come to grief. At any rate, darling, we cannot
+consent to be made wise by the prospect of her possible sorrows on
+our behalf."</p>
+
+<p>It was agreed that on that afternoon Mary should write both to Mr.
+Gilmore and to Janet Fenwick. She offered to keep her letters, and
+show them, when written, to her lover; but he declared that he would
+prefer not to see them. "It is enough for me that I triumph," he
+said, as he left her. When he had gone, she at once told her aunt
+that she would write the letters, and bring that to Mr. Gilmore to be
+read by her when they were finished.</p>
+
+<p>"I would postpone it for awhile, if I were you," said Aunt Sarah.</p>
+
+<p>But Mary declared that any such delay would be unfair to Mr. Gilmore.
+She did write the letters before dinner, and they were as
+<span class="nowrap">follows:&mdash;</span><br />&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+<blockquote>
+<p class="noindent"><span class="smallcaps">My dear Mr. Gilmore</span>,</p>
+
+<p>When last you came down to the Vicarage to see me I
+promised you, as you may perhaps remember, that if it
+should come to pass that I should engage myself to any
+other man, I would at once let you know that it was so. I
+little thought then that I should so soon be called upon
+to keep my promise. I will not pretend that the writing of
+this letter is not very painful to me; but I know that it
+is my duty to write it, and to put an end to a suspense
+which you have been good enough to feel on my account. You
+have, I think, heard the name of my cousin, Captain Walter
+Marrable, who returned from India two or three months ago.
+I found him staying here with his uncle, the clergyman,
+and now I am engaged to be his wife.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps it would be better that I should say nothing more
+than this, and that I should leave myself and my character
+and name to your future kindness,&mdash;or unkindness,&mdash;without
+any attempt to win the former or to decry the latter; but
+you have been to me ever so good and noble that I cannot
+bring myself to be so cold and short. I have always felt
+that your preference for me has been a great honour to me.
+I have appreciated your esteem most highly, and have
+valued your approbation more than I have been able to say.
+If it could be possible that I should in future have your
+friendship, I should value it more than that of any other
+person. God bless you, Mr. Gilmore. I shall always hope
+that you may be happy, and I shall hear with delight any
+tidings which may seem to show that you are so.</p>
+
+<p class="noindent"><span class="ind6">Pray believe that I am</span><br />
+<span class="ind10">Your most sincere friend,</span></p>
+
+<p class="ind15"><span class="smallcaps">Mary Lowther</span>.</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">I have thought it best
+to tell Janet Fenwick what I have done.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+<p class="jright">Loring, Thursday.</p>
+
+<p class="noindent"><span class="smallcaps">Dearest Janet</span>,</p>
+
+<p>I wonder what you will say to my news? But you must not
+scold me. Pray do not scold me. It could never, never have
+been as you wanted. I have engaged myself to marry my
+cousin, Captain Walter Marrable, who is a nephew of Sir
+Gregory Marrable, and a son of Colonel Marrable. We shall
+be very poor, having not more than &pound;300 a-year above his
+pay as a captain; but if he had nothing, I think I should
+do the same. Do you remember how I used to doubt whether I
+should ever have that sort of love for a man for which I
+used to envy you? I don't envy you any longer, and I don't
+regard Mr. Fenwick as being nearly so divine as I used to
+do. I have a Jupiter of my own now, and need envy no woman
+the reality of her love.</p>
+
+<p>I have written to Mr. Gilmore by the same post as will
+take this, and have just told him the bare truth. What
+else could I tell him? I have said something horribly
+stilted about esteem and friendship, which I would have
+left out, only that my letter seemed to be heartless
+without it. He has been to me as good as a man could be;
+but was it my fault that I could not love him? If you knew
+how I tried,&mdash;how I tried to make believe to myself that I
+loved him; how I tried to teach myself that that sort of
+very chill approbation was the nearest approach to love
+that I could ever reach; and how I did this because you
+bade me;&mdash;if you could understand all this, then you would
+not scold me. And I did almost believe that it was so. But
+now&mdash;! Oh, dear! how would it have been if I had engaged
+myself to Mr. Gilmore, and that then Walter Marrable had
+come to me! I get sick when I think how near I was to
+saying that I would love a man whom I never could have
+loved.</p>
+
+<p>Of course I used to ask myself what I should do with
+myself. I suppose every woman living has to ask and to
+answer that question. I used to try to think that it would
+be well not to think of the outer crust of myself. What
+did it matter whether things were soft to me or not? I
+could do my duty. And as this man was good, and a
+gentleman, and endowed with high qualities and appropriate
+tastes, why should he not have the wife he wanted? I
+thought that I could pretend to love him, till, after some
+fashion, I should love him; but as I think of it now, all
+this seems to be so horrid! I know now what to do with
+myself. To be his from head to foot! To feel that nothing
+done for him would be mean or distasteful! To stand at a
+washtub and wash his clothes, if it were wanted. Oh,
+Janet, I used to dread the time in which he would have to
+put his arm round me and kiss me! I cannot tell you what I
+feel now about that other he.</p>
+
+<p>I know well how provoked you will be,&mdash;and it will all
+come of love for me; but you cannot but own that I am
+right. If you have any justice in you, write to me and
+tell me that I am right.</p>
+
+<p>Only that Mr. Gilmore is your great friend, and that,
+therefore, just at first, Walter will not be your friend,
+I would tell you more about him,&mdash;how handsome he is, how
+manly, and how clever. And then his voice is like the
+music of the spheres. You won't feel like being his friend
+at first, but you must look forward to his being your
+friend; you must love him&mdash;as I do Mr. Fenwick; and you
+must tell Mr. Fenwick that he must open his heart for the
+man who is to be my husband. Alas, alas! I fear it will be
+long before I can go to Bullhampton. How I do wish that he
+would find some nice wife to suit him!</p>
+
+<p>Good bye, dearest Janet. If you are really good, you will
+write me a sweet, kind, loving letter, wishing me joy. You
+must know all. Aunt Sarah has refused to congratulate me,
+because the income is so small. Nevertheless, we have not
+quarrelled. But the income will be nothing to you, and I
+do look forward to a kind word. When everything is
+settled, of course I will tell you.</p>
+
+<p class="ind8">Your most affectionate friend,</p>
+
+<p class="ind15"><span class="smallcaps">Mary
+Lowther</span>.<br />&nbsp;</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+
+<p>The former letter of the two was shown to Miss Marrable. That lady
+was of opinion that it should not be sent; but would not say that, if
+to be sent, it could be altered for the better.</p>
+
+
+<p><a name="c21" id="c21"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>CHAPTER XXI.</h3>
+<h4>WHAT PARSON JOHN THINKS ABOUT IT.<br />&nbsp;</h4>
+
+
+<p><img class="left" src="images/ch21a.jpg" width="310" alt="Illustration" />
+On that same Thursday, the Thursday on which Mary Lowther wrote her
+two despatches to Bullhampton, Miss Marrable sent a note down to
+Parson John, requesting that she might have an interview with him. If
+he were at home and disengaged, she would go down to him that
+evening, or he might, if he pleased, come to her. The former she
+thought would be preferable. Parson John assented, and very soon
+after dinner the private brougham came round from the Dragon, and
+conveyed Miss Marrable down to the rectory at Lowtown.</p>
+
+<p>"I am going down to Parson John," said she to Mary. "I think it best
+to speak to him about the engagement."</p>
+
+<p>Mary received the information with a nod of her head that was
+intended to be gracious, and Aunt Sarah proceeded on her way. She
+found her cousin alone in his study, and immediately opened the
+subject which had brought her down the hill. "Walter, I believe, has
+told you about this engagement, Mr. Marrable."</p>
+
+<p>"Never was so astonished in my life! He told me last night. I had
+begun to think that he was getting very fond of her, but I didn't
+suppose it would come to this."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you think it very imprudent?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course it's imprudent, Sarah. It don't require any thinking to be
+aware of that. It's downright stupid;&mdash;two cousins with nothing a
+year between them, when no doubt each of them might do very well.
+They're well-born, and well-looking, and clever, and all that. It's
+absurd, and I don't suppose it will ever come to anything."</p>
+
+<p>"Did you tell Walter what you thought?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why should I tell him? He knows what I think without my telling him;
+and he wouldn't care a pinch of snuff for my opinion. I tell you
+because you ask me."</p>
+
+<p>"But ought not something to be done to prevent it?"</p>
+
+<p>"What can we do? I might tell him that I wouldn't have him here any
+more, but I shouldn't like to do that. Perhaps she'll do your
+bidding."</p>
+
+<p>"I fear not, Mr. Marrable."</p>
+
+<p>"Then you may be quite sure he won't do mine. He'll go away and
+forget her. That'll be the end of it. It'll be as good as a year gone
+out of her life, and she'll lose this other lover of hers at&mdash;what's
+the name of the place? It's a pity, but that's what she'll have to go
+through."</p>
+
+<p>"Is he so light as that?" asked Aunt Sarah, shocked.</p>
+
+<p>"He's about the same as other men, I take it; and she'll be the same
+as other girls. They like to have their bit of fun now, and there'd
+be no great harm,&mdash;only such fun costs the lady so plaguy dear. As
+for their being married, I don't think Walter will ever be such a
+fool as that."</p>
+
+<p>There was something in this that was quite terrible to Aunt Sarah.
+Her Mary Lowther was to be treated in this way;&mdash;to be played with as
+a plaything, and then to be turned off when the time for playing came
+to an end! And this little game was to be played for Walter
+Marrable's delectation, though the result of it would be the ruin of
+Mary's prospects in life!</p>
+
+<p>"I think," said she, "that if I believed him to be so base as that, I
+would send him out of the house."</p>
+
+<p>"He does not mean to be base at all. He's just like the rest of 'em,"
+said Parson John.</p>
+
+<p>Aunt Sarah used every argument in her power to show that something
+should be done; but all to no purpose. She thought that if Sir
+Gregory were brought to interfere, that perhaps might have an effect;
+but the old clergyman laughed at this. What did Captain Walter
+Marrable, who had been in the army all his life, and who had no
+special favour to expect from his uncle, care about Sir Gregory? Head
+of the family, indeed! What was the head of the family to him? If a
+girl would be a fool, the girl must take the result of her folly.
+That was Parson John's doctrine,&mdash;that and a confirmed assurance that
+this engagement, such as it was, would lead to nothing. He was really
+very sorry for Mary, in whose praise he said ever so many
+good-natured things; but she had not been the first fool, and she
+would not be the last. It was not his business, and he could do no
+good by interfering. At last, however, he did promise that he would
+himself speak to Walter. Nothing would come of it, but, as his cousin
+asked him, he would speak to his nephew.</p>
+
+<p>He waited for four-and-twenty hours before he spoke, and during that
+time was subject to none of those terrors which were now making Miss
+Marrable's life a burden to her. In his opinion it was almost a pity
+that a young fellow like Walter should be interrupted in his
+amusement. According to his view of life, very much wisdom was not
+expected from ladies, young or old. They, for the most part, had
+their bread found for them; and were not required to do anything,
+whether they were rich or poor. Let them be ever so poor, the
+disgrace of poverty did not fall upon them as it did upon men. But
+then, if they would run their heads into trouble, trouble came harder
+upon them than on men; and for that they had nobody to blame but
+themselves. Of course it was a very nice thing to be in love. Verses
+and pretty speeches and easy-spoken romance were pleasant enough in
+their way. Parson John had no doubt tried them himself in early life,
+and had found how far they were efficacious for his own happiness.
+But young women were so apt to want too much of the excitement! A
+young man at Bullhampton was not enough without another young man at
+Loring. That, we fear, was the mode in which Parson John looked at
+the subject,&mdash;which mode of looking at it, had he ever ventured to
+explain it to Mary Lowther, would have brought down upon his head
+from that young woman an amount of indignant scorn which would have
+been very disagreeable to Parson John. But then he was a great deal
+too wise to open his mind on such a subject to Mary Lowther.</p>
+
+<p>"I think, sir, I'd better go up and see Curling again next week,"
+said the Captain.</p>
+
+<p>"I dare say. Is anything not going right?"</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose I shall get the money, but I shall like to know when. I am
+very anxious, of course, to fix a day for my marriage."</p>
+
+<p>"I should not be over quick about that, if I were you," said Parson
+John.</p>
+
+<p>"Why not? Situated as I am, I must be quick. I must make up my mind
+at any rate where we're to live."</p>
+
+<p>"You'll go back to your regiment, I suppose, next month?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir. I shall go back to my regiment next month, unless we may
+make up our minds to go out to India."</p>
+
+<p>"What, you and Mary?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I and Mary."</p>
+
+<p>"As man and wife?" said Parson John, with a smile.</p>
+
+<p>"How else should we go?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, no. If she goes with you, she must go as Mrs. Captain
+Marrable, of course. But if I were you, I would not think of anything
+so horrible."</p>
+
+<p>"It would be horrible," said Walter Marrable.</p>
+
+<p>"I should think it would. India may be very well when a man is quite
+young, and if he can keep himself from beer and wine; but to go back
+there at your time of life with a wife, and to look forward to a
+dozen children there, must be an unpleasant prospect, I should say."</p>
+
+<p>Walter Marrable sat silent and black.</p>
+
+<p>"I should give up all idea of India," continued his uncle.</p>
+
+<p>"What the deuce is a man to do?" asked the Captain.</p>
+
+<p>The parson shrugged his shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll tell you what I've been thinking of," said the Captain. "If I
+could get a farm of four or five hundred
+<span class="nowrap">acres&mdash;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"A farm!" exclaimed the parson.</p>
+
+<p>"Why not a farm? I know that a man can do nothing with a farm unless
+he has capital. He should have &pound;10 or &pound;12 an acre for his land, I
+suppose. I should have that and some trifle of an income besides if I
+sold out. I suppose my uncle would let me have a farm under him?"</p>
+
+<p>"He'd see you&mdash;further first."</p>
+
+<p>"Why shouldn't I do as well with a farm as another?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why not turn shoemaker? Because you have not learned the business.
+Farmer, indeed! You'd never get the farm, and if you did, you would
+not keep it for three years. You've been in the army too long to be
+fit for anything else, Walter."</p>
+
+<p>Captain Marrable looked black and angry at being so counselled; but
+he believed what was said to him, and had no answer to make to it.</p>
+
+<p>"You must stick to the army," continued the old man; "and if you'll
+take my advice, you'll do so without the impediment of a wife."</p>
+
+<p>"That's quite out of the question."</p>
+
+<p>"Why is it out of the question?"</p>
+
+<p>"How can you ask me, Uncle John? Would you have me go back from an
+engagement after I have made it?"</p>
+
+<p>"I would have you go back from anything that was silly."</p>
+
+<p>"And tell a girl, after I have asked her to be my wife, that I don't
+want to have anything more to do with her?"</p>
+
+<p>"I should not tell her that; but I should make her understand, both
+for her own sake and for mine, that we had been too fast, and that
+the sooner we gave up our folly the better for both of us. You can't
+marry her, that's the truth of it."</p>
+
+<p>"You'll see if I can't."</p>
+
+<p>"If you choose to wait ten years, you may."</p>
+
+<p>"I won't wait ten months, nor, if I can have my own way, ten weeks."
+What a pity that Mary could not have heard him. "Half the fellows in
+the army are married without anything beyond their pay; and I'm to be
+told that we can't get along with &pound;300 a year? At any rate, we'll
+try."</p>
+
+<p>"Marry in haste, and repent at leisure," said Uncle John.</p>
+
+<p>"According to the doctrines that are going now-a-days," said the
+Captain, "it will be held soon that a gentleman can't marry unless he
+has got &pound;3000 a year. It is the most heartless, damnable teaching
+that ever came up. It spoils the men, and makes women, when they do
+marry, expect ever so many things that they ought never to want."</p>
+
+<p>"And you mean to teach them better, Walter?"</p>
+
+<p>"I mean to act for myself, and not be frightened out of doing what I
+think right, because the world says this and that."</p>
+
+<p>As he so spoke, the angry Captain got up to leave the room.</p>
+
+<p>"All the same," rejoined the parson, firing the last shot; "I'd think
+twice about it, if I were you, before I married Mary Lowther."</p>
+
+<p>"He's more of an ass, and twice as headstrong as I thought him," said
+Parson John to Miss Marrable the next day; "but still I don't think
+it will come to anything. As far as I can observe, three of these
+engagements are broken off for one that goes on. And when he comes to
+look at things he'll get tired of it. He's going up to London next
+week, and I shan't press him to come back. If he does come I can't
+help it. If I were you, I wouldn't ask him up the hill, and I should
+tell Miss Mary a bit of my mind pretty plainly."</p>
+
+<p>Hitherto, as far as words went, Aunt Sarah had told very little of
+her mind to Mary Lowther on the subject of her engagement, but she
+had spoken as yet no word of congratulation; and Mary knew that the
+manner in which she proposed to bestow herself was not received with
+favour by any of her relatives at Loring.</p>
+
+
+<p><a name="c22" id="c22"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>CHAPTER XXII.</h3>
+<h4>WHAT THE FENWICKS THOUGHT ABOUT IT.<br />&nbsp;</h4>
+
+
+<p>Bullhampton unfortunately was at the end of the postman's walk, and
+as the man came all the way from Lavington, letters were seldom
+received much before eleven o'clock. Now this was a most pernicious
+arrangement, in respect to which Mr. Fenwick carried on a perpetual
+feud with the Post-office authorities, having put forward a great
+postal doctrine that letters ought to be rained from heaven on to
+everybody's breakfast-table exactly as the hot water is brought in
+for tea. He, being an energetic man, carried on a long and angry
+correspondence with the authorities aforesaid; but the old man from
+Lavington continued to toddle into the village just at eleven
+o'clock. It was acknowledged that ten was his time; but, as he argued
+with himself, ten and eleven were pretty much of a muchness. The
+consequence of this was, that Mary Lowther's letters to Mrs. Fenwick
+had been read by her two or three hours before she had an opportunity
+of speaking on the subject to her husband. At last, however, he
+returned, and she flew at him with the letter in her hand. "Frank,"
+she said, "Frank, what do you think has happened?"</p>
+
+<p>"The Bank of England must have stopped, from the look of your face."</p>
+
+<p>"I wish it had, with all my heart, sooner than this. Mary has gone
+and engaged herself to her cousin, Walter Marrable."</p>
+
+<p>"Mary Lowther!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; Mary Lowther! Our Mary! And from what I remember hearing about
+him, he is anything but nice."</p>
+
+<p>"He had a lot of money left to him the other day."</p>
+
+<p>"It can't have been much, because Mary owns that they will be very
+poor. Here is her letter. I am so unhappy about it. Don't you
+remember hearing about that Colonel Marrable who was in a horrible
+scrape about somebody's wife?"</p>
+
+<p>"You shouldn't judge the son from the father."</p>
+
+<p>"They've been in the army together, and they're both alike. I hate
+the army. They are almost always no better than they should be."</p>
+
+<p>"That's true, my dear, certainly of all services, unless it be the
+army of martyrs; and there may be a doubt on the subject even as to
+them. May I read it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes; she has been half ashamed of herself every word she has
+written. I know her so well. To think that Mary Lowther should have
+engaged herself to any man after two days' acquaintance!"</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Fenwick read the letter through attentively, and then handed it
+back.</p>
+
+<p>"It's a good letter," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"You mean that it's well written?"</p>
+
+<p>"I mean that it's true. There are no touches put in to make effect.
+She does love the one man, and she doesn't love the other. All I can
+say is, that I'm very sorry for it. It will drive Gilmore out of the
+place."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mean it?"</p>
+
+<p>"I do, indeed. I never knew a man to be at the same time so strong
+and so weak in such a matter. One would say that the intensity of his
+affection would be the best pledge of his future happiness if he were
+to marry the girl; but seeing that he is not to marry her, one cannot
+but feel that a man shouldn't stake his happiness on a thing beyond
+his reach."</p>
+
+<p>"You think it is all up, then;&mdash;that she really will marry this man?"</p>
+
+<p>"What else can I think?"</p>
+
+<p>"These things do go off sometimes. There can't be much money,
+because, you see, old Miss Marrable opposes the whole thing on
+account of there not being income enough. She is anything but rich
+herself, and is the last person of all the world to make a fuss about
+money. If it could be broken
+<span class="nowrap">off&mdash;."</span></p>
+
+<p>"If I understand Mary Lowther," said Mr. Fenwick, "she is not the
+woman to have her match broken off for her by any person. Of course I
+know nothing about the man; but if he is firm, she'll be as firm."</p>
+
+<p>"And then she has written to Mr. Gilmore," said Mrs. Fenwick.</p>
+
+<p>"It's all up with Harry as far as this goes," said Mr. Fenwick.</p>
+
+<p>The Vicar had another matter of moment to discuss with his wife. Sam
+Brattle, after having remained hard at work at the mill for nearly a
+fortnight,&mdash;so hard at work as to induce his father to declare that
+he'd bet a guinea there wasn't a man in the three parishes who could
+come nigh his Sam for a right down day's work;&mdash;after all this, Sam
+had disappeared, had been gone for two days, and was said by the
+constable to have been seen at night on the Devizes side, from whence
+was supposed to come the Grinder, and all manner of Grinder's
+iniquities. Up to this time no further arrest had been made on
+account of Mr. Trumbull's murder, nor had any trace been found of the
+Grinder, or of that other man who had been his companion. The leading
+policeman, who still had charge of the case, expressed himself as
+sure that the old woman at Pycroft Common knew nothing of her son's
+whereabouts; but he had always declared, and still continued to
+declare, that Sam Brattle could tell them the whole story of the
+murder if he pleased, and there had been a certain amount of watching
+kept on the young man, much to his own disgust, and to that of his
+father. Sam had sworn aloud in the village&mdash;so much aloud that he had
+shown his determination to be heard by all men&mdash;that he would go to
+America, and see whether anyone would dare to stop him. He had been
+told of his bail, and had replied that he would demand to be relieved
+of his bail;&mdash;that his bail was illegal, and that he would have it
+all tried in a court of law. Mr. Fenwick had heard of this, and had
+replied that as far as he was concerned he was not in the least
+afraid. He believed that the bail was illegal, and he believed also
+that Sam would stay where he was. But now Sam was gone, and the
+Bullhampton constable was clearly of opinion that he had gone to join
+the Grinder. "At any rate, he's off somewhere," said Mr. Fenwick,
+"and his mother doesn't know where he's gone. Old Brattle, of course,
+won't say a word."</p>
+
+<p>"And will it hurt you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not unless they get hold of those other fellows and require Sam's
+appearance. I don't doubt but that he'd turn up in that case."</p>
+
+<p>"Then it does not signify?"</p>
+
+<p>"It signifies for him. I've an idea that I know where he's gone, and
+I think I shall go after him."</p>
+
+<p>"Is it far, Frank?"</p>
+
+<p>"Something short of Australia, luckily."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Frank!"</p>
+
+<p>"I'll tell you the truth. It's my belief that Carry Brattle is living
+about twenty miles off, and that he's gone to see his sister."</p>
+
+<p>"Carry Brattle!&mdash;down here!"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know it, and I don't want to hear it mentioned; but I fancy
+it is so. At any rate, I shall go and see."</p>
+
+<p>"Poor, dear, bright little Carry! But how is she living, Frank?"</p>
+
+<p>"She's not one of the army of martyrs, you may be sure. I daresay
+she's no better than she should be."</p>
+
+<p>"You'll tell me if you see her?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Shall I send her anything?"</p>
+
+<p>"The only thing to send her is money. If she is in want, I'll relieve
+her,&mdash;with a very sparing hand."</p>
+
+<p>"Will you bring her back,&mdash;here?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, who can say? I should tell her mother, and I suppose we should
+have to ask her father to receive her. I know what his answer will
+be."</p>
+
+<p>"He'll refuse to see her."</p>
+
+<p>"No doubt. Then we should have to put our heads together, and the
+chances are that the poor girl will be off in the meantime,&mdash;back to
+London and the Devil. It is not easy to set crooked things straight."</p>
+
+<p>In spite, however, of this interruption, Mary Lowther and her
+engagement to Captain Marrable was the subject of greatest interest
+at the Vicarage that day and through the night. Mrs. Fenwick half
+expected that Gilmore would come down in the evening; but the Vicar
+declared that his friend would be unwilling to show himself after the
+blow which he would have received. They knew that he would know that
+they had received the news, and that therefore he could not come
+either to tell it, or with the intention of asking questions without
+telling it. If he came at all, he must come like a beaten cur with
+his tail between his legs. And then there arose the question whether
+it would not be better that Mary's letter should be answered before
+Mr. Gilmore was seen. Mrs. Fenwick, whose fingers were itching for
+pen and paper, declared at last that she would write at once; and did
+write, as follows, before she went to
+<span class="nowrap">bed:&mdash;</span><br />&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+<blockquote>
+<p class="jright">The Vicarage, Friday.</p>
+
+<p class="noindent"><span class="smallcaps">Dearest Mary</span>,</p>
+
+<p>I do not know how to answer your letter. You tell me to
+write pleasantly, and to congratulate you; but how is one
+to do that so utterly in opposition to one's own interests
+and wishes? Oh dear, oh dear! how I do so wish you had
+stayed at Bullhampton! I know you will be angry with me
+for saying so, but how can I say anything else? I cannot
+picture you to myself going about from town to town and
+living in country-quarters. And as I never saw Captain
+Marrable, to the best of my belief, I cannot interest
+myself about him as I do about one whom I know and love
+and esteem. I feel that this is not a nice way of writing
+to you, and indeed I would be nice if I could. Of course I
+wish you to be full of joy;&mdash;of course I wish with all my
+heart that you may be happy if you marry your cousin; but
+the thing has come so suddenly that we cannot bring
+ourselves to look upon it as a reality.<br />&nbsp;</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+
+<p>"You should speak for yourself, Janet," said Mr. Fenwick, when he
+came to this part of the letter. He did not, however, require that
+the sentence should be altered.<br />&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+<blockquote>
+<p>You talk so much of doing what is right! Nobody has ever
+doubted that you were right both in morals and sentiment.
+The only regret has been that such a course should be
+right, and that the other thing should be wrong. Poor man!
+we have not seen him yet, nor heard from him. Frank says
+that he will take it very badly. I suppose that men do
+always get over that kind of thing much quicker than women
+do. Many women never can get over it at all; and Harry
+Gilmore, though there is so little about him that seems to
+be soft, is in this respect more like a woman than a man.
+Had he been otherwise, and had only half cared for you,
+and asked you to be his wife as though your taking him
+were a thing he didn't much care about, and were quite a
+matter of course, I believe you would have been up at
+Hampton Privets this moment, instead of going soldiering
+with a captain.</p>
+
+<p>Frank bids me send you his kindest love and his best
+wishes for your happiness. Those are his very words, and
+they seem to be kinder than mine. Of course you have my
+love and my best wishes; but I do not know how to write as
+though I could rejoice with you. Your husband will always
+be dear to us, whoever he may be, if he be good to you. At
+present I feel very, very angry with Captain Marrable; as
+though I wish he had had his head blown off in battle.
+However, if he is to be the happy man, I will open my
+heart to him;&mdash;that is, if he be good.</p>
+
+<p>I know this is not nice, but I cannot make it nicer now.
+God bless you, dearest Mary.</p>
+
+<p class="ind8">Ever your most affectionate friend,</p>
+
+<p class="ind15"><span class="smallcaps">Janet
+Fenwick</span>.<br />&nbsp;</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+
+<p>The letter was not posted till the hour for despatch on the following
+day; but, up to that hour, nothing had been seen at the Vicarage of
+Mr. Gilmore.</p>
+
+
+<p><a name="c23" id="c23"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>CHAPTER XXIII.</h3>
+<h4>WHAT MR. GILMORE THOUGHT ABOUT IT.<br />&nbsp;</h4>
+
+
+<p>Mr. Gilmore was standing on the doorsteps of his own house when
+Mary's letter was brought to him. It was a modest-sized country
+gentleman's residence, built of variegated uneven stones, black and
+grey and white, which seemed to be chiefly flint; but the corners and
+settings of the windows and of the door-ways, and the chimneys, were
+of brick. There was something sombre about it, and many perhaps might
+call it dull of aspect; but it was substantial, comfortable, and
+unassuming. It was entered by broad stone steps, with iron
+balustrades curving outwards as they descended, and there was an open
+area round the house, showing that the offices were in the basement.
+In these days it was a quiet house enough, as Mr. Gilmore was a man
+not much given to the loudness of bachelor parties. He entertained
+his neighbours at dinner perhaps once a month, and occasionally had a
+few guests staying with him. His uncle, the prebendary from
+Salisbury, was often with him, and occasionally a brother who was in
+the army. For the present, however, he was much more inclined, when
+in want of society, to walk off to the Vicarage than to provide it
+for himself at home. When Mary's letter was handed to him with his
+"Times" and other correspondence, he looked, as everybody does, at
+the address, and at once knew that it came from Mary Lowther. He had
+never hitherto received a letter from her, but yet he knew her
+handwriting well. Without waiting a moment, he turned upon his heel,
+and went back into his house, and through the hall to the library.
+When there, he first opened three other letters, two from tradesmen
+in London, and one from his uncle, offering to come to him on the
+next Monday. Then he opened the "Times," and cut it, and put it down
+on the table. Mary's letter meanwhile was in his hand, and anyone
+standing by might have thought that he had forgotten it. But he had
+not forgotten it, nor was it out of his mind for a moment. While
+looking at the other letters, while cutting the paper, while
+attempting, as he did, to read the news, he was suffering under the
+dread of the blow that was coming. He was there for twenty minutes
+before he dared to break the envelope; and though during the whole of
+that time he pretended to deceive himself by some employment, he knew
+that he was simply postponing an evil thing that was coming to him.
+At last he cut the letter open, and stood for some moments looking
+for courage to read it. He did read it, and then sat himself down in
+his chair, telling himself that the thing was over, and that he would
+bear it as a man. He took up his newspaper, and began to study it. It
+was the time of the year when newspapers are not very interesting,
+but he made a rush at the leading articles, and went through two of
+them. Then he turned over to the police reports. He sat there for an
+hour, and read hard during the whole time. Then he got up and shook
+himself, and knew that he was a crippled man, with every function out
+of order, disabled in every limb. He walked from the library into the
+hall, and thence to the dining-room, and so, backwards and forwards,
+for a quarter of an hour. At last he could walk no longer, and,
+closing the door of the library behind him, he threw himself on a
+sofa and cried like a woman.</p>
+
+<p>What was it that he wanted, and why did he want it? Were there not
+other women whom the world would say were as good? Was it ever known
+that a man had died, or become irretrievably broken and destroyed by
+disappointed love? Was it not one of those things that a man should
+shake off from him, and have done with it? He asked himself these,
+and many such-like questions, and tried to philosophise with himself
+on the matter. Had he no will of his own, by which he might conquer
+this enemy? No; he had no will of his own, and the enemy would not be
+conquered. He had to tell himself that he was so poor a thing that he
+could not stand up against the evil that had fallen on him.</p>
+
+<p>He walked out round his shrubberies and paddocks, and tried to take
+an interest in the bullocks and the horses. He knew that if every
+bullock and horse about the place had been struck dead it would not
+enhance his misery. He had not had much hope before, but now he would
+have seen the house of Hampton Privets in flames, just for the chance
+that had been his yesterday. It was not only that he wanted her, or
+that he regretted the absence of some recognised joys which she would
+have brought to him; but that the final decision on her part seemed
+to take from him all vitality, all power of enjoyment, all that
+inward elasticity which is necessary for an interest in worldly
+affairs.</p>
+
+<p>He had as yet hardly thought of anything but himself;&mdash;had hardly
+observed the name of his successful rival, or paid any attention to
+aught but the fact that she had told him that it was all over. He had
+not attempted to make up his mind whether anything could still be
+done, whether he might yet have a chance, whether it would be well
+for him to quarrel with the man; whether he should be indignant with
+her, or remonstrate once again in regard to her cruelty. He had
+thought only of the blow, and of his inability to support it. Would
+it not be best that he should go forth, and blow out his brains, and
+have done with it?</p>
+
+<p>He did not look at the letter again till he had returned to the
+library. Then he took it from his pocket, and read it very carefully.
+Yes, she had been quick about it. Why; how long had it been since she
+had left their parish? It was still October, and she had been there
+just before the murder&mdash;only the other day! Captain Walter Marrable!
+No; he didn't think he had ever heard of him. Some fellow with a
+moustache and a military strut&mdash;just the man that he had always
+hated; one of a class which, with nothing real to recommend it, is
+always interfering with the happiness of everybody. It was in some
+such light as this that Mr. Gilmore at present regarded Captain
+Marrable. How could such a man make a woman happy,&mdash;a fellow who
+probably had no house nor home in which to make her comfortable?
+Staying with his uncle the clergyman! Poor Gilmore expressed a wish
+that the uncle the clergyman had been choked before he had
+entertained such a guest. Then he read the concluding sentence of
+poor Mary's letter, in which she expressed a hope that they might be
+friends. Was there ever such cold-blooded trash? Friends indeed! What
+sort of friendship could there be between two persons, one of whom
+had made the other so wretched,&mdash;so dead as was he at present!</p>
+
+<p>For some half-hour he tried to comfort himself with an idea that he
+could get hold of Captain Marrable and maul him; that it would be a
+thing permissible for him, a magistrate, to go forth with a whip and
+flog the man, and then perhaps shoot him, because the man had been
+fortunate in love where he had been unfortunate. But he knew the
+world in which he lived too well to allow himself long to think that
+this could really be done. It might be that it would be a better
+world were such revenge practicable in it; but, as he well knew, it
+was not practicable now, and if Mary Lowther chose to give herself to
+this accursed Captain, he could not help it. There was nothing that
+he could do but to go away and chafe at his suffering in some part of
+the world in which nobody would know that he was chafing.</p>
+
+<p>When the evening came, and he found that his solitude was terribly
+oppressive to him, he thought that he would go down to the Vicarage.
+He had been told by that false one that her tidings had been sent to
+her friend. He took his hat and sauntered out across the fields, and
+did walk as far as the churchyard gate close to poor Mr. Trumbull's
+farm, the very spot on which he had last seen Mary Lowther; but when
+he was there he could not endure to go through to the Vicarage. There
+is something mean to a man in the want of success in love. If a man
+lose a venture of money he can tell his friend; or if he be
+unsuccessful in trying for a seat in parliament; or be thrown out of
+a run in the hunting-field; or even if he be blackballed for a club;
+but a man can hardly bring himself to tell his dearest comrade that
+his Mary has preferred another man to himself. This wretched fact the
+Fenwicks already knew as to poor Gilmore's Mary; and yet, though he
+had come down there, hoping for some comfort, he did not dare to face
+them. He went back all alone, and tumbled and tossed and fretted
+through the miserable night.</p>
+
+<p>And the next morning was as bad. He hung about the place till about
+four, utterly crushed by his burden. It was a Saturday, and when the
+postman called no letter had yet been even written in answer to his
+uncle's proposition. He was moping about the grounds, with his hands
+in his pockets, thinking of this, when suddenly Mrs. Fenwick appeared
+in the path before him. There had been another consultation that
+morning between herself and her husband, and this visit was the
+result of it. He dashed at the matter immediately.</p>
+
+<p>"You have come," he said, "to talk to me about Mary Lowther."</p>
+
+<p>"I have come to say a word, if I can, to comfort you. Frank bade me
+to come."</p>
+
+
+<div class="center"><a name="il8" id="il8"></a>
+<table style="margin: 0 auto" cellpadding="4px">
+  <tr>
+    <td align="center">
+      <a href="images/il8.jpg">
+      <img src="images/il8-t.jpg" height="500"
+      alt='"I have come to say a word, if I can, to comfort you."' /></a>
+    </td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="center">
+      <span class="caption">"I have come to say a word, if I
+      can, to comfort you."<br />
+      Click to <a href="images/il8.jpg">ENLARGE</a></span>
+    </td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>"There isn't any comfort," he replied.</p>
+
+<p>"We knew that it would be hard to bear, my friend," she said, putting
+her hand within his arm; "but there is comfort."</p>
+
+<p>"There can be none for me. I had set my heart upon it so that I
+cannot forget it."</p>
+
+<p>"I know you had, and so had we. Of course there will be sorrow, but
+it will wear off." He shook his head without speaking. "God is too
+good," she continued, "to let such troubles remain with us long."</p>
+
+<p>"You think, then," he said, "that there is no chance?"</p>
+
+<p>What could she say to him? How, under the circumstances of Mary's
+engagement, could she encourage his love for her friend?</p>
+
+<p>"I know that there is none," he continued. "I feel, Mrs. Fenwick,
+that I do not know what to do with myself or how to hold myself. Of
+course it is nonsense to talk about dying, but I do feel as though if
+I didn't die I should go crazy. I can't settle my mind to a single
+thing."</p>
+
+<p>"It is fresh with you yet, Harry," she said. She had never called him
+Harry before, though her husband did so always, and now she used the
+name in sheer tenderness.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know why such a thing should be different with me than with
+other people," he said; "only perhaps I am weaker. But I've known
+from the very first that I have staked everything upon her. I have
+never questioned to myself that I was going for all or nothing. I
+have seen it before me all along, and now it has come. Oh, Mrs.
+Fenwick, if God would strike me dead this moment, it would be a
+mercy!" And then he threw himself on the ground at her feet. He was
+not there a moment before he was up again. "If you knew how I despise
+myself for all this, how I hate myself!"</p>
+
+<p>She would not leave him, but stayed there till he consented to come
+down with her to the Vicarage. He should dine there, and Frank should
+walk back with him at night. As to that question of Mr.
+Chamberlaine's visit, respecting which Mrs. Fenwick did not feel
+herself competent to give advice herself, it should become matter of
+debate between them and Frank, and then a man and horse could be sent
+to Salisbury on Sunday morning. As he walked down to the Vicarage
+with that pretty woman at his elbow, things perhaps were a little
+better with him.</p>
+
+
+<p><a name="c24" id="c24"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>CHAPTER XXIV.</h3>
+<h4>THE REV. HENRY FITZACKERLEY CHAMBERLAINE.<br />&nbsp;</h4>
+
+
+<p>It was decided that evening at the Vicarage that it would be better
+for all parties that the reverend uncle from Salisbury should be told
+to make his visit, and spend the next week at Hampton Privets; that
+is, that he should come on the Monday and stay till the Saturday. The
+letter was written down at the Vicarage, as Fenwick feared that it
+would never be written if the writing of it were left to the
+unassisted energy of the Squire. The letter was written, and the
+Vicar, who walked back to Hampton Privets with his friend, took care
+that it was given to a servant on that night.</p>
+
+<p>On the Sunday nothing was seen of Mr. Gilmore. He did not come to
+church, nor would he dine at the Vicarage. He remained the whole day
+in his own house, pretending to write, trying to read, with accounts
+before him, with a magazine in his hand, even with a volume of
+sermons open on the table before him. But neither the accounts, nor
+the magazines, nor the sermons, could arrest his attention for a
+moment. He had staked everything on obtaining a certain object, and
+that object was now beyond his reach. Men fail often in other things,
+in the pursuit of honour, fortune, or power, and when they fail they
+can begin again. There was no beginning again for him. When Mary
+Lowther should have married this captain, she would be a thing lost
+to him for ever;&mdash;and was she not as bad as married to this man
+already? He could do nothing to stop her marriage.</p>
+
+<p>Early in the afternoon of Monday the Rev. Henry Fitzackerley
+Chamberlaine reached Hampton Privets. He came with his own carriage
+and a pair of post-horses, as befitted a prebendary of the good old
+times. Not that Mr. Chamberlaine was a very old man, but that it
+suited his tastes and tone of mind to adhere to the well-bred
+ceremonies of life, so many of which went out of fashion when
+railroads came in. Mr. Chamberlaine was a gentleman of about
+fifty-five years of age, unmarried, possessed of a comfortable
+private independence, the incumbent of a living in the fens of
+Cambridgeshire, which he never visited,&mdash;his health forbidding him to
+do so,&mdash;on which subject there had been a considerable amount of
+correspondence between him and a certain right rev. prelate, in which
+the prebendary had so far got the better in the argument as not to be
+disturbed in his manner of life; and he was, as has been before said,
+the owner of a stall in Salisbury Cathedral. His lines had certainly
+fallen to him in very pleasant places. As to that living in the fens,
+there was not much to prick his conscience, as he gave up the
+parsonage house and two-thirds of the income to his curate, expending
+the other third on local charities. Perhaps the argument which had
+most weight in silencing the bishop was contained in a short
+postscript to one of his letters. "By-the-by," said the postscript,
+"perhaps I ought to inform your lordship that I have never drawn a
+penny of income out of Hardbedloe since I ceased to live there."
+"It's a bishop's living," said the happy holder of it, "to one or two
+clerical friends, and Dr. <span class="nowrap">&mdash;&mdash;</span>
+thinks the patronage would be better
+in his hands than in mine. I disagree with him, and he'll have to
+write a great many letters before he succeeds." But his stall was
+worth &pound;800 a year and a house, and Mr. Chamberlaine, in regard to his
+money matters, was quite in clover.</p>
+
+<p>He was a very handsome man, about six feet high, with large light
+grey eyes, a straight nose, and a well cut chin. His lips were thin,
+but his teeth were perfect,&mdash;only that they had been supplied by a
+dentist. His grey hair encircled his head, coming round upon his
+forehead in little wavy curls, in a manner that had conquered the
+hearts of spinsters by the dozen in the cathedral. It was whispered,
+indeed, that married ladies would sometimes succumb, and rave about
+the beauty, and the dignity, and the white hands, and the deep
+rolling voice of the Rev. Henry Fitzackerley Chamberlaine. Indeed,
+his voice was very fine when it would be heard from the far-off end
+of the choir during the communion service, altogether trumping the
+exertion of the other second-rate clergyman who would be associated
+with him at the altar. And he had, too, great gifts of preaching,
+which he would exercise once a week during thirteen weeks of the
+year. He never exceeded twenty-five minutes; every word was audible
+throughout the whole choir, and there was a grace about it that was
+better than any doctrine. When he was to be heard the cathedral was
+always full, and he was perhaps justified in regarding himself as one
+of the ecclesiastical stars of the day. Many applications were made
+to him to preach here and there, but he always refused. Stories were
+told of how he had declined to preach before the Queen at St.
+James's, averring that if Her Majesty would please to visit
+Salisbury, every accommodation should be provided for her. As to
+preaching at Whitehall, Westminster, and St. Paul's, it was not
+doubted that he had over and over again declared that his appointed
+place was in his own stall, and that he did not consider that he was
+called to holding forth in the market-place. He was usually abroad
+during the early autumn months, and would make sundry prolonged
+visits to friends; but his only home was his prebendal residence in
+the Close. It was not much of a house to look at from the outside,
+being built with the plainest possible construction of brick; but
+within it was very pleasant. All that curtains, and carpets, and
+armchairs, and books, and ornaments could do, had been done lavishly,
+and the cellar was known to be the best in the city. He always used
+post-horses, but he had his own carriage. He never talked very much,
+but when he did speak people listened to him. His appetite was
+excellent, but he was a feeder not very easy to please; it was
+understood well by the ladies of Salisbury that if Mr. Chamberlaine
+was expected to dinner, something special must be done in the way of
+entertainment. He was always exceedingly well dressed. What he did
+with his hours nobody knew, but he was supposed to be a man well
+educated at all points. That he was such a judge of all works of art,
+that not another like him was to be found in Wiltshire, nobody
+doubted. It was considered that he was almost as big as the bishop,
+and not a soul in Salisbury would have thought of comparing the dean
+to him. But the dean had seven children, and Mr. Chamberlaine was
+quite unencumbered.</p>
+
+<p>Henry Gilmore was a little afraid of his uncle, but would always
+declare that he was not so. "If he chooses to come over here he is
+welcome," the nephew would say; "but he must live just as I do."
+Nevertheless, though there was but little left of the '47 Lafitte in
+the cellar of Hampton Privets, a bottle was always brought up when
+Mr. Chamberlaine was there, and Mrs. Bunker, the cook, did not
+pretend but that she was in a state of dismay from the hour of his
+coming to that of his going. And yet, Mrs. Bunker and the other
+servants liked him to be there. His presence honoured the Privets.
+Even the boy who blacked his boots felt that he was blacking the
+boots of a great man. It was acknowledged throughout the household
+that the Squire having such an uncle, was more of a Squire than he
+would have been without him. The clergyman, being such as he was, was
+greater than the country gentleman. And yet Mr. Chamberlaine was only
+a prebendary, was the son of a country clergyman who had happened to
+marry a wife with money, and had absolutely never done anything
+useful in the whole course of his life. It is often very curious to
+trace the sources of greatness. With Mr. Chamberlaine, I think it
+came from the whiteness of his hands, and from a certain knack he had
+of looking as though he could say a great deal, though it suited him
+better to be silent, and say nothing. Of outside deportment, no
+doubt, he was a master.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Fenwick always declared that he was very fond of Mr.
+Chamberlaine, and greatly admired him. "He is the most perfect
+philosopher I ever met," Fenwick would say, "and has gone to the very
+centre depth of contemplation. In another ten years he will be the
+great Akinetos. He will eat and drink, and listen, and be at ease,
+and desire nothing. As it is, no man that I know disturbs other
+people so little." On the other hand, Mr. Chamberlaine did not
+profess any great admiration for Mr. Fenwick, who he designated as
+one of the smart "windbag tribe, clever, no doubt, and perhaps
+conscientious, but shallow and perhaps a little conceited." The
+Squire, who was not clever and not conceited, understood them both,
+and much preferred his friend the Vicar to his uncle the prebendary.</p>
+
+<p>Gilmore had once consulted his uncle,&mdash;once in an evil moment, as he
+now felt,&mdash;whether it would not be well for him to marry Miss
+Lowther. The uncle had expressed himself as very adverse to the
+marriage, and would now, on this occasion, be sure to ask some
+question about it. When the great man arrived the Squire was out,
+still wandering round among the bullocks and sheep; but the evening
+after dinner would be very long. On the following day Mr. and Mrs.
+Fenwick, with Mr. and Mrs. Greenthorne, were to dine at the Privets.
+If this first evening were only through, Gilmore thought that he
+could get some comfort, even from his uncle. As he came near the
+house, he went into the yard, and saw the Prebendary's grand
+carriage, which was being washed. No; as far as the groom knew, Mr.
+Chamberlaine had not gone out; but was in the house then. So Gilmore
+entered, and found his uncle in the library.</p>
+
+<p>His first questions were about the murder. "You did catch one man,
+and let him go?" said the Prebendary.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; a tenant of mine; but there was no evidence against him. He was
+not the man."</p>
+
+<p>"I would not have let him go," said Mr. Chamberlaine.</p>
+
+<p>"You would not have kept a man that was innocent?" said Gilmore.</p>
+
+<p>"I would not have let the young man go."</p>
+
+<p>"But the law would not support us in detaining him."</p>
+
+<p>"Nevertheless, I would not have let him go," said Mr. Chamberlaine.
+"I heard all about it."</p>
+
+<p>"From whom did you hear?"</p>
+
+<p>"From Lord Trowbridge. I certainly would not have let him go." It
+appeared, however, that Lord Trowbridge's opinion had been given to
+the Prebendary prior to that fatal meeting which had taken place in
+the house of the murdered man.</p>
+
+<p>The uncle drank his claret in silence on this evening. He said
+nothing, at least, about Mary Lowther.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know where you got it, Harry, but that is not a bad glass of
+wine."</p>
+
+<p>"We think there's none better in the country, sir," said Harry.</p>
+
+<p>"I should be very sorry to commit myself so far; but it is a good
+glass of wine. By the bye, I hope your chef has learned to make a cup
+of coffee since I was here in the spring. I think we will try it
+now." The coffee was brought, and the Prebendary shook his head,&mdash;the
+least shake in the world,&mdash;and smiled blandly.</p>
+
+<p>"Coffee is the very devil in the country," said Harry Gilmore, who
+did not dare to say that the mixture was good in opposition to his
+uncle's opinion.</p>
+
+<p>After the coffee, which was served in the library, the two men sat
+silent together for half an hour, and Gilmore was endeavouring to
+think what it was that made his uncle come to Bullhampton. At last,
+before he had arrived at any decision on this subject, there came
+first a little nod, then a start and a sweet smile, then another nod
+and a start without the smile, and, after that, a soft murmuring of a
+musical snore, which gradually increased in deepness till it became
+evident that the Prebendary was extremely happy. Then it occurred to
+Gilmore that perhaps Mr. Chamberlaine might become tired of going to
+sleep in his own house, and that he had come to the Privets, as he
+could not do so with comfortable self-satisfaction in the houses of
+indifferent friends. For the benefit of such a change it might
+perhaps be worth the great man's while to undergo the penalty of a
+bad cup of coffee.</p>
+
+<p>And could not he, too, go to sleep,&mdash;he, Gilmore? Could he not fall
+asleep,&mdash;not only for a few moments on such an occasion as this,&mdash;but
+altogether, after the Akinetos fashion, as explained by his friend
+Fenwick? Could he not become an immoveable one, as was this divine
+uncle of his? No Mary Lowther had ever disturbed that man's
+happiness. A good dinner, a pretty ring, an easy chair, a china
+tea-cup, might all be procured with certainty, as long as money
+lasted. Here was a man before him superbly comfortable, absolutely
+happy, with no greater suffering than what might come to him from a
+chance cup of bad coffee, while he, Harry Gilmore himself, was as
+miserable a devil as might be found between the four seas, because a
+certain young woman wouldn't come to him and take half of all that he
+owned! If there were any curative philosophy to be found, why could
+not he find it? The world might say that the philosophy was a low
+philosophy; but what did that matter, if it would take away out of
+his breast that horrid load which was more than he could bear? He
+declared to himself that he would sell his heart with all its
+privileges for half-a-farthing, if he could find anybody to take it
+with all its burden. Here, then, was a man who had no burden. He was
+snoring with almost harmonious cadence,&mdash;slowly, discreetly,&mdash;one
+might say, artistically, quite like a gentleman; and the man who so
+snored could not but be happy. "Oh,
+<span class="nowrap">d&mdash;&mdash;n</span> it!" said Gilmore, in a
+private whisper, getting up and leaving the room; but there was more
+of envy than of anger in the exclamation.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! you've been out," said Mr. Chamberlaine, when his nephew
+returned.</p>
+
+<p>"Been to look at the horses made up."</p>
+
+<p>"I never can see the use of that; but I believe a great many men do
+it. I suppose it's an excuse for smoking generally." Now, Mr.
+Chamberlaine did not smoke.</p>
+
+<p>"Well; I did light my pipe."</p>
+
+<p>"There's not the slightest necessity for telling me so, Harry. Let us
+see if Mrs. Bunker's tea is better than her coffee." Then the bell
+was rung, and Mr. Chamberlaine desired that he might have a cup of
+black tea, not strong, but made with a good deal of tea, and poured
+out rapidly, without much decoction. "If it be strong and harsh I
+can't sleep a wink," he said. The tea was brought, and sipped very
+leisurely. There was then a word or two said about certain German
+baths from which Mr. Chamberlaine had just returned; and Mr. Gilmore
+began to believe that he should not be asked to say anything about
+Mary Lowther that night.</p>
+
+<p>But the Fates were not so kind. The Prebendary had arisen with the
+intention of retiring for the night, and was already standing before
+the fire, with his bedroom candle in his hand, when something,&mdash;the
+happiness probably of his own position in life, which allowed him to
+seek the blessings of an undivided couch,&mdash;brought to his memory the
+fact that his nephew had spoken to him about some young woman, some
+young woman who had possessed not even the merit of a dowry.</p>
+
+<p>"By the bye," said he, "what has become of that flame of yours,
+Harry?" Harry Gilmore became black and glum. He did not like to hear
+Mary spoken of as a flame. He was standing at this moment with his
+back to his uncle, and so remained, without answering him. "Do you
+mean to say that you did not ask her, after all?" asked the uncle.
+"If there be any scrape, Harry, you had better let me hear it."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know what you call a scrape," said Harry. "She's not going
+to marry me."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank God, my boy!" Gilmore turned round, but his uncle did not
+probably see his face. "I can assure you," continued Mr.
+Chamberlaine, "that the idea made me quite uncomfortable. I set some
+inquiries on foot, and she was not the sort of girl that you should
+marry."</p>
+
+<p>"By <span class="nowrap">G&mdash;&mdash;,"</span> said Gilmore,
+"I'd give every acre I have in the world,
+and every shilling, and every friend, and twenty years of my life, if
+I could only be allowed at this moment to think it possible that she
+would ever marry me!"</p>
+
+<p>"Good heavens!" said Mr. Chamberlaine. While he was saying it, Harry
+Gilmore walked off, and did not show himself to his uncle again that
+night.</p>
+
+
+<p><a name="c25" id="c25"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>CHAPTER XXV.</h3>
+<h4>CARRY BRATTLE.<br />&nbsp;</h4>
+
+
+<p>On the day after the dinner-party at Hampton Privets Mr. Fenwick made
+his little excursion out in the direction towards Devizes, of which
+he had spoken to his wife. The dinner had gone off very quietly, and
+there was considerable improvement in the coffee. There was some
+gentle sparring between the two clergymen, if that can be called
+sparring in which all the active pugnacity was on one side. Mr.
+Fenwick endeavoured to entrap Mr. Chamberlaine into arguments, but
+the Prebendary escaped with a degree of skill,&mdash;without the shame of
+sullen refusal,&mdash;that excited the admiration of Mr. Fenwick's wife.
+"After all, he is a clever man," she said, as she went home, "or he
+could never slip about as he does, like an eel, and that with so very
+little motion."</p>
+
+<p>On the next morning the Vicar started alone in his gig. He had at
+first said that he would take with him a nondescript boy, who was
+partly groom, partly gardener, and partly shoeblack, and who
+consequently did half the work of the house; but at last he decided
+that he would go alone. "Peter is very silent, and most meritoriously
+uninterested in everything," he said to his wife. "He wouldn't tell
+much, but even he might tell something." So he got himself into his
+gig, and drove off alone. He took the Devizes road, and passed
+through Lavington without asking a question; but when he was half way
+between that place and Devizes, he stopped his horse at a lane that
+led away to the right. He had been on the road before, but he did not
+know that lane. He waited awhile till an old woman whom he saw coming
+to him, reached him, and asked her whether the lane would take him
+across to the Marlborough Road. The old woman knew nothing of the
+Marlborough Road, and looked as though she had never heard of
+Marlborough. Then he asked the way to Pycroft Common. Yes; the lane
+would take him to Pycroft Common. Would it take him to the Bald-faced
+Stag? The old woman said it would take him to Rump End Corner, "but
+she didn't know nowt o' t'other place." He took the lane, however,
+and without much difficulty made his way to the Bald-faced
+Stag,&mdash;which, in the days of the glory of that branch of the Western
+Road, used to supply beer to at least a dozen coaches a-day, but
+which now, alas! could slake no drowth but that of the rural
+aborigines. At the Bald-faced Stag, however, he found that he could
+get a feed of corn, and here he put up his horse,&mdash;and saw the corn
+eaten.</p>
+
+<p>Pycroft Common was a mile from him, and to Pycroft Common he walked.
+He took the road towards Marlborough for half a mile, and then broke
+off across the open ground to the left. There was no difficulty in
+finding this place, and now it was his object to discover the cottage
+of Mrs. Burrows without asking the neighbours for her by name. He had
+obtained a certain amount of information, and thought that he could
+act on it. He walked on to the middle of the common, and looked for
+his points of bearing. There was the beer-house, and there was the
+lane that led away to Pewsey, and there were the two brick cottages
+standing together. Mrs. Burrows lived in the little white cottage
+just behind. He walked straight up to the door, between the
+sunflowers and the rose-bush, and, pausing for a few moments to think
+whether or no he would enter the cottage unannounced, knocked at the
+door. A policeman would have entered without doing so,&mdash;and so would
+a poacher knock over a hare on its form; but whatever creature a
+gentleman or a sportsman be hunting, he will always give it a chance.
+He rapped, and immediately heard that there were sounds within. He
+rapped again, and in about a minute was told to enter. Then he opened
+the door, and found but one person within. It was a young woman, and
+he stood for a moment looking at her before he spoke.</p>
+
+<p>"Carry Brattle," he said, "I am glad that I have found you."</p>
+
+<p>"Laws, Mr. Fenwick!"</p>
+
+<p>"Carry, I am so glad to see you;"&mdash;and then he put out his hand to
+her.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Mr. Fenwick, I ain't fit for the likes of you to touch," she
+said. But as his hand was still stretched out she put her own into
+it, and he held it in his grasp for a few seconds. She was a poor,
+sickly-looking thing now, but there were the remains of great beauty
+in the face,&mdash;or rather, the presence of beauty, but of beauty
+obscured by flushes of riotous living and periods of want, by
+ill-health, harsh usage, and, worst of all, by the sharp agonies of
+an intermittent conscience. It was a pale, gentle face, on which
+there were still streaks of pink,&mdash;a soft, laughing face it had been
+once, and still there was a gleam of light in the eyes that told of
+past merriment, and almost promised mirth to come, if only some great
+evil might be cured. Her long flaxen curls still hung down her face,
+but they were larger, and, as Fenwick thought, more tawdry than of
+yore; and her cheeks were thin, and her eyes were hollow; and then
+there had come across her mouth that look of boldness which the use
+of bad, sharp words, half-wicked and half-witty, will always give.
+She was dressed decently, and was sitting in a low chair, with a
+torn, disreputable-looking old novel in her hand. Fenwick knew that
+the book had been taken up on the spur of the moment, as there had
+certainly been someone there when he had knocked at the door.</p>
+
+<p>And yet, though vice had laid its heavy hand upon her, the glory and
+the brightness, and the sweet outward flavour of innocence, had not
+altogether departed from her. Though her mouth was bold, her eyes
+were soft and womanly, and she looked up into the face of the
+clergyman with a gentle, tamed, beseeching gaze, which softened and
+won his heart at once. Not that his heart had ever been hard against
+her. Perhaps it was a fault with him that he never hardened his heart
+against a sinner, unless the sin implied pretence and falsehood. At
+this moment, remembering the little Carry Brattle of old, who had
+sometimes been so sweetly obedient, and sometimes so wilful, under
+his hands, whom he had petted, and caressed, and scolded, and
+loved,&mdash;whom he had loved undoubtedly in part because she had been so
+pretty,&mdash;whom he had hoped that he might live to marry to some good
+farmer, in whose kitchen he would ever be welcome, and whose children
+he would christen;&mdash;remembering all this, he would now, at this
+moment, have taken her in his arms and embraced her, if he dared,
+showing her that he did not account her to be vile, begging her to
+become more good, and planning some course for her future life.</p>
+
+<p>"I have come across from Bullhampton, Carry, to find you," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"It's a poor place you're come to, Mr. Fenwick. I suppose the police
+told you of my being here?"</p>
+
+<p>"I had heard of it. Tell me, Carry, what do you know of Sam?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of Sam?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes&mdash;of Sam. Don't tell me an untruth. You need tell me nothing, you
+know, unless you like. I don't come to ask as having any authority,
+only as a friend of his, and of yours."</p>
+
+<p>She paused a moment before she replied. "Sam hasn't done any harm to
+nobody," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't say he has. I only want to know where he is. You can
+understand, Carry, that it would be best that he should be at home."</p>
+
+<p>She paused again, and then she blurted out her answer. "He went out
+o' that back door, Mr. Fenwick, when you came in at t'other." The
+Vicar immediately went to the back door, but Sam, of course, was not
+to be seen.</p>
+
+<p>"Why should he be hiding if he has done no harm?" said the Vicar.</p>
+
+<p>"He thought it was one of them police. They do be coming here a'most
+every day, till one's heart faints at seeing 'em. I'd go away if I'd
+e'er a place to go to."</p>
+
+<p>"Have you no place at home, Carry?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, sir; no place."</p>
+
+<p>This was so true that he couldn't tell himself why he had asked the
+question. She certainly had no place at home till her father's heart
+should be changed towards her.</p>
+
+<p>"Carry," said he, speaking very slowly, "they tell me that you are
+married. Is that true?"</p>
+
+<p>She made him no answer.</p>
+
+<p>"I wish you would tell me, if you can. The state of a married woman
+is honest at any rate, let her husband be who he may."</p>
+
+<p>"My state is not honest."</p>
+
+<p>"You are not married, then?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, sir."</p>
+
+<p>He hardly knew how to go on with this interrogation, or to ask
+questions about her past and present life, without expressing a
+degree of censure which, at any rate for the present, he wished to
+repress.</p>
+
+<p>"You are living here, I believe, with old Mrs. Burrows?" he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"I was told that you were married to her son."</p>
+
+<p>"They told you untrue, sir. I know nothing of her son, except just to
+have see'd him."</p>
+
+<p>"Is that true, Carry?"</p>
+
+<p>"It is true. It wasn't he at all."</p>
+
+<p>"Who was it, Carry?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not her son;&mdash;but what does it signify? He's gone away, and I shall
+see un no more. He wasn't no good, Mr. Fenwick, and if you please we
+won't talk about un."</p>
+
+<p>"He was not your husband?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, Mr. Fenwick; I never had a husband, nor never shall, I suppose.
+What man would take the likes of me? I have just got one thing to do,
+and that's all."</p>
+
+<p>"What thing is that, Carry?"</p>
+
+<p>"To die and have done with it," she said, bursting out into loud
+sobs. "What's the use o' living? Nobody 'll see me, or speak to me.
+Ain't I just so bad that they'd hang me if they knew how to catch
+me?"</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean, girl?" said Fenwick, thinking for the moment that
+from her words she, too, might have had some part in the murder.</p>
+
+<p>"Ain't the police coming here after me a'most every day? And when
+they hauls about the place, and me too, what can I say to 'em? I have
+got that low that a'most everybody can say what they please to me.
+And where can I go out o' this? I don't want to be living here always
+with that old woman."</p>
+
+<p>"Who is the old woman, Carry?"</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose you knows, Mr. Fenwick?"</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Burrows, is it?" She nodded her head. "She is the mother of the
+man they call the Grinder?" Again she nodded her head. "It is he whom
+they accuse of the murder?" Yet again she nodded her head. "There was
+another man?" She nodded it again. "And they say that there was a
+third," he said,&mdash;"your brother Sam."</p>
+
+<p>"Then they lie," she shouted, jumping up from her seat. "They lie
+like devils. They are devils; and they'll go, oh, down into the fiery
+furnace for ever and ever." In spite of the tragedy of the moment,
+Mr. Fenwick could not help joining this terribly earnest threat and
+the Marquis of Trowbridge together in his imagination. "Sam hadn't no
+more to do with it than you had, Mr. Fenwick."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't believe he had," said Mr. Fenwick.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; because you're good, and kind, and don't think ill of poor folk
+when they're a bit down. But as for them, they're devils."</p>
+
+<p>"I did not come here, however, to talk about the murder, Carry. If I
+thought you knew who did it, I shouldn't ask you. That is business
+for the police, not for me. I came here partly to look after Sam. He
+ought to be at home. Why has he left his home and his work while his
+name is thus in people's mouths?"</p>
+
+<p>"It ain't for me to answer for him, Mr. Fenwick. Let 'em say what
+they will, they can't make the white of his eye black. But as for me,
+I ain't no business to speak of nobody. How should I know why he
+comes and why he goes? If I said as how he'd come to see his sister,
+it wouldn't sound true, would it, sir, she being what she is?"</p>
+
+<p>He got up and went to the front door, and opened it, and looked about
+him. But he was looking for nothing. His eyes were full of tears, and
+he didn't care to wipe the drops away in her presence.</p>
+
+<p>"Carry," he said, coming back to her, "it wasn't all for him that I
+came."</p>
+
+
+<div class="center"><a name="il9" id="il9"></a>
+<table style="margin: 0 auto" cellpadding="4px">
+  <tr>
+    <td align="center">
+      <a href="images/il9.jpg">
+      <img src="images/il9-t.jpg" height="500"
+      alt="'Carry,' he said, coming back to her,
+      'it wasn't all for him that I came.'" /></a>
+    </td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="center">
+      <span class="caption">"Carry," he said, coming back to her,
+      "it wasn't all for him that I came."<br />
+      Click to <a href="images/il9.jpg">ENLARGE</a></span>
+    </td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>"For who else, then?"</p>
+
+<p>"Do you remember how we loved you when you were young, Carry? Do you
+remember my wife, and how you used to come and play with the children
+on the lawn? Do you remember, Carry, where you sat in church, and the
+singing, and what trouble we had together with the chaunts? There are
+one or two at Bullhampton who never will forget it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nobody loves me now," she said, talking at him over her shoulder,
+which was turned to him.</p>
+
+<p>He thought for a moment that he would tell her that the Lord loved
+her; but there was something human at his heart, something perhaps
+too human, which made him feel that were he down low upon the ground,
+some love that was nearer to him, some love that was more easily
+intelligible, which had been more palpably felt, would in his frailty
+and his wickedness be of more immediate avail to him than the love
+even of the Lord God.</p>
+
+<p>"Why should you think that, Carry?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because I am bad."</p>
+
+<p>"If we were to love only the good, we should love very few. I love
+you, Carry, truly. My wife loves you dearly."</p>
+
+<p>"Does she?" said the girl, breaking into low sobs. "No, she don't. I
+know she don't. The likes of her couldn't love the likes of me. She
+wouldn't speak to me. She wouldn't touch me."</p>
+
+<p>"Come and try, Carry."</p>
+
+<p>"Father would kill me," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"Your father is full of wrath, no doubt. You have done that which
+must make a father angry."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Mr. Fenwick, I wouldn't dare to stand before his eye for a
+minute. The sound of his voice would kill me straight. How could I go
+back?"</p>
+
+<p>"It isn't easy to make crooked things straight, Carry, but we may
+try; and they do become straighter if one tries in earnest. Will you
+answer me one question more?"</p>
+
+<p>"Anything about myself, Mr. Fenwick?"</p>
+
+<p>"Are you living in sin now, Carry?" She sat silent, not that she
+would not answer him, but that she did not comprehend the extent of
+the meaning of his question. "If it be so, and if you will not
+abandon it, no honest person can love you. You must change yourself,
+and then you will be loved."</p>
+
+<p>"I have got the money which he gave me, if you mean that," she said.</p>
+
+<p>Then he asked no further questions about herself, but reverted to the
+subject of her brother. Could she bring him in to say a few words to
+his old friend? But she declared that he was gone, and that she did
+not know whither; that he might probably return this very day to the
+mill, having told her that it was his purpose to do so soon. When he
+expressed a hope that Sam held no consort with those bad men who had
+murdered and robbed Mr. Trumbull, she answered him with such na&iuml;ve
+assurance that any such consorting was out of the question, that he
+became at once convinced that the murderers were far away, and that
+she knew that such was the case. As far as he could learn from her,
+Sam had really been over to Pycroft with the view of seeing his
+sister, taking probably a holiday of a day or two on the way. Then he
+again reverted to herself, having as he thought obtained a favourable
+answer to that vital question which he had asked her.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you nothing to ask of your mother?" he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Sam has told me of her and of Fan."</p>
+
+<p>"And would you not care to see her?"</p>
+
+<p>"Care, Mr. Fenwick! Wouldn't I give my eyes to see her? But how can I
+see her? And what could she say to me? Father 'd kill her if she
+spoke to me. Sometimes I think I'll walk there all the day, and so
+get there at night, and just look about the old place, only I know
+I'd drown myself in the mill-stream. I wish I had. I wish it was
+done. I've seed an old poem in which they thought much of a poor girl
+after she was drowned, though nobody wouldn't think nothing at all
+about her before."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't drown yourself, Carry, and I'll care for you. Keep your hands
+clean. You know what I mean, and I will not rest till I find some
+spot for your weary feet. Will you promise me?" She made him no
+answer. "I will not ask you for a spoken promise, but make it
+yourself, Carry, and ask God to help you to keep it. Do you say your
+prayers, Carry?"</p>
+
+<p>"Never a prayer, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"But you don't forget them. You can begin again. And now I must ask
+for a promise. If I send for you will you come?"</p>
+
+<p>"What&mdash;to Bull'ompton?"</p>
+
+<p>"Wheresoever I may send for you? Do you think that I would have you
+harmed?"</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps it'd be&mdash;for a prison; or to live along with a lot of
+others. Oh, Mr. Fenwick, I could not stand that."</p>
+
+<p>He did not dare to proceed any further lest he should be tempted to
+make promises which he himself could not perform; but she did give
+him an assurance before he went that if she left her present abode
+within a month, she would let him know whither she was going.</p>
+
+<p>He went to the Bald-faced Stag and got his gig; and on his way home,
+just as he was leaving the village of Lavington, he overtook Sam
+Brattle. He stopped and spoke to the lad, asking him whether he was
+returning home, and offering him a seat in the gig. Sam declined the
+seat, but said that he was going straight to the mill.</p>
+
+<p>"It is very hard to make crooked things straight," said Mr. Fenwick
+to himself as he drove up to his own hall-door.</p>
+
+
+<p><a name="c26" id="c26"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>CHAPTER XXVI.</h3>
+<h4>THE TURNOVER CORRESPONDENCE.<br />&nbsp;</h4>
+
+
+<p>It is hoped that the reader will remember that the Marquis of
+Trowbridge was subjected to very great insolence from Mr. Fenwick
+during the discussion which took place in poor old farmer Trumbull's
+parlour respecting the murder. Our friend, the Vicar, did not content
+himself with personal invective, but made allusion to the Marquis's
+daughters. The Marquis, as he was driven home in his carriage, came
+to sundry conclusions about Mr. Fenwick. That the man was an infidel
+he had now no matter of doubt whatever; and if an infidel, then also
+a hypocrite, and a liar, and a traitor, and a thief. Was he not
+robbing the parish of the tithes, and all the while entrapping the
+souls of men and women? Was it not to be expected that with such a
+pastor there should be such as Sam Brattle and Carry Brattle in the
+parish? It was true that as yet this full blown iniquity had spread
+itself only among the comparatively small number of tenants belonging
+to the objectionable "person," who unfortunately owned a small number
+of acres in his lordship's parish;&mdash;but his lordship's tenant had
+been murdered! And with such a pastor in the parish, and such an
+objectionable person, owning acres, to back the pastor, might it not
+be expected that all his tenants would be murdered? Many applications
+had already been made to the Marquis for the Church Farm; but as it
+happened that the applicant whom the Marquis intended to favour, had
+declared that he did not wish to live in the house because of the
+murder, the Marquis felt himself justified in concluding that if
+everything about the parish were not changed very shortly, no decent
+person would be found willing to live in any of his houses. And now,
+when they had been talking of murderers, and worse than murderers, as
+the Marquis said to himself, shaking his head with horror in the
+carriage as he thought of such iniquity, this infidel clergyman had
+dared to allude to his lordship's daughters! Such a man had no right
+even to think of women so exalted. The existence of the Ladies Stowte
+must no doubt be known to such men, and among themselves probably
+some allusion in the way of faint guesses might be made as to their
+modes of life, as men guess at kings and queens, and even at gods and
+goddesses. But to have an illustration, and a very base illustration,
+drawn from his own daughters in his own presence, made with the
+object of confuting himself,&mdash;this was more than the Marquis could
+endure. He could not horsewhip Mr. Fenwick; nor could he send out his
+retainers to do so; but, thank God, there was a bishop! He did not
+quite see his way, but he thought that Mr. Fenwick might be made at
+least to leave that parish. "Turn my daughters out of my house,
+because&mdash;oh, oh!" He almost put his fist through the carriage window
+in the energy of his action as he thought of it.</p>
+
+<p>As it happened, the Marquis of Trowbridge had never sat in the House
+of Commons, but he had a son who sat there now. Lord St. George was
+member for another county in which Lord Trowbridge had an estate, and
+was a man of the world. His father admired him much, and trusted him
+a good deal, but still had an idea that his son hardly estimated in
+the proper light the position in the world which he was called to
+fill. Lord St. George was now at home at the Castle, and in the
+course of that evening the father, as a matter of course, consulted
+the son. He considered that it would be his duty to write to the
+bishop, but he would like to hear St. George's idea on the subject.
+He began, of course, by saying that he did not doubt but that St.
+George would agree with him.</p>
+
+<p>"I shouldn't make any fuss about it," said the son.</p>
+
+<p>"What! pass it over?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; I think so."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you understand the kind of allusion that was made to your
+sisters?"</p>
+
+<p>"It won't hurt them, my lord; and people make allusion to everything
+now-a-days. The bishop can't do anything. For aught you know he and
+Fenwick may be bosom friends."</p>
+
+<p>"The bishop, St. George, is a most right-thinking man."</p>
+
+<p>"No doubt. The bishops, I believe, are all right-thinking men, and it
+is well for them that they are so very seldom called on to go beyond
+thinking. No doubt he'll think that this fellow was indiscreet; but
+he can't go beyond thinking. You'll only be raising a blister for
+yourself."</p>
+
+<p>"Raising a what?"</p>
+
+<p>"A blister, my lord. The longer I live the more convinced I become
+that a man shouldn't keep his own sores open."</p>
+
+<p>There was something in the tone of his son's conversation which
+pained the Marquis much; but his son was known to be a wise and
+prudent man, and one who was rising in the political world. The
+Marquis sighed, and shook his head, and murmured something as to the
+duty which lay upon the great to bear the troubles incident to their
+greatness;&mdash;by which he meant that sores and blisters should be kept
+open, if the exigencies of rank so required. But he ended the
+discussion at last by declaring that he would rest upon the matter
+for forty-eight hours. Unfortunately before those forty-eight hours
+were over Lord St. George had gone from Turnover Castle, and the
+Marquis was left to his own lights. In the meantime, the father and
+son and one or two friends, had been shooting over at Bullhampton; so
+that no further steps of warfare had been taken when Mr. and Mrs.
+Fenwick met the Marquis on the pathway.</p>
+
+<p>On the following day his lordship sat in his own private room
+thinking of his grievance. He had thought of it and of little else
+for now nearly sixty hours. "Suggest to me to turn out my daughters!
+Heaven and earth! My daughters!" He was well aware that, though he
+and his son often differed, he could never so safely keep himself out
+of trouble as by following his son's advice. But surely this was a
+matter per se, standing altogether on its own bottom, very different
+from those ordinary details of life on which he and his son were wont
+to disagree. His daughters! The Ladies Sophie and Carolina Stowte! It
+had been suggested to him to turn them out of his house because&mdash; Oh!
+oh! The insult was so great that no human marquis could stand it. He
+longed to be writing a letter to the bishop. He was proud of his
+letters. Pen and paper were at hand, and he did write.<br />&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+<blockquote>
+<p class="noindent"><span class="smallcaps">Right Rev. and
+dear Lord Bishop</span>,</p>
+
+<p>I think it right to represent to your lordship the
+conduct,&mdash;I believe I may be justified in saying the
+misconduct,&mdash;of the Reverend
+<span class="nowrap">&mdash;&mdash;</span> Fenwick, the vicar of
+Bullhampton.<br />&nbsp;</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p class="noindent">He knew our friend's
+Christian name very well, but he did not choose
+to have it appear that his august memory had been laden with a thing
+so trifling.<br />&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+<blockquote>
+<p class="noindent">You may have heard that
+there has been a most horrid
+murder committed in the parish on one of my tenants; and
+that suspicion is rife that the murder was committed in
+part by a young man, the son of a miller who lives under a
+person who owns some land in the parish. The family is
+very bad, one of the daughters being, as I understand, a
+prostitute. The other day I thought it right to visit the
+parish with the view of preventing, if possible, the
+sojourn there among my people of these objectionable
+characters. When there I was encountered by Mr. Fenwick,
+not only in a most unchristian spirit, but in a bearing so
+little gentlemanlike, that I cannot describe it to you. He
+had obtruded himself into my presence, into one of my own
+houses, the very house of the murdered man, and there,
+when I was consulting with the person to whom I have
+alluded as to the expediency of ridding ourselves of these
+objectionable characters, he met me with ribaldry and
+personal insolence. When I tell your lordship that he made
+insinuations about my own daughters, so gross that I
+cannot repeat them to you, I am sure that I need go no
+further. There were present at this meeting Mr. Puddleham,
+the Methodist minister, and Mr. Henry Gilmore, the
+landlord of the persons in question.</p>
+
+<p>Your lordship has probably heard the character, in a
+religious point of view, of this gentleman. It is not for
+me to express an opinion of the motives which can induce
+such a one to retain his position as an incumbent of a
+parish. But I do believe that I have a right to ask from
+your lordship for some inquiry into the scene which I have
+attempted to describe, and to expect some protection for
+the future. I do not for a moment doubt that your lordship
+will do what is right in the matter.</p>
+
+<p class="noindent"><span class="ind4">I have the honour to be,</span><br />
+<span class="ind6">Right Reverend and dear Lord Bishop,</span><br />
+<span class="ind8">Your most obedient and faithful Servant,</span></p>
+
+<p class="ind15"><span class="smallcaps">Trowbridge</span>.<br />&nbsp;</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+
+<p>He read this over thrice, and became so much in love with the
+composition, that on the third reading he had not the slightest doubt
+as to the expediency of sending it. Nor had he much doubt but that
+the bishop would do something to Mr. Fenwick, which would make the
+parish too hot to hold that disgrace to the Church of England.</p>
+
+<p>When Fenwick came home from Pycroft Common he found a letter from the
+bishop awaiting him. He had driven forty miles on that day, and was
+rather late for dinner. His wife, however, came upstairs with him in
+order that she might hear something of his story, and brought his
+letters with her. He did not open that from the bishop till he was
+half dressed, and then burst out into loud laughter as he read it.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it, Frank?" asked his wife, through the open door of her own
+room.</p>
+
+<p>"Here's such a game," said he. "Never mind; let's have dinner, and
+then you shall see it." The reader, however, may be quite sure that
+Mrs. Fenwick did not wait till dinner was served before she knew the
+nature of the game.</p>
+
+<p>The bishop's letter to the Vicar was very short and very rational,
+and it was not that which made the Vicar laugh; but inside the
+bishop's letter was that from the Marquis. "My dear Mr. Fenwick,"
+said the bishop,<br />&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+<blockquote>
+<p class="noindent">after
+a good deal of consideration, I have determined to
+send you the enclosed. I do so because I have made it a
+rule never to receive an accusation against one of my
+clergy without sending it to the person accused. You will,
+of course, perceive that it alludes to some matter which
+lies outside of my control and right of inquiry; but
+perhaps you will allow me, as a friend, to suggest to you
+that it is always well for a parish clergyman to avoid
+controversy and quarrel with his neighbours; and that it
+is especially expedient that he should be on good terms
+with those who have influence in his parish. Perhaps you
+will forgive me if I add that a spirit of pugnacity,
+though no doubt it may lead to much that is good, has its
+bad tendencies if not watched closely.</p>
+
+<p>Pray remember that Lord Trowbridge is a worthy man, doing
+his duty on the whole well; and that his position, though
+it be entitled to no veneration, is entitled to much
+respect. If you can tell me that you will feel no grudge
+against him for what has taken place, I shall be very
+happy.</p>
+
+<p>You will observe that I have been careful that this letter
+shall have no official character.</p>
+
+<p class="ind10">Yours very faithfully,</p>
+
+<p class="ind15">&amp;c., &amp;c., &amp;c.<br />&nbsp;</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+
+<p>The letter was answered that evening, but before the answer was
+written, the Marquis of Trowbridge was discussed between the husband
+and wife, not in complimentary terms. Mrs. Fenwick on the occasion
+was more pugnacious than her husband. She could not forgive the man
+who had hinted to the bishop that her husband held his living from
+unworthy motives, and that he was a bad clergyman.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear girl," said Fenwick, "what can you expect from an ass but
+his ears?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't expect downright slander from such a man as the Marquis of
+Trowbridge, and if I were you I should tell the bishop so."</p>
+
+<p>"I shall tell him nothing of the kind. I shall write about the
+Marquis with the kindliest feelings."</p>
+
+<p>"But you don't feel kindly?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I do. The poor old idiot has nobody to keep him right, and does
+the best he can according to his lights. I have no doubt he thinks
+that I am everything that is horrid. I am not a bit angry with him,
+and would be as civil to him to-morrow as my nature would allow me,
+if he would only be civil to me."</p>
+
+<p>Then he wrote his letter which will complete the correspondence, and
+which he dated for the following
+<span class="nowrap">day:&mdash;</span><br />&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+<blockquote>
+<p class="jright">Bullhampton Vicarage, Oct. 23, 186&mdash;.</p>
+
+<p class="noindent"><span class="smallcaps">My dear
+Lord Bishop</span>,</p>
+
+<p>I return the Marquis's letter with many thanks. I can
+assure you that I take in proper spirit your little hints
+as to my pugnacity of disposition, and will endeavour to
+profit by them. My wife tells me that I am given to
+combativeness, and I have no doubt that she is right.</p>
+
+<p>As to Lord Trowbridge, I can assure your lordship that I
+will not bear any malice against him, or even think ill of
+him because of his complaint. He and I probably differ in
+opinion about almost everything, and he is one of those
+who pity the condition of all who are so blinded as to
+differ from him. The next time that I am thrown into his
+company I shall act exactly as though no such letter had
+been written, and as if no such meeting had taken place as
+that which he describes.</p>
+
+<p>I hope I may be allowed to assure your lordship, without
+any reference to my motives for keeping it, that I shall
+be very slow to give up a living in your lordship's
+diocese. As your letter to me is unofficial,&mdash;and I thank
+you heartily for sending it in such form,&mdash;I have ventured
+to reply in the same strain.</p>
+
+<p class="noindent"><span class="ind8">I am, my dear Lord Bishop,</span><br />
+<span class="ind10">Your very faithful servant,</span></p>
+
+<p class="ind15"><span class="smallcaps">Francis Fenwick</span>.<br />&nbsp;</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+
+<p>"There," said he, as he folded it, and handed it to his wife, "I
+shall never see the remainder of the series. I would give a shilling
+to know how the bishop gets out of it in writing to the Marquis, and
+half-a-crown to see the Marquis's rejoinder." The reader shall be
+troubled with neither, as he would hardly price them so high as did
+the Vicar. The bishop's letter really contained little beyond an
+assurance on his part that Mr. Fenwick had not meant anything wrong,
+and that the matter was one with which he, the bishop, had no
+concern; all which was worded with most complete episcopal courtesy.
+The rejoinder of the Marquis was long, elaborate, and very pompous.
+He did not exactly scold the bishop, but he expressed very plainly
+his opinion that the Church of England was going to the dogs, because
+a bishop had not the power of utterly abolishing any clergyman who
+might be guilty of an offence against so distinguished a person as
+the Marquis of Trowbridge.</p>
+
+<p>But what was to be done about Carry Brattle? Mrs. Fenwick, when she
+had expressed her anger against the Marquis, was quite ready to own
+that the matter of Carry's position was to them of much greater
+moment than the wrath of the peer. How were they to put out their
+hands and save that brand from the burning? Fenwick, in his
+ill-considered zeal, suggested that she might be brought to the
+Vicarage; but his wife at once knew that such a step would be
+dangerous in every way. How could she live, and what would she do?
+And what would the other servants think of it?</p>
+
+<p>"Why would the other servants mind it?" asked Fenwick. But his wife
+on such a matter could have a way of her own, and that project was
+soon knocked on the head. No doubt her father's house was the proper
+place for her, but then her father was so dour a man.</p>
+
+<p>"Upon my word," said the Vicar, "he is the only person in the world
+of whom I believe myself to be afraid. When I get at him I do not
+speak to him as I would to another; and of course he knows it."</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, if anything was to be done for Carry Brattle, it seemed
+as though it must be done by her father's permission and assistance.
+"There can be no doubt that it is his duty," said Mrs. Fenwick.</p>
+
+<p>"I will not say that as a certainty," said the husband. "There is a
+point at which, I presume, a father may be justified in disowning a
+child. The possession of such a power, no doubt, keeps others from
+going wrong. What one wants is that a father should be presumed to
+have the power; but that when the time comes, he should never use it.
+It is the comfortable doctrine which we are all of us
+teaching;&mdash;wrath, and abomination of the sinner, before the sin;
+pardon and love after it. If you were to run away from me,
+<span class="nowrap">Janet&mdash;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"Frank, do not dare to speak of anything so horrible."</p>
+
+<p>"I should say now probably that were you to do so, I would never
+blast my eyes by looking at you again; but I know that I should run
+after you, and implore you to come back to me."</p>
+
+<p>"You wouldn't do anything of the kind; and it isn't proper to talk
+about it; and I shall go to bed."</p>
+
+<p>"It is very difficult to make crooked things straight," said the
+Vicar, as he walked about the room after his wife had left him. "I
+suppose she ought to go into a reformatory. But I know she wouldn't;
+and I shouldn't like to ask her after what she said."</p>
+
+<p>It is probably the case that Mr. Fenwick would have been able to do
+his duty better, had some harsher feeling towards the sinner been
+mixed with his charity.</p>
+
+
+<p><a name="c27" id="c27"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>CHAPTER XXVII.</h3>
+<h4>"I NEVER SHAMED NONE OF THEM."<br />&nbsp;</h4>
+
+
+<p>"Something must be done about Carry Brattle at once." The Vicar felt
+that he had pledged himself to take some steps for her welfare, and
+it seemed to him, as he thought of the matter, that there were only
+two steps possible. He might intercede with her father, or he might
+use his influence to have her received into some house of correction,
+some retreat, in which she might be kept from evil and disciplined
+for good. He knew that the latter would be the safer plan, if it
+could be brought to bear; and it would certainly be the easier for
+himself. But he thought that he had almost pledged himself to the
+girl not to attempt it, and he felt sure that she would not accede to
+it. In his doubt he went up to his friend Gilmore, intending to
+obtain the light of his friend's wisdom. He found the Squire and the
+Prebendary together, and at once started his subject.</p>
+
+<p>"You'll do no good, Mr. Fenwick," said Mr. Chamberlaine, after the
+two younger men had been discussing the matter for half an hour.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mean that I ought not to try to do any good?"</p>
+
+<p>"I mean that such efforts never come to anything."</p>
+
+<p>"All the unfortunate creatures in the world, then, should be left to
+go to destruction in their own way."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"What ought a man to do, then, for the assistance of such
+fellow-creatures as this poor girl?" asked the Vicar.</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>"I never take it, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"I ought to have remembered," said Mr. Chamberlaine, smiling blandly.
+Then he took up the Saturday Review, and endeavoured to content
+himself with that.</p>
+
+<p>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 assistant. 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 friendship; 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.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"You'll become tired of that, I should think."</p>
+
+<p>"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,&mdash;when I shall be alone. I suppose if one was out among
+the Rocky Mountains, one wouldn't think so much about it."</p>
+
+<p>"Atra Cura sits behind the horseman," said the Vicar. "I don't know
+that travelling will do it. One thing certainly will do it."</p>
+
+<p>"And what is that?"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"What shall I do?"</p>
+
+<p>"Read, dig, shoot, look after the farm, and say your prayers. Don't
+allow yourself time for thinking."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"I'd go and dig, if I were you," said the Vicar.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps I will. Do you know, I've half an idea that I'll go to
+Loring."</p>
+
+<p>"What good will that do?"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't see what good you can do, Harry," said the Vicar. And so
+they parted.</p>
+
+<p>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 asserting 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.</p>
+
+<p>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 Fanny. 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.</p>
+
+<p>"You mean Sam, sir?" asked the mother.</p>
+
+<p>"No; his father. I will go out into the lane, and perhaps Fanny 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.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought perhaps you had heard something of Sam."</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing but what has made me surer than ever that he had no part in
+what was done at Mr. Trumbull's farm."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank God for that!" said the mother, taking him by the hand. Then
+Fanny 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.</p>
+
+<p>"Do not be angry with him; he has been on a good work," said the
+Vicar.</p>
+
+<p>"Good or bad, I know nowt of it," said the miller.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>The Vicar had assumed a tone which was almost one of rebuke,&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing can be so important as that which I have to say. For the
+love of God, Mr. Brattle,&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>"Which daughter?" said the miller, arresting his step.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Do I come to your house and tell you of your sorrows and your shame?
+Let me go!"</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Brattle, if you will stretch forth your hand, you may save her.
+She is your own child&mdash;your flesh and blood. Think how easy it is for
+a poor girl to fall,&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>"I never shamed none of them," said he, struggling on his way back to
+the mill.</p>
+
+<p>"It is that, then;&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>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 friendship to a man who had offended him so deeply.</p>
+
+<p>After a moment's thought he determined to tell the wife, and informed
+her and Fanny 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?</p>
+
+<p>"She is anything but happy, I fear," said Mr. Fenwick.</p>
+
+<p>"My poor Carry!"</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>"Would she come if she were let to come?" asked Fanny.</p>
+
+<p>"I believe she would. I feel sure that she would."</p>
+
+<p>"And what did he say, Mr. Fenwick?" asked the mother. The Vicar only
+shook his head. "He's very good; to me he's ever been good as gold.
+But, oh, Mr. Fenwick, he is so hard."</p>
+
+<p>"He will not let you speak of her?"</p>
+
+<p>"Never a word, Mr. Fenwick. He'd look at you, sir, so that the gleam
+of his eyes would fall on you like a blow. I wouldn't dare;&mdash;nor yet
+wouldn't Fanny, who dares more with him than any of us."</p>
+
+<p>"If it'd serve her, I'd speak," said Fanny.</p>
+
+<p>"But couldn't I see her, Mr. Fenwick? Couldn't you take me in the gig
+with you, sir? I'd slip out arter breakfast up the road, and he
+wouldn't be no wiser, at least till I war back again. He wouldn't ax
+no questions then, I'm thinking. Would he, Fan?"</p>
+
+<p>"He'd ask at dinner; but if I said you were out for the day along
+with Mr. Fenwick, he wouldn't say any more, maybe. He'd know well
+enough where you was gone to."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Fenwick said that he would think of it, and let Fanny know on the
+following Sunday. He would not make a promise now, and at any rate he
+could not go before Sunday. He did not like to pledge himself
+suddenly to such an adventure, knowing that it would be best that he
+should first have his wife's ideas on the matter. Then he took his
+leave, and as he went out of the house he saw the miller standing at
+the door of the mill. He raised his hand and said, "Good-bye," but
+the miller quickly turned his back to him and retreated into his
+mill.</p>
+
+<p>As he walked up to his house through the village he met Mr.
+Puddleham. "So Sam Brattle is off again, sir," said the minister.</p>
+
+<p>"Off what, Mr. Puddleham?"</p>
+
+<p>"Gone clean away. Out of the country."</p>
+
+<p>"Who has told you that, Mr. Puddleham?"</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't it true, sir? You ought to know, Mr. Fenwick, as you're one of
+the bailsmen."</p>
+
+<p>"I've just been at the mill, and I didn't see him."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think you'll ever see him at the mill again, Mr. Fenwick;
+nor yet in Bullhampton, unless the police have to bring him here."</p>
+
+<p>"As I was saying, I didn't see him at the mill, Mr. Puddleham,
+because I didn't go in; but he's working there at this moment, and
+has been all the day. He's all right, Mr. Puddleham. You go and have
+a few words with him, or with his father, and you'll find they're
+quite comfortable at the mill now."</p>
+
+<p>"Constable Hicks told me that he was out of the country," said Mr.
+Puddleham, walking away in considerable disgust.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Fenwick's opinion was, upon the whole, rather in favour of the
+second expedition to Pycroft Common, as she declared that the mother
+should at any rate be allowed to see her child. She indeed would not
+submit to the idea of the miller's indomitable powers. If she were
+Mrs. Brattle, she said, she'd pull the old man's ears, and make him
+give way.</p>
+
+<p>"You go and try," said the Vicar.</p>
+
+<p>On the Sunday morning following, Fanny was told that on Wednesday Mr.
+Fenwick would drive her mother over to Pycroft Common. He had no
+doubt, he said, but that Carry would still be found living with Mrs.
+Burrows. He explained that the old woman had luckily been absent
+during his visit, but would probably be there when they went again.
+As to that they must take their chance. And the whole plan was
+arranged. Mr. Fenwick was to be on the road in his gig at Mr.
+Gilmore's gate at ten o'clock, and Mrs. Brattle was to meet him there
+at that hour.</p>
+
+
+<p><a name="c28" id="c28"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>CHAPTER XXVIII.</h3>
+<h4>MRS. BRATTLE'S JOURNEY.<br />&nbsp;</h4>
+
+
+<p><img class="left" src="images/ch28a.jpg" width="310" alt="Illustration" />
+Mrs. Brattle was waiting at the stile opposite to Mr. Gilmore's gate
+as Mr. Fenwick drove up to the spot. No doubt the dear old woman had
+been there for the last half-hour, thinking that the walk would take
+her twice as long as it did, and fearing that she might keep the
+Vicar waiting. She had put on her Sunday clothes and her Sunday
+bonnet, and when she climbed up into the vacant place beside her
+friend she found her position to be so strange that for a while she
+could hardly speak. He said a few words to her, but pressed her with
+no questions, understanding the cause of her embarrassment. He could
+not but think that of all his parishioners no two were so unlike each
+other as were the miller and his wife. The one was so hard and
+invincible;&mdash;the other so soft and submissive! Nevertheless it had
+always been said that Brattle had been a tender and affectionate
+husband. By degrees the woman's awe at the horse and gig and
+strangeness of her position wore off, and she began to talk of her
+daughter. She had brought a little bundle with her, thinking that she
+might supply feminine wants, and had apologised humbly for venturing
+to come so laden. Fenwick, who remembered what Carry had said about
+money that she still had, and who was nearly sure that the murderers
+had gone to Pycroft Common after the murder had been committed, had
+found a difficulty in explaining to Mrs. Brattle that her child was
+probably not in want. The son had been accused of the murder of the
+man, and now the Vicar had but little doubt that the daughter was
+living on the proceeds of the robbery. "It's a hard life she must be
+living, Mr. Fenwick, with an old 'ooman the likes of that," said Mrs.
+Brattle. "Perhaps if I'd brought a morsel of some'at to
+<span class="nowrap">eat&mdash;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"I don't think they're pressed in that way, Mrs. Brattle."</p>
+
+<p>"Ain't they now? But it's a'most worse, Mr. Fenwick, when one thinks
+where it's to come from. The Lord have mercy on her, and bring her
+out of it!"</p>
+
+<p>"Amen," said the Vicar.</p>
+
+<p>"And is she bright at all, and simple still? She was the brightest,
+simplest lass in all Bull'ompton, I used to think. I suppose her old
+ways have a'most left her, Mr. Fenwick?"</p>
+
+<p>"I thought her very like what she used to be."</p>
+
+<p>"'Deed now, did you, Mr. Fenwick? And she wasn't mopish and
+slatternly like?"</p>
+
+<p>"She was tidy enough. You wouldn't wish me to say that she was
+happy?"</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose not, Mr. Fenwick. I shouldn't ought;&mdash;ought I, now? But,
+Mr. Fenwick, I'd give my left hand she should be happy and gay once
+more. I suppose none but a mother feels it, but the sound of her
+voice through the house was ever the sweetest music I know'd on.
+It'll never have the same ring again, Mr. Fenwick."</p>
+
+<p>He could not tell her that it would. That sainted sinner of whom he
+had reminded Mr. Puddleham, though she had attained to the joy of the
+Lord,&mdash;even she had never regained the mirth of her young innocence.
+There is a bloom on the flower which may rest there till the flower
+has utterly perished, if the handling of it be sufficiently
+delicate;&mdash;but no care, nothing that can be done by friends on earth,
+or even by better friendship from above, can replace that when once
+displaced. The sound of which the mother was thinking could never be
+heard again from Carry Brattle's voice. "If we could only get her
+home once more," said the Vicar, "she might be a good daughter to you
+still."</p>
+
+<p>"I'd be a good mother to her, Mr. Fenwick;&mdash;but I'm thinking he'll
+never have it so. I never knew him to change on a thing like that,
+Mr. Fenwick. He felt it that keenly, it nigh killed 'im. Only that he
+took it out o' hisself in thrashing that wicked man, I a'most think
+he'd a' died o' it."</p>
+
+<p>Again the Vicar drove to the Bald-faced Stag, and again he walked
+along the road and over the common. He offered his arm to the old
+woman, but she wouldn't accept it; nor would she upon any entreaty
+allow him to carry her bundle. She assured him that his doing so
+would make her utterly wretched, and at last he gave up the point.
+She declared that she suffered nothing from fatigue, and that her two
+miles' walk would not be more than her Sunday journey to church and
+back. But as she drew near to the house she became uneasy, and once
+asked to be allowed to pause for a moment. "May be, then," said she,
+"after all, my girl'd rather that I wouldn't trouble her." He took
+her by the arm and led her along, and comforted her,&mdash;assuring her
+that if she would take her child in her arms Carry would for the
+moment be in a heaven of happiness. "Take her into my arms, Mr.
+Fenwick? Why,&mdash;isn't she in my very heart of hearts at this moment?
+And I won't say not a word sharp to her;&mdash;not now, Mr. Fenwick. And
+why would I say sharp words at all? I suppose she understands it
+all."</p>
+
+<p>"I think she does, Mrs. Brattle."</p>
+
+<p>They had now reached the door, and the Vicar knocked. No answer came
+at once; but such had been the case when he knocked before. He had
+learned to understand that in such a household it might not be wise
+to admit all comers without consideration. So he knocked again,&mdash;and
+then again. But still there came no answer. Then he tried the door,
+and found that it was locked. "May be she's seen me coming," said the
+mother, "and now she won't let me in." The Vicar then went round the
+cottage, and found that the back door also was closed. Then he looked
+in at one of the front windows, and became aware that no one was
+sitting, at least in the kitchen. There was an upstairs room, but of
+that the window was closed.</p>
+
+<p>"I begin to fear," he said, "that neither of them is at home."</p>
+
+<p>At this moment he heard the voice of a woman calling to him from the
+door of the nearest cottage,&mdash;one of the two brick tenements which
+stood together,&mdash;and from her he learned that Mrs. Burrows had gone
+into Devizes, and would not probably be home till the evening. Then
+he asked after Carry, not mentioning her name, but speaking of her as
+the young woman who lived with Mrs. Burrows. "Her young man come and
+took her up to Lon'on o' Saturday," said the woman.</p>
+
+<p>Fenwick heard the words, but Mrs. Brattle did not hear them. It did
+not occur to him not to believe the woman's statement, and all his
+hopes about the poor creature were at once dashed to the ground. His
+first feeling was no doubt one of resentment, that she had broken her
+word to him. She had said that she would not go within a month
+without letting him know that she was going; and there is no fault,
+no vice, that strikes any of us so strongly as falsehood or injustice
+against ourselves. And then the nature of the statement was so
+terrible! She had gone back into utter degradation and iniquity. And
+who was the young man? As far as he could obtain a clue, through the
+information which had reached him from various sources, this young
+man must be the companion of the Grinder in the murder and robbery of
+Mr. Trumbull. "She has gone away, Mrs. Brattle," said he, with as sad
+a voice as ever a man used.</p>
+
+<p>"And where be she gone to, Mr. Fenwick? Cannot I go arter her?" He
+simply shook his head and took her by the arm to lead her away. "Do
+they know nothing of her, Mr. Fenwick?"</p>
+
+<p>"She has gone away; probably to London. We must think no more about
+her, Mrs. Brattle&mdash;at any rate for the present. I can only say that I
+am very, very sorry that I brought you here."</p>
+
+<p>The drive back to Bullhampton was very silent and very sad. Mrs.
+Brattle had before her the difficulty of explaining her journey to
+her husband, together with the feeling that the difficulty had been
+incurred altogether for nothing. As for Fenwick, he was angry with
+himself for his own past enthusiasm about the girl. After all, Mr.
+Chamberlaine had shown himself to be the wiser man of the two. He had
+declared it to be no good to take up special cases, and the Vicar as
+he drove himself home notified to himself his assent with the
+Prebendary's doctrine. The girl had gone off the moment she had
+ascertained that her friends were aware of her presence and
+situation. What to her had been the kindness of her clerical friend,
+or the stories brought to her from her early home, or the dirt and
+squalor of the life which she was leading? The moment that there was
+a question of bringing her back to the decencies of the world, she
+escaped from her friends and hurried back to the pollution which, no
+doubt, had charms for her. He had allowed himself to think that in
+spite of her impurity, she might again be almost pure, and this was
+his reward! He deposited the poor woman at the spot at which he had
+taken her up, almost without a word, and then drove himself home with
+a heavy heart. "I believe it will be best to be like her father, and
+never to name her again," said he to his wife.</p>
+
+<p>"But what has she done, Frank?"</p>
+
+<p>"Gone back to the life which I suppose she likes best. Let us say no
+more about it,&mdash;at any rate for the present. I'm sick at heart when I
+think of it."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Brattle, when she got over the stile close to her own home, saw
+her husband standing at the mill door. Her heart sank within her, if
+that could be said to sink which was already so low. He did not move,
+but stood there with his eyes fixed upon her. She had hoped that she
+might get into the house unobserved by him, and learn from Fanny what
+had taken place; but she felt so like a culprit that she hardly dared
+to enter the door. Would it not be best to go to him at once, and ask
+his pardon for what she had done? When he spoke to her, which he did
+at last, his voice was a relief to her. "Where hast been, Maggie?" he
+asked. She went up to him, put her hand on the lappet of his coat and
+shook her head. "Best go in and sit easy, and hear what God sends,"
+he said. "What's the use of scouring about the country here and
+there?"</p>
+
+<p>"There has been no use in it to-day, feyther," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"There arn't no use in it,&mdash;not never," he said; and after that there
+was no more about it. She went into the house and handed the bundle
+to Fanny, and sat down on the bed and cried. On the following morning
+Frank Fenwick received the following
+<span class="nowrap">letter:&mdash;</span><br />&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+<blockquote>
+<p class="jright">London, Sunday.</p>
+
+<p class="noindent"><span class="smallcaps">Honoured Sir</span>,</p>
+
+<p>I told you that I would write if it came as I was going
+away, but I've been forced to go without writing. There
+was nothing to write with at the cottage. Mrs. Burrows and
+me had words, and I thought as she would rob me, and
+perhaps worse. She is a bad woman, and I could stand it no
+longer, so I just come up here, as there was nowhere else
+for me to find a place to lie down in. I thought I'd just
+write and tell you, because of my word; but I know it
+isn't no use.</p>
+
+<p>I'd send my respects and love to father and mother, if I
+dared. I did think of going over; but I know he'd kill me,
+and so he ought. I'd send my respects to Mrs. Fenwick,
+only that I isn't fit to name her;&mdash;and my love to sister
+Fanny. I've come away here, and must just wait till I die.</p>
+
+<p class="ind6">Yours humbly, and most unfortunate,</p>
+
+<p class="ind18"><span class="smallcaps">Carry</span>.</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">If it's any good to be
+sorry, nobody can be more sorry
+than me, and nobody more unhappy. I did try to pray when
+you was gone, but it only made me more ashamed. If there
+was only anywhere to go to, I'd go.<br />&nbsp;</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+
+
+<p><a name="c29" id="c29"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>CHAPTER XXIX.</h3>
+<h4>THE BULL AT LORING.<br />&nbsp;</h4>
+
+
+<p>Gilmore had told his friend that he would do two things,&mdash;that he
+would start off and travel for four or five years, and that he would
+pay a visit to Loring. Fenwick had advised him to do neither, but to
+stay at home and dig and say his prayers. But in such emergencies no
+man takes his friend's advice; and when Mr. Chamberlaine had left
+him, Gilmore had made up his mind that he would at any rate go to
+Loring. He went to church on the Sunday morning, and was half
+resolved to tell Mrs. Fenwick of his purpose; but chance delayed her
+in the church, and he sauntered away home without having mentioned
+it. He let half the next week pass by without stirring beyond his own
+ground. During those three days he changed his mind half a dozen
+times; but at last, on the Thursday, he had his portmanteau packed
+and started on his journey. As he was preparing to leave the house he
+wrote one line to Fenwick in pencil. "I am this moment off to
+Loring.&mdash;H. G." This he left in the village as he drove through to
+the Westbury station.</p>
+
+<p>He had formed no idea in his own mind of any definite purpose in
+going. He did not know what he should do or what say when he got to
+Loring. He had told himself a hundred times that any persecution of
+the girl on his part would be mean and unworthy of him. And he was
+also aware that no condition in which a man could place himself was
+more open to contempt than that of a whining, pining, unsuccessful
+lover. A man is bound to take a woman's decision against him, bear it
+as he may, and say as little against it as possible. He is bound to
+do so when he is convinced that a woman's decision is final; and
+there can be no stronger proof of such finality than the fact that
+she has declared a preference for some other man. All this Gilmore
+knew, but he would not divest himself of the idea that there might
+still be some turn in the wheel of fortune. He had heard a vague
+rumour that Captain Marrable, his rival, was a very dangerous man.
+His uncle was quite sure that the Captain's father was thoroughly
+bad, and had thrown out hints against the son, which Gilmore in his
+anxiety magnified till he felt convinced that the girl whom he loved
+with all his heart was going to throw herself into the arms of a
+thorough scamp. Could he not do something, if not for his own sake,
+then for hers? Might it not be possible for him to deliver her from
+her danger? What, if he should discover some great iniquity;&mdash;would
+she not then in her gratitude be softened towards him? It was on the
+cards that this reprobate was married already, and was about to
+commit bigamy. It was quite probable that such a man should be deeply
+in debt. As for the fortune that had been left to him, Mr.
+Chamberlaine had already ascertained that that amounted to nothing.
+It had been consumed to the last shilling in paying the joint debts
+of the father and son. Men such as Mr. Chamberlaine have sources of
+information which are marvellous to the minds of those who are more
+secluded, and not the less marvellous because the information is
+invariably false. Gilmore in this way almost came to a conviction
+that Mary Lowther was about to sacrifice herself to a man utterly
+unworthy of her, and he taught himself, not to think,&mdash;but to believe
+it to be possible that he might save her. Those who knew him would
+have said that he was the last man in the world to be carried away by
+a romantic notion;&mdash;but he had his own idea of romance as plainly
+developed in his mind as was ever the case with a knight of old, who
+went forth for the relief of a distressed damsel. If he could do
+anything towards saving her, he would do it, or try to do it, though
+he should be brought to ruin in the attempt. Might it not be that at
+last he would have the reward which other knights always attained?
+The chance in his favour was doubtless small, but the world was
+nothing to him without this chance.</p>
+
+<p>He had never been at Loring before, but he had learned the way. He
+went to Chippenham and Swindon, and then by the train to Loring. He
+had no very definite plan formed for himself. He rather thought that
+he would call at Miss Marrable's house,&mdash;call if possible when Mary
+Lowther was not there,&mdash;and learn from the elder lady something of
+the facts of the case. He had been well aware for many weeks past,
+from early days in the summer, that old Miss Marrable had been in
+favour of his claim. He had heard too that there had been family
+quarrels among the Marrables, and a word had been dropped in his
+hearing by Mrs. Fenwick, which had implied that Miss Marrable was by
+no means pleased with the match which her niece Mary Lowther was
+proposing to herself. Everything seemed to show that Captain Marrable
+was a most undesirable person.</p>
+
+<p>When he reached the station at Loring it was incumbent on him to go
+somewhither at once. He must provide for himself for the night. He
+found two omnibuses at the station, and two inn servants competing
+with great ardour for his carpet bag. There were the Dragon and the
+Bull fighting for him. The Bull in the Lowtown was commercial and
+prosperous. The Dragon at Uphill was aristocratic, devoted to county
+purposes, and rather hard set to keep its jaws open and its tail
+flying. Prosperity is always becoming more prosperous, and the
+allurements of the Bull prevailed. "Are you a going to rob the gent
+of his walise?" said the indignant Boots of the Bull as he rescued
+Mr. Gilmore's property from the hands of his natural enemy, as soon
+as he had secured the entrance of Mr. Gilmore into his own vehicle.
+Had Mr. Gilmore known that the Dragon was next door but one to Miss
+Marrable's house, and that the Bull was nearly equally contiguous to
+that in which Captain Marrable was residing, his choice probably
+would not have been altered. In such cases, the knight who is to be
+the deliverer desires above all things that he may be near to his
+enemy.</p>
+
+<p>He was shown up to a bedroom, and then ushered into the commercial
+room of the house. Loring, though it does a very pretty trade as a
+small town, and now has for some years been regarded as a thriving
+place in its degree, is not of such importance in the way of business
+as to support a commercial inn of the first class. At such houses the
+commercial room is as much closed against the uninitiated as is a
+first-class club in London. In such rooms a non-commercial man would
+be almost as much astray as is a non-broker in Capel Court, or an
+attorney in a bar mess-room. At the Bull things were a little mixed.
+The very fact that the words "Commercial Room" were painted on the
+door proved to those who understood such matters that there was a
+doubt in the case. They had no coffee room at the Bull, and strangers
+who came that way were of necessity shown into that in which the
+gentlemen of the road were wont to relax themselves. Certain
+commercial laws are maintained in such apartments. Cigars are not
+allowed before nine o'clock, except upon some distinct arrangement
+with the waiter. There is not, as a rule, a regular daily commercial
+repast; but when three or more gentlemen dine together at five
+o'clock, the dinner becomes a commercial dinner, and the commercial
+laws as to wine, &amp;c., are enforced, with more or less restriction as
+circumstances may seem to demand. At the present time there was but
+one occupant of the chamber to greet Mr. Gilmore when he entered, and
+this greeting was made with all the full honours of commercial
+courtesy. The commercial gentleman is of his nature gregarious, and
+although he be exclusive to a strong degree, more so probably than
+almost any other man in regard to the sacred hour of dinner, when in
+the full glory of his confraternity, he will condescend, when the
+circumstances of his profession have separated him from his
+professional brethren, to be festive with almost any gentleman whom
+chance may throw in his way. Mr. Cockey had been alone for a whole
+day when Gilmore arrived, having reached Loring just twenty-four
+hours in advance of our friend, and was contemplating the sadly
+diminished joys of a second solitary dinner at the Bull, when fortune
+threw this stranger in his way. The waiter, looking at the matter in
+a somewhat similar light, and aware that a combined meal would be for
+the advantage of all parties, very soon assisted Mr. Cockey in making
+his arrangements for the evening. Mr. Gilmore would no doubt want to
+dine. Dinner would be served at five o'clock. Mr. Cockey was going to
+dine, and Mr. Gilmore, the waiter thought, would probably be glad to
+join him. Mr. Cockey expressed himself as delighted, and would only
+be too happy. Now men in love, let their case be ever so bad, must
+dine or die. So much no doubt is not admitted by the chroniclers of
+the old knights who went forth after their ladies; but the old
+chroniclers, if they soared somewhat higher than do those of the
+present day, are admitted to have been on the whole less
+circumstantially truthful. Our knight was very sad at heart, and
+would have done according to his prowess as much as any Orlando of
+them all for the lady whom he loved,&mdash;but nevertheless he was an
+hungered; the mention of dinner was pleasant to him, and he accepted
+the joint courtesies of Mr. Cockey and the waiter with gratitude.</p>
+
+<p>The codfish and beefsteak, though somewhat woolly and tough, were
+wholesome; and the pint of sherry which at Mr. Cockey's suggestion
+was supplied to them, if not of itself wholesome, was innocent by
+reason of its dimensions. Mr. Cockey himself was pleasant and
+communicative, and told Mr. Gilmore a good deal about Loring. Our
+friend was afraid to ask any leading questions as to the persons in
+the place who interested himself, feeling conscious that his own
+subject was one which would not bear touch from a rough hand. He did
+at last venture to make inquiry about the clergyman of the parish.
+Mr. Cockey, with some merriment at his own wit, declared that the
+church was a house of business at which he did not often call for
+orders. Though he had been coming to Loring now for four years, he
+had never heard anything of the clergyman; but the waiter no doubt
+would tell them. Gilmore rather hesitated, and protested that he
+cared little for the matter; but the waiter was called in and
+questioned, and was soon full of stories about old Mr. Marrable. He
+was a good sort of man in his way, the waiter thought, but not much
+of a preacher. The people liked him because he never interfered with
+them. "He don't go poking his nose into people's 'ouses like some of
+'em," said the waiter, who then began to tell of the pertinacity in
+that respect of a younger clergyman at Uphill. Yes; Parson Marrable
+had a relation living at Uphill; an old lady. "No; not his
+grandmother." This was in answer to a joke on the part of Mr. Cockey.
+Nor yet a daughter. The waiter thought she was some kind of a cousin,
+though he did not know what kind. A very grand lady was Miss
+Marrable, according to his showing, and much thought of by the
+quality. There was a young lady living with her, though the waiter
+did not know the young lady's name.</p>
+
+<p>"Does the Rev. Mr. Marrable live alone?" asked Gilmore. "Well, yes;
+for the most part quite alone. But just at present he had a visitor."
+Then the waiter told all that he knew about the Captain. The most
+material part of this was that the Captain had returned from London
+that very evening;&mdash;had come in by the Express while the two "gents"
+were at dinner, and had been taken to the Lowtown parsonage by the
+Bull 'bus. "Quite the gentleman," was the Captain, according to the
+waiter, and one of the "handsomest gents as ever he'd set his eyes
+upon." <span class="nowrap">"D&mdash;&mdash;</span> him,"
+said poor Harry Gilmore to himself. Then he
+ventured upon another question. Did the waiter know anything of
+Captain Marrable's father? The waiter only knew that the Captain's
+father was "a military gent, and was high up in the army." From all
+which the only information which Gilmore received was the fact that
+the match between Marrable and Mary Lowther had not as yet become the
+talk of the town. After dinner Mr. Cockey proposed a glass of toddy
+and a cigar, remarking that he would move a bill for dispensing with
+the smoking rule for that night only, and to this also Gilmore
+assented. Now that he was at Loring he did not know what to do with
+himself better than drinking toddy with Mr. Cockey. Mr. Cockey
+declared the bill to be carried nem. con., and the cigars and toddy
+were produced. Mr. Cockey remarked that he had heard of Sir Gregory
+Marrable, of Dunripple Park. He travelled in Warwickshire, and was in
+the habit, as he said, of fishing up little facts. Sir Gregory wasn't
+much of a man, according to his account. The estate was small and, as
+Mr. Cockey fancied, a little out at elbows. Mr. Cockey thought it all
+very well to be a country gentleman and a "barrow knight," as he
+called it, as long as you had an estate to follow; but he thought
+very little of a title without plenty of stuff. Commerce, according
+to his notions, was the back bone of the nation;&mdash;and that the corps
+of travelling commercial gentlemen was the back bone of trade, every
+child knew. Mr. Cockey became warm and friendly as he drank his
+toddy. "Now, I don't know what you are, sir," said he.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not very much of anything," said Gilmore.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps not, sir. Let that be as it may. But a man, sir, that feels
+that he's one of the supports of the commercial supremacy of this
+nation ain't got much reason to be ashamed of himself."</p>
+
+<p>"Not on that account, certainly."</p>
+
+<p>"Nor yet on no other account, as long as he's true to his employers.
+Now you talk of country gentlemen."</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't talk of them," said Gilmore.</p>
+
+<p>"Well,&mdash;no,&mdash;you didn't; but they do, you know. What does a country
+gentleman know, and what does he do? What's the country the better of
+him? He 'unts, and he shoots, and he goes to bed with his skin full
+of wine, and then he gets up and he 'unts and he shoots again, and
+'as his skin full once more. That's about all."</p>
+
+<p>"Sometimes he's a magistrate."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, justices' justice! we know all about that. Put an old man in
+prison for a week because he looks into his 'ay-field on a Sunday; or
+send a young one to the treadmill for two months because he knocks
+over a 'are! All them cases ought to be tried in the towns, and there
+should be beaks paid as there is in London. I don't see the good of a
+country gentleman. Buying and selling;&mdash;that's what the world has to
+go by."</p>
+
+<p>"They buy and sell land."</p>
+
+<p>"No; they don't. They buy a bit now and then when they're screws, and
+they sell a bit now and then when the eating and drinking has gone
+too fast. But as for capital and investment, they know nothing about
+it. After all, they ain't getting above two-and-a-half per cent. for
+their money. We all know what that must come to."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Cockey had been so mild before the pint of sherry and the glass
+of toddy, that Mr. Gilmore was somewhat dismayed by the change. Mr.
+Cockey, however, in his altered aspect seemed to be so much the less
+gracious, that Gilmore left him and strolled out into the town. He
+climbed up the hill and walked round the church and looked up at the
+windows of Miss Marrable's house, of which he had learned the site;
+but he had no adventure, saw nothing that interested him, and at
+half-past nine took himself wearily to bed.</p>
+
+<p>That same day Captain Marrable had run down from London to Loring
+laden with terrible news. The money on which he had counted was all
+gone! "What do you mean?" said his uncle; "have the lawyers been
+deceiving you all through?"</p>
+
+<p>"What is it to me?" said the ruined man. "It is all gone. They have
+satisfied me that nothing more can be done." Parson John whistled
+with a long-drawn note of wonder. "The people they were dealing with
+would be willing enough to give up the money, but it's all gone. It's
+spent, and there's no trace of it."</p>
+
+<p>"Poor fellow!"</p>
+
+
+<div class="center"><a name="il10" id="il10"></a>
+<table style="margin: 0 auto" cellpadding="4px">
+  <tr>
+    <td align="center">
+      <a href="images/il10.jpg">
+      <img src="images/il10-t.jpg" width="540"
+      alt="Parson John and Walter Marrable." /></a>
+    </td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="center">
+      <span class="caption">Parson John and Walter Marrable.<br />
+      Click to <a href="images/il10.jpg">ENLARGE</a></span>
+    </td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<p>"I've seen my father, uncle John."</p>
+
+<p>"And what passed?"</p>
+
+<p>"I told him that he was a scoundrel, and then I left him. I didn't
+strike him."</p>
+
+<p>"I should hope not that, Walter."</p>
+
+<p>"I kept my hands off him; but when a man has ruined you as he has me,
+it doesn't much matter who he is. Your father and any other man are
+much the same to you then. He was worn, and old, and pale, or I
+should have felled him to the ground."</p>
+
+<p>"And what will you do now?"</p>
+
+<p>"Just go to that hell upon earth on the other side of the globe.
+There's nothing else to be done. I've applied for extension of leave,
+and told them why."</p>
+
+<p>Nothing more was said that night between the uncle and nephew, and no
+word had been spoken about Mary Lowther. On the next morning the
+breakfast at the parsonage passed by in silence. Parson John had been
+thinking a good deal of Mary, but had resolved that it was best that
+he should hold his tongue for the present. From the moment in which
+he had first heard of the engagement, he had made up his mind that
+his nephew and Mary Lowther would never be married. Seeing what his
+nephew was&mdash;or rather seeing that which he fancied his nephew to
+be,&mdash;he was sure that he would not sacrifice himself by such a
+marriage. There was always a way out of things, and Walter Marrable
+would be sure to find it. The way out of it had been found now with a
+vengeance. Immediately after breakfast the Captain took his hat
+without a word, and walked steadily up the hill to Uphill Lane. As he
+passed the door of the Bull he saw, but took no notice of, a
+gentleman who was standing under the covered entrance to the inn, and
+who had watched him coming out from the parsonage gate; but Gilmore,
+the moment that his eyes fell upon the Captain, declared to himself
+that that was his rival. Captain Marrable walked straight up the hill
+and knocked at Miss Marrable's door. Was Miss Lowther at home? Of
+course Miss Lowther was at home at such an hour. The girl said that
+Miss Mary was alone in the breakfast parlour. Miss Marrable had
+already gone down to the kitchen. Without waiting for another word,
+he walked into the little back room, and there he found his love.
+"Walter," she said, jumping up and running to him; "how good of you
+to come so soon! We didn't expect you these two days." She had thrown
+herself into his arms, but, though he embraced her, he did not kiss
+her. "There is something the matter!" she said. "What is it?" As she
+spoke she drew away from him and looked up into his face. He smiled
+and shook his head, still holding her by the waist. "Tell me, Walter;
+I know there is something wrong."</p>
+
+<p>"It is only that dirty money. My father has succeeded in getting it
+all."</p>
+
+<p>"All, Walter?" said she, again drawing herself away.</p>
+
+<p>"Every shilling," said he, dropping his arm.</p>
+
+<p>"That will be very bad."</p>
+
+<p>"Not a doubt of it. I felt it just as you do."</p>
+
+<p>"And all our pretty plans are gone."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes;&mdash;all our pretty plans."</p>
+
+<p>"And what shall you do now?"</p>
+
+<p>"There is only one thing. I shall go to India again. Of course it is
+just the same to me as though I were told that sentence of death had
+gone against me;&mdash;only it will not be so soon over."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't say that, Walter."</p>
+
+<p>"Why not say it, my dear, when I feel it?"</p>
+
+<p>"But you don't feel it. I know it must be bad for you, but it is not
+quite that. I will not think that you have nothing left worth living
+for."</p>
+
+<p>"I can't ask you to go with me to that happy Paradise."</p>
+
+<p>"But I can ask you to take me," she said;&mdash;"though perhaps it will be
+better that I should not."</p>
+
+<p>"My darling!&mdash;my own darling!" Then she came back to him and laid her
+head upon his shoulders, and lifted his hand till it came again round
+her waist. And he kissed her forehead, and smoothed her hair. "Swear
+to me," she said, "that whatever happens you will not put me away
+from you."</p>
+
+<p>"Put you away, dearest! A man doesn't put away the only morsel he has
+to keep him from starving. But yet as I came up here this morning I
+resolved that I would put you away."</p>
+
+<p>"Walter!"</p>
+
+<p>"And even now I know that they will tell me that I should do so. How
+can I take you out there to such a life as that without having the
+means of keeping a house over your head?"</p>
+
+<p>"Officers do marry without fortunes."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes;&mdash;and what sort of a time do their wives have? Oh, Mary, my own,
+my own, my own!&mdash;it is very bad! You cannot understand it all at
+once, but it is very bad."</p>
+
+<p>"If it be better for you, Walter,&mdash;" she said, again drawing herself
+away.</p>
+
+<p>"It is not that, and do not say that it is. Let us at any rate trust
+each other."</p>
+
+<p>She gave herself a little shake before she answered him. "I will
+trust you in everything;&mdash;as God is my judge, in everything. What you
+tell me to do, I will do. But, Walter, I will say one thing first. I
+can look forward to nothing but absolute misery in any life that will
+separate me from you. I know the difference between comfort and
+discomfort in money matters, but all that is as a feather in the
+balance. You are my god upon earth, and to you I must cling. Whether
+you be away from me or with me, I must cling to you the same. If I am
+to be separated from you for a time, I can do it with hope. If I am
+to be separated from you for ever, I shall still do so,&mdash;with
+despair. And now I will trust you, and I will do whatever you tell
+me. If you forbid me to call you mine any longer,&mdash;I will obey, and
+will never reproach you."</p>
+
+<p>"I will always be yours," he said, taking her again to his heart.</p>
+
+<p>"Then, dearest, you shall not find me wanting for anything you may
+ask of me. Of course you can't decide at present."</p>
+
+<p>"I have decided that I must go to India. I have asked for the
+exchange."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes;&mdash;I understand; but about our marriage. It may be that you
+should go out first. I would not be unmaidenly, Walter; but remember
+this&mdash;the sooner the better, if I can be a comfort to you;&mdash;but I can
+bear any delay rather than be a clog upon you."</p>
+
+<p>Marrable, as he had walked up the hill,&mdash;and during all his thoughts,
+indeed, since he had been convinced that the money was gone from
+him,&mdash;had been disposed to think that his duty to Mary required him
+to give her up. He had asked her to be his wife when he believed his
+circumstances to be other than they were; and now he knew that the
+life he had to offer to her was one of extreme discomfort. He had
+endeavoured to shake off any idea that as he must go back to India it
+would be more comfortable for himself to return without than with a
+wife. He wanted to make the sacrifice of himself, and had determined
+that he would do so. Now, at any rate for the moment, all his
+resolves were thrown to the wind. His own love was so strong and was
+so gratified by her love, that half his misery was carried away in an
+enthusiasm of romantic devotion. Let the worst come to the worst, the
+man that was so loved by such a woman could not be of all men the
+most miserable.</p>
+
+<p>He left the house, giving to her the charge of telling the bad news
+to Miss Marrable; and as he went he saw in the street before the
+house the man whom he had seen standing an hour before under the
+gateway of the inn. And Gilmore saw him too, and well knew where he
+had been.</p>
+
+
+<p><a name="c30" id="c30"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>CHAPTER XXX.</h3>
+<h4>THE AUNT AND THE UNCLE.<br />&nbsp;</h4>
+
+
+<p>Miss Marrable heard the story of the Captain's loss in perfect
+silence. Mary told it craftily, with a smile on her face, as though
+she were but slightly affected by it, and did not think very much on
+the change it might effect in her plans and those of her lover. "He
+has been ill-treated; has he not?" she said.</p>
+
+<p>"Very badly treated. I can't understand it, but it seems to me that
+he has been most shamefully treated."</p>
+
+<p>"He tried to explain it all to me; but I don't know that he
+succeeded."</p>
+
+<p>"Why did the lawyers deceive him?"</p>
+
+<p>"I think he was a little rash there. He took what they told him for
+more than it was worth. There was some woman who said that she would
+resign her claim; but when they came to look into it, she too had
+signed some papers and the money was all gone. He could recover it
+from his father by law, only that his father has got nothing."</p>
+
+<p>"And that is to be the end of it."</p>
+
+<p>"That is the end of our five thousand pounds," said Mary, forcing a
+little laugh. Miss Marrable for a few moments made no reply. She sat
+fidgety in her seat, feeling that it was her duty to explain to Mary
+what must, in her opinion, be the inevitable result of this
+misfortune, and yet not knowing how to begin her task. Mary was
+partly aware of what was coming, and had fortified herself to reject
+all advice, to assert her right to do as she pleased with herself,
+and to protest that she cared nothing for the prudent views of
+worldly-minded people. But she was afraid of what was coming. She
+knew that arguments would be used which she would find it very
+difficult to answer; and, although she had settled upon certain
+strong words which she would speak, she felt that she would be driven
+at last to quarrel with her aunt. On one thing she was quite
+resolved. Nothing should induce her to give up her engagement,&mdash;short
+of the expression of a wish to that effect from Walter Marrable
+himself.</p>
+
+<p>"How will this affect you, dear?" said Miss Marrable at last.</p>
+
+<p>"I should have been a poor man's wife any how. Now I shall be the
+wife of a very poor man. I suppose that will be the effect."</p>
+
+<p>"What will he do?"</p>
+
+<p>"He has, aunt, made up his mind to go to India."</p>
+
+<p>"Has he made up his mind to anything else?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course, I know what you mean, aunt?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why should you not know? I mean, that a man going out to India, and
+intending to live there as an officer on his pay, cannot be in want
+of a wife."</p>
+
+<p>"You speak of a wife as if she were the same as a coach-and-four, or
+a box at the opera,&mdash;a sort of luxury for rich men. Marriage, aunt,
+is like death, common to all."</p>
+
+<p>"In our position in life, Mary, marriage cannot be made so common as
+to be undertaken without foresight for the morrow. A poor gentleman
+is further removed from marriage than any other man."</p>
+
+<p>"One knows, of course, that there will be difficulties."</p>
+
+<p>"What I mean, Mary, is, that you will have to give it up."</p>
+
+<p>"Never, Aunt Sarah. I shall never give it up."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mean that you will marry him now, at once, and go out to
+India with him, as a dead weight round his neck?"</p>
+
+<p>"I mean that he shall choose about that."</p>
+
+<p>"It is for you to choose, Mary. Don't be angry. I am bound to tell
+you what I think. You can, of course, act as you please; but I think
+that you ought to listen to me. He cannot go back from his engagement
+without laying himself open to imputation of bad conduct."</p>
+
+<p>"Nor can I."</p>
+
+<p>"Pardon me, dear. That depends, I think, upon what passes between
+you. It is at any rate for you to propose the release to him,&mdash;not to
+fix him with the burthen of proposing it." Mary's heart quailed as
+she heard this, but she did not show her feeling by any expression on
+her face. "For a man, placed as he is, about to return to such a
+climate as that of India, with such work before him as I suppose men
+have there,&mdash;the burden of a wife, without the means of maintaining
+her according to his views of life and
+<span class="nowrap">hers&mdash;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"We have no views of life. We know that we shall be poor."</p>
+
+<p>"It is the old story of love and a cottage,&mdash;only under the most
+unfavourable circumstances. A woman's view of it is, of course,
+different from that of a man. He has seen more of the world, and
+knows better than she does what poverty and a wife and family mean."</p>
+
+<p>"There is no reason why we should be married at once."</p>
+
+<p>"A long engagement for you would be absolutely disastrous."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course, there is disaster," said Mary. "The loss of Walter's
+money is disastrous. One has to put up with disaster. But the worst
+of all disasters would be to be separated. I can stand anything but
+that."</p>
+
+<p>"It seems to me, Mary, that within the last few weeks your character
+has become altogether altered."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course it has."</p>
+
+<p>"You used to think so much more of other people than yourself."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't I think of him, Aunt Sarah?"</p>
+
+<p>"As of a thing of your own. Two months ago you did not know him, and
+now you are a millstone round his neck."</p>
+
+<p>"I will never be a millstone round anybody's neck," said Mary,
+walking out of the room. She felt that her aunt had been very cruel
+to her,&mdash;had attacked her in her misery without mercy; and yet she
+knew that every word that had been uttered had been spoken in pure
+affection. She did not believe that her aunt's chief purpose had been
+to save Walter from the fruits of an imprudent marriage. Had she so
+believed, the words would have had more effect on her. She saw, or
+thought that she saw, that her aunt was trying to save herself
+against her own will, and at this she was indignant. She was
+determined to persevere; and this endeavour to make her feel that her
+perseverance would be disastrous to the man she loved was, she
+thought, very cruel. She stalked upstairs with unruffled demeanour;
+but when there, she threw herself on her bed and sobbed bitterly.
+Could it be that it was her duty, for his sake, to tell him that the
+whole thing should be at an end? It was impossible for her to do so
+now, because she had sworn to him that she would be guided altogether
+by him in his present troubles. She must keep her word to him,
+whatever happened; but of this she was quite sure,&mdash;that if he should
+show the slightest sign of a wish to be free from his engagement, she
+would make him free&mdash;at once. She would make him free, and would
+never allow herself to think for a moment that he had been wrong. She
+had told him what her own feelings were very plainly,&mdash;perhaps, in
+her enthusiasm, too plainly,&mdash;and now he must judge for himself and
+for her. In respect to her aunt, she would endeavour to avoid any
+further conversation on the subject till her lover should have
+decided finally what would be best for both of them. If he should
+choose to say that everything between them should be over, she would
+acquiesce,&mdash;and all the world should be over for her at the same
+time.</p>
+
+<p>While this was going on in Uphill Lane something of the same kind was
+taking place at the Lowtown Parsonage. Parson John became aware that
+his nephew had been with the ladies at Uphill, and when the young man
+came in for lunch, he asked some question which introduced the
+subject. "You've told them of this fresh trouble, no doubt."</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't see Miss Marrable," said the Captain.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know that Miss Marrable much signifies. You haven't asked
+Miss Marrable to be your wife."</p>
+
+<p>"I saw Mary, and I told her."</p>
+
+<p>"I hope you made no bones about it."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know what you mean, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"I hope you told her that you two had had your little game of play,
+like two children, and that there must be an end of it."</p>
+
+<p>"No; I didn't tell her that."</p>
+
+<p>"That's what you have got to tell her in some kind of language, and
+the sooner you do it the better. Of course you can't marry her. You
+couldn't have done it if this money had been all right, and it's out
+of the question now. Bless my soul! how you would hate each other
+before six months were over. I can understand that for a strong
+fellow like you, when he's used to it, India may be a jolly place
+enough."</p>
+
+<p>"It's a great deal more than I can understand."</p>
+
+<p>"But for a poor man with a wife and family;&mdash;oh dear! it must be very
+bad indeed. And neither of you have ever been used to that kind of
+thing."</p>
+
+<p>"I have not," said the Captain.</p>
+
+<p>"Nor has she. That old lady up there is not rich, but she is as proud
+as Lucifer, and always lives as though the whole place belonged to
+her. She's a good manager, and she don't run in debt;&mdash;but Mary
+Lowther knows no more of roughing it than a duchess."</p>
+
+<p>"I hope I may never have to teach her."</p>
+
+<p>"I trust you never may. It's a very bad lesson for a young man to
+have to teach a young woman. Some women die in the learning. Some
+won't learn it at all. Others do, and become dirty and rough
+themselves. Now, you are very particular about women."</p>
+
+<p>"I like to see them well turned out."</p>
+
+<p>"What would you think of your own wife, nursing perhaps a couple of
+babies, dressed nohow when she gets up in the morning, and going on
+in the same way till night? That's the kind of life with officers who
+marry on their pay. I don't say anything against it. If the man likes
+it,&mdash;or rather if he's able to put up with it,&mdash;it may be all very
+well; but you couldn't put up with it. Mary's very nice now, but
+you'd come to be so sick of her, that you'd feel half like cutting
+her throat,&mdash;or your own."</p>
+
+<p>"It would be the latter for choice, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"I dare say it would. But even that isn't a pleasant thing to look
+forward to. I'll tell you the truth about it, my boy. When you first
+came to me and told me that you were going to marry Mary Lowther, I
+knew it could not be. It was no business of mine; but I knew it could
+not be. Such engagements always get themselves broken off somehow.
+Now and again there are a pair of fools who go through with it;&mdash;but
+for the most part it's a matter of kissing and lovers' vows for a
+week or two."</p>
+
+<p>"You seem to know all about it, Uncle John."</p>
+
+<p>"I haven't lived to be seventy without knowing something, I suppose.
+And now here you are without a shilling. I dare say, if the truth
+were known, you've a few debts here and there."</p>
+
+<p>"I may owe three or four hundred pounds or so."</p>
+
+<p>"As much as a year's income;&mdash;and you talk of marrying a girl without
+a farthing."</p>
+
+<p>"She has twelve hundred pounds."</p>
+
+<p>"Just enough to pay your own debts, and take you out to India,&mdash;so
+that you may start without a penny. Is that the sort of career that
+will suit you, Walter? Can you trust yourself to that kind of thing,
+with a wife under your arm? If you were a man of fortune, no doubt
+Mary would make a very nice wife; but, as it is,&mdash;you must give it
+up."</p>
+
+<p>Whereupon Captain Marrable lit a pipe and took himself into the
+parson's garden, thence into the stables and stable-yard, and again
+back to the garden, thinking of all this. There was not a word spoken
+by Parson John which Walter did not know to be true. He had already
+come to the conclusion that he must go out to India before he
+married. As for marrying Mary at once and taking her with him this
+winter, that was impossible. He must go and look about him;&mdash;and as
+he thought of this he was forced to acknowledge to himself that he
+regarded the delay as a reprieve. The sooner the better had been
+Mary's view with him. Though he was loath enough to entertain the
+idea of giving her up, he was obliged to confess that, like the
+condemned man, he desired a long day. There was nothing happy before
+him in the whole prospect of his life. Of course he loved Mary. He
+loved her very dearly. He loved her so dearly, that to have her taken
+from him would be to have his heart plucked asunder. So he swore to
+himself;&mdash;and yet he was in doubt whether it would not be better that
+his heart should be plucked asunder, than that she should be made to
+live in accordance with those distasteful pictures which his uncle
+had drawn for him. Of himself he would not think at all. Everything
+must be bad for him. What happiness could a man expect who had been
+misused, cheated, and mined by his own father? For himself it did not
+much matter what became of him; but he began to doubt whether for
+Mary's sake it would not be well that they should be separated. And
+then Mary had thrust upon him the whole responsibility of a decision!</p>
+
+
+<p><a name="c31" id="c31"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>CHAPTER XXXI.</h3>
+<h4>MARY LOWTHER FEELS HER WAY.<br />&nbsp;</h4>
+
+
+<p>That afternoon there came down to the parsonage a note from Mary to
+the Captain, asking her lover to meet her, and walk with her before
+dinner. He met her, and they took their accustomed stroll along the
+towing-path and into the fields. Mary had thought much of her aunt's
+words before the note was written, and had a fixed purpose of her own
+in view. It was true enough that though she loved this man with all
+her heart and soul, so loved him that she could not look forward to
+life apart from him without seeing that such life would be a great
+blank, yet she was aware that she hardly knew him. We are apt to
+suppose that love should follow personal acquaintance; and yet love
+at third sight is probably as common as any love at all, and it takes
+a great many sights before one human being can know another. Years
+are wanted to make a friendship, but days suffice for men and women
+to get married. Mary was, after a fashion, aware that she had been
+too quick in giving away her heart, and that now, when the gift had
+been made in full, it became her business to learn what sort of man
+was he to whom she had given it. And it was not only his nature as it
+affected her, but his nature as it affected himself that she must
+study. She did not doubt but that he was good, and true, and
+noble-minded; but it might be possible that a man good, true, and
+noble-minded, might have lived with so many indulgences around him as
+to be unable to achieve the constancy of heart which would be
+necessary for such a life as that which would be now before them if
+they married. She had told him that he should decide for himself and
+for her also,&mdash;thus throwing upon him the responsibility, and
+throwing upon him also, very probably, the necessity of a sacrifice.
+She had meant to be generous and trusting; but it might be that of
+all courses that which she had adopted was the least generous. In
+order that she might put this wrong right, if there were a wrong, she
+had asked him to come and walk with her. They met at the usual spot,
+and she put her hand through his arm with her accustomed smile,
+leaning upon him somewhat heavily for a minute, as girls do when they
+want to show that they claim the arm that they lean on as their own.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you told Parson John?" said Mary.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes."</p>
+
+<p>"And what does he say?"</p>
+
+<p>"Just what a crabbed, crafty, selfish old bachelor of seventy would
+be sure to say."</p>
+
+<p>"You mean that he has told you to give up all idea of comforting
+yourself with a wife."</p>
+
+<p>"Just that."</p>
+
+<p>"And Aunt Sarah has been saying exactly the same to me. You can't
+think how eloquent Aunt Sarah has been. And her energy has quite
+surprised me."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think Aunt Sarah was ever much of a friend of mine," said
+the Captain.</p>
+
+<p>"Not in the way of matrimony; in other respects she approves of you
+highly, and is rather proud of you as a Marrable. If you were only
+heir to the title, or something of that kind, she would think you the
+finest fellow going."</p>
+
+<p>"I wish I could gratify her, with all my heart."</p>
+
+<p>"She is such a dear old creature! You don't know her in the least,
+Walter. I am told she was ever so pretty when she was a girl; but she
+had no fortune of her own at that time, and she didn't care to marry
+beneath her position. You mustn't abuse her."</p>
+
+<p>"I've not abused her."</p>
+
+<p>"What she has been saying I am sure is very true; and I dare say
+Parson John has been saying the same thing."</p>
+
+<p>"If she has caused you to change your mind, say so at once, Mary. I
+shan't complain."</p>
+
+<p>Mary pressed his arm involuntarily, and loved him so dearly for the
+little burst of wrath. Was it really true that he, too, had set his
+heart upon it?&mdash;that all that the crafty old uncle had said had been
+of no avail?&mdash;that he also loved so well that he was willing to
+change the whole course of his life and become another person for the
+sake of her? If it were so, she would not say a word that could by
+possibility make him think that she was afraid. She would feel her
+way carefully, so that he might not be led by a chance phrase to
+imagine that what she was about to say was said on her own behalf.
+She would be very careful, but at the same time she would be so
+explicit that there should be no doubt on his mind but that he had
+her full permission to retire from the engagement if he thought it
+best to do so. She was quite ready to share the burthens of life with
+him, let them be what they might; but she would not be a mill-stone
+round his neck. At any rate, he should not be weighted with the
+mill-stone, if he himself looked upon a loving wife in that light.</p>
+
+<p>"She has not caused me to change my mind at all, Walter. Of course I
+know that all this is very serious. I knew that without Aunt Sarah's
+telling me. After all, Aunt Sarah can't be so wise as you ought to
+be, who have seen India and who know it well."</p>
+
+<p>"India is not a nice place to live in&mdash;especially for women."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know that Loring is very nice;&mdash;but one has to take that as
+it comes. Of course it would be nicer if you could live at home and
+have plenty of money. I wish I had a fortune of my own. I never cared
+for it before, but I do now."</p>
+
+<p>"Things don't come by wishing, Mary."</p>
+
+<p>"No; but things do come by resolving and struggling. I have no doubt
+but that you will live yet to do something and to be somebody. I have
+that faith in you. But I can well understand that a wife may be a
+great impediment in your way."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't want to think of myself at all."</p>
+
+<p>"But you must think of yourself. For a woman, after all, it doesn't
+matter much. She isn't expected to do anything particular. A man of
+course must look to his own career, and take care that he does
+nothing to mar it."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't quite understand what you're driving at," said the Captain.</p>
+
+<p>"Well;&mdash;I'm driving at this: that I think that you are bound to
+decide upon doing that which you feel to be wisest without reference
+to my feelings. Of course I love you better than anything in the
+world. I can't be so false as to say it isn't so. Indeed, to tell the
+truth, I don't know that I really ever loved anybody else. But if it
+is proper that we should be separated, I shall get over it,&mdash;in a
+way."</p>
+
+<p>"You mean you'd marry somebody else in the process of time."</p>
+
+<p>"No, Walter; I don't mean that. Women shouldn't make protestations;
+but I don't think I ever should. But a woman can live and get on very
+well without being married, and I should always have you in my heart,
+and I should try to comfort myself with remembering that you had
+loved me."</p>
+
+<p>"I am quite sure that I shall never marry anyone else," said the
+Captain.</p>
+
+<p>"You know what I'm driving at now;&mdash;eh, Walter?"</p>
+
+<p>"Partly."</p>
+
+<p>"I want you to know wholly. I told you this morning that I should
+leave it to you to decide. I still say the same. I consider myself
+for the present as much bound to obey you as though I were your wife
+already. But after saying that, and after hearing Aunt Mary's sermon,
+I felt that I ought to make you understand that I am quite aware that
+it may be impossible for you to keep to your engagement. You
+understand all that better than I do. Our engagement was made when
+you thought you had money, and even then you felt that there was
+little enough."</p>
+
+<p>"It was very little."</p>
+
+<p>"And now there is none. I don't profess to be afraid of poverty
+myself, because I don't quite know what it means."</p>
+
+<p>"It means something very unpleasant."</p>
+
+<p>"No doubt; and it would be unpleasant to be parted;&mdash;wouldn't it?"</p>
+
+<p>"It would be horrible."</p>
+
+<p>She pressed his arm again as she went on. "You must judge between the
+two. What I want you to understand is this, that whatever you may
+judge to be right and best, I will agree to it, and will think that
+it is right and best. If you say that we will get ourselves married
+and try it, I shall feel that not to get ourselves married and not to
+try it is a manifest impossibility; and if you say that we should be
+wrong to get married and try it, then I will feel that to have done
+so was quite a manifest impossibility."</p>
+
+<p>"Mary," said he, "you're an angel."</p>
+
+<p>"No; but I'm a woman who loves well enough to be determined not to
+hurt the man she loves if she can help it."</p>
+
+<p>"There is one thing on which I think we must decide."</p>
+
+<p>"What is that?"</p>
+
+<p>"I must at any rate go out before we are married." Mary Lowther felt
+this to be a decision in her favour,&mdash;to be a decision which for the
+time made her happy and light-hearted. She had so dreaded a positive
+and permanent separation, that the delay seemed to her to be hardly
+an evil.</p>
+
+
+<p><a name="c32" id="c32"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>CHAPTER XXXII.</h3>
+<h4>MR. GILMORE'S SUCCESS.<br />&nbsp;</h4>
+
+
+<p>Harry Gilmore, the prosperous country gentleman, the county
+magistrate, the man of acres, the nephew of Mr. Chamberlaine,
+respected by all who knew him,&mdash;with the single exception of the
+Marquis of Trowbridge,&mdash;was now so much reduced that he felt himself
+to be an inferior being to Mr. Cockey, with whom he breakfasted. He
+had come to Loring, and now he was there he did not know what to do
+with himself. He had come there, in truth, not because he really
+thought he could do any good, but driven out of his home by sheer
+misery. He was a man altogether upset, and verging on to a species of
+insanity. He was so uneasy in his mind that he could read nothing. He
+was half-ashamed of being looked at by those who knew him; and had
+felt some relief in the society of Mr. Cockey till Mr. Cockey had
+become jovial with wine, simply because Mr. Cockey was so poor a
+creature that he felt no fear of him. But as he had come to Loring,
+it was necessary that he should do something. He could not come to
+Loring and go back again without saying a word to anybody. Fenwick
+would ask him questions, and the truth would come out. There came
+upon him this morning an idea that he would not go back home;&mdash;that
+he would leave Loring and go away without giving any reason to any
+one. He was his own master. No one would be injured by anything that
+he might do. He had a right to spend his income as he pleased.
+Everything was distasteful that reminded him of Bullhampton. But
+still he knew that this was no more than a madman's idea;&mdash;that it
+would ill become him so to act. He had duties to perform, and he must
+perform them, let them be ever so distasteful. It was only an idea,
+made to be rejected; but, nevertheless, he thought of it.</p>
+
+<p>To do something, however, was incumbent on him. After breakfast he
+sauntered up the hill and saw Captain Marrable enter the house in
+which Mary Lowther lived. He felt thoroughly ashamed of himself in
+thus creeping about, and spying things out,&mdash;and, in truth, he had
+not intended thus to watch his rival. He wandered into the
+churchyard, sat there sometime on the tombstones, and then again went
+down to the inn. Mr. Cockey was going to Gloucester by an afternoon
+train, and invited him to join an early dinner at two. He assented,
+though by this time he had come to hate Mr. Cockey. Mr. Cockey
+assumed an air of superiority, and gave his opinions about matters
+political and social as though his companion were considerably below
+him in intelligence and general information. He dictated to poor
+Gilmore, and laid down the law as to eating onions with beefsteaks in
+a manner that was quite offensive. Nevertheless, the unfortunate man
+bore with his tormentor, and felt desolate when he was left alone in
+the commercial room, Cockey having gone out to complete his last
+round of visits to his customers. "Orders first and money
+afterwards," Cockey had said, and Cockey had now gone out to look
+after his money.</p>
+
+<p>Gilmore sat for some half-hour helpless over the fire; and then
+starting up, snatched his hat, and hurried out of the house. He
+walked as quickly as he could up the hill, and rang the bell at Miss
+Marrable's house. Had he been there ten minutes sooner, he would have
+seen Mary Lowther tripping down the side path to meet her lover. He
+rang the bell, and in a few minutes found himself in Miss Marrable's
+drawing-room. He had asked for Miss Marrable, had given his name, and
+had been shown upstairs. There he remained alone for a few minutes
+which seemed to him to be interminable. During these minutes Miss
+Marrable was standing in her little parlour downstairs, trying to
+think what she would say to Mr. Gilmore,&mdash;trying also to think why
+Mr. Gilmore should have come to Loring.</p>
+
+<p>After a few words of greeting Miss Marrable said that Miss Lowther
+was out walking. "She will be very glad, I'm sure, to hear good news
+from her friends at Bullhampton."</p>
+
+<p>"They're all very well," said Mr. Gilmore.</p>
+
+<p>"I've heard a great deal of Mr. Fenwick," said Miss Marrable; "so
+much that I seem almost to be acquainted with him."</p>
+
+<p>"No doubt," said Mr. Gilmore.</p>
+
+<p>"Your parish has become painfully known to the public by that
+horrible murder," said Miss Marrable.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, indeed," said Mr. Gilmore.</p>
+
+<p>"I fear that they will hardly catch the perpetrator of it," said Miss
+Marrable.</p>
+
+<p>"I fear not," said Mr. Gilmore.</p>
+
+<p>At this period of the conversation Miss Marrable found herself in
+great difficulty. If anything was to be said about Mary Lowther, she
+could not begin to say it. She had heard a great deal in favour of
+Mr. Gilmore. Mrs. Fenwick had written to her about the man; and Mary,
+though she would not love him, had always spoken very highly of his
+qualities. She knew well that he had gone through Oxford with credit,
+that he was a reading man,&mdash;so reputed, that he was a magistrate, and
+in all respects a gentleman. Indeed, she had formed an idea of him as
+quite a pearl among men. Now that she saw him, she could not repress
+a feeling of disappointment. He was badly dressed, and bore a sad,
+depressed, downtrodden aspect. His whole appearance was what the
+world now calls seedy. And he seemed to be almost unable to speak.
+Miss Marrable knew that Mr. Gilmore was a man disappointed in his
+love, but she did not conceive that love had done him all these
+injuries. Love, however, had done them all. "Are you going to stay
+long in this neighbourhood?" asked Miss Marrable, almost in despair
+for a subject.</p>
+
+<p>Then the man's mouth was opened. "No; I suppose not," he said. "I
+don't know what should keep me here, and I hardly know why I'm come.
+Of course you have heard of my suit to your niece." Miss Marrable
+bowed her courtly little head in token of assent. "When Miss Lowther
+left us, she gave me some hope that I might be successful. At least,
+she consented that I should ask her once more. She has now written to
+tell me that she is engaged to her cousin."</p>
+
+<p>"There is something of the kind," said Miss Marrable.</p>
+
+<p>"Something of the kind! I suppose it is settled; isn't it?"</p>
+
+<p>Miss Marrable was a sensible woman, one not easily led away by
+appearances. Nevertheless, it is probable that had Mr. Gilmore been
+less lugubrious, more sleek, less "seedy," she would have been more
+prone than she now was to have made instant use of Captain Marrable's
+loss of fortune on behalf of this other suitor. She would immediately
+have felt that perhaps something might be done, and she would have
+been tempted to tell him the whole story openly. As it was she could
+not so sympathise with the man before her, as to take him into her
+confidence. No doubt he was Mr. Gilmore, the favoured friend of the
+Fenwicks, the owner of the Privets, and the man of whom Mary had
+often said that there was no fault to be found with him. But there
+was nothing bright about him, and she did not know how to encourage
+him as a lover. "As Mary has told you," she said, "I suppose there
+can be no harm in my repeating that they are engaged," said Miss
+Marrable.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course they are. I am aware of that. I believe the gentleman is
+related to you."</p>
+
+<p>"He is a cousin,&mdash;not very near."</p>
+
+<p>"And I suppose he has your good will?"</p>
+
+<p>"As to that, Mr. Gilmore, I don't know that I can do any good by
+speaking. Young ladies in these days don't marry in accordance with
+the wishes of their old aunts."</p>
+
+<p>"But Miss Lowther thinks so much of you! I don't want to ask any
+questions that ought not to be asked. If this match is so settled
+that it must go on, why there's an end of it. I'll just tell you the
+truth openly, Miss Marrable. I have loved,&mdash;I do love your niece with
+all my heart. When I received her letter it upset me altogether, and
+every hour since has made the feeling worse. I have come here just to
+learn whether there may still possibly be a chance. You will not
+quarrel with me because I have loved her so well?"</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed no," said Miss Marrable, whose heart was gradually becoming
+soft, and who was learning to forget the mud on Mr. Gilmore's boots
+and trousers.</p>
+
+<p>"I heard that Captain Marrable was,&mdash;at any rate, not a very rich
+man; that he could hardly afford to marry his cousin. I did hear,
+also, that the match might in other respects not be suitable."</p>
+
+<p>"There is no other objection, Mr. Gilmore."</p>
+
+<p>"It is the case, Miss Marrable, that these things sometimes come on
+suddenly and go off suddenly. I won't deny that if I could have
+gained Miss Lowther's heart without the interference of any
+interloper, it would have been to me a brighter joy than anything
+that can now be possible. A man cannot be proud of his position who
+seeks to win a woman who owns a preference for another man." Miss
+Marrable's heart had now become very soft, and she began to perceive,
+of her own knowledge, that Mr. Gilmore was at any rate a gentleman.
+"But I would take her in any way that I could get her. Perhaps&mdash;that
+is to say, it might be<span class="nowrap">&mdash;"</span>
+And then he stopped.</p>
+
+<p>Should she tell him everything? She had a strong idea that it was her
+first duty to be true to her own sex and to her own niece. But were
+she to tell the man the whole story it would do her niece no harm.
+She still believed that the match with Captain Marrable must be
+broken off. Even were this done it would be very long, she thought,
+before Mary would bring herself to listen with patience to another
+suitor. But of course it would be best for them all that this episode
+in Mary's life should be forgotten and put out of sight as soon as
+possible. Had not this dangerous captain come up, Mary, no doubt,&mdash;so
+thought Miss Marrable,&mdash;would at last have complied with her friends'
+advice, and have accepted a marriage which was in all respects
+advantageous. If the episode could only get itself forgotten and put
+out of sight, she might do so still. But there must be delay. Miss
+Marrable, after waiting for half a minute to consider, determined
+that she would tell him something. "No doubt," she said, "Captain
+Marrable's income is so small that the match is one that Mary's
+friends cannot approve."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think much of money," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Still it is essential to comfort, Mr. Gilmore."</p>
+
+<p>"What I mean to say is, that I am the last man in the world to insist
+upon that kind of thing, or to appear to triumph because my income is
+larger than another man's." Miss Marrable was now quite sure that Mr.
+Gilmore was a gentleman. "But if the match is to be broken
+<span class="nowrap">off&mdash;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"I cannot say that it will be broken off."</p>
+
+<p>"But it may be?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly it is possible. There are difficulties which may
+necessarily separate them."</p>
+
+<p>"If it be so, my feelings will be the same as they have always been
+since I first knew her. That is all that I have got to say."</p>
+
+<p>Then she told him pretty nearly everything. She said nothing of the
+money which Walter Marrable would have inherited had it not been for
+Colonel Marrable's iniquity; but she did tell him that the young
+people would have no income except the Captain's pay, and poor Mary's
+little fifty pounds a-year; and she went on to explain that, as far
+as she was concerned, and as far as her cousin the clergyman was
+concerned, everything would be done to prevent a marriage so
+disastrous as that in question, and the prospect of a life with so
+little of allurement as that of the wife of a poor soldier in India.
+At the same time she bade him remember that Mary Lowther was a girl
+very apt to follow her own judgment, and that she was for the present
+absolutely devoted to her cousin. "I think it will be broken off,"
+she said. "That is my opinion. I don't think it can go on. But it is
+he that will do it; and for a time she will suffer greatly."</p>
+
+<p>"Then I will wait," said Mr. Gilmore. "I will go home, and wait
+again. If there be a chance, I can live and hope."</p>
+
+<p>"God grant that you may not hope in vain!"</p>
+
+<p>"I would do my best to make her happy. I will leave you now, and am
+very thankful for your kindness. There would be no good in my seeing
+Mary?"</p>
+
+<p>"I think not, Mr. Gilmore."</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose not. She would only feel that I was teasing her. You will
+not tell her of my being here, I suppose?"</p>
+
+<p>"It would do no good, I think."</p>
+
+<p>"None in the least. I'll just go home and wait. If there should be
+anything to tell <span class="nowrap">me&mdash;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"If the match be broken off, I will take care that you shall hear it.
+I will write to Janet Fenwick. I know that she is your friend."</p>
+
+<p>Then Mr. Gilmore left the house, descended the hill without seeing
+Mary, packed up his things, and returned by the night train to
+Westbury. At seven o'clock in the morning he reached home in a
+Westbury gig, very cold, but upon the whole, a much more comfortable
+man than when he had left it. He had almost brought himself to think
+that even yet he would succeed at last.</p>
+
+
+<p><a name="c33" id="c33"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>CHAPTER XXXIII.</h3>
+<h4>FAREWELL.<br />&nbsp;</h4>
+
+
+<p>Christmas came, and a month beyond Christmas, and by the end of
+January Captain Marrable and Miss Lowther had agreed to regard all
+their autumn work as null and void,&mdash;to look back upon the
+love-making as a thing that had not been, and to part as friends.
+Both of them suffered much in this arrangement,&mdash;the man being the
+louder in the objurgations which he made against his ill-fortune, and
+in his assurances to himself and others that he was ruined for life.
+And, indeed, no man could have been much more unhappy than was Walter
+Marrable in these days. To him was added the trouble, which he did
+not endeavour to hide from himself or Mary, that all this misery came
+to him from his own father. Before the end of November, sundry
+renewed efforts were made to save a portion of the money, and the
+lawyers descended so low as to make an offer to take &pound;2000. They
+might have saved themselves the humiliation, for neither &pound;2000 nor
+&pound;200 could have been made to be forthcoming. Walter Marrable, when
+the time came, was painfully anxious to fight somebody; but he was
+told very clearly by Messrs. Block and Curling, that there was nobody
+whom he could fight but his father, and that even by fighting his
+father, he would never obtain a penny. "My belief," said Mr. Curling,
+"is, that you could put your father in prison, but that probably is
+not your object." Marrable was forced to own that that was not his
+object; but he did so in a tone which seemed to imply that a prison,
+were it even for life, would be the best place for his father. Block
+and Curling had been solicitors to the Marrables for ever so many
+years; and though they did not personally love the Colonel, they had
+a professional feeling that the blackness of a black sheep of a
+family should not be made public, at any rate by the family itself or
+by the family solicitors. Almost every family has a black sheep, and
+it is the especial duty of a family solicitor to keep the family
+black sheep from being dragged into the front and visible ranks of
+the family. The Captain had been fatally wrong in signing the paper
+which he had signed, and must take the consequences. "I don't think,
+Captain Marrable, that you would save yourself in any way by
+proceeding against the Colonel," said Mr. Curling. "I have not the
+slightest intention of proceeding against him," said the Captain, in
+great dudgeon,&mdash;and then he left the office and shook the dust off
+his feet, as against Block and Curling as well as against his father.</p>
+
+<p>After this,&mdash;immediately after it,&mdash;he had one other interview with
+his father. As he told his uncle, the devil prompted him to go down
+to Portsmouth to see the man to whom his interests should have been
+dearer than to all the world beside, and who had robbed him so
+ruthlessly. There was nothing to be gained by such a visit. Neither
+money nor counsel, nor even consolation would be forthcoming from
+Colonel Marrable. Probably Walter Marrable felt in his anger that it
+would be unjust that his father should escape without a word to
+remind him from his son's mouth of all that he had done for his son.
+The Colonel held some staff office at Portsmouth, and his son came
+upon him in his lodgings one evening as he was dressing to go out to
+dinner. "Is that you, Walter?" said the battered old reprobate,
+appearing at the door of his bed-room; "I am very glad to see you."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't believe it," said the son.</p>
+
+<p>"Well;&mdash;what would you have me say? If you'll only behave decently, I
+shall be glad to see you."</p>
+
+<p>"You've given me an example in that way, sir; have you not? Decency
+indeed!"</p>
+
+<p>"Now, Walter, if you're going to talk about that horrid money, I tell
+you at once, that I won't listen to you."</p>
+
+<p>"That's kind of you, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"I've been unfortunate. As soon as I can repay it, or a part of it, I
+will. Since you've been back, I've done everything in my power to get
+a portion of it for you,&mdash;and should have got it, but for those
+stupid people in Bedford Row. After all, the money ought to have been
+mine, and that's what I suppose you felt when you enabled me to draw
+it."</p>
+
+<p>"By heavens, that's cool!"</p>
+
+<p>"I mean to be cool;&mdash;I'm always cool. The cab will be here to take me
+to dinner in a very few minutes. I hope you will not think I am
+running away from you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't mean you to go till you've heard what I've got to say," said
+the Captain.</p>
+
+<p>"Then, pray say it quickly." Upon this, the Colonel stood still and
+faced his son; not exactly with a look of anger, but assuming an
+appearance as though he were the person injured. He was a thin old
+man, who wore padded coats, and painted his beard and his eyebrows,
+and had false teeth, and who, in spite of chronic absence of means,
+always was possessed of clothes apparently just new from the hands of
+a West-end tailor. He was one of those men who, through their long,
+useless, ill-flavoured lives, always contrive to live well, to eat
+and drink of the best, to lie softly, and to go about in purple and
+fine linen,&mdash;and yet, never have any money. Among a certain set
+Colonel Marrable, though well known, was still popular. He was
+good-tempered, well-mannered, sprightly in conversation, and had not
+a scruple in the world. He was over seventy, had lived hard, and must
+have known that there was not much more of it for him. But yet he had
+no qualms, and no fears. It may be doubted whether he knew that he
+was a bad man,&mdash;he, than whom you could find none worse though you
+were to search the country from one end to another. To lie, to
+steal,&mdash;not out of tills or pockets, because he knew the danger; to
+cheat&mdash;not at the card-table, because he had never come in the way of
+learning the lesson; to indulge every passion, though the cost to
+others might be ruin for life; to know no gods but his own bodily
+senses, and no duty but that which he owed to those gods; to eat all,
+and produce nothing; to love no one but himself; to have learned
+nothing but how to sit at table like a gentleman; to care not at all
+for his country, or even for his profession; to have no creed, no
+party, no friend, no conscience, to be troubled with nothing that
+touched his heart;&mdash;such had been, was, and was to be the life of
+Colonel Marrable. Perhaps it was accounted to him as a merit by some
+that he did not quail at any coming fate. When his doctor warned him
+that he must go soon, unless he would refrain from this and that and
+the other,&mdash;so wording his caution that the Colonel could not but
+know and did know, that let him refrain as he would he must go
+soon,&mdash;he resolved that he would refrain, thinking that the charms of
+his wretched life were sweet enough to be worth such sacrifice; but
+in no other respect did the caution affect him. He never asked
+himself whether he had aught even to regret before he died, or to
+fear afterwards.</p>
+
+<p>There are many Colonel Marrables about in the world, known well to be
+so at clubs, in drawing-rooms, and by the tradesmen who supply them.
+Men give them dinners and women smile upon them. The best of coats
+and boots are supplied to them. They never lack cigars nor champagne.
+They have horses to ride, and servants to wait upon them more
+obsequious than the servants of other people. And men will lend them
+money too,&mdash;well knowing that there is no chance of repayment. Now
+and then one hears a horrid tale of some young girl who surrenders
+herself to such a one, absolutely for love! Upon the whole the
+Colonel Marrables are popular. It is hard to follow such a man quite
+to the end and to ascertain whether or no he does go out softly at
+last, like the snuff of a candle,&mdash;just with a little stink.</p>
+
+<p>"I will say it as quickly as I can," said the Captain. "I can gain
+nothing I know by staying here in your company."</p>
+
+<p>"Not while you are so very uncivil."</p>
+
+<p>"Civil, indeed! I have to-day made up my mind, not for your sake, but
+for that of the family, that I will not prosecute you as a criminal
+for the gross robbery which you have perpetrated."</p>
+
+<p>"That is nonsense, Walter, and you know it as well as I do."</p>
+
+<p>"I am going back to India in a few weeks, and I trust I may never be
+called upon to see you again. I will not, if I can help it. It may be
+a toss-up which of us may die first, but this will be our last
+meeting. I hope you may remember on your death-bed that you have
+utterly ruined your son in every relation of life. I was engaged to
+marry a girl,&mdash;whom I loved; but it is all over, because of you."</p>
+
+<p>"I had heard of that, Walter, and I really congratulate you on your
+escape."</p>
+
+<p>"I can't strike you&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"No; don't do that."</p>
+
+<p>"Because of your age, and because you are my father. I suppose you
+have no heart, and that I cannot make you feel it."</p>
+
+<p>"My dear boy, I have an appetite, and I must go and satisfy it." So
+saying the Colonel escaped, and the Captain allowed his father to
+make his way down the stairs and into the cab before he followed.</p>
+
+<p>Though he had thus spoken to his father of his blasted hopes in
+regard to Mary Lowther, he had not as yet signified his consent to
+the measure by which their engagement was to be brought altogether to
+an end. The question had come to be discussed widely among their
+friends, as is the custom with such questions in such circumstances,
+and Mary had been told from all sides that she was bound to give it
+up,&mdash;that she was bound to give it up for her own sake, and more
+especially for his; that the engagement, if continued, would never
+lead to a marriage, and that it would in the meantime be absolutely
+ruinous to her,&mdash;and to him. Parson John came up and spoke to her
+with a strength for which she had not hitherto given Parson John
+credit. Her Aunt Sarah was very gentle with her, but never veered
+from her opinion that the engagement must of necessity be abandoned.
+Mr. Fenwick wrote to her a letter full of love and advice, and Mrs.
+Fenwick made a journey to Loring to discuss the matter with her. The
+discussion between them was very long. "If you are saying this on my
+account," said Mary, "it is quite useless."</p>
+
+<p>"On what other account? Mr. Gilmore? Indeed, indeed, I am not
+thinking of him. He is out of my mind altogether. I say it because I
+know it is impossible that you and your cousin should be married, and
+because such an engagement is destructive to both the parties."</p>
+
+<p>"For myself," said Mary, "it can make no difference."</p>
+
+<p>"It will make the greatest difference. It would wear you to pieces
+with a deferred hope. There is nothing so killing, so terrible, so
+much to be avoided. And then for him!&mdash; How is a man, thrown about on
+the world as he will be, to live in such a condition."</p>
+
+<p>The upshot of it all was that Mary wrote a letter to her cousin
+proposing to surrender her engagement, and declaring that it would be
+best for them both that he should agree to accept her surrender. That
+plan which she had adopted before, of leaving all the responsibility
+to him, would not suffice. She had come to perceive during these
+weary discussions that if a way out of his bondage was to be given to
+Walter Marrable it must come from her action and not from his. She
+had intended to be generous when she left everything to him; but it
+was explained to her, both by her aunt and Mrs. Fenwick, that her
+generosity was of a kind which he could not use. It was for her to
+take the responsibility upon herself; it was for her to make the
+move; it was, in short, for her to say that the engagement should be
+over.</p>
+
+<p>The very day that Mrs. Fenwick left her she wrote the letter, and
+Captain Marrable had it in his pocket when he went down to bid a last
+farewell to his father. It had been a sad, weary, tear-laden
+performance,&mdash;the writing of that letter. She had resolved that no
+sign of a tear should be on the paper, and she had rubbed the
+moisture away from her eyes a dozen times during the work lest it
+should fall. There was but little of intended pathos in it; there
+were no expressions of love till she told him at the end that she
+would always love him dearly; there was no repining,&mdash;no mention of
+her own misery. She used all the arguments which others had used to
+her, and then drew her conclusion. She remembered that were she to
+tell him that she would still be true to him, she would in fact be
+asking for some such pledge back from him; and she said not a word of
+any such constancy on her own part. It was best for both of them that
+the engagement should be broken off; and, therefore, broken off it
+was, and should be now and for ever. That was the upshot of Mary
+Lowther's letter.</p>
+
+
+<div class="center"><a name="il11" id="il11"></a>
+<table style="margin: 0 auto" cellpadding="4px">
+  <tr>
+    <td align="center">
+      <a href="images/il11.jpg">
+      <img src="images/il11-t.jpg" height="500"
+      alt="Mary Lowther writes to Walter Marrable." /></a>
+    </td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="center">
+      <span class="caption">Mary Lowther writes to Walter Marrable.<br />
+      Click to <a href="images/il11.jpg">ENLARGE</a></span>
+    </td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Captain Marrable when he received it, though he acknowledged the
+truth of all the arguments, loved the girl far too well to feel that
+this release gave him any comfort. He had doubtless felt that the
+engagement was a burthen on him,&mdash;that he would not have entered into
+it had he not felt sure of his diminished fortune, and that there was
+a fearful probability that it might never result in their being
+married; but not the less did the breaking up of it make him very
+wretched. An engagement for marriage can never be so much to a man as
+it is to a woman,&mdash;marriage itself can never be so much, can never be
+so great a change, produce such utter misery, or of itself be
+efficient for such perfect happiness,&mdash;but his love was true and
+steadfast, and when he learned that she was not to be his, he was as
+a man who had been robbed of his treasure. Her letter was long and
+argumentative. His reply was short and passionate;&mdash;and the reader
+shall see it.<br />&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+<blockquote>
+<p class="jright">Duke Street, January, 186&mdash;.</p>
+
+<p class="noindent"><span class="smallcaps">Dearest Mary</span>,</p>
+
+<p>I suppose you are right. Everybody tells me so, and no
+doubt everybody tells you the same. The chances are that I
+shall get bowled over; and as for getting back again, I
+don't know when I can hope for it. In such a condition it
+would I believe be very wrong and selfish were I to go and
+leave you to think of me as your future husband. You would
+be waiting for that which would never come.</p>
+
+<p>As for me, I shall never care for any other woman. A
+soldier can get on very well without a wife, and I shall
+always regard myself now as one of those useless but
+common animals who are called "not marrying men." I shall
+never marry. I shall always carry your picture in my
+heart, and shall not think that I am sinning against you
+or any one else when I do so after hearing that you are
+married.</p>
+
+<p>I need not tell you that I am very wretched. It is not
+only that I am separated from you, my own dear, dearest
+girl, but that I cannot refrain from thinking how it has
+come to pass that it is so. I went down to see my father
+yesterday. I did see him, and you may imagine of what
+nature was the interview. I sometimes think, when I lie in
+bed, that no man was ever so ill-treated as I have been.</p>
+
+<p>Dearest love, good-bye. I could not have brought myself to
+say what you have said, but I know that you are right. It
+has not been my fault, dear. I did love you, and do love
+you as truly as any man ever loved a woman.</p>
+
+<p class="ind8">Yours with all my heart,</p>
+
+<p class="ind12"><span class="smallcaps">Walter Marrable</span>.</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">I should like to see
+you once more before I start. Is
+there any harm in this? I must run down to my uncle's, but
+I will not go up to you if you think it better not. If you
+can bring yourself to see me, pray, pray do.<br />&nbsp;</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+
+<p>In answer to this Mary wrote to him to say that she would certainly
+see him when he came. She knew no reason, she said, why they should
+not meet. When she had written her note she asked her aunt's opinion.
+Aunt Sarah would not take upon herself to say that no such meeting
+ought to take place, but it was very evident that she thought that it
+would be dangerous.</p>
+
+<p>Captain Marrable did come down to Loring about the end of January,
+and the meeting did take place. Mary had stipulated that she should
+be alone when he called. He had suggested that they should walk out
+together, as had been their wont; but this she had declined, telling
+him that the sadness of such a walk would be too much for her, and
+saying to her aunt with a smile that were she once again out with him
+on the towing-path, there would be no chance of their ever coming
+home. "I could not ask him to turn back," she said, "when I should
+know that it would be for the last time." It was arranged, therefore,
+that the meeting should take place in the drawing-room at Uphill
+Lane.</p>
+
+<p>He came into the room with a quick, uneasy step, and when he reached
+her he put his arm round her and kissed her. She had formed certain
+little resolutions on this subject. He should kiss her, if he
+pleased, once again when he went,&mdash;and only once. And now, almost
+without a motion on her part that was perceptible, she took herself
+out of his arms. There should be no word about that if she could help
+it,&mdash;but she was bound to remember that he was nothing to her now but
+a distant cousin. He must cease to be her lover, though she loved
+him. Nay,&mdash;he had so ceased already. There must be no more laying of
+her head upon his shoulder, no more twisting of her fingers through
+his locks, no more looking into his eyes, no more amorous pressing of
+her lips against his own. Much as she loved him she must remember now
+that such outward signs of love as these would not befit her.
+"Walter," she said, "I am so glad to see you! And yet I do not know
+but what it would have been better that you should have stayed away."</p>
+
+<p>"Why should it have been better? It would have been unnatural not to
+have met each other."</p>
+
+<p>"So I thought. Why should not friends endure to say good-bye, even
+though their friendship be as dear as ours? I told Aunt Sarah that I
+should be angry with myself afterwards if I feared to tell you to
+come."</p>
+
+<p>"There is nothing to fear,&mdash;only that it is so wretched an ending,"
+said he.</p>
+
+<p>"In one way I will not look on it as an ending. You and I cannot be
+married, Walter; but I shall always have your career to look to, and
+shall think of you as my dearest friend. I shall expect you to write
+to me;&mdash;not at first, but after a year or so. You will be able to
+write to me then as though you were my brother."</p>
+
+<p>"I shall never be able to do that."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh yes;&mdash;that is, if you will make the effort for my sake. I do not
+believe but what people can manage and mould their own wills if they
+will struggle hard enough. You must not be unhappy, Walter."</p>
+
+<p>"I am not so wise or self-confident as you, Mary. I shall be unhappy.
+I should be deceiving myself if I were to tell myself otherwise.
+There is nothing before me to make me happy. When I came home there
+was very little that I cared for, though I had the prospect of this
+money and thought that my cares in that respect were over. Then I met
+you, and the whole world seemed altered. I was happy even when I
+found how badly I had been treated. Now all that has gone, and I
+cannot think that I shall be happy again."</p>
+
+<p>"I mean to be happy, Walter."</p>
+
+<p>"I hope you may, dear."</p>
+
+<p>"There are gradations in happiness. The highest I ever came to yet
+was when you told me that you loved me." When she said that, he
+attempted to take her hand, but she withdrew from him, almost without
+a sign that she was doing so. "I have not quite lost that yet," she
+continued, "and I do not mean to lose it altogether. I shall always
+remember that you loved me; and you will not forget that I too loved
+you."</p>
+
+<p>"Forget it?&mdash;no, I don't exactly think that I shall forget it."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know why it should make us altogether unhappy. For a time, I
+suppose, we shall be down-hearted."</p>
+
+<p>"I shall, I know. I can't pretend to such strength as to say that I
+can lose what I want, and not feel it."</p>
+
+<p>"We shall both feel it, Walter;&mdash;but I do not know that we must be
+miserable. When do you leave England?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing is settled. I have not had the heart to think of it. It will
+not be for a month or two yet. I suppose I shall stay out my regular
+Indian time."</p>
+
+<p>"And what shall you do with yourself?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have no plans at all, Mary. Sir Gregory has asked me to Dunripple,
+and I shall remain there probably till I am tired of it. It will be
+so pleasant, talking to my uncle of my father."</p>
+
+<p>"Do not talk of him at all, Walter. You will best forgive him by not
+talking of him. We shall hear, I suppose, of what you do from Parson
+John."</p>
+
+<p>She had seated herself a little away from him, and he did not attempt
+to draw near to her again till at her bidding he rose to leave her.
+He sat there for nearly an hour, and during that time much more was
+said by her than by him. She endeavoured to make him understand that
+he was as free as air, and that she would hope some day to hear that
+he was married. In reply to this, he asserted very loudly that he
+would never call any woman his wife, unless unexpected circumstances
+should enable him to return and again ask for her hand. "Not that you
+are to wait for me, Mary," he said. She smiled, but made no definite
+answer to this. She had told herself that it would not be for his
+welfare that she should allude to the possibility of a renewed
+engagement, and she did not allude to it.</p>
+
+<p>"God bless you, Walter," she said at last, coming to him and offering
+him her hand.</p>
+
+<p>"God bless you, for ever and ever, dearest Mary," he said, taking her
+in his arms and kissing her again and again. It was to be the last,
+and she did not seem to shun him. Then he left her, went as far as
+the door,&mdash;and returned again. "Dearest, dearest Mary. You will give
+me one more kiss?"</p>
+
+<p>"It shall be the last, Walter," she said. Then she did kiss him, as
+she would have kissed her brother that was going from her, and
+escaping from his arms she left the room.</p>
+
+<p>He had come to Loring late on the previous evening, and on that same
+day he returned to London. No doubt he dined at his club, drank a
+pint of wine and smoked a cigar or two, though he did it all after a
+lugubrious fashion. Men knew that he had fallen into great trouble in
+the matter of his inheritance, and did not expect him to be joyful
+and of pleasant countenance. "By George!" said little Captain Boodle,
+"if it was my governor, I'd go very near being hung for him; I would,
+by George!" Which remark obtained a good deal of general sympathy in
+the billiard-room of that military club. In the meantime Mary Lowther
+at Loring had resolved that she would not be lugubrious, and she sat
+down to dinner opposite to her aunt with a pleasant smile on her
+face. Before the evening was over, however, she had in some degree
+broken down. "I fear I can't get along with novels, Aunt Sarah," she
+said. "Don't you think I could find something to do." Then the old
+lady came round the room and kissed her niece;&mdash;but she made no other
+reply.</p>
+
+
+<p><a name="c34" id="c34"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>CHAPTER XXXIV.</h3>
+<h4>BULLHAMPTON NEWS.<br />&nbsp;</h4>
+
+
+<p>When the matter was quite settled at Loring,&mdash;when Miss Marrable not
+only knew that the engagement had been surrendered on both sides, but
+that it had been so surrendered as to be incapable of being again
+patched up, she bethought herself of her promise to Mr. Gilmore. This
+did not take place for a fortnight after the farewell which was
+spoken in the last chapter,&mdash;at which time Walter Marrable was
+staying with his uncle, Sir Gregory, at Dunripple. Miss Marrable had
+undertaken that Mr. Gilmore should be informed as soon as the
+engagement was brought to an end, and had been told that this
+information should reach him through Mrs. Fenwick. When a fortnight
+had passed, Miss Marrable was aware that Mary had not herself written
+to her friend at Bullhampton; and though she felt herself to be shy
+of the subject, though she entertained a repugnance to make any
+communication based on a hope that Mary might after a while receive
+her old lover graciously,&mdash;for time must of course be needed before
+such grace could be accorded,&mdash;she did write a few lines to Mrs.
+Fenwick. She explained that Captain Marrable was to return to India,
+and that he was to go as a free man. Mary, she said, bore her burden
+well. Of course, it must be some time before the remembrance of her
+cousin would cease to be a burden to her; but she went about her
+heavy task with a good will,&mdash;so said Miss Marrable,&mdash;and would no
+doubt conquer her own unhappiness after a time by the strength of her
+personal character. Not a word was spoken of Mr. Gilmore, but Mrs.
+Fenwick understood it all. The letter, she knew well, was a message
+to Mr. Gilmore;&mdash;a message which it would be her duty to give as soon
+as possible, that he might extract from it such comfort as it would
+contain for him,&mdash;though it would be his duty not to act upon it for,
+at any rate, many months to come. "And it will be a comfort to him,"
+said her husband when he read Miss Marrable's letter.</p>
+
+<p>"Of all the men I know, he is the most constant," said Mrs. Fenwick,
+"and best deserves that his constancy should be rewarded."</p>
+
+<p>"It is the man's nature," said the parson. "Of course, he will get
+her at last; and when he has got her, he will be quite contented with
+the manner in which he has won her. There's nothing like going on
+with a thing. I believe I might be a bishop if I set my heart on it."</p>
+
+<p>"Why don't you, then?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am not sure that the beauty of the thing is so well-defined to me
+as is Mary Lowther's to poor Harry. In perseverance and success of
+that kind the man's mind should admit of no doubt. Harry is quite
+clear of this,&mdash;that in spite of Mary's preference for her cousin, it
+would be the grandest thing in the world to him that she should marry
+him. The certainty of his condition will pull him through at last."</p>
+
+<p>Two days after this Mrs. Fenwick put Miss Marrable's letter into Mr.
+Gilmore's hand,&mdash;having perceived that it was specially written that
+it might be so treated. She kept it in her pocket till she should
+chance to see him, and at last handed it to him as she met him
+walking on his own grounds. "I have a letter from Loring," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"From Mary?"</p>
+
+<p>"No;&mdash;from Mary's aunt. I have it here, and I think you had better
+read it. To tell you the truth, Harry, I have been looking for you
+ever since I got it. Only you must not make too much of it."</p>
+
+<p>Then he read the letter. "What do you mean," he asked, "by making too
+much of it?"</p>
+
+<p>"You must not suppose that Mary is the same as before she saw this
+cousin of hers."</p>
+
+<p>"But she is the same."</p>
+
+<p>"Well;&mdash;yes, in body and in soul, no doubt. But such an experience
+leaves a mark which cannot be rubbed out quite at once."</p>
+
+<p>"You mean that I must wait before I ask her again."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course you must wait. The mark must be rubbed out first, you
+know."</p>
+
+<p>"I will wait; but as for the rubbing out of the mark, I take it that
+will be altogether beyond me. Do you think, Mrs. Fenwick, that no
+woman should ever, under any circumstances, marry one man when she
+loves another?"</p>
+
+<p>She could not bring herself to tell him that in her opinion Mary
+Lowther would of all women be the least likely to do so. "That is one
+of those questions," she said, "which it is almost impossible for a
+person to answer. In the first place, before answering it, we should
+have a clear definition of love."</p>
+
+<p>"You know what I mean well enough."</p>
+
+<p>"I do know what you mean, but I hardly do know how to answer you. If
+you went to Mary Lowther now, she would take it almost as an insult;
+and she would feel it in that light, because she is aware that you
+know of this story of her cousin."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course I shall not go to her at once."</p>
+
+<p>"She will never forget him altogether."</p>
+
+<p>"Such things cannot be forgotten," said Gilmore.</p>
+
+<p>"Nevertheless," said Mrs. Fenwick, "it is probable that Mary will be
+married some day. These wounds get themselves cured as do others."</p>
+
+<p>"I shall never be cured of mine," said he, laughing. "As for Mary, I
+hardly know what to think. I suppose girls do marry without caring
+very much for the men they take. One sees it every day; and then
+afterwards, they love their husbands. It isn't very romantic, but it
+seems to me that it is so."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't think of it too much, Harry," said Mrs. Fenwick. "If you still
+are devoted to <span class="nowrap">her&mdash;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"Indeed I am."</p>
+
+<p>"Then wait awhile, and we will have her at Bullhampton again. You
+know at any rate what our wishes are."</p>
+
+<p>Everything had been very quiet at Bullhampton during the last three
+months. The mill was again in regular work, and Sam had remained at
+home with fair average regularity. The Vicar had heard nothing more
+of Carry Brattle, and had been unable to trace her or to learn where
+she was living. He had taken various occasions to mention her name to
+her mother, but Mrs. Brattle knew nothing of her, and believed that
+Sam was equally ignorant with herself. Both she and the Vicar found
+it impossible to speak to Sam on the subject, though they knew that
+he had been with his sister more than once when she was living at
+Pycroft Common. As for the miller himself, no one had mentioned
+Carry's name to him since the day on which the Vicar had made his
+attempt. And from that day to the present there had been, if not ill
+blood, at least cold blood between Mr. Fenwick and old Brattle. The
+Vicar had gone down to the mill as often as usual, having determined
+that what had occurred should make no difference with him; and the
+intercourse with Mrs. Brattle and Fanny had been as kind on each side
+as usual;&mdash;but the miller had kept out of his way, retreating from
+him openly, going from the house to the mill as soon as he appeared,
+never speaking to him, and taking no other notice of him beyond a
+slight touch of the hat. "Your husband is still angry with me," he
+said one day to Mrs. Brattle. She shook her head and smiled sadly,
+and said that it would pass over some day,&mdash;only that Jacob was so
+persistent. With Sam, the Vicar held little or no communication. Sam
+in these days never went to church, and though he worked at the mill
+pretty constantly, he would absent himself from the village
+occasionally for a day or two together, and tell no one where he had
+been.</p>
+
+<p>The strangest and most important piece of business going on at this
+time in Bullhampton was the building of a new chapel or
+tabernacle,&mdash;the people called it a Salem,&mdash;for Mr. Puddleham. The
+first word as to the erection reached Mr. Fenwick's ears from Grimes,
+the builder and carpenter, who, meeting him in Bullhampton Street,
+pointed out to him a bit of spare ground just opposite the vicarage
+gates,&mdash;a morsel of a green on which no building had ever yet stood,
+and told him that the Marquis had given it for a chapel. "Indeed,"
+said Fenwick. "I hope it may be convenient and large enough for them.
+All the same, I wish it had been a little farther from my gate." This
+he said in a cheery tone, showing thereby considerable presence of
+mind. That such a building should be so placed was a trial to him,
+and he knew at once that the spot must have been selected to annoy
+him. Doubtless, the land in question was the property of the Marquis
+of Trowbridge. When he came to think of it, he had no doubt on the
+matter. Nevertheless, the small semi-circular piece of grass
+immediately opposite to his own swinging gate, looked to all the
+world as though it were an appendage of the Vicarage. A cottage built
+there would have been offensive; but a staring brick Methodist
+chapel, with the word Salem inserted in large letters over the door,
+would, as he was aware, flout him every time he left or entered his
+garden. He had always been specially careful to avoid any semblance
+of a quarrel with the Methodist minister, and had in every way shown
+his willingness to regard Mr. Puddleham's flock as being equal to his
+own in the general gifts of civilisation. To Mr. Puddleham himself,
+he had been very civil, sending him fruit and vegetables out of the
+Vicarage garden, and lending him newspapers. When the little
+Puddlehams were born, Mrs. Fenwick always inquired after the mother
+and infant. The greatest possible care had been exercised at the
+Vicarage since Mr. Fenwick's coming to show that the Established
+Church did not despise the dissenting congregation. For the last
+three years there had been talk of a new chapel, and Mr. Fenwick had
+himself discussed the site with Mr. Puddleham. A large and commodious
+spot of ground, remote from the vicarage, had, as he believed, been
+chosen. When he heard those tidings, and saw what would be the effect
+of the building, it seemed to him almost impossible that a Marquis
+could condescend to such revenge. He went at once to Mr. Puddleham,
+and learned from him that Grimes' story was true. This had been in
+December. After Christmas, the foundations were to be begun at once,
+said Mr. Puddleham, so that the brickwork might go on as soon as the
+frosts were over. Mr. Puddleham was in high spirits, and expressed a
+hope that he should be in his new chapel by next August. When the
+Vicar asked why the change of site was made, being careful to show no
+chagrin by the tone of his voice, Mr. Puddleham remarked that the
+Marquis's agent thought that it would be an improvement, "in which
+opinion I quite coincide," said Mr. Puddleham, looking very
+stern,&mdash;showing his teeth, as it were, and displaying an inclination
+for a parish quarrel. Fenwick, still prudent, made no objection to
+the change, and dropped no word of displeasure in Mr. Puddleham's
+hearing.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't believe he can do it," said Mrs. Fenwick, boiling with
+passion.</p>
+
+<p>"He can, no doubt," said the Vicar.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mean to say the street is his;&mdash;to do what he likes with it?"</p>
+
+<p>"The street is the Queen's highway,&mdash;which means that it belongs to
+the public; but this is not the street. I take it that all the land
+in the village belongs to the Marquis. I never knew of any common
+right, and I don't believe there is any."</p>
+
+<p>"It is the meanest thing I ever heard of in my life," said Mrs.
+Fenwick.</p>
+
+<p>"There I agree with you." Later in the day, when he had been thinking
+of it for hours, he again spoke to his wife. "I shall write to the
+Marquis and remonstrate. It will probably be of no avail; but I think
+I ought to do so for the sake of those who come after me. I shall be
+able to bother him a good deal, if I can do nothing else," he added,
+laughing. "I feel, too, that I must quarrel with somebody, and I
+won't quarrel with dear old Puddleham, if I can help it."</p>
+
+
+<p><a name="c35" id="c35"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>CHAPTER XXXV.</h3>
+<h4>MR. PUDDLEHAM'S NEW CHAPEL.<br />&nbsp;</h4>
+
+
+<p><img class="left" src="images/ch35a.jpg" width="310" alt="Illustration" />
+The Vicar devoted a week to the consideration of his grievance about
+the chapel, and then did write to the Marquis. Indeed, there was no
+time to be lost if he intended to do anything, as on the second day
+after his interview with Mr. Grimes, Grimes himself, with two men to
+assist him, began their measuring on the devoted spot, sticking in
+little marks for the corners of the projected building, and turning
+up a sod here and there. Mr. Grimes was a staunch Churchman; and
+though in the way of business he was very glad to have the building
+of a Methodist chapel,&mdash;or of a Pagan temple, if such might come in
+his way,&mdash;yet, even though he possibly might give some offence to the
+great man's shadow in Bullhampton, he was willing to postpone his
+work for two or three days at the Vicar's request. "Grimes," the
+Vicar said, "I'm not quite sure that I like this."</p>
+
+
+<div class="center"><a name="il12" id="il12"></a>
+<table style="margin: 0 auto" cellpadding="4px">
+  <tr>
+    <td align="center">
+      <a href="images/il12.jpg">
+      <img src="images/il12-t.jpg" height="500"
+      alt="Site of Mr. Puddleham's new chapel." /></a>
+    </td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="center">
+      <span class="caption">Site of Mr. Puddleham's new chapel.<br />
+      Click to <a href="images/il12.jpg">ENLARGE</a></span>
+    </td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>"Well, sir;&mdash;no, sir. I was thinking myself, sir, that maybe you
+might take it unkind in the Marquis."</p>
+
+<p>"I think I shall write to him. Perhaps you wouldn't mind giving over
+for a day or two." Grimes yielded at once, and took his spade and
+measurements away, although Mr. Puddleham fretted a good deal. Mr.
+Puddleham had been much elated by the prospect of his new Bethel, and
+had, it must be confessed, received into his mind an idea that it
+would be a good thing to quarrel with the Vicar under the auspices of
+the landlord. Fenwick's character had hitherto been too strong for
+him, and he had been forced into parochial quiescence and religious
+amity almost in spite of his conscience. He was a much older man than
+Mr. Fenwick, having been for thirty years in the ministry, and he had
+always previously enjoyed the privilege of being on bad terms with
+the clergyman of the Establishment. It had been his glory to be a
+poacher on another man's manor, to filch souls, as it were, out of
+the keeping of a pastor of a higher grade than himself, to say severe
+things of the short comings of an endowed clergyman, and to obtain
+recognition of his position by the activity of his operations in the
+guise of a blister. Our Vicar, understanding something of this, had,
+with some malice towards the gentleman himself, determined to rob Mr.
+Puddleham of his blistering powers. There is no doubt a certain
+pleasure in poaching which does not belong to the licit following of
+game; but a man can't poach if the right of shooting be accorded to
+him. Mr. Puddleham had not been quite happy in his mind amidst the
+ease and amiable relations which Mr. Fenwick enforced upon him, and
+had long since begun to feel that a few cabbages and peaches did not
+repay him for the loss of those pleasant and bitter things, which it
+would have been his to say in his daily walks and from the pulpit of
+his Salem, had he not been thus hampered, confined, and dominated.
+Hitherto he had hardly gained a single soul from under Mr. Fenwick's
+grasp,&mdash;had indeed on the balance lost his grasp on souls, and was
+beginning to be aware that this was so because of the cabbages and
+the peaches. He told himself that though he had not hankered after
+these flesh-pots, that though he would have preferred to be without
+the flesh-pots, he had submitted to them. He was painfully conscious
+of the guile of this young man, who had, as it were, cheated him out
+of that appropriate acerbity of religion, without which a proselyting
+sect can hardly maintain its ground beneath the shadow of an endowed
+and domineering Church. War was necessary to Mr. Puddleham. He had
+come to be hardly anybody at all, because he was at peace with the
+vicar of the parish in which he was established. His eyes had been
+becoming gradually open to all this for years; and when he had been
+present at the bitter quarrel between the Vicar and the Marquis, he
+had at once told himself that now was his opportunity. He had
+intended to express a clear opinion to Mr. Fenwick that he, Mr.
+Fenwick, had been very wrong in speaking to the Marquis as he had
+spoken, and as he was walking out of the farm-house he was preparing
+some words as to the respect due to those in authority. It happened,
+however, that at that moment the wind was taken out of his sails by a
+strange comparison which the Vicar made to him between the sins of
+them two, ministers of God as they were, and the sins of Carry
+Brattle. Mr. Puddleham at the moment had been cowed and quelled. He
+was not quite able to carry himself in the Vicar's presence as though
+he were the Vicar's equal. But the desire for a quarrel remained, and
+when it was suggested to him by Mr. Packer, the Marquis's man of
+business, that the green opposite to the Vicarage gate would be a
+convenient site for his chapel, and that the Marquis was ready to
+double his before-proffered subscription, then he saw plainly that
+the moment had come, and that it was fitting that he should gird up
+his loins and return all future cabbages to the proud donor.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Puddleham had his eye keenly set on the scene of his future
+ministration, and was aware of Grimes's default almost as soon as
+that man with his myrmidons had left the ground. He at once went to
+Grimes with heavy denunciations, with threats of the Marquis, and
+with urgent explanation as to the necessity of instant work. But
+Grimes was obdurate. The Vicar had asked him to leave the work for a
+day or two, and of course he must do what the Vicar asked. If he
+couldn't be allowed to do as much as that for the Vicar of the
+parish, Bullhampton wouldn't be, in Mr. Grimes's opinion, any place
+for anybody to live in. Mr. Puddleham argued the matter out, but he
+argued in vain. Mr. Grimes declared that there was time enough, and
+that he would have the work finished by the time fixed,&mdash;unless,
+indeed, the Marquis should change his mind. Mr. Puddleham regarded
+this as a most improbable supposition. "The Marquis doesn't change
+his mind, Mr. Grimes," he said; and then he walked forth from Mr.
+Grimes's house with much offence.</p>
+
+<p>By this time all Bullhampton knew of the quarrel,&mdash;knew of it,
+although Mr. Fenwick had been so very careful to guard himself from
+any quarrelling at all. He had not spoken a word in anger on the
+subject to anyone but his wife; and in making his request to Grimes
+had done so with hypocritical good humour. But, nevertheless, he was
+aware that the parish was becoming hot about it; and when he sat down
+to write his letter to the Marquis he was almost minded to give up
+the idea of writing, to return to Grimes, and to allow the measuring
+and sod-turning to be continued. Why should a place of worship
+opposite to his gate be considered by him as an injury? Why should
+the psalm-singing of Christian brethren hurt his ears as he walked
+about his garden? And if, through the infirmity of his nature, his
+eyes and his ears were hurt, what was that to the great purport for
+which he had been sent into the parish? Was he not about to create
+enmity by his opposition; and was it not his special duty to foster
+love and goodwill among his people? After all he, within his own
+Vicarage grounds, had all that it was intended that he should
+possess; and that he held very firmly. Poor Mr. Puddleham had no such
+firm holding; and why should he quarrel with Mr. Puddleham because
+that ill-paid preacher sought to strengthen the ground on which his
+Salem stood?</p>
+
+<p>As he paused, however, to think of all this, there came upon him the
+conviction that in this thing that was to be done the Marquis was
+determined to punish him personally, and he could not resist the
+temptation of fighting the Marquis. And then, if he succumbed easily
+in this matter, would it not follow almost as a matter of course that
+the battle against him would be carried on elsewhere? If he yielded
+now, resolving to ignore altogether any idea of his own comfort or
+his own taste, would he thereby maintain that tranquillity in his
+parish which he thought so desirable? He had already seen that in Mr.
+Puddleham's manner to himself which made him sure that Mr. Puddleham
+was ambitious to be a sword in the right hand of the Marquis.
+Personally the Vicar was himself pugnacious. Few men, perhaps, were
+more so. If there must be a fight let them come on, and he would do
+his best. Turning the matter thus backwards and forwards in his mind,
+he came at last to the conclusion that there must be a fight, and
+consequently he wrote the following letter to the
+<span class="nowrap">Marquis;&mdash;</span><br />&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+<blockquote>
+<p class="jright">Bullhampton Vicarage, January 3, 186&mdash;.</p>
+
+<p class="noindent"><span class="smallcaps">My Lord Marquis</span>,</p>
+
+<p>I learned by chance the other day in the village that a
+new chapel for the use of the Methodist congregation of
+the parish was to be built on the little open green
+immediately opposite the Vicarage gate, and that this
+special spot of ground had been selected and given by your
+lordship for this purpose. I do not at all know what truth
+there may be in this,&mdash;except that Mr. Grimes, the
+carpenter here, has received orders from your agent about
+the work. It may probably be the case that the site has
+been chosen by Mr. Packer, and not by your lordship. As no
+real delay to the building can at this time of the year
+arise from a short postponement of the beginning, I have
+asked Mr. Grimes to desist till I shall have written to
+you on the subject.</p>
+
+<p>I can assure your lordship, in the first place, that no
+clergyman of the Established Church in the kingdom can be
+less unwilling than I am that they who dissent from my
+teaching in the parish should have a commodious place of
+worship. If land belonged to me in the place I would give
+it myself for such a purpose; and were there no other
+available site than that chosen, I would not for a moment
+remonstrate against it. I had heard, with satisfaction,
+from Mr. Puddleham himself that another spot was chosen
+near the cross roads in the village, on which there is
+more space, to which as I believe there is no objection,
+and which would certainly be nearer than that now selected
+to the majority of the congregation.</p>
+
+<p>But of course it would not be for me to trouble your
+lordship as to the ground on which a Methodist chapel
+should be built, unless I had reason to show why the site
+now chosen is objectionable. I do not for a moment
+question your lordship's right to give the site. There is
+something less than a quarter of an acre in the patch in
+question; and though hitherto I have always regarded it as
+belonging in some sort to the Vicarage,&mdash;as being a part,
+as it were, of the entrance,&mdash;I feel convinced that you,
+as landlord of the ground, would not entertain the idea of
+bestowing it for any purpose without being sure of your
+right to do so. I raise no question on this point,
+believing that there is none to be raised; but I
+respectfully submit to your lordship, whether such an
+erection as that contemplated by you will not be a lasting
+injury to the Vicarage of Bullhampton, and whether you
+would wish to inflict a lasting and gratuitous injury on
+the vicar of a parish, the greatest portion of which
+belongs to yourself.</p>
+
+<p>No doubt life will be very possible to me and my wife, and
+to succeeding vicars and their wives, with a red-brick
+chapel built as a kind of watch-tower over the Vicarage
+gate. So would life be possible at Turnover Park with a
+similar edifice immediately before your lordship's
+hall-door. Knowing very well that the reasonable wants of
+the Methodists cannot make such a building on such a spot
+necessary, you no doubt would not consent to it; and I now
+venture to ask you to put a stop to this building here for
+the same reason. Were there no other site in the parish
+equally commodious I would not say a word.</p>
+
+<p class="noindent"><span class="ind6">I have the honour to be,</span><br />
+<span class="ind8">Your lordship's most obedient servant,</span></p>
+
+<p class="ind15"><span class="smallcaps">Francis
+Fenwick</span>.<br />&nbsp;</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+
+<p>Lord Trowbridge, when he received this letter,&mdash;when he had only
+partially read it, and had not at all digested it, was disposed to
+yield the point. He was a silly man, thinking much too highly of his
+own position, believing himself entitled to unlimited deference from
+all those who in any way came within the rays of his magnificence,
+and easily made angry by opposition; but he was not naturally prone
+to inflict evil, and did in some degree recognise it as a duty
+attached to his splendour that he should be beneficent to the
+inferiors with whom he was connected. Great as was his wrath against
+the present Vicar of Bullhampton, and thoroughly as he conceived it
+to be expedient that so evil-minded a pastor should be driven out of
+the parish, nevertheless he felt some scruple at taking a step which
+would be injurious to the parish vicar, let the parish vicar be who
+he might. Packer was the sinner who had originated the new plan for
+punishing Mr. Fenwick,&mdash;Packer, with the assistance of Mr. Puddleham;
+and the Marquis, though he had in some sort authorised the plan, had
+in truth thought very little about it. When the Vicar spoke of the
+lasting injury to the Vicarage, and when Lord Trowbridge remembered
+that he owned two thousand and two acres within the parish,&mdash;as Mr.
+Puddleham had told him,&mdash;he began to think that the chapel had better
+be built elsewhere. The Vicar was a pestilent man to whom punishment
+was due, but the punishment should be made to attach itself to the
+man, rather than to the man's office. So was working the Marquis's
+mind, till the Marquis came upon that horrid passage in the Vicar's
+letter, in which it was suggested that the building of a Methodist
+chapel in his own park, immediately in front of his own august
+hall-door might under certain circumstances be expedient. The remark
+was almost as pernicious and unpardonable as that which had been made
+about his lordship's daughters. It was manifest to him that the Vicar
+intended to declare that marquises were no more than other
+people,&mdash;and that the declaration was made and insisted on with the
+determination of insulting him. Had this apostate priest been capable
+of feeling any proper appreciation of his own position and that of
+the Marquis, he would have said nothing of Turnover Park. When the
+Marquis had read the letter a second time and had digested it he
+perceived that its whole tenour was bad, that the writer was
+evil-minded, and that no request made by him should be granted. Even
+though the obnoxious chapel should have to be pulled down for the
+benefit of another vicar, it should be put up for the punishment of
+this vicar. A man who wants to have a favour done for him, can hardly
+hope to be successful if he asks for the favour with insolence. So
+the heart of the Marquis was hardened, and he was strengthened to do
+that which misbecame him both as a gentleman and a landlord.</p>
+
+<p>He did not answer the letter for some time; but he saw Packer, saw
+his head agent, and got out the map of the property. The map of the
+property was not very clear in the matter, but he remembered the
+space well, and convinced himself that no other place in all
+Bullhampton could be so appropriate for a Methodist chapel. At the
+end of a week he caused a reply to be written to Mr. Fenwick. He
+would not demean himself by writing with his own hand, but he gave
+his orders to the head agent. The head agent merely informed the
+Vicar that it was considered that the spot of ground in question was
+the most appropriate in the village for the purpose in hand.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Fenwick when she heard the reply burst out into tears. She was a
+woman by no means over devoted to things of this world, who thought
+much of her duties and did them, who would have sacrificed anything
+for her husband and children, who had learned the fact that both
+little troubles and great, if borne with patience, may be borne with
+ease; but she did think much of her house, was proud of her garden,
+and rejoiced in the external prettiness of her surroundings. It was
+gall to her that this hideous building should be so placed as to
+destroy the comeliness of that side of her abode. "We shall hear
+their singing and ranting whenever we open our front windows," she
+said.</p>
+
+<p>"Then we won't open them," said the Vicar.</p>
+
+<p>"We can't help ourselves. Just see what it will be whenever we go in
+and out. We might just as well have it inside the house at once."</p>
+
+<p>"You speak as though Mr. Puddleham were always in his pulpit."</p>
+
+<p>"They're always doing something,&mdash;and then the building will be there
+whether it's open or shut. It will alter the parish altogether, and I
+really think it will be better that you should get an exchange."</p>
+
+<p>"And run away from my enemy?"</p>
+
+<p>"It would be running away from an intolerable nuisance."</p>
+
+<p>"I won't do that," said the Vicar. "If there were no other reason for
+staying, I won't put it in the power of the Marquis of Trowbridge to
+say that he has turned me out of my parish, and so punished me
+because I have not submitted myself to him. I have not sought the
+quarrel. He has been overbearing and insolent, and now is meanly
+desirous to injure me because I will not suffer his insolence. No
+doubt, placed as he is, he can do much; but he cannot turn me out of
+Bullhampton."</p>
+
+<p>"What is the good of staying, Frank, if we are to be made wretched?"</p>
+
+<p>"We won't be made wretched. What! be wretched because there is an
+ugly building opposite to your outside gate? It is almost wicked to
+say so. I don't like it. I like the doing of the thing less even than
+the thing itself. If it can be stopped, I will stop it. If it could
+be prevented by any amount of fighting, I should think myself right
+to fight in such a cause. If I can see my way to doing anything to
+oppose the Marquis, it shall be done. But I won't run away." Mrs.
+Fenwick said nothing more on the subject at that moment, but she felt
+that the glory and joy of the Vicarage were gone from it.</p>
+
+
+<p><a name="c36" id="c36"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>CHAPTER XXXVI.</h3>
+<h4>SAM BRATTLE GOES OFF AGAIN.<br />&nbsp;</h4>
+
+
+<p>Mr. Grimes had suggested to the Vicar in a very low whisper that the
+new chapel might perhaps be put down as a nuisance. "It ain't for me
+to say, of course," said Mr. Grimes, "and in the way of business one
+building is as good as another as long as you see your money. But
+buildings is stopped because they're nuisances." This occurred a day
+or two after the receipt of the agent's letter from Turnover, and the
+communication was occasioned by orders given to Mr. Grimes to go on
+with the building instantly, unless he intended to withdraw from the
+job. "I don't think, Grimes, that I can call a place of Christian
+worship a nuisance," said the Vicar. To this Grimes rejoined that he
+had known a nunnery bell to be stopped because it was a nuisance, and
+that he didn't see why a Methodist chapel bell was not as bad as a
+nunnery bell. Fenwick had declared that he would fight if he could
+find a leg to stand upon, and he thanked Grimes, saying that he would
+think of the suggestion. But when he thought of it, he did not see
+that any remedy was open to him on that side. In the meantime Mr.
+Puddleham attacked Grimes with great severity because the work was
+not continued. Mr. Puddleham, feeling that he had the Marquis at his
+back, was eager for the fight. He had already received in the street
+a salutation from the Vicar, cordial as usual, with the very
+slightest bend of his neck, and the sourest expression of his mouth.
+Mrs. Puddleham had already taught the little Puddlehams that the
+Vicarage cabbages were bitter with the wormwood of an endowed
+Establishment, and ought no longer to be eaten by the free children
+of an open Church. Mr. Puddleham had already raised up his voice in
+his existing tabernacle, as to the injury which was being done to his
+flock, and had been very touching on the subject of the little
+vineyard which the wicked king coveted. When he described himself as
+Naboth, it could not but be supposed that Ahab and Jezebel were both
+in Bullhampton. It went forth through the village that Mr. Puddleham
+had described Mrs. Fenwick as Jezebel, and the torch of discord had
+been thrown down, and war was raging through the parish.</p>
+
+<p>There had come to be very high words indeed between Mr. Grimes and
+Mr. Puddleham, and some went so far as to declare that they had heard
+the builder threaten to punch the minister's head. This Mr. Grimes
+denied stoutly, as the Methodist party were making much of it in
+consequence of Mr. Puddleham's cloth and advanced years. "There's no
+lies is too hot for them," said Mr. Grimes, in his energy, and "no
+lawlessness too heavy." Then he absolutely refused to put his hand to
+a spade or a trowel. He had his time named in his contract, he said,
+and nobody had a right to drive him. This was ended by the appearance
+on a certain Monday morning of a Baptist builder from Salisbury, with
+all the appurtenances of his trade, and with a declaration on Mr.
+Grimes' part, that he would have the law on the two leading members
+of the Puddleham congregation, from whom he had received his original
+order. In truth, however, there had been no contract, and Mr. Grimes
+had gone to work upon a verbal order which, according to the
+Puddleham theory, he had already vitiated by refusing compliance with
+its terms. He, however, was hot upon his lawsuit, and thus the whole
+parish was by the ears.</p>
+
+<p>It may be easily understood how much Mr. Fenwick would suffer from
+all this. It had been specially his pride that his parish had been at
+peace, and he had plumed himself on the way in which he had continued
+to clip the claws with which nature had provided the Methodist
+minister. Though he was fond of a fight himself, he had taught
+himself to know that in no way could he do the business of his life
+more highly or more usefully than as a peacemaker; and as a
+peacemaker he had done it. He had never put his hand within Mr.
+Puddleham's arm, and whispered a little parochial nothing into his
+neighbour's ear, without taking some credit to himself for his
+cleverness. He had called his peaches angels of peace, and had spoken
+of his cabbages as being dove-winged. All this was now over, and
+there was hardly one in Bullhampton who was not busy hating and
+abusing somebody else.</p>
+
+<p>And then there came another trouble on the Vicar. Just at the end of
+January, Sam Brattle came up to the Vicarage and told Mr. Fenwick
+that he was going to leave the mill. Sam was dressed very decently;
+but he was attired in an un-Bullhampton fashion, which was not
+pleasant to Mr. Fenwick's eyes; and there was about him an air which
+seemed to tell of filial disobedience and personal independence.</p>
+
+<p>"But you mean to come back again, Sam?" said the Vicar.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, sir; I don't know as I do. Father and I has had words."</p>
+
+<p>"And that is to be a reason why you should leave him? You speak of
+your father as though he were no more to you than another man."</p>
+
+<p>"I wouldn't a' borne not a tenth of it from no other man, Mr.
+Fenwick."</p>
+
+<p>"Well&mdash;and what of that? Is there any measure of what is due by you
+to your father? Remember, Sam, I know your father well."</p>
+
+<p>"You do, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"He is a very just man, and he is very fond of you. You are the apple
+of his eye, and now you would bring his gray hairs with sorrow to the
+grave."</p>
+
+<p>"You ask mother, sir, and she'll tell you how it is. I just said a
+word to him,&mdash;a word as was right to be said, and he turned upon me,
+and bade me go away and come back no more."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mean that he has banished you from the mill?"</p>
+
+<p>"He said what I tells you. He told mother afterwards, that if so as I
+would promise never to mention that thing again, I might come and go
+as I pleased. But I wasn't going to make no such promise. I up and
+told him so; and then he&mdash;cursed me."</p>
+
+<p>For a moment or two the Vicar was silent, thinking whether in this
+affair Sam had been most wrong, or the old man. Of course he was
+hearing but one side of the question. "What was it, Sam, that he
+forbade you to mention?"</p>
+
+<p>"It don't matter now, sir; only I thought I'd better come and tell
+you, along of your being the bail, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mean that you are going to leave Bullhampton altogether?"</p>
+
+<p>"To leave it altogether, Mr. Fenwick. I ain't doing no good here."</p>
+
+<p>"And why shouldn't you do good? Where can you do more good?"</p>
+
+<p>"It can't be good to be having words with father day after day."</p>
+
+<p>"But, Sam, I don't think you can go away. You are bound by the
+magistrates' orders. I don't speak for myself, but I fear the police
+would be after you."</p>
+
+<p>"And is it to go on allays,&mdash;that a chap can't move to better
+hisself, because them fellows can't catch the men as murdered old
+Trumbull? That can't be law,&mdash;nor yet justice." Upon this there arose
+a discussion in which the Vicar endeavoured to explain to the young
+man that as he had evidently consorted with the men who were, on the
+strongest possible grounds, suspected to be the murderers, and as he
+had certainly been with those men where he had no business to
+be,&mdash;namely, in Mr. Fenwick's own garden at night,&mdash;he had no just
+cause of complaint at finding his own liberty more crippled than that
+of other people. No doubt Sam understood this well enough, as he was
+sharp and intelligent; but he fought his own battle, declaring that
+as the Vicar had not prosecuted him for being in the garden, nobody
+could be entitled to punish him for that offence; and that as it had
+been admitted that there was no evidence connecting him with the
+murder, no policeman could have a right to confine him to one parish.
+He argued the matter so well, that Mr. Fenwick was left without much
+to say. He was unwilling to press his own responsibility in the
+matter of the bail, and therefore allowed the question to fall
+through,&mdash;tacitly admitting that if Sam chose to leave the parish,
+there was nothing in the affair of the murder to hinder him. He went
+back, therefore, to the inexpediency of the young man's departure,
+telling him that he would rush right into the Devil's jaws. "May be
+so, Mr. Fenwick," said Sam, "but I'm sure I'll never be out of 'em as
+long as I stays here in Bullhampton."</p>
+
+<p>"But what is it all about, Sam?" The Vicar, as he asked the question
+had a very distinct idea in his own head as to the cause of the
+quarrel, and was aware that his sympathies were with the son rather
+than with the father. Sam answered never a word, and the Vicar
+repeated his question. "You have quarrelled with your father before
+this, and have made it up. Why should not you make up this quarrel?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because he cursed me," said Sam.</p>
+
+<p>"An idle word, spoken in wrath! Don't you know your father well
+enough to take that for what it is worth? What was it about?"</p>
+
+<p>"It was about Carry, then."</p>
+
+<p>"What had you said?"</p>
+
+<p>"I said as how she ought to be let come home again, and that if I was
+to stay there at the mill, I'd fetch her. Then he struck at me with
+one of the mill-bolts. But I didn't think much o' that."</p>
+
+<p>"Was it then he&mdash;cursed you?"</p>
+
+<p>"No; mother came up, and I went aside with her. I told her as I'd go
+on speaking to the old man about Carry;&mdash;and so I did."</p>
+
+<p>"And where is Carry?" Sam made no reply to this whatever. "You know
+where she can be found, Sam?" Sam shook his head, but didn't speak.
+"You couldn't have said that you would fetch her, if you didn't know
+where to find her."</p>
+
+<p>"I wouldn't stop till I did find her, if the old man would take her
+back again. She's bad enough, no doubt, but there's others worse nor
+her."</p>
+
+<p>"When did you see her last?"</p>
+
+<p>"Over at Pycroft."</p>
+
+<p>"And whither did she go from Pycroft, Sam?"</p>
+
+<p>"She went to Lon'on, I suppose, Mr. Fenwick."</p>
+
+<p>"And what is her address in London?" In reply to this Sam again shook
+his head. "Do you mean to seek her now?"</p>
+
+<p>"What's the use of seeking her if I ain't got nowhere to put her
+into. Father's got a house and plenty of room in it. Where could I
+put her?"</p>
+
+<p>"Sam, if you'll find her, and bring her to any place for me to see
+her, I'll find a home for her somewhere. I will, indeed. Or, if I
+knew where she was, I'd go up to London to her myself. She's not my
+<span class="nowrap">sister&mdash;!"</span></p>
+
+<p>"No, sir, she ain't. The likes of you won't likely have a sister the
+likes of her. She's <span class="nowrap">a&mdash;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"Sam, stop. Don't say a bitter word of her. You love her."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes;&mdash;I do. That don't make her not a bad 'un."</p>
+
+<p>"So do I love her. And as for being bad, which of us isn't bad? The
+world is very hard on her offence."</p>
+
+<p>"Down on it, like a dog on a rat."</p>
+
+<p>"It is not for me to make light of her sin;&mdash;but her sin can be
+washed away as well as other sin. I love her too. She was the
+brightest, kindest, sauciest little lass in all the parish, when I
+came here."</p>
+
+<p>"Father was proud enough of her then, Mr. Fenwick."</p>
+
+<p>"You find her and let me know where she is, and I will make out a
+home for her somewhere;&mdash;that is, if she will be tractable. I'm
+afraid your father won't take her at the mill."</p>
+
+<p>"He'll never set eyes on her again, if he can help it. As for you,
+Mr. Fenwick, if there was only a few more like you about, the world
+wouldn't be so bad to get on in. Good-bye, Mr. Fenwick."</p>
+
+<p>"Good-bye, Sam;&mdash;if it must be so."</p>
+
+<p>"And don't you be afeared about me, Mr. Fenwick. If the hue-and-cry
+is out anyways again me, I'll turn up. That I will,&mdash;though it was to
+be hung afterwards,&mdash;sooner than you'd be hurt by anything I'd been a
+doing."</p>
+
+<p>So they parted, as friends rather than as enemies, though the Vicar
+knew very well that the young man was wrong to go and leave his
+father and mother, and that in all probability he would fall at once
+into some bad mode of living. But the conversation about Carry
+Brattle had so softened their hearts to each other, that Mr. Fenwick
+found it impossible to be severe. And he knew, moreover, that no
+severity of expression would have been of avail. He couldn't have
+stopped Sam from going had he preached to him for an hour.</p>
+
+<p>After that the building of the chapel went on apace, the large
+tradesman from Salisbury being quicker in his work than could have
+been the small tradesman belonging to Bullhampton. In February there
+came a hard frost, and still the bricklayers were at work. It was
+said in Bullhampton that walls built as those walls were being built
+could never stand. But then it might be that these reports were
+spread by Mr. Grimes, that the fanatical ardour of the Salisbury
+Baptist lent something to the rapidity of his operations, and that
+the Bullhampton feeling in favour of Mr. Fenwick and the Church
+Establishment added something to the bitterness of the prevailing
+criticisms. At any rate, the walls of the new chapel were mounting
+higher and higher all through February, and by the end of the first
+week in March there stood immediately opposite to the Vicarage gate a
+hideously ugly building, roofless, doorless, windowless;&mdash;with those
+horrid words,&mdash;"New Salem, <span class="nowrap">186&mdash;"</span>
+legibly inscribed on a visible
+stone inserted above the doorway, a thing altogether as objectionable
+to the eyes of a Church of England parish clergyman as the
+imagination of any friend or enemy could devise. We all know the
+abominable adjuncts of a new building,&mdash;the squalid half-used heaps
+of bad mortar, the eradicated grass, the truculent mud, the scattered
+brickbats, the remnants of timber, the debris of the workmen's
+dinners, the morsels of paper scattered through the dirt! There had
+from time to time been actual encroachments on the Vicarage grounds,
+and Mrs. Fenwick, having discovered that the paint had been injured
+on the Vicarage gate, had sent an angry message to the Salisbury
+Baptist. The Salisbury Baptist had apologised to Mr. Fenwick, saying
+that such things would happen in the building of houses, &amp;c., and Mr.
+Fenwick had assured him that the matter was of no consequence. He was
+not going to descend into the arena with the Salisbury Baptist. In
+this affair the Marquis of Trowbridge was his enemy, and with the
+Marquis he would fight, if there was to be any fight at all. He would
+stand at his gate and watch the work, and speak good-naturedly to the
+workmen; but he was in truth sick at heart. The thing, horrible as it
+was to him, so fascinated him that he could not keep his mind from
+it. During all this time it made his wife miserable. She had
+literally grown thin under the infliction of the new chapel. For more
+than a fortnight she had refused to visit the front gate of her own
+house. To and from church she always went by the garden wicket; but
+in going to the school, she had to make a long round to avoid the
+chapel,&mdash;and this round she made day after day. Fenwick himself,
+still hoping that there might be some power of fighting, had written
+to an enthusiastic archdeacon, a friend of his, who lived not very
+far distant. The Archdeacon had consulted the Bishop,&mdash;really
+troubled deeply about the matter,&mdash;and the Bishop had taken upon
+himself, with his own hands, to write words of mild remonstrance to
+the Marquis. "For the welfare of the parish generally," said the
+Bishop, "I venture to make this suggestion to your lordship, feeling
+sure that you will do anything that may not be unreasonable to
+promote the comfort of the parishioners." In this letter he made no
+allusion to his late correspondence with the Marquis as to the sins
+of the Vicar. Nor did the Marquis in his reply allude to the former
+correspondence. He expressed an opinion that the erection of a place
+of Christian worship on an open space outside the bounds of a
+clergyman's domain ought not to be held to be objectionable by that
+clergyman;&mdash;and that as he had already given the spot, he could not
+retract the gift. These letters, however, had been written before the
+first brick had been laid, and the world in that part of the country
+was of opinion that the Marquis might have retracted his gift. After
+this Mr. Fenwick found no ground whatever on which he could fight his
+battle. He could only stand at his gateway, and look at the thing as
+it rose above the ground, fascinated by its ugliness.</p>
+
+<p>He was standing there once, about a month or five weeks after his
+interview with Sam Brattle, just at the beginning of March, when he
+was accosted by the Squire. Mr. Gilmore, through the winter,&mdash;ever
+since he had heard that Mary Lowther's engagement with Walter
+Marrable had been broken off,&mdash;had lived very much alone. He had been
+pressed to come to the Vicarage, but had come but seldom, waiting
+patiently till the time should come when he might again ask Mary to
+be his wife. He was not so gloomy as he had been during the time the
+engagement had lasted, but still he was a man much altered from his
+former self. Now he came across the road, and spoke a word or two to
+his friend. "If I were you, Frank, I should not think so much about
+it."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, you would, old boy, if it touched you as it does me. It isn't
+that the chapel should be there. I could have built a chapel for them
+with my own hands on the same spot, if it had been necessary."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't see what there is to annoy you."</p>
+
+<p>"This annoys me,&mdash;that after all my endeavours, there should be
+people here, and many people, who find a gratification in doing that
+which they think I shall look upon as an annoyance. The sting is in
+their desire to sting, and in my inability to show them their error,
+either by stopping what they are doing, or by proving myself
+indifferent to it. It isn't the building itself, but the double
+disgrace of the building."</p>
+
+
+<p><a name="c37" id="c37"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>CHAPTER XXXVII.</h3>
+<h4>FEMALE MARTYRDOM.<br />&nbsp;</h4>
+
+
+<p>Early in February Captain Marrable went to Dunripple to stay with his
+uncle, Sir Gregory, and there he still was when the middle of March
+had come. News of his doings reached the ladies at Loring, but it
+reached them through hands which were not held to be worthy of a
+perfect belief,&mdash;at any rate, on Mary Lowther's part. Dunripple Park
+is in Warwickshire, and lies in the middle of a good hunting country.
+Now, according to Parson John, from whom these tidings came, Walter
+Marrable was hunting three days a week; and, as Sir Gregory himself
+did not keep hunters, Walter must have hired his horses,&mdash;so said
+Parson John, deploring that a nephew so poor in purse should have
+allowed himself to be led into such heavy expense. "He brought home a
+little ready money with him," said the parson; "and I suppose he
+thinks he may have his fling as long as that lasts." No doubt Parson
+John, in saying this, was desirous of proving to Mary that Walter
+Marrable was not dying of love, and was, upon the whole, leading a
+jolly life, in spite of the little misfortune that had happened to
+him. But Mary understood all this quite as well as did Parson John
+himself; and simply declined to believe the hunting three days a
+week. She said not a word about it, however, either to him or to her
+aunt. If Walter could amuse himself, so much the better; but she was
+quite sure that, at such a period of his life as this, he would not
+spend his money recklessly. The truth lay between Parson John's
+stories and poor Mary's belief. Walter Marrable was hunting,&mdash;perhaps
+twice a week, hiring a horse occasionally, but generally mounted by
+his uncle, Sir Gregory. He hunted; but did so after a lugubrious
+fashion, as became a man with a broken heart, who was laden with many
+sorrows, and had just been separated from his lady love for ever and
+ever. But still, when there came anything good, in the way of a run,
+and when our Captain could get near to hounds, he enjoyed the fun,
+and forgot his troubles for a while. Is a man to know no joy because
+he has an ache at his heart?</p>
+
+<p>In this matter of disappointed and, as it were, disjointed affection,
+men are very different from women, and for the most part, much more
+happily circumstanced. Such sorrow a woman feeds;&mdash;but a man starves
+it. Many will say that a woman feeds it, because she cannot but feed
+it; and that a man starves it, because his heart is of the starving
+kind. But, in truth, the difference comes not so much from the inner
+heart, as from the outer life. It is easier to feed a sorrow upon
+needle-and-thread and novels, than it is upon lawyers' papers, or
+even the out-a-door occupations of a soldier home upon leave who has
+no work to do. Walter Marrable told himself again and again that he
+was very unhappy about his cousin, but he certainly did not suffer in
+that matter as Mary suffered. He had that other sorrow, arising from
+his father's cruel usage of him, to divide his thoughts, and probably
+thought quite as much of the manner in which he had been robbed, as
+he did of the loss of his love.</p>
+
+<p>But poor Mary was, in truth, very wretched. When a girl asks herself
+that question,&mdash;what shall she do with her life? it is so natural
+that she should answer it by saying that she will get married, and
+give her life to somebody else. It is a woman's one career&mdash;let women
+rebel against the edict as they may; and though there may be
+word-rebellion here and there, women learn the truth early in their
+lives. And women know it later in life when they think of their
+girls; and men know it, too, when they have to deal with their
+daughters. Girls, too, now acknowledge aloud that they have learned
+the lesson; and Saturday Reviewers and others blame them for their
+lack of modesty in doing so,&mdash;most unreasonably, most uselessly, and,
+as far as the influence of such censors may go, most perniciously.
+Nature prompts the desire, the world acknowledges its ubiquity,
+circumstances show that it is reasonable, the whole theory of
+creation requires it; but it is required that the person most
+concerned should falsely repudiate it, in order that a mock modesty
+may be maintained, in which no human being can believe! Such is the
+theory of the censors who deal heavily with our Englishwomen of the
+present day. Our daughters should be educated to be wives, but,
+forsooth, they should never wish to be wooed! The very idea is but a
+remnant of the tawdry sentimentality of an age in which the mawkish
+insipidity of the women was the reaction from the vice of that
+preceding it. That our girls are in quest of husbands, and know well
+in what way their lines in life should be laid, is a fact which none
+can dispute. Let men be taught to recognise the same truth as regards
+themselves, and we shall cease to hear of the necessity of a new
+career for women.</p>
+
+<p>Mary Lowther, though she had never encountered condemnation as a
+husband-hunter, had learned all this, and was well aware that for her
+there was but one future mode of life that could be really blessed.
+She had eyes, and could see; and ears, and could hear. She could
+make,&mdash;indeed, she could not fail to make,&mdash;comparisons between her
+aunt and her dear friend, Mrs. Fenwick. She saw, and could not fail
+to see, that the life of the one was a starved, thin, poor
+life,&mdash;which, good as it was in its nature, reached but to few
+persons, and admitted but of few sympathies; whereas the other woman,
+by means of her position as a wife and a mother, increased her roots
+and spread out her branches, so that there was shade, and fruit, and
+beauty, and a place in which the birds might build their nests. Mary
+Lowther had longed to be a wife,&mdash;as do all girls healthy in mind and
+body; but she had found it to be necessary to her to love the man who
+was to become her husband. There had come to her a suitor recommended
+to her by all her friends,&mdash;recommended to her also by all outward
+circumstances,&mdash;and she had found that she did not love him! For a
+while she had been sorely perplexed, hardly knowing what it might be
+her duty to do, not understanding how it was that the man was
+indifferent to her, doubting whether, after all, the love of which
+she had dreamt was not a passion which might come after marriage,
+rather than before it,&mdash;but still fearing to run so great a hazard.
+She had doubted, feared, and had hitherto declined,&mdash;when that other
+lover had fallen in her way. Mr. Gilmore had wooed her for months
+without touching her heart. Then Walter Marrable had come and had
+conquered her almost in an hour. She had never felt herself disposed
+to play with Mr. Gilmore's hair, to lean against his shoulder, to be
+touched by his fingers,&mdash;never disposed to wait for his coming, or to
+regret his going. But she had hardly become acquainted with her
+cousin before his presence was a pleasure to her; and no sooner had
+he spoken to her of his love, than everything that concerned him was
+dear to her. The atmosphere that surrounded him was sweeter to her
+than the air elsewhere. All those little aids which a man gives to a
+woman were delightful to her when they came to her from his hands.
+She told herself that she had found the second half that was needed
+to make herself one whole; that she had become round and entire in
+joining herself to him; and she thought that she understood well why
+it had been that Mr. Gilmore had been nothing to her. As Mr. Fenwick
+was manifestly the husband appointed for his wife, so had Walter
+Marrable been appointed for her. And so there had come upon her a
+dreamy conviction that marriages are made in heaven. That question,
+whether they were to be poor or rich, to have enough or much less
+than enough for the comforts of life, was, no doubt, one of much
+importance; but, in the few happy days of her assured engagement, it
+was not allowed by her to interfere for a moment with the fact that
+she and Walter were intended, each to be the companion of the other,
+as long as they two might live.</p>
+
+<p>Then by degrees,&mdash;by degrees, though the process had been quick,&mdash;had
+fallen upon her that other conviction, that it was her duty to him to
+save him from the burdens of that life to which she herself had
+looked forward so fondly. At first she had said that he should judge
+of the necessity; swearing to herself that his judgment, let it be
+what it might, should be right to her. Then she had perceived that
+this was not sufficient;&mdash;that in this way there would be no escape
+for him;&mdash;that she herself must make the decision, and proclaim it.
+Very tenderly and very cautiously had she gone about her task;
+feeling her way to the fact that this separation, if it came from
+her, would be deemed expedient by him. That she would be right in all
+this, was her great resolve; that she might after all be wrong, her
+constant fear. She, too, had heard of public censors, of the girl of
+the period, and of the forward indelicacy with which women of the age
+were charged. She knew not why, but it seemed to her that the laws of
+the world around her demanded more of such rectitude from a woman
+than from a man, and, if it might be possible to her, she would
+comply with these laws. She had convinced herself, forming her
+judgment from every tone of his voice, from every glance of his eye,
+from every word that fell from his lips, that this separation would
+be expedient for him. And then, assuring herself that the task should
+be hers, and not his, she had done it. She had done it, and, counting
+up the cost afterwards, she had found herself to be broken in pieces.
+That wholeness and roundness, in which she had rejoiced, had gone
+from her altogether. She would try to persuade herself that she could
+live as her aunt had lived, and yet be whole and round. She tried,
+but knew that she failed. The life to which she had looked forward
+had been the life of a married woman; and now, as that was taken from
+her, she could be but a thing broken, a fragment of humanity, created
+for use, but never to be used.</p>
+
+<p>She bore all this well, for a while,&mdash;and indeed never ceased to bear
+it well, to the eyes of those around her. When Parson John told her
+of Walter's hunting, she laughed, and said that she hoped he would
+distinguish himself. When her aunt on one occasion congratulated her,
+telling her that she had done well and nobly, she bore the
+congratulation with a smile and a kind word. But she thought about it
+much, and within the chambers of her own bosom there were complaints
+made that the play which had been played between him and her during
+the last few months should for her have been such a very tragedy,
+while for him the matter was no more than a melodrama, touched with a
+pleasing melancholy. He had not been made a waif upon the waters by
+the misfortune of a few weeks, by the error of a lawyer, by a
+mistaken calculation,&mdash;not even by the crime of his father. His
+manhood was, at any rate, perfect to him. Though he might be a poor
+man, he was still a man with his hands free, and with something
+before him which he could do. She understood, too, that the rough
+work of his life would be such that it would rub away, perhaps too
+quickly, the impression of his late love, and enable him hereafter to
+love another. But for her,&mdash;for her there could be nothing but
+memory, regrets, and a life which would simply be a waiting for
+death. But she had done nothing wrong,&mdash;and she must console herself
+with that, if consolation could then be found.</p>
+
+<p>Then there came to her a letter from Mrs. Fenwick which moved her
+much. It was the second which she had received from her friend since
+she had made it known that she was no longer engaged to her cousin.
+In her former letter Mrs. Fenwick had simply expressed her opinion
+that Mary had done rightly, and had, at the same time, promised that
+she would write again, more at length, when the passing by of a few
+weeks should have so far healed the first agony of the wound, as to
+make it possible for her to speak of the future. Mary, dreading this
+second letter, had done nothing to elicit it; but at last it came.
+And as it had some effect on Mary Lowther's future conduct, it shall
+be given to the <span class="nowrap">reader:&mdash;</span><br />&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+<blockquote>
+<p class="jright">Bullhampton Vicarage, March 12, 186&mdash;.</p>
+
+<p class="noindent"><span class="smallcaps">Dearest Mary</span>,</p>
+
+<p>I do so wish you were here, if it were only to share our
+misery with us. I did not think that so small a thing as
+the building of a wretched chapel could have put me out so
+much, and made me so uncomfortable as this has done. Frank
+says that it is simply the feeling of being beaten,&mdash;the
+insult not the injury, which is the grievance; but they
+both rankle with me. I hear the click of the trowel every
+hour, and though I never go near the front gate, yet I
+know that it is all muddy and foul with brickbats and
+mortar. I don't think that anything so cruel and unjust
+was ever done before; and the worst of it is that Frank,
+though he hates it just as much as I do, does preach such
+sermons to me about the wickedness of caring for small
+evils. 'Suppose you had to go to it every Sunday
+yourself,' he said the other day, trying to make me
+understand what a real depth of misery there is in the
+world. 'I shouldn't mind that half so much,' I answered.
+Then he bade me try it,&mdash;which wasn't fair because he
+knows I can't. However, they say it will all tumble down
+because it has been built so badly.</p>
+
+<p>I have been waiting to hear from you, but I can understand
+why you should not write. You do not wish to speak of your
+cousin, or to write without speaking of him. Your aunt has
+written to me twice, as doubtless you know, and has told
+me that you are well, only more silent than heretofore.
+Dearest Mary, do write to me, and tell me what is in your
+heart. I will not ask you to come to us,&mdash;not
+yet,&mdash;because of our neighbour; but I do think that if you
+were here I could do you good. I know so well, or fancy
+that I know so well, the current in which your thoughts
+are running! You have had a wound, and think that
+therefore you must be a cripple for life. But it is not
+so; and such thoughts, if not wicked, are at least wrong.
+I would that it had been otherwise. I would that you had
+not met your
+<span class="nowrap">cousin.&mdash;</span><br />&nbsp;</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+
+<p class="noindent">"So would not
+I," said Mary to herself; but as she said it she knew
+that she was wrong. Of course it would be for her welfare, and for
+his too, if his heart was as hers, that she should never have seen
+<span class="nowrap">him.&mdash;</span><br />&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+<blockquote>
+<p class="noindent">But because
+you have met him, and have fancied that you
+and he would be all in all together, you will be wrong
+indeed if you let that fancy ruin your future life. Or if
+you encourage yourself to feel that, because you have
+loved one man from whom you are necessarily parted,
+therefore you should never allow yourself to become
+attached to another, you will indeed be teaching yourself
+an evil lesson. I think I can understand the arguments
+with which you may perhaps endeavour to persuade your
+heart that its work of loving has been done, and should
+not be renewed; but I am quite sure that they are false
+and inhuman. The Indian, indeed, allows herself to be
+burned through a false idea of personal devotion; and if
+that idea be false in a widow, how much falser is it in
+one who has never been a wife.</p>
+
+<p>You know what have ever been our wishes. They are the same
+now as heretofore; and his constancy is of that nature,
+that nothing will ever change it. I am persuaded that it
+would have been unchanged, even if you had married your
+cousin, though in that case he would have been studious to
+keep out of your way. I do not mean to press his claims at
+present. I have told him that he should be patient, and
+that if the thing be to him as important as he makes it,
+he should be content to wait. He replied that he would
+wait. I ask for no word from you at present on this
+subject. It will be much better that there should be no
+word. But it is right that you should know that there is
+one who loves you with a devotion which nothing can alter.</p>
+
+<p>I will only add to this my urgent prayer that you will not
+make too much to yourself of your own misfortune, or allow
+yourself to think that because this and that have taken
+place, therefore everything must be over. It is hard to
+say who makes the greatest mistakes, women who treat their
+own selves with too great a reverence, or they who do so
+with too little.</p>
+
+<p>Frank sends his kindest love. Write to me at once, if only
+to condole with me about the chapel.</p>
+
+<p class="ind10">Most affectionately yours,</p>
+
+<p class="ind15"><span class="smallcaps">Janet Fenwick</span>.</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">My sister
+and Mr. Quickenham are coming here for Easter
+week, and I have still some hopes of getting my
+brother-in-law to put us up to some way of fighting the
+Marquis and his myrmidons. I have always heard it said
+that there was no case in which Mr. Quickenham couldn't
+make a fight.<br />&nbsp;</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+
+<p>Mary Lowther understood well the whole purport of this letter,&mdash;all
+that was meant as well as all that was written. She had told herself
+again and again that there had been that between her and the lover
+she had lost,&mdash;tender embraces, warm kisses, a bird-like pressure of
+the plumage,&mdash;which alone should make her deem it unfit that she
+should be to another man as she had been to him, even should her
+heart allow it. It was against this doctrine that her friend had
+preached, with more or less of explicitness in her sermon. And how
+was the truth? If she could take a lesson on that subject from any
+human being in the world, she would take it from her friend Janet
+Fenwick. But she rebelled against the preaching, and declared to
+herself that her friend had never been tried, and therefore did not
+understand the case. Must she not be guided by her own feelings, and
+did she not feel that she could never lay her head on the shoulder of
+another lover without blushing at her memories of the past?</p>
+
+<p>And yet how hard was it all! It was not the joys of young love that
+she regretted in her present mood, not the loss of those soft
+delights of which she had suddenly found herself to be so capable;
+but that all the world should be dark and dreary before her! And he
+could hunt, could dance, could work,&mdash;no doubt could love again! How
+happy would it be for her if her reason would allow her to be a Roman
+Catholic, and a nun!</p>
+
+
+<p><a name="c38" id="c38"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>CHAPTER XXXVIII.</h3>
+<h4>A LOVER'S MADNESS.<br />&nbsp;</h4>
+
+
+<p>The letter from Mrs. Fenwick, which the reader has just seen, was the
+immediate effect of a special visit which Mr. Gilmore had made to
+her. On the 10th of March he had come to her with a settled purpose,
+pointing out to her that he had now waited a certain number of months
+since he had heard of the rupture between Mary and her cousin, naming
+the exact period which Mrs. Fenwick had bade him wait before he
+should move again in the matter, and asking her whether he might not
+now venture to take some step. Mrs. Fenwick had felt it to be unfair
+that her very words should be quoted against her, as to the three or
+four months, feeling that she had said three or four instead of six
+or seven to soften the matter to her friend; but, nevertheless, she
+had been induced to write to Mary Lowther.</p>
+
+<p>"I was thinking that perhaps you might ask her to come to you again,"
+Mr. Gilmore had said when Mrs. Fenwick rebuked him for his
+impatience. "If you did that, the thing might come on naturally."</p>
+
+<p>"But she wouldn't come if I did ask her."</p>
+
+<p>"Because she hates me so much that she will not venture to come near
+me?"</p>
+
+<p>"What nonsense that is, Harry. It has nothing to do with hating. If I
+thought that she even disliked you, I should tell you so, believing
+that it would be for the best. But of course if I asked her here just
+at present, she could not but remember that you are our nearest
+neighbour, and feel that she was pressed to come with some reference
+to your hopes."</p>
+
+<p>"And therefore she would not come?"</p>
+
+<p>"Exactly; and if you will think of it, how could it be otherwise?
+Wait till he is in India. Wait at any rate till the summer, and then
+Frank and I will do our best to get her here."</p>
+
+<p>"I will wait," said Mr. Gilmore, and immediately took his leave, as
+though there were no other subject of conversation now possible to
+him.</p>
+
+<p>Since his return from Loring, Mr. Gilmore's life at his own house had
+been quite secluded. Even the Fenwicks had hardly seen him, though
+they lived so near to him. He had rarely been at church, had seen no
+company at home since his uncle, the prebendary, had left him, and
+had not dined even at the Vicarage more than once or twice. All this
+had of course been frequently discussed between Mr. and Mrs. Fenwick,
+and had made the Vicar very unhappy. He had expressed a fear that his
+friend would be driven half crazy by a foolish indulgence in a
+hopeless passion, and had suggested that it might perhaps be for the
+best that Gilmore should let his place and travel abroad for two or
+three years, so that, in that way, his disappointment might be
+forgotten. But Mrs. Fenwick still hoped better things than this. She
+probably thought more of Mary Lowther than she did of Harry Gilmore,
+and still believed that a cure for both their sorrows might be found,
+if one would only be patient, and the other would not despair.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Gilmore had promised that he would wait, and then Mrs. Fenwick
+had written her letter. To this there came a very quick answer. In
+respect to the trouble about the chapel, Mary Lowther was sympathetic
+and droll, as she would have been had there been upon her the weight
+of no love misfortune. "She had trust," she said, "in Mr. Quickenham,
+who no doubt would succeed in harassing the enemy, even though he
+might be unable to obtain ultimate conquest. And then there seemed to
+be a fair prospect that the building would fall of itself, which
+surely would be a great triumph. And, after all, might it not fairly
+be hoped that the pleasantness of the Vicarage garden, which Mr.
+Puddleham must see every time he visited his chapel, might be quite
+as galling and as vexatious to him as would be the ugliness of the
+Methodist building to the Fenwicks?</p>
+
+<p>"You should take comfort in the reflection that his sides will be
+quite as full of thorns as your own," said Mary; "and perhaps there
+may come some blessed opportunity for crushing him altogether by
+heaping hot coals of fire on his head. Offer him the use of the
+Vicarage lawn for one of his school tea-parties, and that, I should
+think, would about finish him."</p>
+
+<p>This was all very well, and was written on purpose to show to Mrs.
+Fenwick that Mary could still be funny in spite of her troubles; but
+the pith of the letter, as Mrs. Fenwick well understood, lay in the
+few words of the last paragraph.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't suppose, dear, that I am going to die of a broken heart. I
+mean to live and to be as happy as any of you. But you must let me go
+on in my own way. I am not at all sure that being married is not more
+trouble than it is worth."</p>
+
+<p>That she was deceiving herself in saying this Mary knew well enough;
+and Mrs. Fenwick, too, guessed that it was so. Nevertheless, it was
+plain enough that nothing more could be said about Mr. Gilmore just
+at present.</p>
+
+<p>"You ought to blow him up, and make him come to us," Mrs. Fenwick
+said to her husband.</p>
+
+<p>"It is all very well to say that, but one man can't blow another up,
+as women do. Men don't talk to each other about the things that
+concern them nearly,&mdash;unless it be about money."</p>
+
+<p>"What do they talk about, then?"</p>
+
+<p>"About matters that don't concern them nearly;&mdash;game, politics, and
+the state of the weather. If I were to mention Mary's name to him, he
+would feel it to be an impertinence. You can say what you please."</p>
+
+<p>Soon after this, Gilmore came again to the Vicarage; but he was
+careful to come when the Vicar would not be there. He sauntered into
+the garden by the little gate from the churchyard, and showed himself
+at the drawing-room window, without going round to the front door. "I
+never go to the front now," said Mrs. Fenwick; "I have only once been
+through the gate since they began to build."</p>
+
+<p>"Is not that very inconvenient?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course it is. When we came home from dining at Sir Thomas's the
+other day, I had myself put down at the church gate, and walked all
+the way round, though it was nearly pitch dark. Do come in, Harry."</p>
+
+
+<div class="center"><a name="il13" id="il13"></a>
+<table style="margin: 0 auto" cellpadding="4px">
+  <tr>
+    <td align="center">
+      <a href="images/il13.jpg">
+      <img src="images/il13-t.jpg" height="500"
+      alt='"Do come in, Harry."' /></a>
+    </td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="center">
+      <span class="caption">"Do come in, Harry."<br />
+      Click to <a href="images/il13.jpg">ENLARGE</a></span>
+    </td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Then Mr. Gilmore came in, and seated himself before the fire. Mrs.
+Fenwick understood his moods so well, that she would not say a word
+to hurry him. If he chose to talk about Mary Lowther, she knew very
+well what she would say to him; but she would not herself introduce
+the subject. She spoke for awhile about the Brattles, saying that the
+old man had suffered much since his son had gone from him. Sam had
+left Bullhampton at the end of January, never having returned to the
+mill after his visit to the Vicar, and had not been heard of since.
+Gilmore, however, had not been to see his tenant; and though he
+expressed an interest about the Brattles, had manifestly come to the
+Vicarage with the object of talking upon matters more closely
+interesting to himself.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you write to Loring, Mrs. Fenwick?" he asked at last.</p>
+
+<p>"I wrote to Mary soon after you were last here."</p>
+
+<p>"And has she answered you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; she wrote again almost at once. She could not but write, as I
+had said so much to her about the chapel."</p>
+
+<p>"She did not allude to&mdash;anything else, then?"</p>
+
+<p>"I can't quite say that, Harry. I had written to her out of a very
+full heart, telling her what I thought as to her future life
+generally, and just alluding to our wishes respecting you."</p>
+
+<p>"Well?"</p>
+
+<p>"She said just what might have been expected,&mdash;that for the present
+she would rather be let alone."</p>
+
+<p>"I have let her alone. I have neither spoken to her nor written to
+her. She does not mean to say that I have troubled her?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course you have not troubled her,&mdash;but she knows what we all
+mean."</p>
+
+<p>"I have waited all the winter, Mrs. Fenwick, and have said not a
+word. How long was it that she knew her cousin before she was engaged
+to him?"</p>
+
+<p>"What has that to do with it? You know what our wishes are; but,
+indeed, indeed, nothing can be done by hurrying her."</p>
+
+<p>"She was engaged to that man, and the engagement broken off all
+within a month. It was no more than a dream."</p>
+
+<p>"But the remembrance of such dreams will not fade away quickly. Let
+us hope that hereafter it may be as a dream;&mdash;but time must be
+allowed to efface the idea of its reality."</p>
+
+<p>"Time;&mdash;yes; but cannot we arrange some plan for the future? Cannot
+something be done? I thought you said you would ask her to come
+here?"</p>
+
+<p>"So I did,&mdash;but not yet."</p>
+
+<p>"Why shouldn't she come now? You needn't ask because I am here. There
+is no saying whom she may meet, and then my chance will be gone
+again."</p>
+
+<p>"Is that all you know about women, Harry? Do you think that the girl
+whom you love so dearly will take up with one man after another in
+that fashion?"</p>
+
+<p>"Who can say? She was not very long in taking up, as you call it,
+with Captain Marrable. I should be happier if she were here, even if
+I did not see her."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course you would see her, and of course you would propose
+again,&mdash;and of course she would refuse you."</p>
+
+<p>"Then there is no hope?"</p>
+
+<p>"I do not say that. Wait till the summer comes; and then, if I can
+influence her, we will have her here. If you find that remaining at
+the Privets all alone is wearisome to
+<span class="nowrap">you&mdash;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"Of course it is wearisome."</p>
+
+<p>"Then go up to London&mdash;or abroad&mdash;or anywhere for a change. Take some
+occupation in hand and stick to it."</p>
+
+<p>"That is so easily said, Mrs. Fenwick."</p>
+
+<p>"No man ever did anything by moping; and you mope. I know I am
+speaking plainly, and you may be angry with me, if you please."</p>
+
+<p>"I am not at all angry with you; but I think you hardly understand."</p>
+
+<p>"I do understand," said Mrs. Fenwick, speaking with all the energy
+she could command; "and I am most anxious to do all that you wish.
+But it cannot be done in a day. If I were to ask her now, she would
+not come; and if she came it would not be for your good. Wait till
+the summer. You may be sure that no harm will be done by a little
+patience."</p>
+
+<p>Then he went away, declaring again that he would wait with patience;
+but saying, at the same time, that he would remain at home. "As for
+going to London," he said, "I should do nothing there. When I find
+that there is no chance left, then probably I shall go abroad."</p>
+
+<p>"It is my belief," said the Vicar, that evening, when his wife told
+him what had occurred, "that she will never have him; not because she
+does not like him, or could not learn to like him if he were as other
+men are, but simply because he is so unreasonably unhappy about her.
+No woman was ever got by that sort of puling and whining love. If it
+were not that I think him crazy, I should say that it was unmanly."</p>
+
+<p>"But he is crazy."</p>
+
+<p>"And will be still worse before he has done with it. Anything would
+be good now which would take him away from Bullhampton. It would be a
+mercy that his house should be burned down, or that some great loss
+should fall upon him. He sits there at home, and does nothing. He
+will not even look after the farm. He pretends to read, but I don't
+believe that he does even that."</p>
+
+<p>"And all because he is really in love, Frank."</p>
+
+<p>"I am very glad that I have never been in love with the same
+reality."</p>
+
+<p>"You never had any need, sir. The plums fell into your mouth too
+easily."</p>
+
+<p>"Plums shouldn't be too difficult," said the Vicar, "or they lose
+their sweetness."</p>
+
+<p>A few days after this Mr. Fenwick was standing at his own gate,
+watching the building of the chapel and talking to the men, when
+Fanny Brattle from the mill came up to him. He would stand there by
+the hour at a time, and had made quite a friendship with the foreman
+of the builder from Salisbury, although the foreman, like his master,
+was a Dissenter, and had come into the parish as an enemy. All
+Bullhampton knew how infinite was the disgust of the Vicar at what
+was being done; and that Mrs. Fenwick felt it so strongly, that she
+would not even go in and out of her own gate. All Bullhampton was
+aware that Mr. Puddleham spoke openly of the Vicar as his enemy,&mdash;in
+spite of the peaches and cabbages on which the young Puddlehams had
+been nourished; and that the Methodist minister had, more than once
+within the last month or two, denounced his brother of the
+Established Church from his own pulpit. All Bullhampton was talking
+of the building of the chapel,&mdash;some abusing the Marquis and Mr.
+Puddleham and the Salisbury builder; others, on the other hand,
+declaring that it was very good that the Establishment should have a
+fall. Nevertheless there Mr. Fenwick would stand and chat with the
+men, fascinated after a fashion by the misfortune which had come upon
+him. Mr. Packer, the Marquis's steward, had seen him there, and had
+endeavoured to slink away unobserved,&mdash;for Mr. Packer was somewhat
+ashamed of the share he had had in the matter,&mdash;but Mr. Fenwick had
+called to him, and had spoken to him of the progress of the building.</p>
+
+<p>"Grimes never could have done it so fast," said the Vicar.</p>
+
+<p>"Well,&mdash;not so fast, Mr. Fenwick, certainly."</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose it won't signify about the frost?" said the Vicar. "I
+should be inclined to think that the mortar will want repointing."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Packer had nothing to say to this. He was not responsible for the
+building. He endeavoured to explain that the Marquis had nothing to
+do with the work, and had simply given the land.</p>
+
+<p>"Which was all that he could do," said the Vicar, laughing.</p>
+
+<p>It was on the same day and while Packer was still standing close to
+him, that Fanny Brattle accosted him. When he had greeted the young
+woman and perceived that she wished to speak to him, he withdrew
+within his own gate, and asked her whether there was anything that he
+could do for her. She had a letter in her hand, and after a little
+hesitation she asked him to read it. It was from her brother, and had
+reached her by private means. A young man had brought it to her when
+her father was in the mill, and had then gone off, declining to wait
+for any answer.</p>
+
+<p>"Father, sir, knows nothing about it as yet," she said.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Fenwick took the letter and read it. It was as
+<span class="nowrap">follows:&mdash;</span><br />&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+<blockquote>
+<p class="noindent"><span class="smallcaps">Dear Sister</span>,</p>
+
+<p>I want you to help me a little, for things is very bad
+with me. And it is not for me neither, or I'd sooner
+starve nor ax for a sixpence from the mill. But Carry is
+bad too, and if you've got a trifle or so, I think you'd
+be of a mind to send it. But don't tell father, on no
+account. I looks to you not to tell father. Tell mother,
+if you will; but I looks to her not to mention it to
+father. If it be so you have two pounds by you, send it to
+me in a letter, to the care of<br />&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+<p class="noindent"><span class="ind4">Muster Thomas Craddock,</span><br />
+<span class="ind6">Number 5, Crooked Arm Yard,</span><br />
+<span class="ind8">Cowcross Street,</span><br />
+<span class="ind10">City of London.</span><br />&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+<p>My duty to mother, but don't say a word to father,
+whatever you do. Carry don't live nowhere there, nor they
+don't know her.</p>
+
+<p class="ind10">Your affectionate brother,</p>
+
+<p class="ind15"><span class="smallcaps">Sam
+Brattle</span>.<br />&nbsp;</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+
+<p>"Have you told your father, Fanny?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not a word, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"Nor your mother?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh yes, sir. She has read the letter, and thinks I had better come
+to you to ask what we should do."</p>
+
+<p>"Have you got the money, Fanny?"</p>
+
+<p>Fanny Brattle explained that she had in her pocket something over the
+sum named, but that money was so scarce with them now at the mill,
+that she could hardly send it without her father's knowledge. She
+would not, she said, be afraid to send it and then to tell her father
+afterwards. The Vicar considered the matter for some time, standing
+with the open letter in his hand, and then he gave his advice.</p>
+
+<p>"Come into the house, Fanny," he said, "and write a line to your
+brother, and then get a money order at the post-office for four
+pounds, and send it to your brother; and tell him that I lend it to
+him till times shall be better with him. Do not give him your
+father's money without your father's leave. Sam will pay me some day,
+unless I be mistaken in him."</p>
+
+<p>Then Fanny Brattle with many grateful thanks did as the Vicar bade
+her.</p>
+
+
+<p><a name="c39" id="c39"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>CHAPTER XXXIX.</h3>
+<h4>THE THREE HONEST MEN.<br />&nbsp;</h4>
+
+
+<p>The Vicar of Bullhampton was&mdash;a "good sort of fellow." In praise of
+him to this extent it is hoped that the reader will cordially agree.
+But it cannot be denied that he was the most imprudent of men. He had
+done very much that was imprudent in respect to the Marquis of
+Trowbridge; and since he had been at Bullhampton had been imprudent
+in nearly everything that he had done regarding the Brattles. He was
+well aware that the bold words which he had spoken to the Marquis had
+been dragon's teeth sown by himself, and that they had sprung up from
+the ground in the shape of the odious brick building which now stood
+immediately in face of his own Vicarage gate. Though he would smile
+and be droll, and talk to the workmen, he hated that building quite
+as bitterly as did his wife. And now, in regard to the Brattles,
+there came upon him a great trouble. About a week after he had lent
+the four pounds to Fanny on Sam's behalf, there came to him a dirty
+note from Salisbury, written by Sam himself, in which he was told
+that Carry Brattle was now at the Three Honest Men, a public-house in
+one of the suburbs of the city, waiting there till Mr. Fenwick should
+find a home for her,&mdash;in accordance with his promise given to her
+brother. Sam, in his letter, had gone on to explain that it would be
+well that Mr. Fenwick should visit the Three Honest Men speedily, as
+otherwise there would be a bill there which neither Carry nor Sam
+would be able to defray. Poor Sam's letter was bald, and they who did
+not understand his position might have called it bold. He wrote to
+the Vicar as though the Vicar's coming to Salisbury for the required
+purpose was a matter of course; and demanded a home for his sister
+without any reference to her future mode of life, or power of earning
+her bread, as though it was the Vicar's manifest duty to provide such
+home. And then that caution in regard to the bill was rather a threat
+than anything else. If you don't take her quickly from the Three
+Honest Men there'll be the very mischief of a bill for you to pay.
+That was the meaning of the caution, and so the Vicar understood it.</p>
+
+<p>But Mr. Fenwick, though he was imprudent, was neither unreasonable
+nor unintelligent. He had told Sam Brattle that he would provide a
+home for Carry, if Sam would find his sister and induce her to accept
+the offer. Sam had gone to work, and had done his part. Having done
+it, he was right to claim from the Vicar his share of the
+performance. And then, was it not a matter of course that Carry, when
+found, should be without means to pay her own expenses? Was it to be
+supposed that a girl in her position would have money by her. And had
+not Mr. Fenwick known the truth about their poverty when he had given
+those four pounds to Fanny Brattle to be sent up to Sam in London?
+Mr. Fenwick was both reasonable and intelligent as to all this; and,
+though he felt that he was in trouble, did not for a moment think of
+denying his responsibility, or evading the performance of his
+promise. He must find a home for poor Carry, and pay any bill at the
+Three Honest Men which he might find standing there in her name.</p>
+
+<p>Of course he told his trouble to his wife; and of course he was
+scolded for the promise he had given. "But, my dear Frank, if for
+her, why not for others; and how is it possible?"</p>
+
+<p>"For her and not for others, because she is an old friend, a
+neighbour's child, and one of the parish." That question was easily
+answered.</p>
+
+<p>"But how is it possible, Frank? Of course one would do anything that
+it is possible to save her. What I mean is, that one would do it for
+all of them, if only it were possible."</p>
+
+<p>"If you can do it for one, will not even that be much?"</p>
+
+<p>"But what is to be done? Who will take her? Will she go into a
+reformatory?"</p>
+
+<p>"I fear not."</p>
+
+<p>"There are so many, and I do not know how they are to be treated
+except in a body. Where can you find a home for her?"</p>
+
+<p>"She has a married sister, Janet."</p>
+
+<p>"Who would not speak to her, or let her inside the door of her house!
+Surely, Frank, you know the unforgiving nature of women of that class
+for such sin as poor Carry Brattle's?"</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder whether they ever say their prayers," said the Vicar.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course they do. Mrs. Jay, no doubt, is a religious woman. But it
+is permitted to them not to forgive that sin."</p>
+
+<p>"By what law?"</p>
+
+<p>"By the law of custom. It is all very well, Frank, but you can't
+fight against it. At any rate, you can't ignore it till it has been
+fought against and conquered. And it is useful. It keeps women from
+going astray."</p>
+
+<p>"You think, then, that nothing should be done for this poor creature,
+who fell so piteously, with so small a sin?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have not said so. But when you promised her a home, where did you
+think of finding one for her? Her only fitting home is with her
+mother, and you know that her father will not take her there."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Fenwick said nothing more at that moment, not having clearly made
+up his mind as to what he might best do; but he had before his eyes,
+dimly, a plan by which he thought it possible that he might force
+Carry Brattle on her father's heart. If this plan might be carried
+out, he would take her to the mill-house and seat her in the room in
+which the family lived, and then bring the old man in from his work.
+It might be that Jacob Brattle, in his wrath, would turn with
+violence upon the man who had dared thus to interfere in the affairs
+of his family; but he would certainly offer no rough usage to the
+poor girl. Fenwick knew the man well enough to be sure that he would
+not lay his hands in anger upon a woman.</p>
+
+<p>But something must be done at once,&mdash;something before any such plan
+as that which was running through his brain could be matured and
+carried into execution. There was Carry at the Three Honest Men, and,
+for aught the Vicar knew, her brother staying with her,&mdash;with his,
+the Vicar's credit, pledged for their maintenance. It was quite clear
+that something must be done. He had applied to his wife, and his wife
+did not know how to help him. He had suggested the wife of the
+ironmonger at Warminster as the proper guardian for the poor child,
+and his own wife had at once made him understand that this was
+impractical. Indeed, how was it possible that such a one as Carry
+Brattle should be kept out of sight and stowed away in an open
+hardware-shop in a provincial town? The properest place for her would
+be in the country, on some farm; and, so thinking, he determined to
+apply to the girl's eldest brother.</p>
+
+<p>George Brattle was a prosperous man, living on a large farm near
+Fordingbridge, ten or twelve miles the other side of Salisbury. Of
+him the Vicar knew very little, and of his wife nothing. That the man
+had been married fourteen or fifteen years, and had a family growing
+up, the Vicar did know; and, knowing it, feared that Mrs. Brattle of
+Startup, as their farm was called, would not be willing to receive
+this proposed new inmate. But he would try. He would go on to Startup
+after having seen Carry at the Three Honest Men, and use what
+eloquence he could command for the occasion.</p>
+
+<p>He drove himself over on the next day to meet an early train, and was
+in Salisbury by nine o'clock. He had to ask his way to the Three
+Honest Men, and at last had some difficulty in finding the house. It
+was a small beershop, in a lane on the very outskirts of the city,
+and certainly seemed to him, as he looked at it, to be as
+disreputable a house, in regard to its outward appearance, as ever he
+had proposed to enter. It was a brick building of two stories, with a
+door in the middle of it which stood open, and a red curtain hanging
+across the window on the left-hand side. Three men dressed like
+navvies were leaning against the door-posts. There is no sign,
+perhaps, which gives to a house of this class so disreputable an
+appearance as red curtains hung across the window; and yet there is
+no other colour for pot-house curtains that has any popularity. The
+one fact probably explains the other. A drinking-room with a blue or
+a brown curtain would offer no attraction to the thirsty navvy who
+likes to have his thirst indulged without criticism. But, in spite of
+the red curtain, Fenwick entered the house, and asked the uncomely
+woman at the bar after Sam Brattle. Was there a man named Sam Brattle
+staying there;&mdash;a man with a sister?</p>
+
+<p>Then were let loose against the unfortunate clergyman the floodgates
+of a drunken woman's angry tongue. It was not only that the landlady
+of the Three Honest Men was very drunk, but also that she was very
+angry. Sam Brattle and his sister had been there, but they had been
+turned out of the house. There had manifestly been some great row,
+and Carry Brattle was spoken of with all the worst terms of reproach
+which one woman can heap upon the name of another. The mistress of
+the Three Honest Men was a married woman,&mdash;and, as far as that went,
+respectable; whereas poor Carry was not married, and certainly not
+respectable. Something of her past history had been known. She had
+been called names which she could not repudiate, and the truth of
+which even her brother on her behalf could not deny; and then she had
+been turned into the street. So much Mr. Fenwick learned from the
+drunken woman, and nothing more he could learn. When he asked after
+Carry's present address the woman jeered at him, and accused him of
+base purposes in coming after such a one. She stood with arms akimbo
+in the passage, and said she would raise the neighbourhood on him.
+She was drunk, and dirty, as foul a thing as the eye could look upon;
+every other word was an oath, and no phrase used by the lowest of men
+in their lowest moments was too hot or too bad for her woman's
+tongue; and yet there was the indignation of outraged virtue in her
+demeanour and in her language, because this stranger had come to her
+door asking after a girl who had been led astray. Our Vicar cared
+nothing for the neighbourhood, and, indeed, cared very little for the
+woman at all,&mdash;except in so far as she disgusted him; but he did care
+much at finding that he could obtain no clue to her whom he was
+seeking. The woman would not even tell him when the girl had left her
+house, or give him any assistance towards finding her. He had at
+first endeavoured to mollify the virago by offering to pay the amount
+of any expenses which might have been left unsettled; but even on
+this score he could obtain no consideration. She continued to revile
+him, and he was obliged to leave her,&mdash;which he did, at last, with a
+hurried step to avoid a quart pot which the woman had taken up to
+hurl at his head, upon some comparison which he most indiscreetly
+made between herself and poor Carry Brattle.</p>
+
+<p>What should he do now? The only chance of finding the girl was, as he
+thought, to go to the police-office. He was still in the lane, making
+his way back to the street which would take him into the city, when
+he was accosted by a little child. "You be the parson," said the
+child. Mr. Fenwick owned that he was a parson. "Parson from
+Bull'umpton?" said the child, inquiringly. Mr. Fenwick acknowledged
+the fact. "Then you be to come with me." Whereupon Mr. Fenwick
+followed the child, and was led into a miserable little court in
+which population was squalid, thick, and juvenile. "She be here, at
+Mrs. Stiggs's," said the child. Then the Vicar understood that he had
+been watched, and that he was being taken to the place where she whom
+he was seeking had found shelter.</p>
+
+
+<p><a name="c40" id="c40"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>CHAPTER XL.</h3>
+<h4>TROTTER'S BUILDINGS.<br />&nbsp;</h4>
+
+
+<p>In the back room up-stairs of Mr. Stiggs's house in Trotter's
+Buildings the Vicar did find Carry Brattle, and he found also that
+since her coming thither on the preceding evening,&mdash;for only on the
+preceding evening had she been turned away from the Three Honest
+Men,&mdash;one of Mrs. Stiggs's children had been on the look-out in the
+lane.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought that you would come to me, sir," said Carry Brattle.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course I should come. Did I not promise that I would come? And
+where is your brother?"</p>
+
+<p>But Sam had left her as soon as he had placed her in Mrs. Stiggs's
+house, and Carry could not say whither he had gone. He had brought
+her to Salisbury, and had remained with her two days at the Three
+Honest Men, during which time the remainder of their four pounds had
+been spent; and then there had been a row. Some visitors to the house
+recognised poor Carry, or knew something of her tale, and evil words
+were spoken. There had been a fight and Sam had thrashed some
+man,&mdash;or some half-dozen men, if all that Carry said was true. She
+had fled from the house in sad tears, and after a while her brother
+had joined her,&mdash;bloody, with his lip cut and a black eye. It seemed
+that he had had some previous knowledge of this woman who lived in
+Trotter's Buildings,&mdash;had known her or her husband,&mdash;and there he had
+found shelter for his sister, having explained that a clergyman would
+call for her and pay for her modest wants, and then take her away.
+She supposed that Sam had gone back to London; but he had been so
+bruised and mauled in the fight that he had determined that Mr.
+Fenwick should not see him. This was the story as Carry told it; and
+Mr. Fenwick did not for a moment doubt its truth.</p>
+
+<p>"And now, Carry," said he, "what is it that you would do?"</p>
+
+<p>She looked up into his face, and yet not wholly into his face,&mdash;as
+though she were afraid to raise her eyes so high,&mdash;and was silent.
+His were intently fixed upon her, as he stood over her, and he
+thought that he had never seen a sight more sad to look at. And yet
+she was very pretty,&mdash;prettier, perhaps, than she had been in the
+days when she would come up the aisle of his church, to take her
+place among the singers, with red cheeks and bright flowing clusters
+of hair. She was pale now, and he could see that her cheeks were
+rough,&mdash;from paint, perhaps, and late hours, and an ill-life; but the
+girl had become a woman, and the lines of her countenance were fixed,
+and were very lovely, and there was a pleading eloquence about her
+mouth for which there had been no need in her happy days at
+Bullhampton. He had asked her what she would do! But had she not come
+there, at her brother's instigation, that he might tell her what she
+should do? Had he not promised that he would find her a home if she
+would leave her evil ways? How was it possible that she should have a
+plan for her future life? She answered him not a word; but tried to
+look into his face and failed.</p>
+
+<p>Nor had he any formed plan. That idea, indeed, of going to Startup
+had come across his brain,&mdash;of going to Startup, and of asking
+assistance from the prosperous elder brother. But so diffident was he
+of success that he hardly dared to mention it to the poor girl.</p>
+
+<p>"It is hard to say what you should do," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Very hard, sir."</p>
+
+<p>His heart was so tender towards her that he could not bring himself
+to propose to her the cold and unpleasant safety of a Reformatory. He
+knew, as a clergyman and as a man of common sense, that to place her
+in such an establishment would, in truth, be the greatest kindness
+that he could do her. But he could not do it. He satisfied his own
+conscience by telling himself that he knew that she would accept no
+such refuge. He thought that he had half promised not to ask her to
+go to any such place. At any rate, he had not meant that when he had
+made his rash promise to her brother; and though that promise was
+rash, he was not the less bound to keep it. She was very pretty, and
+still soft, and he had loved her well. Was it a fault in him that he
+was tender to her because of her prettiness, and because he had loved
+her as a child? We must own that it was a fault. The crooked places
+of the world, if they are to be made straight at all, must be made
+straight after a sterner and a juster fashion.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps you could stay here for a day or two?" he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Only that I've got no money."</p>
+
+<p>"I will see to that,&mdash;for a few days, you know. And I was thinking
+that I would go to your brother George."</p>
+
+<p>"My brother George?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes;&mdash;why not? Was he not always good to you?"</p>
+
+<p>"He was never bad, sir; only&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Only what?"</p>
+
+<p>"I've been so bad, sir, that I don't think he'd speak to me, or
+notice me, or do anything for me. And he has got a wife, too."</p>
+
+<p>"But a woman doesn't always become hard-hearted as soon as she is
+married. There must be some of them that will take pity on you,
+Carry." She only shook her head. "I shall tell him that it is his
+duty, and if he be an honest, God-fearing man, he will do it."</p>
+
+<p>"And should I have to go there?"</p>
+
+<p>"If he will take you&mdash;certainly. What better could you wish? Your
+father is hard, and though he loves you still, he cannot bring
+himself to forget."</p>
+
+<p>"How can any of them forget, Mr. Fenwick?"</p>
+
+<p>"I will go out at once to Startup, and as I return through Salisbury
+I will let you know what your brother says." She again shook her
+head. "At any rate, we must try, Carry. When things are difficult,
+they cannot be mended by people sitting down and crying. I will ask
+your brother; and if he refuses, I will endeavour to think of
+something else. Next to your father and mother, he is certainly the
+first that should be asked to look to you." Then he said much to her
+as to her condition, preached to her the little sermon with which he
+had come prepared; was as stern to her as his nature and love would
+allow,&mdash;though, indeed, his words were tender enough. He strove to
+make her understand that she could have no escape from the dirt and
+vileness and depth of misery into which she had fallen, without the
+penalty of a hard, laborious life, in which she must submit to be
+regarded as one whose place in the world was very low. He asked her
+whether she did not hate the disgrace and the ignominy and the vile
+wickedness of her late condition. "Yes, indeed, sir," she answered,
+with her eyes still only half-raised towards him. What other answer
+could she make? He would fain have drawn from her some deep and
+passionate expression of repentance, some fervid promise of future
+rectitude, some eager offer to bear all other hardships, so that she
+might be saved from a renewal of the past misery. But he knew that no
+such eloquence, no such energy, no such ecstacy, would be
+forthcoming. And he knew, also, that humble, contrite, and wretched
+as was the girl now, the nature within her bosom was not changed.
+Were he to place her in a reformatory, she would not stay there. Were
+he to make arrangements with Mrs. Stiggs, who in her way seemed to be
+a decent, hard-working woman,&mdash;to make arrangements for her board and
+lodging, with some collateral regulations as to occupation,
+needle-work, and the like,&mdash;she would not adhere to them. The change
+from a life of fevered, though most miserable, excitement, to one of
+dull, pleasureless, and utterly uninteresting propriety, is one that
+can hardly be made without the assistance of binding control. Could
+she have been sent to the mill, and made subject to her mother's
+softness as well as to her mother's care, there might have been room
+for confident hope. And then, too,&mdash;but let not the reader read this
+amiss,&mdash;because she was pretty and might be made bright again, and
+because he was young, and because he loved her, he longed, were it
+possible, to make her paths pleasant for her. Her fall, her first
+fall had been piteous to him, rather than odious. He, too, would have
+liked to get hold of the man and to have left him without a sound
+limb within his skin,&mdash;to have left him pretty nearly without a skin
+at all; but that work had fallen into the miller's hands, who had
+done it fairly well. And, moreover, it would hardly have fitted the
+Vicar. But, as regarded Carry herself, when he thought of her in his
+solitary rambles, he would build little castles in the air on her
+behalf, in which her life should be anything but one of sackcloth and
+ashes. He would find for her some loving husband, who should know and
+should have forgiven the sin which had hardly been a sin, and she
+should be a loving wife with loving children. Perhaps, too, he would
+add to this, as he built his castles, the sweet smiles of
+affectionate gratitude with which he himself would be received when
+he visited her happy hearth. But he knew that these were castles in
+the air, and he endeavoured to throw them all behind him as he
+preached his sermon. Nevertheless, he was very tender with her, and
+treated her not at all as he would have done an ugly young
+parishioner who had turned thief upon his hands.</p>
+
+<p>"And now, Carry," he said, as he left her, "I will get a gig in the
+town, and will drive over to your brother. We can but try it. I am
+clear as to this, that the best thing for you will be to be among
+your own people."</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose it would, sir; but I don't think she'll ever be brought to
+have me."</p>
+
+<p>"We will try, at any rate. And if she will have you, you must
+remember that you must not eat the bread of idleness. You must be
+prepared to work for your living."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't want to be idle, sir." Then he took her by the hand, and
+pressed it, and bade God bless her, and gave her a little money in
+order that she might make some first payment to Mrs. Stiggs. "I'm
+sure I don't know why you should do all this for the likes of me,
+sir," said the girl, bursting into tears. The Vicar did not tell her
+that he did it because she was gracious in his eyes, and perhaps was
+not aware of the fact himself.</p>
+
+<p>He went to the Dragon of Wantley, and there procured a gig. He had a
+contest in the inn-yard before they would let him have the gig
+without a man to drive him; but he managed it at last, fearing that
+the driver might learn something of his errand. He had never been at
+Startup Farm before; and knew very little of the man he was going to
+see on so very delicate a mission; but he did know that George
+Brattle was prosperous, and that in early life he had been a good
+son. His last interview with the farmer had had reference to the
+matter of bail required for Sam, and on that occasion the brother
+had, with some persuasion, done as he was asked. George Brattle had
+contrived to win for himself a wife from the Fordingbridge side of
+the country, who had had a little money; and as he, too, had carried
+away from the mill a little money in his father's prosperous days, he
+had done very well. He paid his rent to the day, owed no man
+anything, and went to church every other Sunday, eschewing the bad
+example set to him by his father in matters of religion. He was
+hard-fisted, ignorant, and self-confident, knowing much about corn
+and the grinding of it, knowing something of sheep and the shearing
+of them, knowing also how to get the worth of his ten or eleven
+shillings a week out of the bones of the rural labourers;&mdash;but
+knowing very little else. Of all this Fenwick was aware; and, in
+spite of that church-going twice a month, rated the son as inferior
+to the father; for about the old miller there was a stubborn
+constancy which almost amounted to heroism. With such a man as was
+this George Brattle, how was he to preach a doctrine of true human
+charity with any chance of success? But the man was one who was
+pervious to ideas of duty, and might be probably pervious to feelings
+of family respect. And he had been good to his father and mother,
+regarding with something of true veneration the nest from which he
+had sprung. The Vicar did not like the task before him, dreading the
+disappointment which failure would produce; but he was not the man to
+shrink from any work which he had resolved to undertake, and drove
+gallantly into the farmyard, though he saw both the farmer and his
+wife standing at the back-door of the house.</p>
+
+
+<p><a name="c41" id="c41"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>CHAPTER XLI.</h3>
+<h4>STARTUP FARM.<br />&nbsp;</h4>
+
+
+<p>Farmer Brattle, who was a stout man about thirty-eight years of age
+but looking as though he were nearly ten years older, came up to the
+Vicar, touching his hat, and then putting his hand out in greeting.</p>
+
+<p>"This be a pleasure something like, Muster Fenwick, to see thee here
+at Startup. This be my wife. Molly, thou has never seen Muster
+Fenwick from Bull'umpton. This be our Vicar, as mother and Fanny says
+is the pick of all the parsons in Wiltshire."</p>
+
+<p>Then Mr. Fenwick got down, and walked into the spacious kitchen,
+where he was cordially welcomed by the stout mistress of Startup
+Farm.</p>
+
+<p>He was very anxious to begin his story to the brother alone. Indeed,
+as to that, his mind was quite made up; but Mrs. Brattle, who within
+the doors of that house held a position at any rate equal to that of
+her husband, did not seem disposed to give him the opportunity. She
+understood well enough that Mr. Fenwick had not come over from
+Bullhampton to shake hands with her husband, and to say a few civil
+words. He must have business, and that business must be about the
+Brattle family. Old Brattle was supposed to be in money difficulties,
+and was not this an embassy in search of money? Now Mrs. George
+Brattle, who had been born a Huggins, was very desirous that none of
+the Huggins money should be sent into the parish of Bullhampton.
+When, therefore, Mr. Fenwick asked the farmer to step out with him
+for a moment, Mrs. George Brattle looked very grave, and took her
+husband apart and whispered a word of caution into his ear.</p>
+
+<p>"It's about the mill, George; and don't you do nothing till you've
+spoke to me."</p>
+
+<p>Then there came a solid look, almost of grief, upon George's face.
+There had been a word or two before this between him and the wife of
+his bosom as to the affairs of the mill.</p>
+
+<p>"I've just been seeing somebody at Salisbury," began the Vicar,
+abruptly, as soon as they had crossed from the yard behind the house
+into the enclosure around the ricks.</p>
+
+<p>"Some one at Salisbury, Muster Fenwick? Is it any one as I knows?"</p>
+
+<p>"One that you did know well, Mr. Brattle. I've seen your sister
+Carry." Again there came upon the farmer's face that heavy look,
+which was almost a look of grief; but he did not at once utter a
+word. "Poor young thing!" continued the Vicar. "Poor, dear,
+unfortunate girl!"</p>
+
+<p>"She brought it on herself, and on all of us," said the farmer.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, indeed, my friend. The light, unguarded folly of a moment has
+ruined her, and brought dreadful sorrow upon you all. But something
+should be done for her;&mdash;eh?"</p>
+
+<p>Still the brother said nothing.</p>
+
+<p>"You will help, I'm sure, to rescue her from the infamy into which
+she must fall if none help her?"</p>
+
+<p>"If there's money wanted to get her into any of them places&mdash;," begun
+the farmer.</p>
+
+<p>"It isn't that;&mdash;it isn't that, at any rate, as yet."</p>
+
+<p>"What be it, then?"</p>
+
+<p>"The personal countenance and friendship of some friend that loves
+her. You love your sister, Mr. Brattle?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know as I does, Muster Fenwick."</p>
+
+<p>"You used to, and you must still pity her."</p>
+
+<p>"She's been and well-nigh broke the hearts of all on us. There wasn't
+one of us as wasn't respectable, till she come up;&mdash;and now there's
+Sam. But a boy as is bad ain't never so bad as a girl."</p>
+
+<p>It must be understood that in the expression of this opinion Mr.
+Brattle was alluding, not to the personal wickedness of the wicked of
+the two sexes, but to the effect of their wickedness on those
+belonging to them.</p>
+
+<p>"And therefore more should be done to help a girl."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll stand the money, Muster Fenwick,&mdash;if it ain't much."</p>
+
+<p>"What is wanted is a home in your own house."</p>
+
+<p>"Here&mdash;at Startup?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; here, at Startup. Your father will not take her."</p>
+
+<p>"Neither won't I. But it ain't me in such a matter as this. You ask
+my missus, and see what she'll say. Besides, Muster Fenwick, it's
+clean out of all reason."</p>
+
+<p>"Out of all reason to help a sister?"</p>
+
+<p>"So it be. Sister, indeed! Why did she go and make&mdash;. I won't say
+what she's made of herself. Ain't she brought trouble and sorrow
+enough upon us? Have her here! Why, I'm that angry with her, I
+shouldn't be keeping my hands off her. Why didn't she keep herself to
+herself, and not disgrace the whole family?"</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, in spite of these strong expressions of opinion, Mr.
+Fenwick, by the dint of the bitter words which he spoke in reference
+to the brother's duty as a Christian, did get leave from the farmer
+to make the proposition to Mrs. George Brattle,&mdash;such permission as
+would have bound the brother to accept Carry, providing that Mrs.
+George would also consent to accept her. But even this permission was
+accompanied by an assurance that it would not have been given had he
+not felt perfectly convinced that his wife would not listen for a
+moment to the scheme. He spoke of his wife almost with awe, when Mr.
+Fenwick left him to make this second attack. "She has never had
+nothing to say to none sich as that," said the farmer, shaking his
+head, as he alluded both to his wife and to his sister; "and I ain't
+sure as she'll be first-rate civil to any one as mentions sich in her
+hearing."</p>
+
+<p>But Mr. Fenwick persevered, in spite even of this caution. When the
+Vicar re-entered the house, Mrs. George Brattle had retired to her
+parlour, and the kitchen was in the hands of the maid-servant. He
+followed the lady, however, and found that she had been at the
+trouble, since he had seen her last, of putting on a clean cap on his
+behalf. He began at once, jumping again into the middle of things by
+a reference to her husband.</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Brattle," he said, "your husband and I have been talking about
+his poor sister Carry."</p>
+
+<p>"The least said the soonest mended about that one, I'm afeared," said
+the dame.</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed, I agree with you. Were she once placed in safe and kind
+hands, the less then said the better. She has left the life she was
+<span class="nowrap">leading&mdash;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"They never leaves it," said the dame.</p>
+
+<p>"It is so seldom that an opportunity is given them. Poor Carry is at
+the present moment most anxious to be placed somewhere out of
+danger."</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Fenwick, if you ask me, I'd rather not talk about her;&mdash;I would
+indeed. She's been and brought a slur upon us all, the vile thing! If
+you ask me, Mr. Fenwick, there ain't nothing too bad for her."</p>
+
+<p>Fenwick, who, on the other hand, thought that there could be hardly
+anything too good for his poor penitent, was beginning to be angry
+with the woman. Of course, he made in his own mind those comparisons
+which are common to us all on such occasions. What was the great
+virtue of this fat, well-fed, selfish, ignorant woman before him,
+that she should turn up her nose at a sister who had been
+unfortunate? Was it not an abominable case of the Pharisee thanking
+the Lord that he was not such a one as the Publican;&mdash;whereas the
+Publican was in a fair way to heaven?</p>
+
+<p>"Surely you would have her saved, if it be possible to save her?"
+said the Vicar.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know about saving. If such as them is to be made all's one
+as others as have always been decent, I'm sure I don't know who it is
+as isn't to be saved."</p>
+
+<p>"Have you never read of Mary Magdalen, Mrs. Brattle?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I have, Mr. Fenwick. Perhaps she hadn't got no father, nor
+brothers, and sisters, and sisters-in-law, as would be pretty well
+broken-hearted when her vileness would be cast up again' 'em. Perhaps
+she hadn't got no decent house over her head afore she begun. I don't
+know how that was."</p>
+
+<p>"Our Saviour's tender mercy, then, would not have been wide enough
+for such sin as that." This the Vicar said with intended irony; but
+irony was thrown away on Mrs. George Brattle.</p>
+
+<p>"Them days and ours isn't the same, Mr. Fenwick, and you can't make
+'em the same. And Our Saviour isn't here now to say who is to be a
+Mary Magdalen and who isn't. As for Carry Brattle, she has made her
+bed and she must lie upon it. We shan't interfere."</p>
+
+<p>Fenwick was determined, however, that he would make his proposition.
+It was almost certain now that he could do no good to Carry by making
+it; but he felt that it would be a pleasure to him to make this
+self-righteous woman know what he conceived to be her duty in the
+matter. "My idea was this&mdash;that you should take her in here, and
+endeavour to preserve her from future evil courses."</p>
+
+<p>"Take her in here?" shrieked the woman.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; here. Who is nearer to her than a brother?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not if I know it, Mr. Fenwick; and if that is what you have been
+saying to Brattle, I must tell you that you've come on a very bad
+errand. People, Mr. Fenwick, knows how to manage things such as that
+for themselves in their own houses. Strangers don't usually talk
+about such things, Mr. Fenwick. Perhaps, Mr. Fenwick, you didn't know
+as how we have got girls of our own coming up. Have her in here&mdash;at
+Startup? I think I see her here!"</p>
+
+<p>"But, Mrs. Brattle&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't Mrs. Brattle me, Mr. Fenwick, for I won't be so treated. And I
+must tell you that I don't think it over decent of you,&mdash;a clergyman,
+and a young man, too, in a way,&mdash;to come talking of such a one in a
+house like this."</p>
+
+<p>"Would you have her starve, or die in a ditch?"</p>
+
+<p>"There ain't no question of starving. Such as her don't starve. As
+long as it lasts, they've the best of eating and drinking,&mdash;only too
+much of it. There's prisons; let 'em go there if they means
+repentance. But they never does,&mdash;never, till there ain't nobody to
+notice 'em any longer; and by that time they're mostly thieves and
+pickpockets."</p>
+
+<p>"And you would do nothing to save your own husband's sister from such
+a fate?"</p>
+
+<p>"What business had she to be sister to any honest man? Think of what
+she's been and done to my children, who wouldn't else have had nobody
+to be ashamed of. There never wasn't one of the Hugginses who didn't
+behave herself;&mdash;that is of the women," added Mrs. George,
+remembering the misdeeds of a certain drunken uncle of her own, who
+had come to great trouble in a matter of horseflesh. "And now, Mr.
+Fenwick, let me beg that there mayn't be another word about her. I
+don't know nothing of such women, nor what is their ways, and I don't
+want. I never didn't speak a word to such a one in my life, and I
+certainly won't begin under my own roof. People knows well enough
+what's good for them to do and what isn't without being dictated to
+by a clergyman. You'll excuse me, Mr. Fenwick; but I'll just make
+bold to say as much as that. Good morning, Mr. Fenwick."</p>
+
+<p>In the yard, standing close by the gig, he met the farmer again.</p>
+
+<p>"You didn't find she'd be of your way of thinking, Muster Fenwick?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not exactly, Mr. Brattle."</p>
+
+<p>"I know'd she wouldn't. The truth is, Muster Fenwick, that young
+women as goes astray after that fashion is just like any sick animal,
+as all the animals as ain't comes and sets upon immediately. It's
+just as well, too. They knows it beforehand, and it keeps 'em
+straight."</p>
+
+<p>"It didn't keep poor Carry straight."</p>
+
+<p>"And, by the same token, she must suffer, and so must we all. But,
+Muster Fenwick, as far as ten or fifteen pounds goes, if it can be of
+<span class="nowrap">use&mdash;"</span></p>
+
+<p>But the Vicar, in his indignation, repudiated the offer of money, and
+drove himself back to Salisbury with his heart full of sorrow at the
+hardness of the world. What this woman had been saying to him was
+only what the world had said to her,&mdash;the world that knows so much
+better how to treat an erring sinner than did Our Saviour when on
+earth.</p>
+
+<p>He went with his sad news to Mrs. Stiggs's house, and then made terms
+for Carry's board and lodging, at any rate, for a fortnight. And he
+said much to the girl as to the disposition of her time. He would
+send her books, and she was to be diligent in needle-work on behalf
+of the Stiggs family. And then he begged her to go to the daily
+service in the cathedral,&mdash;not so much because he thought that the
+public worship was necessary for her, as that thus she would be
+provided with a salutary employment for a portion of her day. Carry,
+as she bade him farewell, said very little. Yes; she would stay with
+Mrs. Stiggs. That was all that she did say.</p>
+
+
+<p><a name="c42" id="c42"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>CHAPTER XLII.</h3>
+<h4>MR. QUICKENHAM, Q.C.<br />&nbsp;</h4>
+
+
+<p><img class="left" src="images/ch42a.jpg" width="310" alt="Illustration" />
+On the Thursday in Passion week, which fell on the 6th of April, Mr.
+and Mrs. Quickenham came to Bullhampton Vicarage. The lawyer intended
+to take a long holiday,&mdash;four entire days,&mdash;and to return to London
+on the following Tuesday; and Mrs. Quickenham meant to be very happy
+with her sister.</p>
+
+<p>"It is such a comfort to get him out of town, if it's only for two
+days," said Mrs. Quickenham; "and I do believe he has run away this
+time without any papers in his portmanteau."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Fenwick, with something of apology in her tone, explained to her
+sister that she was especially desirous of getting a legal opinion on
+this occasion from her brother-in-law.</p>
+
+<p>"That's mere holiday work," said the barrister's anxious wife.
+"There's nothing he likes so much as that; but it is the reading of
+those horrible long papers by gaslight. I wouldn't mind how much he
+had to talk, nor yet how much he had to write, if it wasn't for all
+that weary reading. Of course he does have juniors with him now, but
+I don't find that it makes much difference. He's at it every night,
+sheet after sheet; and though he always says he's coming up
+immediately, it's two or three before he's in bed."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Quickenham was three or four years older than her sister, and
+Mr. Quickenham was twelve years older than his wife. The lawyer
+therefore was considerably senior to the clergyman. He was at the
+Chancery bar, and after the usual years of hard and almost profitless
+struggling, had worked himself up into a position in which his income
+was very large, and his labours never ending. Since the days in which
+he had begun to have before his eyes some idea of a future career for
+himself, he had always been struggling hard for a certain goal,
+struggling successfully, and yet never getting nearer to the thing he
+desired. A scholarship had been all in all to him when he left
+school; and, as he got it, a distant fellowship already loomed before
+his eyes. That attained was only a step towards his life in London.
+His first brief, anxiously as it had been desired, had given no real
+satisfaction. As soon as it came to him it was a rung of the ladder
+already out of sight. And so it had been all through his life, as he
+advanced upwards, making a business, taking a wife to himself, and
+becoming the father of many children. There was always something
+before him which was to make him happy when he reached it. His gown
+was of silk, and his income almost greater than his desires; but he
+would fain sit upon the Bench, and have at any rate his evenings for
+his own enjoyment. He firmly believed now, that that had been the
+object of his constant ambition; though could he retrace his thoughts
+as a young man, he would find that in the early days of his forensic
+toils, the silent, heavy, unillumined solemnity of the judge had
+appeared to him to be nothing in comparison with the glittering
+audacity of the successful advocate. He had tried the one, and might
+probably soon try the other. And when that time shall have come, and
+Mr. Quickenham shall sit upon his seat of honour in the new Law
+Courts, passing long, long hours in the tedious labours of
+conscientious painful listening; then he will look forward again to
+the happy ease of dignified retirement, to the coming time in which
+all his hours will be his own. And then, again, when those
+unfurnished hours are there, and with them shall have come the
+infirmities which years and toil shall have brought, his mind will
+run on once more to that eternal rest in which fees and salary,
+honours and dignity, wife and children, with all the joys of
+satisfied success, shall be brought together for him in one perfect
+amalgam which he will call by the name of Heaven. In the meantime, he
+has now come down to Bullhampton to enjoy himself for four days,&mdash;if
+he can find enjoyment without his law papers.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Quickenham was a tall, thin man, with eager gray eyes, and a long
+projecting nose, on which, his enemies in the courts of law were wont
+to say, his wife would hang a kettle, in order that the
+unnecessary heat coming from his mouth might not be wasted. His hair
+was already grizzled, and, in the matter of whiskers, his heavy
+impatient hand had nearly altogether cut away the only intended
+ornament to his face. He was a man who allowed himself time for
+nothing but his law work, eating all his meals as though the saving
+of a few minutes in that operation were matter of vital importance,
+dressing and undressing at railroad speed, moving ever with a quick,
+impetuous step, as though the whole world around him went too slowly.
+He was short-sighted, too, and would tumble about in his unnecessary
+hurry, barking his shins, bruising his knuckles, and breaking most
+things that were breakable,&mdash;but caring nothing for his sufferings
+either in body or in purse so that he was not reminded of his
+awkwardness by his wife. An untidy man he was, who spilt his soup on
+his waistcoat and slobbered with his tea, whose fingers were apt to
+be ink-stained, and who had a grievous habit of mislaying papers that
+were most material to him. He would bellow to the servants to have
+his things found for him, and would then scold them for looking. But
+when alone he would be ever scolding himself because of the faults
+which he thus committed. A conscientious, hard-working, friendly man
+he was, but one difficult to deal with; hot in his temper, impatient
+of all stupidities, impatient often of that which he wrongly thought
+to be stupidity, never owning himself to be wrong, anxious always for
+the truth, but often missing to see it, a man who would fret
+grievously for the merest trifle, and think nothing of the greatest
+success when it had once been gained. Such a one was Mr. Quickenham;
+and he was a man of whom all his enemies and most of his friends were
+a little afraid. Mrs. Fenwick would declare herself to be much in awe
+of him; and our Vicar, though he would not admit as much, was always
+a little on his guard when the great barrister was with him.</p>
+
+<p>How it had come to pass that Mr. Chamberlaine had not been called
+upon to take a part in the Cathedral services during Passion week
+cannot here be explained; but it was the fact, that when Mr.
+Quickenham arrived at Bullhampton, the Canon was staying at The
+Privets. He had come over there early in the week,&mdash;as it was
+supposed by Mr. Fenwick with some hope of talking his nephew into a
+more reasonable state of mind respecting Miss Lowther; but, according
+to Mrs. Fenwick's uncharitable views, with the distinct object of
+escaping the long church services of the Holy week,&mdash;and was to
+return to Salisbury on the Saturday. He was, therefore, invited to
+meet Mr. Quickenham at dinner on the Thursday. In his own city and
+among his own neighbours he would have thought it indiscreet to dine
+out in Passion week; but, as he explained to Mr. Fenwick, these
+things were very different in a rural parish.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Quickenham arrived an hour or two before dinner, and was
+immediately taken out to see the obnoxious building; while Mrs.
+Fenwick, who never would go to see it, described all its horrors to
+her sister within the guarded precincts of her own drawing-room.</p>
+
+<p>"It used to be a bit of common land, didn't it?" said Mr. Quickenham.</p>
+
+<p>"I hardly know what is common land," replied the Vicar. "The children
+used to play here, and when there was a bit of grass on it some of
+the neighbours' cows would get it."</p>
+
+<p>"It was never advertised&mdash;to be let on building lease?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh dear no! Lord Trowbridge never did anything of that sort."</p>
+
+<p>"I dare say not," said the lawyer. "I dare say not." Then he walked
+round the plot of ground, pacing it, as though something might be
+learned in that way. Then he looked up at the building with his hands
+in his pockets, and his head on one side. "Has there been a deed of
+gift,&mdash;perhaps a peppercorn rent, or something of that kind?" The
+Vicar declared that he was altogether ignorant of what had been done
+between the agent for the Marquis and the trustees to whom had been
+committed the building of the chapel. "I dare say nothing," said Mr.
+Quickenham. "They've been in such a hurry to punish you, that they've
+gone on a mere verbal permission. What's the extent of the glebe?"</p>
+
+<p>"They call it forty-two acres."</p>
+
+<p>"Did you ever have it measured?"</p>
+
+<p>"Never. It would make no difference to me whether it is forty-one or
+forty-three."</p>
+
+<p>"That's as may be," said the lawyer. "It's as nasty a thing as I've
+looked at for many a day, but it wouldn't do to call it a nuisance."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course not. Janet is very hot about it; but, as for me, I've made
+up my mind to swallow it. After all, what harm will it do me?"</p>
+
+<p>"It's an insult,&mdash;that's all."</p>
+
+<p>"But if I can show that I don't take it as an insult, the insult will
+be nothing. Of course the people know that their landlord is trying
+to spite me."</p>
+
+<p>"That's just it."</p>
+
+<p>"And for awhile they'll spite me too, because he does. Of course it's
+a bore. It cripples one's influence, and to a certain degree spreads
+dissent at the cost of the Church. Men and women will go to that
+place merely because Lord Trowbridge favours the building. I know all
+that, and it irks me; but still it will be better to swallow it."</p>
+
+<p>"Who's the oldest man in the parish?" asked Mr. Quickenham; "the
+oldest with his senses still about him." The parson reflected for
+awhile, and then said that he thought Brattle, the miller, was as old
+a man as there was there, with the capability left to him of
+remembering and of stating what he remembered. "And what's his
+age,&mdash;about?" Fenwick said that the miller was between sixty and
+seventy, and had lived in Bullhampton all his life. "A church-going
+man?" asked the lawyer. To this the Vicar was obliged to reply that,
+to his very great regret, old Brattle never entered a church. "Then
+I'll step over and see him during morning service to-morrow," said
+the lawyer. The Vicar raised his eyebrows, but said nothing as to the
+propriety of Mr. Quickenham's personal attendance at a place of
+worship on Good Friday.</p>
+
+<p>"Can anything be done, Richard?" said Mrs. Fenwick, appealing to her
+brother-in-law.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes;&mdash;undoubtedly something can be done."</p>
+
+<p>"Can there, indeed? I am so glad. What can be done?"</p>
+
+<p>"You can make the best of it."</p>
+
+<p>"That's just what I'm determined I won't do. It's mean-spirited, and
+so I tell Frank. I never would have hurt them as long as they treated
+us well; but now they are enemies, and as enemies I will regard them.
+I should think myself disgraced if I were to sit down in the presence
+of the Marquis of Trowbridge; I should, indeed."</p>
+
+<p>"You can easily manage that by standing up when you meet him," said
+Mr. Quickenham. Mr. Quickenham could be very funny at times, but
+those who knew him would remark that whenever he was funny he had
+something to hide. His wife as she heard his wit was quite sure that
+he had some plan in his head about the chapel.</p>
+
+<p>At half-past six there came Mr. Chamberlaine and his nephew. The
+conversation about the chapel was still continued, and the canon from
+Salisbury was very eloquent, and learned also, upon the subject. His
+eloquence was brightest while the ladies were still in the room, but
+his learning was brought forth most manifestly after they had
+retired. He was very clear in his opinion that the Marquis had the
+law on his side in giving the land for the purpose in question, even
+if it could be shown that he was simply the lord of the manor, and
+not so possessed of the spot as to do what he liked in it for his own
+purposes. Mr. Chamberlaine expressed his opinion that, although he
+himself might think otherwise, it would be held to be for the benefit
+of the community that the chapel should be built, and in no court
+could an injunction against the building be obtained.</p>
+
+<p>"But he couldn't give leave to have it put on another man's ground,"
+said the Queen's Counsel.</p>
+
+<p>"There is no question of another man's ground here," said the member
+of the Chapter.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not so sure of that," continued Mr. Quickenham. "It may not be
+the ground of any one man, but if it's the ground of any ten or
+twenty it's the same thing."</p>
+
+<p>"But then there would be a lawsuit," said the Vicar.</p>
+
+<p>"It might come to that," said the Queen's Counsel.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sure you wouldn't have a leg to stand upon," said the member of
+the Chapter.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't see that at all," said Gilmore. "If the land is common to
+the parish, the Marquis of Trowbridge cannot give it to a part of the
+parishioners because he is Lord of the Manor."</p>
+
+<p>"For such a purpose I should think he can," said Mr. Chamberlaine.</p>
+
+<p>"And I'm quite sure he can't," said Mr. Quickenham. "All the same, it
+may be very difficult to prove that he hasn't the right; and in the
+meantime there stands the chapel, a fact accomplished. If the ground
+had been bought and the purchasers had wanted a title, I think it
+probable the Marquis would never have got his money."</p>
+
+<p>"There can be no doubt that it is very ungentlemanlike," said Mr.
+Chamberlaine.</p>
+
+<p>"There I'm afraid I can't help you," said Mr. Quickenham. "Good law
+is not defined very clearly here in England; but good manners have
+never been defined at all."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't want anyone to help me on such a matter as that," said Mr.
+Chamberlaine, who did not altogether like Mr. Quickenham.</p>
+
+<p>"I dare say not," said Mr. Quickenham; "and yet the question may be
+open to argument. A man may do what he likes with his own, and can
+hardly be called ungentlemanlike because he gives it away to a person
+you don't happen to like."</p>
+
+
+<div class="center"><a name="il14" id="il14"></a>
+<table style="margin: 0 auto" cellpadding="4px">
+  <tr>
+    <td align="center">
+      <a href="images/il14.jpg">
+      <img src="images/il14-t.jpg" height="500"
+      alt='"I dare say not," said Mr. Quickenham.' /></a>
+    </td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="center">
+      <span class="caption">"I dare say not," said Mr. Quickenham.<br />
+      Click to <a href="images/il14.jpg">ENLARGE</a></span>
+    </td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>"I know what we all think about it in Salisbury," said Mr.
+Chamberlaine.</p>
+
+<p>"It's just possible that you may be a little hypercritical in
+Salisbury," said Quickenham.</p>
+
+<p>There was nothing else discussed and nothing else thought of in the
+Vicarage. The first of June had been the day now fixed for the
+opening of the new chapel, and here they were already in April. Mr.
+Fenwick was quite of opinion that if the services of Mr. Puddleham's
+congregation were once commenced in the building they must be
+continued there. As long as the thing was a thing not yet
+accomplished it might be practicable to stop it; but there could be
+no stopping it when the full tide of Methodist eloquence should have
+begun to pour itself from the new pulpit. It would then have been
+made the House of God,&mdash;even though not consecrated,&mdash;and as such it
+must remain. And now he was becoming sick of the grievance, and
+wished that it was over. As to going to law with the Marquis on a
+question of Common-right, it was a thing that he would not think of
+doing. The living had come to him from his college, and he had
+thought it right to let the Bursar of Saint John's know what was
+being done; but it was quite clear that the college could not
+interfere or spend their money on a matter which, though it was
+parochial, had no reference to their property in the parish. It was
+not for the college, as patron of the living, to inquire whether
+certain lands belonged to the Marquis of Trowbridge or to the parish
+at large, though the Vicar no doubt, as one of the inhabitants of the
+place, might raise the question at law if he chose to find the money
+and could find the ground on which to raise it. His old friend the
+Bursar wrote him back a joking letter, recommending him to put more
+fire into his sermons and thus to preach his enemy down.</p>
+
+<p>"I have become so sick of this chapel," the Vicar said to his wife
+that night, "that I wish the subject might never be mentioned again
+in the house."</p>
+
+<p>"You can't be more sick of it than I am," said his wife.</p>
+
+<p>"What I mean is, that I'm sick of it as a subject of conversation.
+There it is, and let us make the best of it, as Quickenham says."</p>
+
+<p>"You can't expect anything like sympathy from Richard, you know."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't want any sympathy. I want simply silence. If you'll only
+make up your mind to take it for granted, and to put up with it&mdash;as
+you had to do with the frost when the shrubs were killed, or with
+anything that is disagreeable but unavoidable, the feeling of
+unhappiness about it would die away at once. One does not grieve at
+the inevitable."</p>
+
+<p>"But one must be quite sure that it is inevitable."</p>
+
+<p>"There it stands, and nothing that we can do can stop it."</p>
+
+<p>"Charlotte says that she is sure Richard has got something in his
+head. Though he will not sympathise, he will think and contrive and
+fight."</p>
+
+<p>"And half ruin us by his fighting," said the husband. "He fancies the
+land may be common land, and not private property."</p>
+
+<p>"Then of course the chapel has no right to be there."</p>
+
+<p>"But who is to have it removed? And if I could succeed in doing so,
+what would be said to me for putting down a place of worship after
+such a fashion as that?"</p>
+
+<p>"Who could say anything against you, Frank?"</p>
+
+<p>"The truth is, it is Lord Trowbridge who is my enemy here, and not
+the chapel or Mr. Puddleham. I'd have given the spot for the chapel,
+had they wanted it, and had I had the power to give it. I'm annoyed
+because Lord Trowbridge should know that he had got the better of me.
+If I can only bring myself to feel,&mdash;and you too,&mdash;that there is no
+better in it, and no worse, I shall be annoyed no longer. Lord
+Trowbridge cannot really touch me; and could he, I do not know that
+he would."</p>
+
+<p>"I know he would."</p>
+
+<p>"No, my dear. If he suddenly had the power to turn me out of the
+living I don't believe he'd do it,&mdash;any more than I would him out of
+his estate. Men indulge in little injuries who can't afford to be
+wicked enough for great injustice. My dear, you will do me a great
+favour,&mdash;the greatest possible kindness,&mdash;if you'll give up all
+outer, and, as far as possible, all inner hostility to the chapel."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Frank!"</p>
+
+<p>"I ask it as a great favour,&mdash;for my peace of mind."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course I will."</p>
+
+<p>"There's my darling! It shan't make me unhappy any longer. What!&mdash;a
+stupid lot of bricks and mortar, that, after all, are intended for a
+good purpose,&mdash;to think that I should become a miserable wretch just
+because this good purpose is carried on outside my own gate. Were it
+in my dining-room, I ought to bear it without misery."</p>
+
+<p>"I will strive to forget it," said his wife. And on the next morning,
+which was Good Friday, she walked to church, round by the outside
+gate, in order that she might give proof of her intention to keep her
+promise to her husband. Her husband walked before her; and as she
+went she looked round at her sister and shuddered and turned up her
+nose. But this was involuntary.</p>
+
+<p>In the mean time Mr. Quickenham was getting himself ready for his
+walk to the mill. Any such investigation as this which he had on hand
+was much more compatible with his idea of a holiday than attendance
+for two hours at the Church Service. On Easter Sunday he would make
+the sacrifice,&mdash;unless a headache, or pressing letters from London,
+or Apollo in some other beneficent shape, might interfere and save
+him from the necessity. Mr. Quickenham, when at home, would go to
+church as seldom as was possible, so that he might save himself from
+being put down as one who neglected public worship. Perhaps he was
+about equal to Mr. George Brattle in his religious zeal. Mr. George
+Brattle made a clear compromise with his own conscience. One good
+Sunday against a Sunday that was not good left him, as he thought,
+properly poised in his intended condition of human infirmity. It may
+be doubted whether Mr. Quickenham's mind was equally philosophic on
+the matter. He could hardly tell why he went to church, or why he
+stayed away. But he was aware when he went of the presence of some
+unsatisfactory feelings of imposture on his own part, and he was
+equally alive, when he did not go, to a sting of conscience in that
+he was neglecting a duty. But George Brattle had arranged it all in a
+manner that was perfectly satisfactory to himself.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Quickenham had inquired the way, and took the path to the mill
+along the river. He walked rapidly, with his nose in the air, as
+though it was a manifest duty, now that he found himself in the
+country, to get over as much ground as possible, and to refresh his
+lungs thoroughly. He did not look much as he went at the running
+river, or at the opening buds on the trees and hedges. When he met a
+rustic loitering on the path, he examined the man unconsciously, and
+could afterwards have described, with tolerable accuracy, how he was
+dressed; and he had smiled as he had observed the amatory
+pleasantness of a young couple, who had not thought it at all
+necessary to increase the distance between them because of his
+presence. These things he had seen, but the stream, and the hedges,
+and the twittering of the birds, were as nothing to him.</p>
+
+<p>As he went he met old Mrs. Brattle making her weary way to church. He
+had not known Mrs. Brattle, and did not speak to her, but he had felt
+quite sure that she was the miller's wife. Standing with his hands in
+his pockets on the bridge which divided the house from the mill, with
+his pipe in his mouth, was old Brattle, engaged for the moment in
+saying some word to his daughter, Fanny, who was behind him. But she
+retreated as soon as she saw the stranger, and the miller stood his
+ground, waiting to be accosted, suspicion keeping his hands deep down
+in his pockets, as though resolved that he would not be tempted to
+put them forth for the purpose of any friendly greeting. The lawyer
+saluted him by name, and then the miller touched his hat, thrusting
+his hand back into his pocket as soon as the ceremony was
+accomplished. Mr. Quickenham explained that he had come from the
+Vicarage, that he was brother-in-law to Mr. Fenwick, and a
+lawyer,&mdash;at each of which statements old Brattle made a slight
+projecting motion with his chin, as being a mode of accepting the
+information slightly better than absolute discourtesy. At the present
+moment Mr. Fenwick was out of favour with him, and he was not
+disposed to open his heart to visitors from the Vicarage. Then Mr.
+Quickenham plunged at once into the affair of the day.</p>
+
+<p>"You know that chapel they are building, Mr. Brattle, just opposite
+to the parson's gate?"</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Brattle replied that he had heard of the chapel, but had never,
+as yet, been up to see it.</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed; but you remember the bit of ground?"</p>
+
+<p>Yes;&mdash;the miller remembered the ground very well. Man and boy he had
+known it for sixty years. As far as his mind went he thought it a
+very good thing that the piece of ground should be put to some useful
+purpose at last.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not sure but what you may be right there," said the lawyer.</p>
+
+<p>"It's not been of use,&mdash;not to nobody,&mdash;for more than forty year,"
+said the miller.</p>
+
+<p>"And before that what did they do with it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Parson, as we had then in Bull'umpton, kep' a few sheep."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah!&mdash;just so. And he would get a bit of feeding off the ground?" The
+miller nodded his head. "Was that the Vicar just before Mr. Fenwick?"
+asked the lawyer.</p>
+
+<p>"Not by no means. There was Muster Brandon, who never come here at
+all, but had a curate who lived away to Hinton. He come after Parson
+Smallbones."</p>
+
+<p>"It was Parson Smallbones who kept the sheep?"</p>
+
+<p>"And then there was Muster Threepaway, who was parson well nigh
+thirty years afore Muster Fenwick come. He died up at Parsonage
+House, did Muster Threepaway."</p>
+
+<p>"He didn't keep sheep?"</p>
+
+<p>"No; he kep' no sheep as ever I heard tell on. He didn't keep much
+barring hisself,&mdash;didn't Muster Threepaway. He had never no child,
+nor yet no wife, nor nothing at all, hadn't Muster Threepaway. But he
+was a good man as didn't go meddling with folk."</p>
+
+<p>"But Parson Smallbones was a bit of a farmer?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, ay. Parsons in them days warn't above a bit of farming. I warn't
+much more than a scrap of a boy, but I remember him. He wore a wig,
+and old black gaiters; and knew as well what was his'n and what
+wasn't as any parson in Wiltshire. Tithes was tithes then; and parson
+was cute enough in taking on 'em."</p>
+
+<p>"But these sheep of his were his own, I suppose?"</p>
+
+<p>"Whose else would they be, sir?"</p>
+
+<p>"And did he fence them in on that bit of ground?"</p>
+
+<p>"There'd be a boy with 'em, I'm thinking, sir. There wasn't so much
+fencing of sheep then as there be now. Boys was cheaper in them
+days."</p>
+
+<p>"Just so; and the parson wouldn't allow other sheep there?"</p>
+
+<p>"Muster Smallbones mostly took all he could get, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"Exactly. The parsons generally did, I believe. It was the way in
+which they followed most accurately the excellent examples set them
+by the bishops. But, Mr. Brattle, it wasn't in the way of tithes that
+he had this grass for his sheep?"</p>
+
+<p>"I can't say how he had it, nor yet how Muster Fenwick has the
+meadows t'other side of the river, which he lets to farmer Pierce;
+but he do have 'em, and farmer Pierce do pay him the rent."</p>
+
+<p>"Glebe land, you know," said Mr. Quickenham.</p>
+
+<p>"That's what they calls it," said the miller.</p>
+
+<p>"And none of the vicars that came after old Smallbones have ever done
+anything with that bit of ground?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ne'er a one on'em. Mr. Brandon, as I tell 'ee, never come nigh the
+place. I don't know as ever I see'd him. It was him as they made
+bishop afterwards, some'eres away in Ireland. He had a lord to his
+uncle. Then Muster Threepaway, he was here ever so long."</p>
+
+<p>"But he didn't mind such things."</p>
+
+<p>"He never owned no sheep; and the old 'oomen's cows was let to go on
+the land, as was best, and then the boys took to playing hopskotch
+there, with a horse or two over it at times, and now Mr. Puddleham
+has it for his preaching. Maybe, sir, the lawyers might have a turn
+at it yet;" and the miller laughed at his own wit.</p>
+
+<p>"And get more out of it than any former occupant," said Mr.
+Quickenham, who would indeed have been very loth to allow his wife's
+brother-in-law to go into a law suit, but still felt that a very
+pretty piece of litigation was about to be thrown away in this matter
+of Mr. Puddleham's chapel.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Quickenham bade farewell to the miller, and thought that he saw a
+way to a case. But he was a man very strongly given to accuracy, and
+on his return to the Vicarage said no word of his conversation with
+the miller. It would have been natural that Fenwick should have
+interrogated him as to his morning's work; but the Vicar had
+determined to trouble himself no further about his grievance, to say
+nothing further respecting it to any man, not even to allow the
+remembrance of Mr. Puddleham and his chapel to dwell in his mind; and
+consequently held his peace. Mrs. Fenwick was curious enough on the
+subject, but she had made a promise to her husband, and would at
+least endeavour to keep it. If her sister should tell her anything
+unasked, that would not be her fault.</p>
+
+
+<p><a name="c43" id="c43"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>CHAPTER XLIII.</h3>
+<h4>EASTER AT TURNOVER CASTLE.<br />&nbsp;</h4>
+
+
+<p>It was not only at Bullhampton that this affair of the Methodist
+chapel demanded and received attention. At Turnover also a good deal
+was being said about it, and the mind of the Marquis was not easy. As
+has been already told, the bishop had written to him on the subject,
+remonstrating with him as to the injury he was doing to the present
+vicar, and to future vicars, of the parish which he, as landlord, was
+bound to treat with beneficent consideration. The Marquis had replied
+to the bishop with a tone of stern resolve. The Vicar of Bullhampton
+had treated him with scorn, nay, as he thought, with most
+unpardonable insolence, and he would not spare the Vicar. It was
+proper that the dissenters at Bullhampton should have a chapel, and
+he had a right to do what he liked with his own. So arguing with
+himself, he had written to the bishop very firmly; but his own mind
+had not been firm within him as he did so. There were misgivings at
+his heart. He was a Churchman himself, and he was pricked with
+remorse as he remembered that he was spiting the Church which was
+connected with the state, of which he was so eminent a supporter. His
+own chief agent, too, had hesitated, and had suggested that perhaps
+the matter might be postponed. His august daughters, though they had
+learned to hold the name of Fenwick in proper abhorrence,
+nevertheless were grieved about the chapel. Men and women were
+talking about it, and the words of the common people found their way
+to the august daughters of the house of Stowte.</p>
+
+<p>"Papa," said Lady Carolina; "wouldn't it, perhaps, be better to build
+the Bullhampton chapel a little farther off from the Vicarage?"</p>
+
+<p>"The next vicar might be a different sort of person," said the Lady
+Sophie.</p>
+
+<p>"No; it wouldn't," said the Earl, who was apt to be very imperious
+with his own daughters, although he was of opinion that they should
+be held in great awe by all the world&mdash;excepting only himself and
+their eldest brother.</p>
+
+<p>That eldest brother, Lord Saint George, was in truth regarded at
+Turnover as being, of all persons in the world, the most august. The
+Marquis himself was afraid of his son, and held him in extreme
+veneration. To the mind of the Marquis the heir expectant of all the
+dignities of the House of Stowte was almost a greater man than the
+owner of them; and this feeling came not only from a consciousness on
+the part of the father that his son was a bigger man than himself,
+cleverer, better versed in the affairs of the world, and more thought
+of by those around them, but also to a certain extent from an idea
+that he who would have all these grand things thirty or perhaps even
+fifty years hence, must be more powerful than one with whom their
+possession would come to an end probably after the lapse of eight or
+ten years. His heir was to him almost divine. When things at the
+castle were in any way uncomfortable, he could put up with the
+discomfort for himself and his daughters; but it was not to be
+endured that Saint George should be incommoded. Old carriage-horses
+must be changed if he were coming; the glazing of the new greenhouse
+must be got out of the way, lest he should smell the paint; the game
+must not be touched till he should come to shoot it. And yet Lord
+Saint George himself was a man who never gave himself any airs; and
+who in his personal intercourse with the world around him demanded
+much less acknowledgment of his magnificence than did his father.</p>
+
+<p>And now, during this Easter week, Lord Saint George came down to the
+castle, intending to kill two birds with one stone, to take his
+parliamentary holiday, and to do a little business with his father.
+It not unfrequently came to pass that he found it necessary to
+repress the energy of his father's august magnificence. He would go
+so far as to remind his father that in these days marquises were not
+very different from other people, except in this, that they perhaps
+might have more money. The Marquis would fret in silence, not daring
+to commit himself to an argument with his son, and would in secret
+lament over the altered ideas of the age. It was his theory of
+politics that the old distances should be maintained, and that the
+head of a great family should be a patriarch, entitled to obedience
+from those around him. It was his son's idea that every man was
+entitled to as much obedience as his money would buy, and to no more.
+This was very lamentable to the Marquis; but nevertheless, his son
+was the coming man, and even this must be borne.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sorry about this chapel at Bullhampton," said the son to the
+father after dinner.</p>
+
+<p>"Why sorry, Saint George? I thought you would have been of opinion
+that the dissenters should have a chapel."</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly they should, if they're fools enough to want to build a
+place to pray in, when they have got one already built for them.
+There's no reason on earth why they shouldn't have a chapel, seeing
+that nothing that we can do will save them from schism."</p>
+
+<p>"We can't prevent dissent, Saint George."</p>
+
+<p>"We can't prevent it, because, in religion as in everything else, men
+like to manage themselves. This farmer or that tradesman becomes a
+dissenter because he can be somebody in the management of his chapel,
+and would be nobody in regard to the parish church."</p>
+
+<p>"That is very dreadful."</p>
+
+<p>"Not worse than our own people, who remain with us because it sounds
+the most respectable. Not one in fifty really believes that this or
+that form of worship is more likely to send him to heaven than any
+other."</p>
+
+<p>"I certainly claim to myself to be one of the few," said the Marquis.</p>
+
+<p>"No doubt; and so you ought, my lord, as every advantage has been
+given you. But, to come back to the Bullhampton chapel,&mdash;don't you
+think we could move it away from the parson's gate?"</p>
+
+<p>"They have built it now, Saint George."</p>
+
+<p>"They can't have finished it yet."</p>
+
+<p>"You wouldn't have me ask them to pull it down? Packer was here
+yesterday, and said that the framework of the roof was up."</p>
+
+<p>"What made them hurry it in that way? Spite against the Vicar, I
+suppose."</p>
+
+<p>"He is a most objectionable man, Saint George; most insolent,
+overbearing, and unlike a clergyman. They say that he is little
+better than an infidel himself."</p>
+
+<p>"We had better leave that to the bishop, my lord."</p>
+
+<p>"We must feel about it, connected as we are with the parish," said
+the Marquis.</p>
+
+<p>"But I don't think we shall do any good by going into a parochial
+quarrel."</p>
+
+<p>"It was the very best bit of land for the purpose in all
+Bullhampton," said the Marquis. "I made particular inquiry, and there
+can be no doubt of that. Though I particularly dislike that Mr.
+Fenwick, it was not done to injure him."</p>
+
+<p>"It does injure him damnably, my lord."</p>
+
+<p>"That's only an accident."</p>
+
+<p>"And I'm not at all sure that we shan't find that we have made a
+mistake."</p>
+
+<p>"How a mistake?"</p>
+
+<p>"That we have given away land that doesn't belong to us."</p>
+
+<p>"Who says it doesn't belong to us?" said the Marquis, angrily. A
+suggestion so hostile, so unjust, so cruel as this, almost overcame
+the feeling of veneration which he entertained for his son. "That is
+really nonsense, Saint George."</p>
+
+<p>"Have you looked at the title deeds?"</p>
+
+<p>"The title deeds are of course with Mr. Boothby. But Packer knows
+every foot of the ground,&mdash;even if I didn't know it myself."</p>
+
+<p>"I wouldn't give a straw for Packer's knowledge."</p>
+
+<p>"I haven't heard that they have even raised the question themselves."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm told that they will do so,&mdash;that they say it is common land.
+It's quite clear that it has never been either let or enclosed."</p>
+
+<p>"You might say the same of the bit of green that lies outside the
+park gate,&mdash;where the great oak stands; but I don't suppose that that
+is common."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't say that this is&mdash;but I do say that there may be difficulty
+of proof; and that to be driven to the proof in such a matter would
+be disagreeable."</p>
+
+<p>"What would you do, then?"</p>
+
+<p>"Take the bull by the horns, and move the chapel at our own expense
+to some site that shall be altogether unobjectionable."</p>
+
+<p>"We should be owning ourselves wrong, Augustus."</p>
+
+<p>"And why not? I cannot see what disgrace there is in coming forward
+handsomely and telling the truth. When the land was given we thought
+it was our own. There has come up a shadow of a doubt, and sooner
+than be in the wrong, we give another site and take all the expense.
+I think that would be the right sort of thing to do."</p>
+
+<p>Lord Saint George returned to town two days afterwards, and the
+Marquis was left with the dilemma on his mind. Lord Saint George,
+though he would frequently interfere in matters connected with the
+property in the manner described, would never dictate and seldom
+insist. He had said what he had got to say, and the Marquis was left
+to act for himself. But the old lord had learned to feel that he was
+sure to fall into some pit whenever he declined to follow his son's
+advice. His son had a painful way of being right that was a great
+trouble to him. And this was a question which touched him very
+nearly. It was not only that he must yield to Mr. Fenwick before the
+eyes of Mr. Puddleham and all the people of Bullhampton; but that he
+must confess his own ignorance as to the borders of his own property,
+and must abandon a bit of land which he believed to belong to the
+Stowte estate. Now, if there was a point in his religion as to which
+Lord Trowbridge was more staunch than another, it was as to the
+removal of landmarks. He did not covet his neighbour's land; but he
+was most resolute that no stranger should, during his reign, ever
+possess a rood of his own.</p>
+
+
+<p><a name="c44" id="c44"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>CHAPTER XLIV.</h3>
+<h4>THE MARRABLES OF DUNRIPPLE.<br />&nbsp;</h4>
+
+
+<p>"If I were to go, there would be nobody left but you. You should
+remember that, Walter, when you talk of going to India." This was
+said to Walter Marrable at Dunripple, by his cousin Gregory, Sir
+Gregory's only son.</p>
+
+<p>"And if I were to die in India, as I probably shall, who will come
+next?"</p>
+
+<p>"There is nobody to come next for the title."</p>
+
+<p>"But for the property?"</p>
+
+<p>"As it stands at present, if you and I were to die before your father
+and uncle John, the survivor of them would be the last in the entail.
+If they, too, died, and the survivor of us all left no will, the
+property would go to Mary Lowther. But that is hardly probable. When
+my grandfather made the settlement, on my father's marriage, he had
+four sons living."</p>
+
+<p>"Should my father have the handling of it I would not give much for
+anybody's chance after him," said Walter.</p>
+
+<p>"If you were to marry there would, of course, be a new settlement as
+to your rights. Your father could do no harm except as your
+heir,&mdash;unless, indeed, he were heir to us all. My uncle John will
+outlive him, probably."</p>
+
+<p>"My uncle John will live for ever, I should think," said Walter
+Marrable.</p>
+
+<p>This conversation took place between the two cousins when Walter had
+been already two or three weeks at Dunripple. He had come there
+intending to stay over two or three days, and he had already accepted
+an invitation to make the house his home as long as he should remain
+in England. He had known but little of his uncle and nothing of his
+cousin, before this visit was made. He had conceived them to be
+unfriendly to him, having known them to be always unfriendly to his
+father. He was, of course, aware,&mdash;very well aware now, since he had
+himself suffered so grievously from his father's dishonesty,&mdash;that
+the enmity which had reached them from Dunripple had been well
+deserved. Colonel Marrable had, as a younger brother, never been
+content with what he was able to extract from the head of the family,
+who was, in his eyes, a milch cow that never ought to run dry. With
+Walter Marrable there had remained a feeling adverse to his uncle and
+cousin, even after he had been forced to admit to himself how many
+and how grievous were the sins of his own father. He had believed
+that the Dunripple people were stupid, and prejudiced, and selfish;
+and it had only been at the instance of his uncle, the parson, that
+he had consented to make the visit. He had gone there, and had been
+treated, at any rate, with affectionate consideration. And he had
+found the house to be not unpleasant, though very quiet. Living at
+Dunripple there was a Mrs. Brownlow, a widowed sister of the late
+Lady Marrable, with her daughter, Edith Brownlow. Previous to this
+time Walter Marrable had never even heard of the Brownlows, so little
+had he known about Dunripple; and when he arrived there it had been
+necessary to explain to him who these people were.</p>
+
+<p>He had found his uncle, Sir Gregory, to be much such a man as he had
+expected in outward appearance and mode of life. The baronet was old
+and disposed to regard himself as entitled to all the indulgences of
+infirmity. He rose late, took but little exercise, was very
+particular about what he ate, and got through his day with the
+assistance of his steward, his novel, and occasionally of his doctor.
+He slept a great deal, and was never tired of talking of himself.
+Occupation in life he had none, but he was a charitable, honourable
+man, who had high ideas of what was due to others. His son, however,
+had astonished Walter considerably. Gregory Marrable the younger was
+a man somewhat over forty, but he looked as though he were sixty. He
+was very tall and thin, narrow in the chest, and so round in the
+shoulders as to appear to be almost humpbacked. He was so
+short-sighted as to be nearly blind, and was quite bald. He carried
+his head so forward that it looked as though it were going to fall
+off. He shambled with his legs, which seemed never to be strong
+enough to carry him from one room to another; and he tried them by no
+other exercise, for he never went outside the house except when, on
+Sundays and some other very rare occasions, he would trust himself to
+be driven in a low pony-phaeton. But in one respect he was altogether
+unlike his father. His whole time was spent among his books, and he
+was at this moment engaged in revising and editing a very long and
+altogether unreadable old English chronicle in rhyme, for publication
+by one of those learned societies which are rife in London. Of Robert
+of Gloucester, and William Langland, of Andrew of Wyntown and the
+Lady Juliana Berners, he could discourse, if not with eloquence, at
+least with enthusiasm. Chaucer was his favourite poet, and he was
+supposed to have read the works of Gower in English, French, and
+Latin. But he was himself apparently as old as one of his own
+black-letter volumes, and as unfit for general use. Walter could
+hardly regard him as a cousin, declaring to himself that his uncle
+the parson, and his own father were, in effect, younger men than the
+younger Gregory Marrable. He was never without a cough, never well,
+never without various ailments and troubles of the flesh,&mdash;of which,
+however, he himself made but slight account, taking them quite as a
+matter of course. With such inmates the house no doubt would have
+been dull, had there not been women there to enliven it.</p>
+
+<p>By degrees, too, and not by slow degrees, the new comer found that he
+was treated as one of the family,&mdash;found that, after a certain
+fashion, he was treated as the heir to the family. Between him and
+the title and the estate there were but the lives of four old men.
+Why had he not known that this was so before he had allowed himself
+to be separated from Mary Lowther? But he had known nothing of
+it,&mdash;had thought not at all about it. There had been another
+Marrable, of the same generation with himself, between him and the
+succession, who might marry and have children, and he had not
+regarded his heirship as being likely to have any effect, at any rate
+upon his early life. It had never occurred to him that he need not go
+to India, because he would probably outlive four old gentlemen and
+become Sir Walter Marrable and owner of Dunripple.</p>
+
+<p>Nor would he have looked at the matter in that light now had not his
+cousin forced the matter upon him. Not a word was said to him at
+Dunripple about Mary Lowther, but very many words were said about his
+own condition. Gregory Marrable strongly advised him against going to
+India,&mdash;so strongly that Walter was surprised to find that such a man
+would have so much to say on such a subject. The young captain, in
+such circumstances, could not very well explain that he was driven to
+follow his profession in a fashion so disagreeable to him because,
+although he was heir to Dunripple, he was not near enough to it to be
+entitled to any allowance from its owner; but he felt that that would
+have been the only true answer when it was proposed to him to stay in
+England because he would some day become Sir Walter Marrable. But he
+did plead the great loss which he had encountered by means of his
+father's ill-treatment of him, and endeavoured to prove to his cousin
+that there was no alternative before him but to serve in some quarter
+of the globe in which his pay would be sufficient for his wants.</p>
+
+<p>"Why should you not sell out, or go on half-pay, and remain here and
+marry Edith Brownlow?" said his cousin.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think I could do that," said Walter, slowly.</p>
+
+<p>"Why not? There is nothing my father would like so much." Then he was
+silent for awhile, but, as his cousin made no further immediate
+reply, Gregory Marrable went on with his plan. "Ten years ago, when
+she was not much more than a little girl, and when it was first
+arranged that she should come here, my father proposed&mdash;that I should
+marry her."</p>
+
+<p>"And why didn't you?"</p>
+
+<p>The elder cousin smiled and shook his head, and coughed aloud as he
+smiled. "Why not, indeed? Well; I suppose you can see why not. I was
+an old man almost before she was a young woman. She is just
+twenty-four now, and I shall be dead, probably, in two years' time."</p>
+
+<p>"Nonsense."</p>
+
+<p>"Twice since that time I have been within an inch of dying. At any
+rate, even my father does not look to that any longer."</p>
+
+<p>"Is he fond of Miss Brownlow?"</p>
+
+<p>"There is no one in the world whom he loves so well. Of course an old
+man loves a young woman best. It is natural that he should do so. He
+never had a daughter; but Edith is the same to him as his own child.
+Nothing would please him so much as that she should be the mistress
+of Dunripple."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid that it cannot be so," said Walter.</p>
+
+<p>"But why not? There need be no India for you then. If you would do
+that you would be to my father exactly as though you were his son.
+Your father might, of course, outlive my father, and no doubt will
+outlive me, and then for his life he will have the place, but some
+arrangement could be made so that you should continue here."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid it cannot be so," said Walter. Many thoughts were passing
+through his mind. Why had he not known that these good things were so
+near to him before he had allowed Mary Lowther to go off from him?
+And, had it chanced that he had visited Dunripple before he had gone
+to Loring, how might it have been between him and this other girl?
+Edith Brownlow was not beautiful, not grand in her beauty as was Mary
+Lowther; but she was pretty, soft, lady-like, with a sweet dash of
+quiet pleasant humour,&mdash;a girl who certainly need not be left begging
+about the world for a husband. And this life at Dunripple was
+pleasant enough. Though the two elder Marrables were old and infirm,
+Walter was allowed to do just as he pleased in the house. He was
+encouraged to hunt. There was shooting for him if he wished it. Even
+the servants about the place, the gamekeeper, the groom, and the old
+butler, seemed to have recognised him as the heir. There would have
+been so comfortable an escape from the dilemma into which his father
+had brought him,&mdash;had he not made his visit to Loring.</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?" demanded Gregory Marrable.</p>
+
+<p>"A man cannot become attached to a girl by order, and what right have
+I to suppose that she would accept me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course she would accept you. Why not? Everybody around her would
+be in your favour. And as to not falling in love with her, I declare
+I do not know a sweeter human being in the world than Edith
+Brownlow."</p>
+
+<p>Before the hunting season was over Captain Marrable had abandoned his
+intention of going to India, and had made arrangements for serving
+for awhile with his regiment in England. This he did after a
+discussion of some length with his uncle, Sir Gregory. During that
+discussion nothing was said about Edith Brownlow, and of course, not
+a word was said about Mary Lowther. Captain Marrable did not even
+know whether his uncle or his cousin was aware that that engagement
+had ever existed. Between him and his uncle there had never been an
+allusion to his marriage, but the old man had spoken of his nearness
+to the property, and had expressed his regret that the last heir, the
+only heir likely to perpetuate the name and title, should take
+himself to India in the pride of his life. He made no offer as to
+money, but he told his nephew that there was a home for him if he
+would give up his profession, or a retreat whenever his professional
+duties might allow him to visit it. Horses should be kept for him,
+and he should be treated in every way as a son of the family.</p>
+
+<p>"Take my father at his word," said Gregory Marrable. "He will never
+let you be short of money."</p>
+
+<p>After much consideration Walter Marrable did take Sir Gregory at his
+word, and abandoned for ever all idea of a further career in India.</p>
+
+<p>As soon as he had done this he wrote to Mary Lowther to inform her of
+his decision. "It does seem hard," he said in his letter, "that an
+arrangement which is in so many respects desirable, should not have
+been compatible with one which is so much more desirable." But he
+made no renewed offer. Indeed he felt that he could not do so at the
+present moment, in honesty either to his cousin or to his uncle, as
+he had accepted their hospitality and acceded to the arrangements
+which they had proposed without any word on his part of such
+intention. A home had been offered to him at Dunripple,&mdash;to him in
+his present condition, but certainly not a home to any wife whom he might
+bring there, nor a home to the family which might come afterwards. He
+thought that he was doing the best that he could with himself by
+remaining in England, and the best also towards a possible future
+renewal of his engagement with Mary Lowther. But of that he said
+nothing in his letter to her. He merely told her the fact as it
+regarded himself, and told that somewhat coldly. Of Edith Brownlow,
+and of the proposition in regard to her, of course he said nothing.</p>
+
+<p>It was the intention both of Sir Gregory and his son that the new
+inmate of the house should marry Edith. The old man, who, up to a
+late date had with weak persistency urged the match upon his son, had
+taken up the idea from the very first arrival of his nephew at
+Dunripple. Such an arrangement would solve all the family
+difficulties, and would enable him to provide for Edith as though she
+were indeed his daughter. He loved Edith dearly, but he could not
+bear that she should leave Dunripple, and it had grieved him sorely
+when he reflected that in coming years Dunripple must belong to
+relatives of whom he knew nothing that was good, and that Edith
+Brownlow must be banished from the house. If his son would have
+married Edith, all might have been well, but even Sir Gregory was at
+last aware that no such marriage as that could take place. Then had
+come the quarrel between the Colonel and the Captain, and the latter
+had been taken into favour. Colonel Marrable would not have been
+allowed to put his foot inside Dunripple House, so great was the
+horror which he had created. And the son had been feared too as long
+as the father and son were one. But now the father, who had treated
+the whole family vilely, had treated his own son most vilely, and
+therefore the son had been received with open arms. If only he could
+be trusted with Edith,&mdash;and if Edith and he might be made to trust
+each other,&mdash;all might be well. Of the engagement between Walter and
+Mary Lowther no word had ever reached Dunripple. Twice or thrice in
+the year a letter would pass between Parson John and his nephew,
+Gregory Marrable, but such letters were very short, and the parson
+was the last man in the world to spread the tittle-tattle of a
+love-story. He had always known that that affair would lead to
+nothing, and that the less said about it the better.</p>
+
+<p>Walter Marrable was to join his regiment at Windsor before the end of
+April. When he wrote to Mary Lowther to tell her of his plans he had
+only a fortnight longer for remaining in idleness at Dunripple. The
+hunting was over, and his life was simply idle. He perceived, or
+thought that he perceived, that all the inmates of the house, and
+especially his uncle, expected that he would soon return to them, and
+that they spoke of his work of soldiering as of a thing that was
+temporary. Mrs. Brownlow, who was a quiet woman, very reticent, and
+by no means inclined to interfere with things not belonging to her,
+had suggested that he would soon be with them again, and the
+housekeeper had given him to understand that his room was not to be
+touched. And then, too, he thought that he saw that Edith Brownlow
+was specially left in his way. If that were so it was necessary that
+the eyes of some one of the Dunripple party should be opened to the
+truth.</p>
+
+<p>He was walking home with Miss Brownlow across the park from church
+one Sunday morning. Sir Gregory never went to church; his age was
+supposed to be too great, or his infirmities too many. Mrs. Brownlow
+was in the pony carriage driving her nephew, and Walter Marrable was
+alone with Edith. There had been some talk of cousinship,&mdash;of the
+various relationships of the family, and the like,&mdash;and of the way in
+which the Marrables were connected. They two, Walter and Edith, were
+not cousins. She was related to the family only by her aunt's
+marriage, and yet, as she said, she had always heard more of the
+Marrables than of the Brownlows.</p>
+
+
+<div class="center"><a name="il15" id="il15"></a>
+<table style="margin: 0 auto" cellpadding="4px">
+  <tr>
+    <td align="center">
+      <a href="images/il15.jpg">
+      <img src="images/il15-t.jpg" height="500"
+      alt="Sunday Morning at Dunripple." /></a>
+    </td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="center">
+      <span class="caption">Sunday Morning at Dunripple.<br />
+      Click to <a href="images/il15.jpg">ENLARGE</a></span>
+    </td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>"You never saw Mary Lowther?" Walter asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Never."</p>
+
+<p>"But you have heard of her?"</p>
+
+<p>"I just know her name,&mdash;hardly more. The last time your uncle was
+here,&mdash;Parson John, we were talking of her. He made her out to be
+wonderfully beautiful."</p>
+
+<p>"That was as long ago as last summer," said the Captain, reflecting
+that his uncle's account had been given before he and Mary Lowther
+had seen each other.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes;&mdash;ever so long ago."</p>
+
+<p>"She is wonderfully beautiful."</p>
+
+<p>"You know her, then, Captain Marrable?"</p>
+
+<p>"I know her very well. In the first place, she is my cousin."</p>
+
+<p>"But ever so distant?"</p>
+
+<p>"We are not first cousins. Her mother was a daughter of General
+Marrable, who was a brother of Sir Gregory's father."</p>
+
+<p>"It is so hard to understand, is it not? She is wonderfully
+beautiful, is she?"</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed, she is."</p>
+
+<p>"And she is your cousin&mdash;in the first place. What is she in the
+second place?"</p>
+
+<p>He was not quite sure whether he wished to tell the story or not. The
+engagement was broken, and it might be a question whether, as
+regarded Mary, he had a right to tell it; and, then, if he did tell
+it, would not his reason for doing so be apparent? Was it not
+palpable that he was expected to marry this girl, and that she would
+understand that he was explaining to her that he did not intend to
+carry out the general expectation of the family? And, then, was he
+sure that it might not be possible for him at some future time to do
+as he was desired?</p>
+
+<p>"I meant to say that, as I was staying at Loring, of course I met her
+frequently. She is living with a certain old Miss Marrable, whom you
+will meet some day."</p>
+
+<p>"I have heard of her, but I don't suppose I ever shall meet her. I
+never go anywhere. I don't suppose there are such stay-at-home people
+in the world as we are."</p>
+
+<p>"Why don't you get Sir Gregory to ask them here?"</p>
+
+<p>"Both he and my cousin are so afraid of having strange women in the
+house; you know, we never have anybody here; your coming has been
+quite an event. Old Mrs. Potter seems to think that an era of
+dissipation is to be commenced because she has been called upon to
+open so many pots of jam to make pies for you."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid I have been very troublesome."</p>
+
+<p>"Awfully troublesome. You can't think of all that had to be said and
+done about the stables! Do you have your oats bruised? Even I was
+consulted about that. Most of the people in the parish are quite
+disappointed because you don't go about in your full armour."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid it's too late now."</p>
+
+<p>"I own I was a little disappointed myself when you came down to
+dinner without a sword. You can have no idea in what a state of rural
+simplicity we live here. Would you believe it?&mdash;for ten years I have
+never seen the sea, and have never been into any town bigger than
+Worcester,&mdash;unless Hereford be bigger. We did go once to the festival
+at Hereford. We have not managed Gloucester yet."</p>
+
+<p>"You've never seen London?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not since I was twelve years old. Papa died when I was fourteen, and
+I came here almost immediately afterwards. Fancy, ten years at
+Dunripple! There is not a tree or a stone I don't know, and of course
+not a face in the parish."</p>
+
+<p>She was very nice; but it was out of the question that she should
+ever become his wife. He had thought that he might explain this to
+herself by letting her know that he had within the last few months
+become engaged to, and had broken his engagement with, his cousin,
+Mary Lowther. But he found that he could not do it. In the first
+place, she would understand more than he meant her to understand if
+he made the attempt. She would know that he was putting her on her
+guard, and would take it as an insult. And then he could not bring
+himself to talk about Mary Lowther, and to tell their joint secrets.
+He was discontented with himself and with Dunripple, and he repented
+that he had yielded in respect to his Indian service. Everything had
+gone wrong with him. Had he refused to accede to Mary's proposition
+for a separation, and had he come to Dunripple as an engaged man, he
+might, he thought, have reconciled his uncle,&mdash;or at least his Cousin
+Gregory,&mdash;to his marriage with Mary. But he did not see his way back
+to that position now, having been entertained at his uncle's house as
+his uncle's heir for so long a time without having mentioned it.</p>
+
+<p>At last he went off to Windsor, sad at heart, having received from
+Mary an answer to his letter, which he felt to be very cold, very
+discreet, and very unsatisfactory. She had merely expressed a fervent
+wish that whether he went to India or whether he remained in England,
+he might be prosperous and happy. The writer evidently intended that
+the correspondence should not be continued.</p>
+
+
+<p><a name="c45" id="c45"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>CHAPTER XLV.</h3>
+<h4>WHAT SHALL I DO WITH MYSELF?<br />&nbsp;</h4>
+
+
+<p>Parson John Marrable, though he said nothing in his letters to
+Dunripple about the doings of his nephew at Loring, was by no means
+equally reticent in his speech at Loring as to the doings at
+Dunripple. How he came by his news he did not say, but he had ever so
+much to tell. And Miss Marrable, who knew him well, was aware that
+his news was not simple gossip, but was told with an object. In his
+way, Parson John was a crafty man, who was always doing a turn of
+business. To his mind it was clearly inexpedient, and almost
+impracticable, that his nephew and Mary Lowther should ever become
+man and wife. He knew that they were separated; but he knew, also,
+that they had agreed to separate on terms which would easily admit of
+being reconsidered. He, too, had heard of Edith Brownlow, and had
+heard that if a marriage could be arranged between Walter and Edith,
+the family troubles would be in a fair way of settlement. No good
+could come to anybody from that other marriage. As for Mary Lowther,
+it was manifestly her duty to become Mrs. Gilmore. He therefore took
+some trouble to let the ladies at Uphill know that Captain Marrable
+had been received very graciously at Dunripple; that he was making
+himself very happy there, hunting, shooting, and forgetting his old
+troubles; that it was understood that he was to be recognised as the
+heir;&mdash;and that there was a young lady in the case, the favourite of
+Sir Gregory.</p>
+
+<p>He understood the world too well to say a word to Mary Lowther
+herself about her rival. Mary would have perceived his drift. But he
+expressed his ideas about Edith confidentially to Miss Marrable,
+fully alive to the fact that Miss Marrable would know how to deal
+with her niece. "It is by far the best thing that could have happened
+to him," said the parson. "As for going out to India again, for a man
+with his prospects it was very bad."</p>
+
+<p>"But his cousin isn't much older than he is," suggested Miss
+Marrable.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes he is,&mdash;a great deal older. And Gregory's health is so bad that
+his life is not worth a year's purchase. Poor fellow! they tell me he
+only cares to live till he has got his book out. The truth is that if
+Walter could make a match of it with Edith Brownlow, they might
+arrange something about the property which would enable him to live
+there just as though the place were his own. The Colonel would be the
+only stumbling-block, and after what he has done, he could hardly
+refuse to agree to anything."</p>
+
+<p>"They'd have to pay him," said Miss Marrable.</p>
+
+<p>"Then he must be paid, that's all. My brother Gregory is wrapped up
+in that girl, and he would do anything for her welfare. I'm told that
+she and Walter have taken very kindly to each other already."</p>
+
+<p>It would be better for Mary Lowther that Walter Marrable should marry
+Edith Brownlow. Such, at least, was Miss Marrable's belief. She could
+see that Mary, though she bore herself bravely, still did so as one
+who had received a wound for which there was no remedy;&mdash;as a man who
+has lost a leg and who nevertheless intends to enjoy life though he
+knows that he never can walk again. But in this case, the real bar to
+walking was the hope in Mary's breast,&mdash;a hope that was still
+present, though it was not nourished,&mdash;that the leg was not
+irremediably lost. If Captain Marrable would finish all that by
+marrying Edith, then,&mdash;so thought Miss Marrable,&mdash;in process of time
+the cure would be made good, and there might be another leg. She did
+not believe much in the Captain's constancy, and was quite ready to
+listen to the story about another love. And so from day to day words
+were dropped into Mary's ear which had their effect.</p>
+
+<p>"I must say that I am glad that he is not to go to India," said Miss
+Marrable to her niece.</p>
+
+<p>"So, indeed, am I," answered Mary.</p>
+
+<p>"In the first place it is such an excellent thing that he should be
+on good terms at Dunripple. He must inherit the property some day,
+and the title too."</p>
+
+<p>To this Mary made no reply. It seemed to her to have been hard that
+the real state of things should not have been explained to her before
+she gave up her lover. She had then regarded any hope of relief from
+Dunripple as being beyond measure distant. There had been a
+possibility, and that was all,&mdash;a chance to which no prudent man or
+woman would have looked in making their preparations for the life
+before them. That had been her idea as to the Dunripple prospects;
+and now it seemed that on a sudden Walter was to be regarded as
+almost the immediate heir. She did not blame him; but it did appear
+to be hard upon her.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't see the slightest reason why he shouldn't live at
+Dunripple," continued Miss Marrable.</p>
+
+<p>"Only that he would be dependent. I suppose he does not mean to sell
+out of the army altogether."</p>
+
+<p>"At any rate, he may be backwards and forwards. You see, there is no
+chance of Sir Gregory's own son marrying."</p>
+
+<p>"So they say."</p>
+
+<p>"And his position would be really that of a younger brother in
+similar circumstances."</p>
+
+<p>Mary paused a moment before she replied, and then she spoke out.</p>
+
+<p>"Dear Aunt Sarah, what does all this mean? I know you are speaking at
+me, and yet I don't quite understand it. Everything between me and
+Captain Marrable is over. I have no possible means of influencing his
+life. If I were told to-morrow that he had given up the army and
+taken to living altogether at Dunripple, I should have no means of
+judging whether he had done well or ill. Indeed, I should have no
+right to judge."</p>
+
+<p>"You must be glad that the family should be united."</p>
+
+<p>"I am glad. Now, is that all?"</p>
+
+<p>"I want you to bring yourself to think without regret of his probable
+marriage with this young lady."</p>
+
+<p>"You don't suppose I shall blame him if he marries her."</p>
+
+<p>"But I want you to see it in such a light that it shall not make you
+unhappy."</p>
+
+<p>"I think, dear aunt, that we had better not talk of it. I can assure
+you of this, that if I could prevent him from marrying by holding up
+my little finger, I would not do it."</p>
+
+<p>"It would be ten thousand pities," urged the old lady, "that either
+his life or yours should be a sacrifice to a little episode, which,
+after all, only took a week or two in the acting."</p>
+
+<p>"I can only answer for myself," said Mary. "I don't mean to be a
+sacrifice."</p>
+
+<p>There were many such conversations, and by degrees they did have an
+effect upon Mary Lowther. She learned to believe that it was probable
+that Captain Marrable should marry Miss Brownlow, and, of course,
+asked herself questions as to the effect such a marriage would have
+upon herself, which she answered more fully than she did those which
+were put to her by her aunt. Then there came to Parson John some
+papers, which required his signature, in reference to the disposal of
+a small sum of money, he having been one of the trustees to his
+brother's marriage settlement. This was needed in regard to some
+provision which the baronet was making for his niece, and which, if
+read aright, would rather have afforded evidence against than in
+favour of the chance of her immediate marriage; but it was taken at
+Loring to signify that the thing was to be done, and that the
+courtship was at any rate in progress. Mary did not believe all that
+she heard; but there was left upon her mind an idea that Walter
+Marrable was preparing himself for the sudden change of his
+affections. Then she determined that, should he do so, she would not
+judge him to have done wrong. If he could settle himself comfortably
+in this way, why should he not do so? She was told that Edith
+Brownlow was pretty, and gentle, and good, and would undoubtedly
+receive from Sir Gregory's hands all that Sir Gregory could give her.
+It was expedient, for the sake of the whole family, that such a
+marriage should be arranged. She would not stand in the way of it;
+and, indeed, how could she stand in the way of it? Had not her
+engagement with Captain Marrable been dissolved at her own instance
+in the most solemn manner possible? Let him marry whom he might, she
+could have no ground of complaint on that score.</p>
+
+<p>She was in this state of mind when she received Captain Marrable's
+letter from Dunripple. When she opened it, for a moment she thought
+that it would convey to her tidings respecting Miss Brownlow. When
+she had read it, she told herself how impossible it was that he
+should have told her of his new matrimonial intentions, even if he
+entertained them. The letter gave no evidence either one way or the
+other; but it confirmed to her the news which had reached her through
+Parson John, that her former lover intended to abandon that special
+career, his choice of which had made it necessary that they two
+should abandon their engagement. When at Loring he had determined
+that he must go to India. He had found it to be impossible that he
+should live without going to India. He had now been staying a few
+weeks at Dunripple with his uncle, and with Edith Brownlow, and it
+turned out that he need not go to India at all. Then she sat down,
+and wrote to him that guarded, civil, but unenthusiastic letter, of
+which the reader has already heard. She had allowed herself to be
+wounded and made sore by what they had told her of Edith Brownlow.</p>
+
+<p>It was still early in the spring, just in the middle of April, when
+Mary received another letter from her friend at Bullhampton, a letter
+which made her turn all these things in her mind very seriously. If
+Walter Marrable were to marry Edith Brownlow, what sort of future
+life should she, Mary Lowther, propose to herself? She was firmly
+resolved upon one thing, that it behoved her to look rather to what
+was right than to what might simply be pleasant. But would it be
+right that she should consider herself to be, as it were, widowed by
+the frustration of an unfortunate passion? Life would still be left
+to her,&mdash;such a life as that which her aunt lived,&mdash;such a life, with
+this exception, that whereas her aunt was a single lady with moderate
+means, she would be a single lady with very small means indeed. But
+that question of means did not go far with her; there was something
+so much more important that she could put that out of sight. She had
+told herself very plainly that it was a good thing for a woman to be
+married; that she would live and die unsuccessfully if she lived and
+died a single woman; that she had desired to do better with herself
+than that. Was it proper that she should now give up all such
+ambition because she had made a mistake? If it were proper, she would
+do so; and then the question resolved itself into this;&mdash;Could she be
+right if she married a man without loving him? To marry a man without
+esteeming him, without the possibility of loving him hereafter, she
+knew would be wrong.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Fenwick's letter was as follows;&mdash;<br />&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+<blockquote>
+<p class="jright">Vicarage, Tuesday.</p>
+
+<p class="noindent"><span class="smallcaps">My dear Mary</span>,</p>
+
+<p>My brother-in-law left us yesterday, and has put us all
+into a twitter. He said, just as he was going away, that
+he didn't believe that Lord Trowbridge had any right to
+give away the ground, because it had not been in his
+possession or his family's for a great many years, or
+something of that sort. We don't clearly understand all
+about it, nor does he; but he is to find out something
+which he says he can find out, and then let us know. But
+in the middle of all this, Frank declares that he won't
+stir in the matter, and that if he could put the
+abominable thing down by holding up his finger, he would
+not do it. And he has made me promise not to talk about
+it, and, therefore, all I can do is to be in a twitter. If
+that spiteful old man has really given away land that
+doesn't belong to him, simply to annoy us,&mdash;and it
+certainly has been done with no other object,&mdash;I think
+that he ought to be told of it. Frank, however, has got to
+be quite serious about it, and you know how very serious
+he can be when he is serious.</p>
+
+<p>But I did not sit down to write specially about that
+horrid chapel. I want to know what you mean to do in the
+summer. It is always better to make these little
+arrangements beforehand; and when I speak of the summer, I
+mean the early summer. The long and the short of it is,
+will you come to us about the end of May?</p>
+
+<p>Of course, I know which way your thoughts will go when you
+get this, and, of course, you will know what I am thinking
+of when I write it; but I will promise that not a word
+shall be said to you to urge you in any way. I do not
+suppose you will think it right that you should stay away
+from friends whom you love, and who love you dearly, for
+fear of a man who wants you to marry him. You are not
+afraid of Mr. Gilmore, and I don't suppose that you are
+going to shut yourself up all your life because Captain
+Marrable has not a fortune of his own. Come at any rate.
+If you find it unpleasant you shall go back just when you
+please, and I will pledge myself that you shall not be
+harassed by persuasions.</p>
+
+<p class="ind10">Yours most affectionately,</p>
+
+<p class="ind15"><span class="smallcaps">Janet Fenwick</span>.</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">Frank
+has read this. He says that all I have said about
+his being serious is a tarradiddle; but that nothing can
+be more true than what I have said about your friends
+loving you, and wishing to have you here again. If you
+were here we might talk him over yet about the chapel.<br />&nbsp;</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+
+<p class="noindent">To which,
+in the Vicar's handwriting, was added the word, "Never!"</p>
+
+<p>It was two days before she showed this letter to her aunt&mdash;two days
+in which she had thought much upon the subject. She knew well that
+her aunt would counsel her to go to Bullhampton, and, therefore, she
+would not mention the letter till she had made up her own mind.</p>
+
+<p>"What will you do?" said her aunt.</p>
+
+<p>"I will go, if you do not object."</p>
+
+<p>"I certainly shall not object," said Miss Marrable.</p>
+
+<p>Then Mary wrote a very short letter to her friend, which may as well,
+also, be communicated to the
+<span class="nowrap">reader:&mdash;</span><br />&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+<blockquote>
+<p class="jright">Loring, Thursday.</p>
+
+<p class="noindent"><span class="smallcaps">Dear Janet</span>,</p>
+
+<p>I will go to you about the end of May; and yet, though I
+have made up my mind to do so, I almost doubt that I am
+not wise. If one could only ordain that things should be
+as though they had never been! That, however, is
+impossible, and one can only endeavour to live so as to
+come as nearly as possible to such a state. I know that I
+am confused; but I think you will understand what I mean.</p>
+
+<p>I intend to be very full of energy about the chapel, and I
+do hope that your brother-in-law will be able to prove
+that Lord Trowbridge has been misbehaving himself. I never
+loved Mr. Puddleham, who always seemed to look upon me
+with wrath because I belonged to the Vicarage; and I
+certainly should take delight in seeing him banished from
+the Vicarage gate.</p>
+
+<p class="ind10">Always affectionately yours,</p>
+
+<p class="ind15"><span class="smallcaps">Mary
+Lowther.</span><br />&nbsp;</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+
+<p><a name="c46" id="c46"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>CHAPTER XLVI.</h3>
+<h4>MR. JAY OF WARMINSTER.<br />&nbsp;</h4>
+
+
+<p><img class="left" src="images/ch46a.jpg" width="310" alt="Illustration" />
+The Vicar had undertaken to maintain Carry Brattle at Mrs. Stiggs's
+house, in Trotter's Buildings, for a fortnight, but he found at the
+end of the fortnight that his responsibility on the poor girl's
+behalf was by no means over. The reader knows with what success he
+had made his visit to Startup, and how far he was from ridding
+himself of his burden by the aid of the charity and affections of the
+poor girl's relatives there. He had shaken the Startup dust, as it
+were, from his gig-wheels as he drove out of George Brattle's
+farmyard, and had declined even the offer of money which had been
+made. Ten or fifteen pounds! He would make up the amount of that
+offer out of his own pocket rather than let the brother think that he
+had bought off his duty to a sister at so cheap a rate. Then he
+convinced himself that in this way he owed Carry Brattle fifteen
+pounds, and comforted himself by reflecting that these fifteen pounds
+would carry the girl on a good deal beyond the fortnight; if only she
+would submit herself to the tedium of such a life as would be hers if
+she remained at Mrs. Stiggs's house. He named a fortnight both to
+Carry and to Mrs. Stiggs, saying that he himself would either come or
+send before the end of that time. Then he returned home, and told the
+whole story to his wife. All this took place before Mr. Quickenham's
+arrival at the vicarage.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear Frank," said his wife to him, "you will get into trouble."</p>
+
+<p>"What sort of trouble?"</p>
+
+<p>"In the first place, the expense of maintaining this poor girl,&mdash;for
+life, as far as we can see,&mdash;will fall upon you."</p>
+
+<p>"What if it does? But, as a matter of course, she will earn her bread
+sooner or later. How am I to throw her over? And what am I to do with
+her?"</p>
+
+<p>"But that is not the worst of it, Frank."</p>
+
+<p>"Then what is the worst of it? Let us have it at once."</p>
+
+<p>"People will say that you, a clergyman and a married man, go to see a
+pretty young woman at Salisbury."</p>
+
+<p>"You believe that people will say that?"</p>
+
+<p>"I think you should guard against it, for the sake of the parish."</p>
+
+<p>"What sort of people will say it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Lord Trowbridge, and his set."</p>
+
+<p>"On my honour, Janet, I think that you wrong Lord Trowbridge. He is a
+fool, and to a certain extent a vindictive fool; and I grant you that
+he has taken it into his silly old head to hate me unmercifully; but
+I believe him to be a gentleman, and I do not think that he would
+condescend to spread a damnably malicious report of which he did not
+believe a word himself."</p>
+
+<p>"But, my dear, he will believe it."</p>
+
+<p>"Why? How? On what evidence? He couldn't believe it. Let a man be
+ever such a fool, he can't believe a thing without some reason. I
+dislike Lord Trowbridge very much; and you might just as well say
+that because I dislike him I shall believe that he is a hard
+landlord. He is not a hard landlord; and were he to stick dissenting
+chapels all about the county, I should be a liar and a slanderer were
+I to say that he was."</p>
+
+<p>"But then, you see, you are not a fool, Frank."</p>
+
+<p>This brought the conversation to an end. The Vicar was willing enough
+to turn upon his heel and say nothing more on a matter as to which he
+was by no means sure that he was in the right; and his wife felt a
+certain amount of reluctance in urging any arguments upon such a
+subject. Whatever Lord Trowbridge might say or think, her Frank must
+not be led to suppose that any unworthy suspicion troubled her own
+mind. Nevertheless, she was sure that he was imprudent.</p>
+
+<p>When the fortnight was near at an end, and nothing had been done, he
+went again over to Salisbury. It was quite true that he had business
+there, as a gentleman almost always does have business in the county
+town where his banker lives, whence tradesmen supply him, and in
+which he belongs to some club. And our Vicar, too, was a man fond of
+seeing his bishop, and one who loved to move about in the precincts
+of the cathedral, to shake hands with the dean, and to have a little
+subrisive fling at Mr. Chamberlaine, or such another as Mr.
+Chamberlaine, if the opportunity came in his way. He was by no means
+indisposed to go into Salisbury in the ordinary course of things; and
+on this occasion absolutely did see Mr. Chamberlaine, the dean, his
+saddler, and the clerk at the Fire Insurance Office,&mdash;as well as Mrs.
+Stiggs and Carry Brattle. If, therefore, anyone had said that on this
+day he had gone into Salisbury simply to see Carry Brattle, such
+person would have maligned him. He reduced the premium on his Fire
+Insurance by 5<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i> a year, and he engaged Mr. Chamberlaine
+to meet Mr. Quickenham, and he borrowed from the dean an old book about
+falconry; so that in fact the few minutes which he spent at Mrs.
+Stiggs's house were barely squeezed in among the various affairs of
+business which he had to transact at Salisbury.</p>
+
+<p>All that he could say to Carry Brattle was this,&mdash;that hitherto he
+had settled nothing. She must stay in Trotter's Buildings for another
+week or so. He had been so busy, in consequence of the time of the
+year, preparing for Easter and the like, that he had not been able to
+look about him. He had a plan; but would say nothing about it till he
+had seen whether it could be carried out. When Carry murmured
+something about the cost of her living the Vicar boldly declared that
+she need not fret herself about that, as he had money of hers in
+hand. He would some day explain all about that, but not now. Then he
+interrogated Mrs. Stiggs as to Carry's life. Mrs. Stiggs expressed
+her belief that Carry wouldn't stand it much longer. The hours had
+been inexpressibly long, and she had declared more than once that the
+best thing she could do was to go out and kill herself. Nevertheless,
+Mrs. Stiggs's report as to her conduct was favourable. Of Sam
+Brattle, the Vicar, though he inquired, could learn nothing. Carry
+declared that she had not heard from him since he left her all
+bruised and bleeding after his fight at the Three Honest Men.</p>
+
+<p>The Vicar had told Carry Brattle that he had a plan,&mdash;but, in truth,
+he had no plan. He had an idea that he might overcome the miller by
+taking his daughter straight into his house, and placing the two face
+to face together; but it was one in which he himself put so little
+trust, that he could form no plan out of it. In the first place,
+would he be justified in taking such a step? Mrs. George Brattle had
+told him that people knew what was good for them without being
+dictated to by clergymen; and the rebuke had come home to him. He was
+the last man in the world to adopt a system of sacerdotal
+interference. "I could do it so much better if I was not a
+clergyman," he would say to himself. And then, if old Brattle chose
+to turn his daughter out of the house, on such provocation as the
+daughter had given him, what was that to him, Fenwick, whether priest
+or layman? The old man knew what he was about, and had shown his
+determination very vigorously.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll try the ironmonger at Warminster," he said, to his wife.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid it will be of no use."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think it will. Ironmongers are probably harder than millers
+or farmers,&mdash;and farmers are very hard. That fellow, Jay, would not
+even consent to be bail for Sam Brattle. But something must be done."</p>
+
+<p>"She should be put into a reformatory."</p>
+
+<p>"It would be too late now. That should have been done at once. At any
+rate, I'll go to Warminster. I want to call on old Dr. Dickleburg,
+and I can do that at the same time."</p>
+
+<p>He did go to Warminster. He did call on the Doctor, who was not at
+home;&mdash;and he did call also upon Mr. Jay, who was at home.</p>
+
+<p>With Mr. Jay himself his chance was naturally much less than it would
+be with George Brattle. The ironmonger was connected with the
+unfortunate young woman only by marriage; and what brother-in-law
+would take such a sister-in-law to his bosom? And of Mrs. Jay he
+thought that he knew that she was puritanical, stiff, and severe. Mr.
+Jay he found in his shop along with an apprentice, but he had no
+difficulty in leading the master ironmonger along with him through a
+vista of pots, grates and frying pans, into a small recess at the
+back of the establishment, in which requests for prolonged credit
+were usually made, and urgent appeals for speedy payment as often put
+forth.</p>
+
+<p>"Know the story of Caroline Brattle? Oh yes! I know it, sir," said
+Mr. Jay. "We had to know it." And as he spoke he shook his head, and
+rubbed his hands together, and looked down upon the ground. There
+was, however, a humility about the man, a confession on his part,
+that in talking to an undoubted gentleman he was talking to a
+superior being, which gave to Fenwick an authority which he had felt
+himself to want in his intercourse with the farmer.</p>
+
+<p>"I am sure, Mr. Jay, you will agree with me in that she should be
+saved if possible."</p>
+
+<p>"As to her soul, sir?" asked the ironmonger.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course, as to her soul. But we must get at that by saving her in
+this world first."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Jay was a slight man, of middle height, with very respectable
+iron-grey hair that stood almost upright upon his head, but with a
+poor, inexpressive, thin face below it. He was given to bowing a good
+deal, rubbing his hands together, smiling courteously, and to the
+making of many civil little speeches; but his strength as a leading
+man in Warminster lay in his hair, and in the suit of orderly
+well-brushed black clothes which he wore on all occasions. He was,
+too, a man fairly prosperous, who went always to church, paid his
+way, attended sedulously to his business, and hung his bells, and
+sold his pots in such a manner as not actually to drive his old
+customers away by default of work. "Jay is respectable, and I don't
+like to leave him," men would say, when their wives declared that the
+backs of his grates fell out, and that his nails never would stand
+hammering. So he prospered; but, perhaps, he owed his prosperity
+mainly to his hair. He rubbed his hands, and smiled, and bowed his
+head about, as he thought what answer he might best make. He was
+quite willing that poor Carry's soul should be saved. That would
+naturally be Mr. Fenwick's affair. But as to saving her body, with
+any co-operation from himself or Mrs. Jay,&mdash;he did not see his way at
+all through such a job as that.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid she is a bad 'un, Mr. Fenwick; I'm afraid she is," said
+Mr. Jay.</p>
+
+<p>"The thing is, whether we can't put our heads together and make her
+less bad," said the Vicar. "She must live somewhere, Mr. Jay."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know whether almost the best thing for 'em isn't to die,&mdash;of
+course after they have repented, Mr. Fenwick. You see, sir, it is so
+very low, and so shameful, and they do bring such disgrace on their
+poor families. There isn't anything a young man can do that is nearly
+so bad,&mdash;is there, Mr. Fenwick?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not at all sure of that, Mr. Jay."</p>
+
+<p>"Ain't you now?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not going to defend Carry Brattle;&mdash;but if you will think how
+very small an amount of sin may bring a woman to this wretched
+condition, your heart will be softened. Poor Carry;&mdash;she was so
+bright, and so good and so clever!"</p>
+
+<p>"Clever she was, Mr. Fenwick;&mdash;and bright, too, as you call it.
+<span class="nowrap">But&mdash;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"Of course we know all that. The question now is, what can we do to
+help her? She is living now at this present moment, an orderly, sober
+life; but without occupation, or means, or friends. Will your wife
+let her come to her,&mdash;for a month or so, just to try her?"</p>
+
+<p>"Come and live here!" exclaimed the ironmonger.</p>
+
+<p>"That is what I would suggest. Who is to give her the shelter of a
+roof, if a sister will not?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think that Mrs. Jay would undertake that," said the
+ironmonger, who had ceased to rub his hands and to bow, and whose
+face had now become singularly long and lugubrious.</p>
+
+<p>"May I ask her?"</p>
+
+<p>"It wouldn't do any good, Mr. Fenwick;&mdash;it wouldn't indeed."</p>
+
+<p>"It ought to do good. May I try?"</p>
+
+<p>"If you ask me, Mr. Fenwick, I should say no; indeed I should. Mrs.
+Jay isn't any way strong, and the bare mention of that disreputable
+connexion produces a sickness internally;&mdash;it does, indeed, Mr.
+Fenwick."</p>
+
+<p>"You will do nothing, then, to save from perdition the sister of your
+own wife;&mdash;and will let your wife do nothing?"</p>
+
+<p>"Now, Mr. Fenwick, don't be hard on me;&mdash;pray don't be hard on me. I
+have been respectable, and have always had respectable people about
+me. If my wife's family are turning wrong, isn't that bad enough on
+me without your coming to say such things as this to me? Really, Mr.
+Fenwick, if you'd think of it, you wouldn't be so hard."</p>
+
+<p>"She may die in a ditch, then, for you?" said the Vicar, whose
+feeling against the ironmonger was much stronger than it had been
+against the farmer. He could say nothing further, so he turned upon
+his heel and marched down the length of the shop, while the
+obsequious tradesman followed him,&mdash;again bowing and rubbing his
+hands, and attending him to his carriage. The Vicar didn't speak
+another word, or make any parting salutation to Mr. Jay. "Their
+hearts are like the nether millstone," he said to himself, as he
+drove away, flogging his horse. "Of what use are all the sermons?
+Nothing touches them. Do unto others as you think they would do unto
+you. That's their doctrine." As he went home he made up his mind that
+he would, as a last effort, carry out that scheme of taking Carry
+with him to the mill;&mdash;he would do so, that is, if he could induce
+Carry to accompany him. In the meantime, there was nothing left to
+him but to leave her with Mrs. Stiggs, and to pay ten shillings a
+week for her board and lodging. There was one point on which he could
+not quite make up his mind;&mdash;whether he would or would not first
+acquaint old Mrs. Brattle with his intention.</p>
+
+<p>He had left home early, and when he returned his wife had received
+Mary Lowther's reply to her letter.</p>
+
+<p>"She will come?" asked Frank.</p>
+
+<p>"She just says that and nothing more."</p>
+
+<p>"Then she'll be Mrs. Gilmore."</p>
+
+<p>"I hope so, with all my heart," said Mrs. Fenwick.</p>
+
+<p>"I look upon it as tantamount to accepting him. She wouldn't come
+unless she had made up her mind to take him. You mark my words.
+They'll be married before the chapel is finished."</p>
+
+<p>"You say it as if you thought she oughtn't to come."</p>
+
+<p>"No;&mdash;I don't mean that. I was only thinking how quickly a woman may
+recover from such a hurt."</p>
+
+<p>"Frank, don't be ill-natured. She will be doing what all her friends
+advise."</p>
+
+<p>"If I were to die, your friends would advise you not to grieve; but
+they would think you very unfeeling if you did not."</p>
+
+<p>"Are you going to turn against her?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"Then why do you say such things? Is it not better that she should
+make the effort than lie there helpless and motionless, throwing her
+whole life away? Will it not be much better for Harry Gilmore?"</p>
+
+<p>"Very much better for him, because he'll go crazy if she don't."</p>
+
+<p>"And for her too. We can't tell what is going on inside her breast. I
+believe that she is making a great effort because she thinks it is
+right. You will be kind to her when she comes?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly I will,&mdash;for Harry's sake&mdash;and her own."</p>
+
+<p>But in truth the Vicar at this moment was not in a good humour. He
+was becoming almost tired of his efforts to set other people
+straight, so great were the difficulties that came in his way. As he
+had driven into his own gate he had met Mr. Puddleham, standing in
+the road just in front of the new chapel. He had made up his mind to
+accept the chapel, and now he said a pleasant word to the minister.
+Mr. Puddleham turned up his eyes and his nose, bowed very stiffly,
+and then twisted himself round, without answering a word. How was it
+possible for a man to live among such people in good humour and
+Christian charity?</p>
+
+<p>In the evening he was sitting with his wife in the drawing-room
+discussing all these troubles, when the maid came in to say that
+Constable Toffy was at the door.</p>
+
+<p>Constable Toffy was shown into his study, and then the Vicar followed
+him. He had not spoken to the constable now for some months,&mdash;not
+since the time at which Sam had been liberated; but he had not a
+moment's doubt when he was thus summoned, that something was to be
+said as to the murder of Mr. Trumbull. The constable put his hand up
+to his head, and sat down at the Vicar's invitation, before he began
+to speak.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it, Toffy?" said the Vicar.</p>
+
+<p>"We've got 'em at last, I think," said Mr. Toffy, in a very low, soft
+voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Got whom;&mdash;the murderers?"</p>
+
+<p>"Just so, Mr. Fenwick; all except Sam Brattle,&mdash;whom we want."</p>
+
+<p>"And who are the men?"</p>
+
+<p>"Them as we supposed all along,&mdash;Jack Burrows, as they call the
+Grinder, and Lawrence Acorn as was along with him. He's a Birmingham
+chap, is Acorn. He's know'd very well at Birmingham. And then, Mr.
+Fenwick, there's Sam. That's all as seems to have been in it. We
+shall want Sam, Mr. Fenwick."</p>
+
+<p>"You don't mean to tell me that he was one of the murderers?"</p>
+
+<p>"We shall want him, Mr. Fenwick."</p>
+
+<p>"Where did you find the other men?"</p>
+
+<p>"They did get as far as San Francisco,&mdash;did the others. They haven't
+had a bad game of it,&mdash;have they, Mr. Fenwick? They've had more than
+seven months of a run. It was the 31st of August as Mr. Trumbull was
+murdered, and here's the 15th of April, Mr. Fenwick. There ain't a
+many runs as long as that. You'll have Sam Brattle for us all right,
+no doubt, Mr. Fenwick?" The Vicar told the constable that he would
+see to it, and get Sam Brattle to come forward as soon as he could.
+"I told you all through, Mr. Fenwick, as Sam was one of them as was
+in it, but you wouldn't believe me."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't believe it now," said the Vicar.</p>
+
+
+<p><a name="c47" id="c47"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>CHAPTER XLVII.</h3>
+<h4>SAM BRATTLE IS WANTED.<br />&nbsp;</h4>
+
+
+<p>The next week was one of considerable perturbation, trouble, and
+excitement at Bullhampton, and in the neighbourhood of Warminster and
+Heytesbury. It soon became known generally that Jack the Grinder and
+Lawrence Acorn were in Salisbury gaol, and that Sam Brattle&mdash;was
+wanted. The perturbation and excitement at Bullhampton were, of
+course, greater than elsewhere. It was necessary that the old miller
+should be told,&mdash;necessary also that the people at the mill should be
+asked as to Sam's present whereabouts. If they did not know it, they
+might assist the Vicar in discovering it. Fenwick went to the mill,
+taking the Squire with him; but they could obtain no information. The
+miller was very silent, and betrayed hardly any emotion when he was
+told that the police again wanted his son.</p>
+
+<p>"They can come and search," he said. "They can come and search." And
+then he walked slowly away into the mill. There was a scene, of
+course, with Mrs. Brattle and Fanny, and the two women were in a sad
+way.</p>
+
+<p>"Poor boy,&mdash;wretched boy!" said the unfortunate mother, who sat
+sobbing with her apron over her face.</p>
+
+<p>"We know nothing of him, Mr. Gilmore, or we would tell at once," said
+Fanny.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sure you would," said the Vicar. "And you may remember this,
+Mrs. Brattle; I do not for one moment believe that Sam had any more
+to do with the murder than you or I. You may tell his father that I
+say so, if you please."</p>
+
+<p>For saying this the Squire rebuked him as soon as they had left the
+mill. "I think you go too far in giving such assurance as that," he
+said.</p>
+
+<p>"Surely you would have me say what I think?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not on such a matter as this, in which any false encouragement may
+produce so much increased suffering. You, yourself, are so prone to
+take your own views in opposition to those of others that you should
+be specially on your guard when you may do so much harm."</p>
+
+<p>"I feel quite sure that he had nothing to do with it."</p>
+
+<p>"You see that you have the police against you after a most minute and
+prolonged investigation."</p>
+
+<p>"The police are asses," insisted the Vicar.</p>
+
+<p>"Just so. That is, you prefer your own opinion to theirs in regard to
+a murder. I should prefer yours to theirs on a question of scriptural
+evidence, but not in such an affair as this. I don't want to talk you
+over, but I wish to make you careful with other people who are so
+closely concerned. In dealing with others you have no right to throw
+over the ordinary rules of evidence."</p>
+
+<p>The Vicar accepted the rebuke and promised to be more
+careful,&mdash;repeating, however, his own opinion about Sam, to which he
+declared his intention of adhering in regard to his own conduct, let
+the police and magistrates say what they might. He almost went so far
+as to declare that he should do so even in opposition to the verdict
+of a jury; but Gilmore understood that this was simply the natural
+obstinacy of the man, showing itself in its natural form.</p>
+
+<p>At this moment, which was certainly one of gloom to the parish at
+large, and of great sorrow at the Vicarage, the Squire moved about
+with a new life which was evident to all who saw him. He went about
+his farm, and talked about his trees, and looked at his horses and
+had come to life again. No doubt many guesses as to the cause of this
+were made throughout his establishment, and some of them, probably,
+very near the truth. But, for the Fenwicks there was no need of
+guessing. Gilmore had been told that Mary Lowther was coming to
+Bullhampton in the early summer, and had at once thrown off the cloak
+of his sadness. He had asked no further questions; Mrs. Fenwick had
+found herself unable to express a caution; but the extent of her
+friend's elation almost frightened her.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't look at it," she said to her husband, "quite as he does."</p>
+
+<p>"She'll have him now," he answered, and then Mrs. Fenwick said
+nothing further.</p>
+
+<p>To Fenwick himself, this change was one of infinite comfort. The
+Squire was his old friend and almost his only near neighbour. In all
+his troubles, whether inside or outside of the parish, he naturally
+went to Gilmore; and, although he was a man not very prone to walk by
+the advice of friends, still it had been a great thing to him to have
+a friend who would give an opinion, and perhaps the more so, as the
+friend was one who did not insist on having his opinion taken. During
+the past winter Gilmore had been of no use whatever to his friend.
+His opinions on all matters had gone so vitally astray, that they had
+not been worth having. And he had become so morose, that the Vicar
+had found it to be almost absolutely necessary to leave him alone as
+far as ordinary life was concerned. But now the Squire was himself
+again, and on this exciting topic of Trumbull's murder, the prisoners
+in Salisbury gaol, and the necessity for Sam's reappearance, could
+talk sensibly and usefully.</p>
+
+<p>It was certainly very expedient that Sam should be made to reappear
+as soon as possible. The idea was general in the parish that the
+Vicar knew all about him. George Brattle, who had become bail for his
+brother's reappearance, had given his name on the clear understanding
+that the Vicar would be responsible. Some half-sustained tidings of
+Carry's presence in Salisbury and of the Vicar's various visits to
+the city were current in Bullhampton, and with these were mingled an
+idea that Carry and Sam were in league together. That Fenwick was
+chivalrous, perhaps Quixotic, in his friendships for those whom he
+regarded, had long been felt, and this feeling was now stronger than
+ever. He certainly could bring up Sam Brattle if he pleased;&mdash;or, if
+he pleased, as might, some said, not improbably be the case, he could
+keep him away. There would be &pound;400 to pay for the bail-bond, but the
+Vicar was known to be rich as well as Quixotic, and,&mdash;so said the
+Puddlehamites,&mdash;would care very little about that, if he might thus
+secure for himself his own way.</p>
+
+<p>He was constrained to go over again to Salisbury in order that he
+might, if possible, learn from Carry how to find some trace to her
+brother, and of this visit the Puddlehamites also informed
+themselves. There were men and women in Bullhampton who knew exactly
+how often the Vicar had visited the young woman at Salisbury, how
+long he had been with her on each occasion, and how much he paid Mrs.
+Stiggs for the accommodation. Gentlemen who are Quixotic in their
+kindness to young women are liable to have their goings and comings
+chronicled with much exactitude, if not always with accuracy.</p>
+
+<p>His interview with Carry on this occasion was very sad. He could not
+save himself from telling her in part the cause of his inquiries.
+"They haven't taken the two men, have they?" she asked, with an
+eagerness that seemed to imply that she possessed knowledge on the
+matter which could hardly not be guilty.</p>
+
+<p>"What two men?" he asked, looking full into her face. Then she was
+silent and he was unwilling to catch her in a trap, to cross-examine
+her as a lawyer would do, or to press out of her any communication
+which she would not make willingly and of her own free action. "I am
+told," he said, "that two men have been taken for the murder."</p>
+
+<p>"Where did they find 'em, sir?"</p>
+
+<p>"They had escaped to America, and the police have brought them back.
+Did you know them, Carry?" She was again silent. The men had not been
+named, and it was not for her to betray them. Hitherto, in their
+interviews, she had hardly ever looked him in the face, but now she
+turned her blue eyes full upon him. "You told me before at the old
+woman's cottage," he said, "that you knew them both,&mdash;had known one
+too well."</p>
+
+<p>"If you please, sir, I won't say nothing about 'em."</p>
+
+<p>"I will not ask you, Carry. But you would tell me about your brother,
+if you knew?"</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed I would, sir;&mdash;anything. He hadn't no more to do with Farmer
+Trumbull's murder nor you had. They can't touch a hair of his head
+along of that."</p>
+
+<p>"Such is my belief;&mdash;but who can prove it?" Again she was silent.
+"Can you prove it? If speaking could save your brother, surely you
+would speak out. Would you hesitate, Carry, in doing anything for
+your brother's sake? Whatever may be his faults, he has not been hard
+to you like the others."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, sir, I wish I was dead."</p>
+
+<p>"You must not wish that, Carry. And if you know ought of this you
+will be bound to speak. If you could bring yourself to tell me what
+you know, I think it might be good for both of you."</p>
+
+<p>"It was they who had the money. Sam never seed a shilling of it."</p>
+
+<p>"Who is 'they'?"</p>
+
+<p>"Jack Burrows and Larry Acorn. And it wasn't Larry Acorn neither,
+sir. I know very well who did it. It was Jack Burrows who did it."</p>
+
+<p>"That is he they call the Grinder?"</p>
+
+<p>"But Larry was with him then," said the girl, sobbing.</p>
+
+<p>"You are sure of that?"</p>
+
+<p>"I ain't sure of nothing, Mr. Fenwick, only that Sam wasn't there at
+all. Of that I am quite, quite, quite sure. But when you asks me,
+what am I to say?"</p>
+
+<p>Then he left her without speaking to her on this occasion a word
+about herself. He had nothing to say that would give her any comfort.
+He had almost made up his mind that he would take her over with him
+to the mill, and try what might be done by the meeting between the
+father, mother, and daughter, but all this new matter about the
+police and the arrest, and Sam's absence, made it almost impossible
+for him to take such a step at present. As he went, he again
+interrogated Mrs. Stiggs, and was warned by her that words fell daily
+from her lodger which made her think that the young woman would not
+remain much longer with her. In the meantime there was nothing of
+which she could complain. Carry insisted on her liberty to go out and
+about the city alone; but the woman was of opinion that she did this
+simply with the object of asserting her independence. After that the
+necessary payment was made, and the Vicar returned to the Railway
+Station. Of Sam he had learned nothing, and now he did not know where
+to go for tidings. He still believed that the young man would come of
+his own accord, if the demand for his appearance were made so public
+as to reach his ear.</p>
+
+<p>On that same day there was a meeting of the magistrates at
+Heytesbury, and the two men who had been so cruelly fetched back from
+San Francisco were brought before it. Mr. Gilmore was on the bench,
+along with Sir Thomas Charleys, who was the chairman, and three other
+gentlemen. Lord Trowbridge was in the court house, and sat upon the
+bench, but gave it out that he was not sitting there as a magistrate.
+Samuel Brattle was called upon to answer to his bail, and Jones, the
+attorney appearing for him, explained that he had gone from home to
+seek work elsewhere, alluded to the length of time that had elapsed,
+and to the injustice of presuming that a man against whom no evidence
+had been adduced, should be bound to remain always in one
+parish,&mdash;and expressed himself without any doubt that Mr. Fenwick and
+Mr. George Brattle, who were his bailsmen, would cause him to be
+found and brought forward. As neither the clergyman nor the farmer
+were in court, nothing further could be done at once; and the
+magistrates were quite ready to admit that time must be allowed. Nor
+was the case at all ready against the two men who were in custody.
+Indeed, against them the evidence was so little substantial that a
+lawyer from Devizes, who attended on their behalf, expressed his
+amazement that the American authorities should have given them up,
+and suggested that it must have been done with some view to a
+settlement of the Alabama claims. Evidence, however, was brought up
+to show that the two men had been convicted before, the one for
+burglary, and the other for horse-stealing; that the former, John
+Burrows, known as the Grinder, was a man from Devizes with whom the
+police about that town, and at Chippenham, Bath, and Wells, were well
+acquainted; that the other, Acorn, was a young man who had been
+respectable, as a partner in a livery stable at Birmingham, but who
+had taken to betting, and had for a year past been living by evil
+courses, having previously undergone two years of imprisonment with
+hard labour. It was proved that they had been seen in the
+neighbourhood both before and after the murder; that boots found in
+the cottage at Pycroft Common fitted certain footmarks in the mud of
+the farmer's yard; that Burrows had been supplied with a certain
+poison at a county chemist's at Lavington, and that the dog Bone'm
+had been poisoned with the like. Many other matters were proved, all
+of which were declared by the lawyer from Devizes to amount to
+nothing, and by the police authorities, who were prosecutors, to be
+very much. The magistrates of course ordered a remand, and ordered
+also that on the day named Sam Brattle should appear. It was
+understood that that day week was only named pro form&acirc;, the
+constables having explained that at least a fortnight would be
+required for the collection of further evidence. This took place on
+Tuesday, the 25th of April, and it was understood that time up to the
+8th of May would be given to the police to complete their case.</p>
+
+<p>So far all went on quietly at Heytesbury; but before the magistrates
+left the little town there was a row. Sir Thomas Charleys, in
+speaking to his brother magistrate, Mr. Gilmore, about the whole
+affair and about the Brattles in particular, had alluded to "Mr.
+Fenwick's unfortunate connexion with Carry Brattle" at Salisbury.
+Gilmore fired up at once, and demanded to know the meaning of this.
+Sir Thomas, who was not the wisest man in the world, but who had
+ideas of justice, and as to whom, in giving him his due, it must be
+owned that he was afraid of no one, after some hesitation,
+acknowledged that what he had heard respecting Mr. Fenwick had fallen
+from Lord Trowbridge. He had heard from Lord Trowbridge that the
+Vicar of Bullhampton was
+<span class="nowrap">&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*.</span>
+Gilmore on the occasion became full
+of energy, and pressed the baronet very hard. Sir Thomas hoped that
+Mr. Gilmore was not going to make mischief. Mr. Gilmore declared that
+he would not submit to the injury done to his friend, and that he
+would question Lord Trowbridge on the subject. He did question Lord
+Trowbridge, whom he found waiting for his carriage, in the parlour of
+the Bull Inn, Sir Thomas having accompanied him in the search. The
+Marquis was quite outspoken. He had heard, he said, from what he did
+not doubt to be good authority, that Mr. Fenwick was in the habit of
+visiting alone a young woman who had lived in his parish, but whom he
+now maintained in lodgings in a low alley in the suburbs of
+Salisbury. He had said so much as that. In so saying, had he spoken
+truth or falsehood? If he had said anything untrue, he would be the
+first to acknowledge his own error.</p>
+
+<p>Then there had come to be very hot words. "My lord," said Mr.
+Gilmore, "your insinuation is untrue. Whatever your words may have
+been, in the impression which they have made, they are slanderous."</p>
+
+<p>"Who are you, sir," said the Marquis, looking at him from head to
+foot, "to talk to me of the impression of my words?"</p>
+
+<p>But Mr. Gilmore's blood was up. "You intended to convey to Sir Thomas
+Charleys, my lord, that Mr. Fenwick's visits were of a disgraceful
+nature. If your words did not convey that, they conveyed nothing."</p>
+
+<p>"Who are you, sir, that you should interpret my words? I did no more
+than my duty in conveying to Sir Thomas Charleys my conviction,&mdash;my
+well-grounded conviction,&mdash;as to the gentleman's conduct. What I said
+to him I will say aloud to the whole county. It is notorious that the
+Vicar of Bullhampton is in the habit of visiting a profligate young
+woman in a low part of the city. That I say is disgraceful to him, to
+his cloth, and to the parish, and I shall give my opinion to the
+bishop to that effect. Who are you, sir, that you should question my
+words?" And again the Marquis eyed the Squire from head to foot,
+leaving the room with a majestic strut as Gilmore went on to assert
+that the allegation made, with the sense implied by it, contained a
+wicked and a malicious slander. Then there were some words, much
+quieter than those preceding them, between Mr. Gilmore and Sir
+Thomas, in which the Squire pledged himself to,&mdash;he hardly knew what,
+and Sir Thomas promised to hold his tongue,&mdash;for the present. But, as
+a matter of course, the quarrel flew all over the little town. It was
+out of the question that such a man as the Marquis of Trowbridge
+should keep his wrath confined. Before he had left the inn-yard he
+had expressed his opinion very plainly to half-a-dozen persons, both
+as to the immorality of the Vicar and the impudence of the Squire;
+and as he was taken home his hand was itching for pen and paper in
+order that he might write to the bishop. Sir Thomas shrugged his
+shoulders, and did not tell the story to more than three or four
+confidential friends, to all of whom he remarked that on the matter
+of the visits made to the girl, there never was smoke without fire.
+Gilmore's voice, too, had been loud, and all the servants about the
+inn had heard him. He knew that the quarrel was already public, and
+felt that he had no alternative but to tell his friend what had
+passed.</p>
+
+
+<div class="center"><a name="il16" id="il16"></a>
+<table style="margin: 0 auto" cellpadding="4px">
+  <tr>
+    <td align="center">
+      <a href="images/il16.jpg">
+      <img src="images/il16-t.jpg" height="500"
+      alt='"Who are you, sir, that
+      you should interpret my words?"' /></a>
+    </td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="center">
+      <span class="caption">"Who are you, sir, that you should
+      interpret my words?"<br />
+      Click to <a href="images/il16.jpg">ENLARGE</a></span>
+    </td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>On that same evening he saw the Vicar. Fenwick had returned from
+Salisbury, tired, dispirited, and ill at ease, and was just going in
+to dress for dinner, when Gilmore met him at his own stable-door, and
+told him what had occurred.</p>
+
+<p>"Then, after all, my wife was right and I was wrong," said Fenwick.</p>
+
+<p>"Right about what?" Gilmore asked.</p>
+
+<p>"She said that Lord Trowbridge would spread these very lies. I
+confess that I made the mistake of believing him to be a gentleman.
+Of course I may use your information?"</p>
+
+<p>"Use it just as you please," said Gilmore. Then they parted, and
+Gilmore, who was on horseback, rode home.</p>
+
+
+<p><a name="c48" id="c48"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>CHAPTER XLVIII.</h3>
+<h4>MARY LOWTHER RETURNS TO BULLHAMPTON.<br />&nbsp;</h4>
+
+
+<p>A month went by after the scenes described in the last chapter, and
+summer had come at Bullhampton. It was now the end of May, and, with
+the summer, Mary Lowther had arrived. During the month very little
+progress had been made with the case at Heytesbury. There had been
+two or three remands, and now there was yet another. The police
+declared that this was rendered necessary by the absence of Sam
+Brattle,&mdash;that the magistrates were anxious to give all reasonable
+time for the production of the man who was out upon bail,&mdash;and that,
+as he was undoubtedly concerned in the murder, they were determined
+to have him. But they who professed to understand the case, among
+whom were the lawyer from Devizes and Mr. Jones of Heytesbury,
+declared that no real search had been made for Brattle because the
+evidence in regard to the other men was hitherto inefficient. The
+remand now stood again till Tuesday, June the 5th, and it was
+understood that if Brattle did not then appear the bail would be
+declared to have been forfeited.</p>
+
+<p>Fenwick had written a very angry letter to Lord Trowbridge, to which
+he had got no answer, and Lord Trowbridge had written a very silly
+letter to the bishop, in replying to which the bishop had snubbed
+him. "I am informed by my friend, Mr. Gilmore," said the Vicar to the
+Marquis, "that your lordship has stated openly that I have made
+visits to a young woman in Salisbury which are disgraceful to me, to
+my cloth, and to the parish of which I am the incumbent. I do not
+believe that your lordship will deny that you have done so, and I,
+therefore, call upon you at once to apologise to me for the calumny,
+which, in its nature, is as injurious and wicked as calumny can be,
+and to promise that you will not repeat the offence." The Marquis,
+when he received this, had not as yet written that letter to the
+bishop on which he had resolved after his interview with
+Gilmore,&mdash;feeling, perhaps, some qualms of conscience, thinking that
+it might be well that he should consult his son,&mdash;though with a full
+conviction that, if he did so, his son would not allow him to write
+to the bishop at all,&mdash;possibly with some feeling that he had been
+too hard upon his enemy, the Vicar. But, when the letter from
+Bullhampton reached him, all feelings of doubt, caution, and mercy,
+were thrown to the winds. The tone of the letter was essentially
+aggressive and impudent. It was the word calumny that offended him
+most, that, and the idea that he, the Marquis of Trowbridge, should
+be called upon to promise not to commit an offence! The pestilent
+infidel at Bullhampton, as he called our friend, had not attempted to
+deny the visits to the young woman at Salisbury. And the Marquis had
+made fresh inquiry which had completely corroborated his previous
+information. He had learned Mrs. Stiggs's address, and the name of
+Trotter's Buildings, which details were to his mind circumstantial,
+corroborative, and damnatory. Some dim account of the battle at the
+Three Honest Men had reached him, and the undoubted fact that Carry
+Brattle was maintained by the Vicar. Then he remembered all Fenwick's
+old anxiety on behalf of the brother, whom the Marquis had taught
+himself to regard as the very man who had murdered his tenant. He
+reminded himself, too, of the murderer's present escape from
+justice by aid of this pestilent clergyman; and thus became
+convinced that in dealing with Mr. Fenwick, as it was his undoubted
+duty to do, he had to deal with one of the very worst of the human
+race. His lordship's mind was one utterly incapable of sifting
+evidence,&mdash;unable even to understand evidence when it came to him. He
+was not a bad man. He desired nothing that was not his own, and
+remitted much that was. He feared God, honoured the Queen, and loved
+his country. He was not self-indulgent. He did his duties as he knew
+them. But he was an arrogant old fool, who could not keep himself
+from mischief,&mdash;who could only be kept from mischief by the aid of
+some such master as his son. As soon as he received the Vicar's
+letter he at once sat down and wrote to the bishop. He was so sure
+that he was right, that he sent Fenwick's letter to the bishop,
+acknowledging what he himself had said at Heytesbury, and justifying
+it altogether by an elaborate account of the Vicar's wickedness. "And
+now, my lord, let me ask you," said he, in conclusion, "whether you
+deem this a proper man to have the care of souls in the large and
+important parish of Bullhampton."</p>
+
+<p>The bishop felt himself to be very much bullied. He had no doubt
+whatsoever about his parson. He knew that Fenwick was too strong a
+man to be acted upon beneficially by such advice as to his private
+conduct as a bishop might give, and too good a man to need any
+caution as to his conduct. "My Lord Marquis," he said, in reply, "in
+returning the endorsed letter from Mr. Fenwick to your lordship, I
+can only say that nothing has been brought before me by your lordship
+which seems to me to require my interference. I should be wrong if I
+did not add to this the expression of my opinion that Mr. Fenwick is
+a moral man, doing his duty in his parish well, and an example in my
+diocese to be followed, rather than a stumbling block."</p>
+
+<p>When this letter reached the Castle Lord St. George was there. The
+poor old Marquis was cut to the quick. He immediately perceived,&mdash;so
+he told himself,&mdash;that the bishop was an old woman, who understood
+nothing; but he was sure that St. George would not look at the matter
+in the same light. And yet it was impossible not to tell St. George.
+Much as he dreaded his son, he did honestly tell everything to his
+Mentor. He had already told St. George of Fenwick's letter to him and
+of his letter to the bishop, and St. George had whistled. Now he showed
+the bishop's letter to his son. St. George read the letter, refolded
+it slowly, shrugged his shoulders, and said, as he returned it to his
+<span class="nowrap">father,&mdash;</span></p>
+
+<p>"Well, my lord, I suppose you like a hornet's nest."</p>
+
+<p>This was the uncomfortable position of things at Bullhampton about
+the beginning of June, at which time Mary Lowther was again staying
+with her friend Mrs. Fenwick. Carry Brattle was still at Salisbury,
+but had not been seen by the Vicar for more than a fortnight. The
+Marquis's letter, backed as it was in part by his wife's counsel,
+had, much to his own disgust, deterred him from seeing the girl. His
+wife, however, had herself visited Trotter's Buildings, and had seen
+Carry, taking to her a little present from her mother, who did not
+dare to go over to Salisbury to see her child, because of words that
+had passed between her and her husband.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Fenwick, on her return home, had reported that Carry was silent,
+sullen, and idle; that her only speech was an expression of a wish
+that she was dead, and that Mrs. Stiggs had said that she could get
+no good of her. In the meantime Sam Brattle had not yet turned up,
+and the 5th of June was at hand.</p>
+
+<p>Mary Lowther was again at the vicarage, and of course it was
+necessary that she and Mr. Gilmore should meet each other. A promise
+had been made to her that no advice should be pressed upon her,&mdash;the
+meaning of which, of course, was that nothing should be said to her
+urging her to marry Mr. Gilmore. But it was of course understood by
+all the parties concerned that Mr. Gilmore was to be allowed to come
+to the house; and, indeed, this was understood by the Fenwicks to
+mean almost as plainly that she would at least endeavour to bring
+herself to accept him when he did come. To Mary herself, as she made
+the journey, the same meaning seemed to be almost inevitable; and as
+she perceived this, she told herself that she had been wrong to leave
+home. She knew,&mdash;she thought she knew,&mdash;that she must refuse him, and
+in doing so would simply be making fresh trouble. Would it not have
+been better for her to have remained at Loring,&mdash;to have put herself
+at once on a par with her aunt, and have commenced her life of
+solitary spinsterhood and dull routine? But, then, why should she
+refuse him? She endeavoured to argue it out with herself in the
+railway carriage. She had been told that Walter Marrable would
+certainly marry Edith Brownlow, and she believed it. No doubt it was
+much better that he should do so. At any rate, she and Walter were
+separated for ever. When he wrote to her, declaring his purpose of
+remaining in England, he had said not a word of renewing his
+engagement with her. No doubt she loved him. About that she did not
+for a moment endeavour to deceive herself. No doubt, if that fate in
+life which she most desired might be hers, she would become the wife
+of Walter Marrable. But that fate would not be hers, and then there
+arose the question whether, on that account, she was unfit to be the
+wife of any other man. Of this she was quite certain, that should it
+ever seem to her to be her duty to accept the other man, she would
+first explain to him clearly the position in which she found herself.
+At last the whole matter resolved itself to this;&mdash;was it possible
+for her to divest her idea of life of all romance, and to look for
+contentment and satisfaction in the performance of duties to others?
+The prospect of an old maid's life at Loring was not pleasant to her
+eyes; but she would bear that, and worse than that, rather than do
+wrong. It was, however, so hard for her to know what was right and
+what was wrong! Supposing that she were to consent to marry Mr.
+Gilmore, would she be forsworn when at the altar she promised to love
+him? All her care would be henceforth for him, all her heart, as far
+as she could command her heart, and certainly all her truth. There
+should not be a secret of her mind hidden from him. She would force
+herself to love him, and to forget that other man. He should be the
+object of all her idolatry. She would, in that case, do her very
+utmost to reward him for the constancy of the affection with which he
+had regarded her; and yet, as she was driven in at the vicarage gate,
+she told herself that it would have been better for her to remain at
+Loring.</p>
+
+<p>During the first evening Mr. Gilmore's name was not mentioned. There
+were subjects enough for conversation, as the period was one of great
+excitement in Bullhampton.</p>
+
+<p>"What did you think of our chapel?" asked Mrs. Fenwick.</p>
+
+<p>"I had no idea it was so big."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, they are not going to leave us a single soul to go to church.
+Mr. Puddleham means to make a clean sweep of the parish."</p>
+
+<p>"You don't mean to say that any have left you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well; none as yet," replied Mrs. Fenwick. "But then the chapel isn't
+finished; and the Marquis has not yet sent his order to his tenants
+to become dissenters. We expect that he will do so, unless he can
+persuade the bishop to turn Frank out of the living."</p>
+
+<p>"But the bishop couldn't turn him out."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course, he couldn't,&mdash;and wouldn't if he could. The bishop and
+Frank are the best friends in the world. But that has nothing to do
+with it. You mustn't abuse the chapel to Frank; just at this moment
+the subject is tabooed. My belief is that the whole edifice will have
+to come down, and that the confusion of Mr. Puddleham and the Marquis
+will be something more complete than ever was yet seen. In the
+meantime, I put my finger to my lip, and just look at Frank whenever
+the chapel is mentioned."</p>
+
+<p>And then there was the matter of the murder, and the somewhat sad
+consideration of Sam's protracted absence.</p>
+
+<p>"And will you have to pay four hundred pounds, Mr. Fenwick?" Mary
+asked.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall be liable to pay it if he does not appear to-morrow, and no
+doubt must absolutely pay it if he does not turn up soon."</p>
+
+<p>"But you don't think that he was one of them?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am quite sure he was not. But he has had trouble in his family,
+and he got into a quarrel, and I fancy he has left the country. The
+police say that he has been traced to Liverpool."</p>
+
+<p>"And will the other men be convicted?" Mrs. Fenwick asked.</p>
+
+<p>"I believe they will, and most fervently hope so. They have some
+evidence about the wheels of a small cart in which Burrows certainly,
+and, I believe, no doubt Acorn also, were seen to drive across
+Pycroft Common early on the Sunday morning. A part of the tire had
+come off, and another bit, somewhat broader, and an inch or so too
+short, had been substituted. The impress made by this wheel in the
+mud, just round the corner by the farm gate, was measured and copied
+at the time, and they say that this will go far to identify the men.
+That the man's cart was there is certain,&mdash;also that he was in the
+same cart at Pycroft Common an hour or two after the murder."</p>
+
+<p>"That does seem clear," said Mary.</p>
+
+<p>"But somebody suggests that Sam had borrowed the cart. I believe,
+however, that it will all come out;&mdash;only, if I have to pay four
+hundred pounds I shall think that Farmer Trumbull has cost me very
+dear."</p>
+
+<p>On the next morning Gilmore came to the vicarage. It had been
+arranged that he would drive Fenwick over to Heytesbury, and that he
+would call for him after breakfast. A somewhat late hour,&mdash;two in the
+afternoon,&mdash;had been fixed for going on with the murder case, as it
+was necessary that a certain constable should come down from London
+on that morning; and, therefore, there would be no need for the two
+men to start very early from Bullhampton. This was explained to Mary
+by Mrs. Fenwick. "He dines here to-day," she had said when they met
+in the morning before prayers, "and you may as well get over the
+first awkwardness at once." Mary had assented to this, and, after
+breakfast, Gilmore made his appearance among them in the garden. He
+was just one moment alone with the girl he loved.</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Lowther," he said, "I cannot be with you for an instant without
+telling you that I am unchanged."</p>
+
+<p>Mary made no reply, and he said nothing further. Mrs. Fenwick was
+with them so quickly that there was no need for a reply,&mdash;and then he
+was gone. During the whole day the two friends talked of the murder,
+and of the Brattles, and the chapel,&mdash;which was thoroughly inspected
+from the roof to the floor,&mdash;but not a word was said about the loves
+of Harry Gilmore or Walter Marrable. Gilmore's name was often
+mentioned as the whole story was told of Lord Trowbridge's new
+quarrel, and of the correspondence with the bishop,&mdash;of which Fenwick
+had learned the particulars from the bishop's chaplain. And in the
+telling of this story Mrs. Fenwick did not scruple to express her
+opinion that Harry Gilmore had behaved well, with good spirit, and
+like a true friend. "If the Marquis had been anywhere near his own
+age I believe he would have horsewhipped him," said the Vicar's wife,
+with that partiality for the corporal chastisement of an enemy which
+is certainly not uncommon to the feminine mind. This was all very
+well, and called for no special remark from Mary, and possibly might
+have an effect.</p>
+
+<p>The gentlemen returned late in the evening, and the Squire dressed at
+the vicarage. But the great event of the day had to be told before
+anyone was allowed to dress. Between four and five o'clock, just as
+the magistrates were going to leave the bench, Sam Brattle had walked
+into Court.</p>
+
+<p>"And your money is safe?" said his wife.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, my money is safe; but, I declare, I think more of Sam's truth.
+He was there, as it seemed, all of a sudden. The police had learned
+nothing of him. He just walked into the court, and we heard his
+voice. 'They tell me I'm wanted,' he said; and so he gave himself
+up."</p>
+
+<p>"And what was done?" asked his wife.</p>
+
+<p>"It was too late to do anything; so they allowed a remand for another
+week, and Sam was walked off to prison."</p>
+
+<p>At dinner time the conversation was still about the murder. It had
+been committed after Mary Lowther had left Bullhampton; but she had
+heard all the details, and was now as able to be interested about it
+as were the others. It was Gilmore's opinion that, instead of
+proceeding against Sam, they would put him into the witness-box and
+make him tell what he knew about the presence of the other two men.
+Fenwick declared that, if they did so, such was Sam's obstinacy that
+he would tell nothing. It was his own idea,&mdash;as he had explained both
+to his wife and to Gilmore,&mdash;that Carry Brattle could give more
+evidence respecting the murder than her brother. Of this he said
+nothing at present, but he had informed Constable Toffy that if
+Caroline Brattle were wanted for the examination she would be found
+at the house of Mrs. Stiggs.</p>
+
+<p>Thus for an hour or two the peculiar awkwardness of the meeting
+between Harry Gilmore and Mary was removed. He was enabled to talk
+with energy on a matter of interest, and she could join the
+conversation. But when they were round the tea-table it seemed to be
+arranged by common consent that Trumbull's murder and the Brattles
+should, for a while, be laid aside. Then Mary became silent and
+Gilmore became awkward. When inquiries were made as to Miss Marrable,
+he did not know whether to seem to claim, or not to claim, that
+lady's acquaintance. He could not, of course, allude to his visit to
+Loring, and yet he could hardly save himself from having to
+acknowledge that he had been there. However, the hour wore itself
+away, and he was allowed to take his departure.</p>
+
+<p>During the next two days he did not see Mary Lowther. On the Friday
+he met her with Mrs. Fenwick as the two were returning from the mill.
+They had gone to visit Mrs. Brattle and Fanny, and to administer such
+comfort as was possible in the present circumstances. The poor woman
+told them that the father was now as silent about his son as about
+his daughter, but that he had himself gone over to Heytesbury to
+secure legal advice for the lad, and to learn from Mr. Jones, the
+attorney, what might be the true aspect of the case. Of what he had
+learned he had told nothing to the women at the mill, but the two
+ladies had expressed their strong opinion of Sam's innocence. All
+this was narrated by Mrs. Fenwick to Gilmore, and Mary Lowther was
+enabled to take her part in the narrative. The Squire was walking
+between the two, and it seemed to him as he walked that Mary at least
+had no desire to avoid him. He became high in hope, and began to wish
+that even now, at this moment, he might be left alone with her and
+might learn his fate. He parted from them when they were near the
+village, and as he went he held Mary's hand within his own for a few
+moments. There was no return of his pressure, but it seemed to him
+that her hand was left with him almost willingly.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you think of him?" her friend said to her, as soon as he had
+parted from them.</p>
+
+<p>"What do I think of him? I have always thought well of him."</p>
+
+<p>"I know you have; to think otherwise of one who is positively so good
+would be impossible. But do you feel more kindly to him than you
+used?"</p>
+
+<p>"Janet," said Mary, after pausing awhile, "you had better leave me
+alone. Don't be angry with me; but really it will be better that you
+should leave me alone."</p>
+
+<p>"I won't be angry with you, and I will leave you alone," said Mrs.
+Fenwick. And, as she considered this request afterwards, it seemed to
+her that the very making of such a request implied a determination on
+the girl's part to bring herself to accept the man's offer,&mdash;if it
+might be possible.</p>
+
+
+<p><a name="c49" id="c49"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>CHAPTER XLIX.</h3>
+<h4>MARY LOWTHER'S DOOM.<br />&nbsp;</h4>
+
+
+<p>The police were so very tedious in managing their business, and the
+whole affair of the second magisterial investigation was so
+protracted, that people in the neighbourhood became almost tired of
+it, in spite of that appetite for excitement which the ordinary quiet
+life of a rural district produces. On the first Tuesday in June Sam
+had surrendered himself at Heytesbury, and on the second Tuesday it
+was understood that the production of the prisoners was only formal.
+The final examination, and committal, if the evidence should be
+sufficient, was to take place on the third Tuesday in the month.
+Against this Mr. Jones had remonstrated very loudly on Sam's behalf,
+protesting that the magistrates were going beyond their power in
+locking up a man against whom there was no more evidence now than
+there had been when before they had found themselves compelled to
+release him on bail. But this was of no avail. Sam had been released
+before because the men who were supposed to have been his accomplices
+were not in custody; and now that they were in custody the police
+declared it to be out of the question that he should be left at
+large. The magistrates of course agreed with the police, in spite of
+the indignation of Mr. Jones. In the meantime a subp&oelig;na was served
+upon Carry Brattle to appear on that final Tuesday,&mdash;Tuesday the
+nineteenth of June. The policeman, when he served her with the paper,
+told her that on the morning in question he would come and fetch her.
+The poor girl said not a word as she took into her hand the dreadful
+document. Mrs. Stiggs asked a question or two of the man, but got
+from him no information. But it was well known in Trotter's
+Buildings, and round about the Three Honest Men, that Sam Brattle was
+to be tried for the murder of Mr. Trumbull, and public opinion in
+that part of Salisbury was adverse to Sam. Public opinion was averse,
+also, to poor Carry; and Mrs. Stiggs was becoming almost tired of her
+lodger, although the payment made for her was not ungenerous and was
+as punctual as the sun. In truth, the tongue of the landlady of the
+Three Honest Men was potential in those parts, and was very bitter
+against Sam and his sister.</p>
+
+<p>In the meantime there was a matter of interest which, to our friends
+at Bullhampton, exceeded even that of the Heytesbury examinations.
+Mr. Gilmore was now daily at the vicarage on some new or old lover's
+pretence. It might be that he stood but for a minute or two on the
+terrace outside the drawing-room windows, or that he would sit with
+the ladies during half the afternoon, or that he would come down to
+dinner,&mdash;some excuse having arisen for an invitation to that effect
+during the morning. Very little was said on the subject between Mrs.
+Fenwick and Mary Lowther, and not a word between the Vicar and his
+guest; but between Mr. and Mrs. Fenwick many words were spoken, and
+before the first week was over they were sure that she would yield.</p>
+
+<p>"I think she will," said Mrs. Fenwick;&mdash;"but she will do it in
+agony."</p>
+
+<p>"Then if I were Harry I would leave her alone," said the Vicar.</p>
+
+<p>"But you are not Harry; and if you were, you would be wrong. She will
+not be happy when she accepts him; but by the time the day fixed for
+the wedding comes round, she will have reconciled herself to it, and
+then she will be as loving a wife as ever a man had." But the Vicar
+shook his head and said that, so far as he was concerned, love of
+that sort would not have sufficed for him.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course," said his wife, "it is very pleasant for a man to be told
+that the woman he loves is dying for him; but men can't always have
+everything that they want."</p>
+
+<p>Mary Lowther at this time became subject to a feeling of shame which
+almost overwhelmed her. There grew upon her a consciousness that she
+had allowed herself to come to Bullhampton on purpose that she might
+receive a renewed offer of marriage from her old lover, and that she
+had done so because her new and favoured lover had left her. Of
+course she must accept Mr. Gilmore. Of that she had now become quite
+sure. She had come to Bullhampton,&mdash;so she now told herself,&mdash;because
+she had been taught to believe that it would not be right for her to
+abandon herself to a mode of life which was not to her taste. All the
+friends in whose judgment she could confide expressed to her in every
+possible way their desire that she should marry this man; and now she
+had made this journey with the view of following their counsel. So
+she thought of herself and her doings; but such was not in truth the
+case. When she first determined to visit Bullhampton, she was very
+far from thinking that she would accept the man. Mrs. Fenwick's
+argument that she should not be kept away from Bullhampton by fear of
+Mr. Gilmore, had prevailed with her,&mdash;and she had come. And now that
+she was there, and that this man was daily with her, it was no longer
+possible that she should refuse him. And, after all, what did it
+matter? She was becoming sick of the importance which she imputed to
+herself in thinking of herself. If she could make the man happy why
+should she not do so? The romance of her life had become to her a
+rhodomontade of which she was ashamed. What was her love, that she
+should think so much about it? What did it mean? Could she not do her
+duty in the position in life in which her friends wished to place
+her, without hankering after a something which was not to be bestowed
+on her? After all, what did it all matter? She would tell the man the
+exact truth as well as she knew how to tell it, and then let him take
+her or leave her as he listed.</p>
+
+<p>And she did tell him the truth, after the following fashion. It came
+to pass at last that a day and an hour was fixed in which Mr. Gilmore
+might come to the vicarage and find Mary alone. There were no
+absolute words arranging this to which she was a party, but it was
+understood. She did not even pretend an unwillingness to receive him,
+and had assented by silence when Mrs. Fenwick had said that the man
+should be put out of his suspense. Mary, when she was silent, knew
+well that it was no longer within her power to refuse him.</p>
+
+<p>He came and found her alone. He knew, too, or fancied that he knew,
+what would be the result of the interview. She would accept him,
+without protestations of violent love for himself, acknowledging what
+had passed between her and her cousin, and proffering to him the
+offer of future affection. He had pictured it all to himself, and
+knew that he intended to accept what would be tendered. There were
+drawbacks in the happiness which was in store for him, but still he
+would take what he could get. As each so nearly understood the
+purpose of the other it was almost a pity that the arrangement could
+not be made without any words between them,&mdash;words which could hardly
+be pleasant either in the speaking or in the hearing.</p>
+
+<p>He had determined that he would disembarrass himself of all
+preliminary flourishes in addressing her, and had his speech ready as
+he took her by the hand. "Mary," he said, "you know why I am here."
+Of course she made no reply. "I told you when I first saw you again
+that I was unchanged." Then he paused, as though he expected that she
+would answer him, but still she said nothing. "Indeed I am unchanged.
+When you were here before I told you that I could look forward to no
+happiness unless you would consent to be my wife. That was nearly a
+year ago, and I have come again now to tell you the same thing. I do
+not think but what you will believe me to be in earnest."</p>
+
+<p>"I know that you are in earnest," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"No man was ever more so. My constancy has been tried during the time
+that you have been away. I do not say so as a reproach to you. Of
+course there can be no reproach. I have nothing to complain of in
+your conduct to me. But I think I may say that if my regard for you
+has outlived the pain of those months there is some evidence that it
+is sincere."</p>
+
+<p>"I have never doubted your sincerity."</p>
+
+<p>"Nor can you doubt my constancy."</p>
+
+<p>"Except in this, that it is so often that we want that which we have
+not, and find it so little worthy of having when we get it."</p>
+
+<p>"You do not say that from your heart, Mary. If you mean to refuse me
+again, it is not because you doubt the reality of my love."</p>
+
+<p>"I do not mean to refuse you again, Mr. Gilmore." Then he attempted
+to put his arm round her waist, but she recoiled from him, not in
+anger, but very quietly, and with a womanly grace that was perfect.
+"But you must hear me first, before I can allow you to take me in the
+only way in which I can bestow myself. I have been steeling myself to
+this, and I must tell you all that has occurred since we were last
+together."</p>
+
+<p>"I know it all," said he, anxious that she should be spared;&mdash;anxious
+also that he himself should be spared the pain of hearing that which
+she was about to say to him.</p>
+
+<p>But it was necessary for her that she should say it. She would not go
+to him as his accepted mistress upon other terms than those she had
+already proposed to herself. "Though you know it, I must speak of
+it," she said. "I should not, otherwise, be dealing honestly either
+with you or with myself. Since I saw you last, I have met my cousin,
+Captain Marrable. I became attached to him with a quickness which I
+cannot even myself understand. I loved him dearly, and we were
+engaged to be married."</p>
+
+<p>"You wrote to me, Mary, and told me all that." This he said, striving
+to hide the impatience which he felt; but striving in vain.</p>
+
+<p>"I did so, and now I have to tell you that that engagement is at an
+end. Circumstances occurred,&mdash;a sad loss of income that he had
+expected,&mdash;which made it imperative on him, and also on me in his
+behalf, that we should abandon our hopes. He would have been ruined
+by such a marriage,&mdash;and it is all over." Then she paused, and he
+thought that she had done; but there was more to be said, words
+heavier to be borne than any which she had yet uttered. "And I love
+him still. I should lie if I said that it was not so. If he were free
+to marry me this moment I should go to him." As she said this, there
+came a black cloud across his brow; but he stood silent to hear it
+all to the last. "My respect and esteem for you are boundless," she
+continued,&mdash;"but he has my heart. It is only because I know that I
+cannot be his wife that I have allowed myself to think whether it is
+my duty to become the wife of another man. After what I now say to
+you, I do not expect that you will persevere. Should you do so, you
+must give me time." Then she paused, as though it were now his turn
+to speak; but there was something further that she felt herself bound
+to say, and, as he was still silent, she continued. "My
+friends,&mdash;those whom I most trust in the world, my aunt and Janet
+Fenwick, all tell me that it will be best for me to accept your
+offer. I have made no promise to either of them. I would tell my mind
+to no one till I told it to you. I believe I owe as much to
+you,&mdash;almost as much as a woman can owe to a man; but still, were my
+cousin so placed that he could afford to marry a poor wife, I should
+leave you and go to him at once. I have told you everything now; and
+if, after this, you can think me worth having, I can only promise
+that I will endeavour, at some future time, to do my duty to you as
+your wife." Then she had finished, and she stood before him&mdash;waiting
+her doom.</p>
+
+<p>His brow had become black and still blacker as she continued her
+speech. He had kept his eyes upon her without quailing for a moment,
+and had hoped for some moment of tenderness, some sparkle of feeling,
+at seeing which he might have taken her in his arms and have stopped
+the sternness of her speech. But she had been at least as strong as
+he was, and had not allowed herself to show the slightest sign of
+weakness.</p>
+
+<p>"You do not love me, then?" he said.</p>
+
+<p>"I esteem you as we esteem our dearest friends."</p>
+
+<p>"And you will never love me?"</p>
+
+<p>"How shall I answer you? I do love you,&mdash;but not as I love him. I
+shall never again have that feeling."</p>
+
+<p>"Except for him?"</p>
+
+<p>"Except for him. If it is to be conquered, I will conquer it. I know,
+Mr. Gilmore, that what I have told you will drive you from me. It
+ought to do so."</p>
+
+<p>"It is for me to judge of that," he said, turning upon her quickly.</p>
+
+<p>"In judging for myself I have thought it right to tell you the exact
+truth, and to let you know what it is that you would possess if you
+should choose to take me." Then again she was silent, and waited for
+her doom.</p>
+
+<p>There was a pause of, perhaps, a couple of minutes, during which he
+made no reply. He walked the length of the room twice, slowly, before
+he uttered a word, and during that time he did not look at her. Had
+he chosen to take an hour, she would not have interrupted him again.
+She had told him everything, and it was for him now to decide. After
+what she had said he could not but recall his offer. How was it
+possible that he should desire to make a woman his wife after such a
+declaration as that which she had made to him?</p>
+
+<p>"And now," he said, "it is for me to decide."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Mr. Gilmore, it is for you to decide."</p>
+
+<p>"Then," said he, coming up to her and putting out his hand, "you are
+my betrothed. May God in his mercy soften your heart to me, and
+enable you to give me some return for all the love that I bear you."
+She took his hand and raised it to her lips and kissed it, and then
+had left the room before he was able to stop her.</p>
+
+
+<p><a name="c50" id="c50"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>CHAPTER L.</h3>
+<h4>MARY LOWTHER INSPECTS HER FUTURE HOME.<br />&nbsp;</h4>
+
+
+<p>Of course it was soon known in the vicarage that Mary Lowther had
+accepted the Squire's hand. She had left him standing in the
+drawing-room;&mdash;had left him very abruptly, though she had
+condescended to kiss his hand. Perhaps in no way could she have made
+a kinder reply to his petition for mercy. In ordinary cases it is
+probably common for a lady, when she has yielded to a gentleman's
+entreaties for the gift of herself, to yield also something further
+for his immediate gratification, and to submit herself to his
+embrace. In this instance it was impossible that the lady should do
+so. After the very definite manner in which she had explained to him
+her feelings, it was out of the question that she should stay and toy
+with him;&mdash;that she should bear the pressure of his arm, or return
+his caresses. But there had come upon her a sharp desire to show her
+gratitude before she left him,&mdash;to show her gratitude, and to prove,
+by some personal action towards him, that though she had been forced
+to tell him that she did not love him,&mdash;that she did not love him
+after the fashion in which his love was given to her,&mdash;that yet he
+was dear to her, as our dearest friends are dear. And therefore, when
+he had stretched out his hand to her in sign of the offer which he
+was making her, she had raised it to her lips and kissed it.</p>
+
+<p>Very shortly after she had left the room Mrs. Fenwick came to him.
+"Well, Harry," she said, coming up close to him, and looking into his
+eyes to see how it had fared with him, "tell me that I may wish you
+joy."</p>
+
+<p>"She has promised that she will be my wife," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"And is not that what you have so long wished?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, indeed."</p>
+
+<p>"Then why are you not elated?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have no doubt she will tell you all. But do not suppose, Mrs.
+Fenwick, that I am not thankful. She has behaved very well,&mdash;and she
+has accepted me. She has explained to me in what way her acceptance
+has been given, and I have submitted to it."</p>
+
+<p>"Now, Harry, you are going to make yourself wretched about some
+romantic trifle."</p>
+
+<p>"I am not going to make myself miserable at all. I am much less
+miserable than I could have believed to be possible six months ago.
+She has told me that she will be my wife, and I do not for a moment
+think that she will go back from her word."</p>
+
+<p>"Then what is it?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have not won her as other men do. Never mind;&mdash;I do not mean to
+complain. Mrs. Fenwick, I shall trust you to let me know when she
+will be glad to see me here."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course you will come when you like and how you like. You must be
+quite at home here."</p>
+
+<p>"As far as you and Frank are concerned, that would be a
+matter-of-course to me. But it cannot be so&mdash;yet&mdash;in regard to Mary.
+At any rate, I will not intrude upon her till I know that my coming
+will not be a trouble to her." After this it was not necessary that
+Mrs. Fenwick should be told much more of the manner in which these
+new betrothals had been made.</p>
+
+<p>Mary was, of course, congratulated both by the Vicar and his wife,
+and she received their congratulations with a dignity of deportment
+which, even from her, almost surprised them. She said scarcely a
+word, but smiled as she was kissed by each of them and did whisper
+something as to her hope that she might be able to make Mr. Gilmore
+happy. There was certainly no triumph; and there was no visible sign
+of regret. When she was asked whether she would not wish that he
+should come to the vicarage, she declared that she would have him
+come just as he pleased. If she only knew of his coming beforehand
+she would take care that she would be within to receive him. Whatever
+might be his wishes, she would obey them. Mrs. Fenwick suggested that
+Gilmore would like her to go up to the Privets, and look at the house
+which was to be her future home. She promised that she would go with
+him at any hour that he might appoint. Then there was something said
+as to fixing the day of the wedding. "It is not to be immediately,"
+she replied; "he promised me that he would give me time." "She speaks
+of it as though she was going to be hung," the Vicar said afterwards
+to his wife.</p>
+
+<p>On the day after her engagement she saw Gilmore, and then she wrote
+to her aunt to tell her the tidings. Her letter was very short, and
+had not Miss Marrable thoroughly understood the character of her
+niece, and the agony of the struggle to which Mary was now subjected,
+it would have seemed to be cold and ungrateful. "My dear Aunt," said
+the letter, "Yesterday I accepted Mr. Gilmore's offer. I know you
+will be glad to hear this, as you have always thought that I ought to
+do so. No time has been fixed for the wedding, but it will not be
+very soon. I hope I may do my duty to him and make him happy; but I
+do not know whether I should not have been more useful in remaining
+with my affectionate aunt." That was the whole letter, and there was
+no other friend to whom she herself communicated the tidings. It
+occurred to her for a moment that she would write to Walter
+Marrable;&mdash;but Walter Marrable had told her nothing of Edith
+Brownlow. Walter Marrable would learn the news fast enough. And then,
+the writing of such a letter would not have been very easy to her.</p>
+
+<p>On the Sunday afternoon, after church, she walked up to the Privets
+with her lover. The engagement had been made on the previous
+Thursday, and this was the first occasion on which she had been alone
+with him for more than a minute or two at a time since she had then
+parted from him. They started immediately from the churchyard,
+passing out through the gate which led into Mr. Trumbull's field, and
+it was understood that they were to return for an early dinner at the
+vicarage. Mary had made many resolutions as to this walk. She would
+talk much, so that it might not be tedious and melancholy to him; she
+would praise everything, and show the interest which she took in the
+house and grounds; she would ask questions, and display no hesitation
+as to claiming her own future share of possession in all that
+belonged to him. She went off at once as soon as she was through the
+wicket gate, asking questions as to the division of the property of
+the parish between the two owners, as to this field and that field,
+and the little wood which they passed, till her sharp intelligence
+told her that she was over-acting her part. He was no actor, but
+unconsciously he perceived her effort; and he resented it,
+unconsciously also, by short answers and an uninterested tone. She
+was aware of it all, and felt that there had been a mistake. It would
+be better for her to leave the play in his hands, and to adapt
+herself to his moods.</p>
+
+<p>"We had better go straight up to the house," he said, as soon as the
+pathway had led them off Lord Trowbridge's land into his own domain.</p>
+
+<p>"I think we had," said she.</p>
+
+<p>"If we go round by the stables it will make us late for Fenwick's
+dinner."</p>
+
+<p>"We ought to be back by half-past two," she said. They had left the
+church exactly at half-past twelve, and were therefore to be together
+for two hours.</p>
+
+<p>He took her over the house. The showing of a house in such
+circumstances is very trying, both to the man and to the woman. He is
+weighted by a mixed load of pride in his possession and of assumed
+humility. She, to whom every detail of the future nest is so vitally
+important, is almost bound to praise, though every encomium she
+pronounces will be a difficulty in the way of those changes which she
+contemplates. But on the present occasion Mary contemplated no
+change. Marrying this man, as she was about to do, professedly
+without loving him, she was bound to take everything else as she
+found it. The dwelling rooms of the house she had known before; the
+dining-room, the drawing-room, and the library. She was now taken
+into his private chamber, where he sat as a magistrate, and paid his
+men, and kept his guns and fishing-rods. Here she sat down for a
+moment, and when he had told her this and that,&mdash;how he was always
+here for so long in the morning, and how he hoped that she would come
+to him sometimes when he was thus busy, he came and stood over her,
+putting his hand upon her shoulder. "Mary," he said, "will you not
+kiss me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly I will," she said, jumping up, and offering her face to
+his salute. A month or two ago he would have given the world for
+permission to kiss her; and now it seemed as though the thing itself
+were a matter but of little joy. A kiss to be joyful should be
+stolen, with a conviction on the part of the offender that she who
+has suffered the loss will never prosecute the thief. She had meant
+to be good to him, but the favour would have gone further with him
+had she made more of it.</p>
+
+<p>Then they went up stairs. Who does not know the questions that were
+asked and that were answered? On this occasion they were asked and
+answered with matter-of-fact useful earnestness. The papers on the
+walls were perhaps old and ugly; but she did not mind it if they were
+so. If he liked to have the rooms new papered, of course it would be
+nice. Would she like new furniture? Did she object to the
+old-fashioned four-post bedsteads? Had she any special taste about
+hangings and colours? Of course she had, but she could not bring
+herself to indulge them by giving orders as to this or that. She
+praised everything; was satisfied with everything; was interested in
+everything; but would propose no changes. What right had she, seeing
+that she was to give him so little, to ask him to do this or that for
+her? She meant on this occasion to do all that she could for his
+happiness, but had she ordered new furniture for the whole house,
+begged that every room might be fresh papered, and pointed out that
+the panelling was old and must be altered, and the entire edifice
+re-painted inside and out, he would have been a happier man. "I hope
+you will find it comfortable," he said, in a tone of voice that was
+beyond measure lugubrious.</p>
+
+<p>"I am sure that I shall," she replied. "What more can any woman want
+than there is here? And then there are so many comforts to which I
+have never been used."</p>
+
+<p>This passed between them as they stood on the steps of the house,
+looking down upon green paddocks in front of the house; "I think we
+will come and see the gardens another day," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Whenever you like," she answered. "Perhaps if we stay now we shall
+be keeping them waiting." Then, as they returned by the road, she
+remembered an account that Janet Fenwick had given her of a certain
+visit which Janet had made to the vicarage as Miss Balfour, and of
+all the joys of that inspection. But what right had she, Mary
+Lowther, to suppose that she could have any of the same pleasure?
+Janet Balfour, in her first visit to the vicarage, had been to see
+the home in which she was to live with the man to whom her whole
+heart had been given without reserve.</p>
+
+
+<p><a name="c51" id="c51"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>CHAPTER LI.</h3>
+<h4>THE GRINDER AND HIS COMRADE.<br />&nbsp;</h4>
+
+
+<p>As the day drew near for the final examination at Heytesbury of the
+suspected murderers,&mdash;the day on which it was expected that either
+all the three prisoners, or at least two of them, would be committed
+to take their trial at the summer assizes, the Vicar became anxious
+as to the appearance of Carry Brattle in the Court. At first he
+entertained an idea that he would go over to Salisbury and fetch her;
+but his wife declared that this was imprudent and Quixotic,&mdash;and that
+he shouldn't do it. Fenwick's argument in support of his own idea
+amounted to little more than this,&mdash;that he would go for the girl
+because the Marquis of Trowbridge would be sure to condemn him for
+taking such a step. "It is intolerable to me," he said, "that I
+should be impeded in my free action by the interference and
+accusations of such an ass as that." But the question was one on
+which his wife felt herself to be so strong that she would not yield,
+either to his logic or to his anger. "It can't be fit for you to go
+about and fetch witnesses; and it won't make it more fit because she
+is a pretty young woman who has lost her character." "Honi soit qui
+mal y pense," said the Vicar. But his wife was resolute, and he gave
+up the plan. He wrote, however, to the constable at Salisbury,
+begging the man to look to the young woman's comfort, and offering to
+pay for any special privilege or accommodation that might be accorded
+to her. This occurred on the Saturday before the day on which Mary
+Lowther was taken up to look at her new home.</p>
+
+<p>The Sunday passed by, with more or less of conversation respecting
+the murder; and so also the Monday morning. The Vicar had himself
+been summoned to give his evidence as to having found Sam Brattle in
+his own garden, in company with another man with whom he had
+wrestled, and whom he was able to substantiate as the Grinder; and,
+indeed, the terrible bruise made by the Vicar's life-preserver on the
+Grinder's back, would be proved by evidence from Lavington. On the
+Monday evening he was sitting, after dinner, with Gilmore, who had
+dined at the vicarage, when he was told that a constable from
+Salisbury wished to see him. The constable was called into the room,
+and soon told his story. He had gone up to Trotter's Buildings that
+day after dinner, and was told that the bird had flown. She had gone
+out that morning, and Mrs. Stiggs knew nothing of her departure. When
+they examined the room in which she slept, they found that she had
+taken what little money she possessed and her best clothes. She had
+changed her frock and put on a pair of strong boots, and taken her
+cloak with her. Mrs. Stiggs acknowledged that had she seen the girl
+going forth thus provided, her suspicions would have been aroused;
+but Carry had managed to leave the house without being observed. Then
+the constable went on to say that Mrs. Stiggs had told him that she
+had been sure that Carry would go. "I've been a waiting for it all
+along," she had said; "but when there came the law rumpus atop of the
+other, I knew as how she'd hop the twig." And now Carry Brattle had
+hopped the twig, and no one knew whither she had gone. There was much
+sorrow at the vicarage; for Mrs. Fenwick, though she had been obliged
+to restrain her husband's impetuosity in the matter, had nevertheless
+wished well for the poor girl;&mdash;and who could not believe aught of
+her now but that she would return to misery and degradation? When the
+constable was interrogated as to the need for her attendance on the
+morrow, he declared that nothing could now be done towards finding
+her and bringing her to Heytesbury in time for the magistrates'
+session. He supposed there would be another remand, and that then
+she, too, would be&mdash;wanted.</p>
+
+<p>But there had been so many remands that on the Tuesday the
+magistrates were determined to commit the men, and did commit two of
+them. Against Sam there was no tittle of evidence, except as to that
+fact that he had been seen with these men in Mr. Fenwick's garden;
+and it was at once proposed to put him into the witness-box, instead
+of proceeding against him as one of the murderers. As a witness he
+was adjudged to have behaved badly; but the assumed independence of
+his demeanour was probably the worst of his misbehaviour. He would
+tell them nothing of the circumstances of the murder, except that
+having previously become acquainted with the two men, Burrows and
+Acorn, and having, as he thought, a spite against the Vicar at the
+time, he had determined to make free with some of the vicarage fruit.
+He had, he said, met the men in the village that afternoon, and had
+no knowledge of their business there. He had known Acorn more
+intimately than the other man, and confessed at last that his
+acquaintance with that man had arisen from a belief that Acorn was
+about to marry his sister. He acknowledged that he knew that Burrows
+had been a convicted thief, and that Acorn had been punished for
+horse stealing. When he was asked how it had come to pass that he was
+desirous of seeing his sister married to a horse-stealer, he declined
+to answer, and, looking round the Court, said that he hoped there was
+no man there who would be coward enough to say anything against his
+sister. They who heard him declared that there was more of a threat
+than a request expressed in his words and manner.</p>
+
+<p>A question was put to him as to his knowledge of Farmer Trumbull's
+money. "There was them as knew; but I knew nothing," he said. He was
+pressed on this point by the magistrates, but would say not a word
+further. As to this, however, the police were indifferent, as they
+believed that they would be able to prove at the trial, from other
+sources, that the mother of the man called the Grinder had certainly
+received tidings of the farmer's wealth. There were many small
+matters of evidence to which the magistrates trusted. One of the men
+had bought poison, and the dog had been poisoned. The presence of the
+cart at the farmer's gate was proved, and the subsequent presence of
+the two men in the same cart at Pycroft Common. The size of the
+footprints, the characters and subsequent flight of the men, and
+certain damaging denials and admissions which they themselves had
+made, all went to make up the case against them, and they were
+committed to be tried for the murder. Sam, however, was allowed to go
+free, being served, however, with a subp&oelig;na to attend at the trial
+as a witness. "I will," said he, "if you send me down money enough to
+bring me up from South Shields, and take me back again. I ain't a
+coming on my own hook as I did this time;&mdash;and wouldn't now, only for
+Muster Fenwick." Our friends left the police to settle this question
+with Sam, and then drove home to Bullhampton.</p>
+
+<p>The Vicar was triumphant, though his triumph was somewhat quelled by
+the disappearance of Carry Brattle. There could, however, be no
+longer any doubt that Sam Brattle's innocence as to the murder was
+established. Head-Constable Toffy had himself acknowledged to him
+that Sam could have had no hand in it. "I told you so from the
+beginning," said the Vicar. "We 'as got the right uns, at any rate,"
+said the constable; "and it wasn't none of our fault that we hadn't
+'em before." But though Constable Toffy was thus honest, there were
+one or two in Heytesbury on that day who still persisted in declaring
+that Sam was one of the murderers. Sir Thomas Charleys stuck to that
+opinion to the last; and Lord Trowbridge, who had again sat upon the
+bench, was quite convinced that justice was being shamefully robbed
+of her due.</p>
+
+<p>When the Vicar reached Bullhampton, instead of turning into his own
+place at once, he drove himself on to the mill. He dropped Gilmore at
+the gate, but he could not bear that the father and mother should not
+know immediately, from a source which they would trust, that Sam had
+been declared innocent of that great offence. Driving round by the
+road, Fenwick met the miller about a quarter of a mile from his own
+house. "Mr. Brattle," he said, "they have committed the two men."</p>
+
+<p>"Have they, sir?" said the miller, not condescending to ask a
+question about his own son.</p>
+
+<p>"As I have said all along, Sam had no more to do with it than you or
+I."</p>
+
+<p>"You have been very good, Muster Fenwick."</p>
+
+<p>"Come, Mr. Brattle, do not pretend that this is not a comfort to
+you."</p>
+
+<p>"A comfort as my son ain't proved a murderer! If they'd a hanged 'im,
+Muster Fenwick, that'd a been bad, for certain. It ain't much of
+comfort we has; but there may be a better and a worser in everything,
+no doubt. I'm obleeged to you, all as one, Muster Fenwick&mdash;very much
+obleeged; and it will take a heavy load off his mother's heart." Then
+the Vicar turned his gig round, and drove himself home.</p>
+
+
+<p><a name="c52" id="c52"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>CHAPTER LII.</h3>
+<h4>CARRY BRATTLE'S JOURNEY.<br />&nbsp;</h4>
+
+
+<p>Mrs. Stiggs had been right in her surmise about Carry Brattle. The
+confinement in Trotter's Buildings and want of interest in her life
+was more than the girl could bear, and she had been thinking of
+escape almost from the first day that she had been there. Had it not
+been for the mingled fear and love with which she regarded Mr.
+Fenwick, had she not dreaded that he should think her ungrateful, she
+would have flown even before the summons came to her which told her
+that she must appear before the magistrates and lawyers, and among a
+crowd of people, in the neighbourhood of her old home. That she could
+not endure, and therefore she had flown. When it had been suggested
+to her that she should go and live with her brother's wife as her
+servant, that idea had been hard to bear. But there had been
+uncertainty, and an opinion of her own which proved to be right, that
+her sister-in-law would not receive her. Now about this paper that
+the policeman had handed to her, and the threatened journey to
+Heytesbury, there was no uncertainty,&mdash;unless she might possibly
+escape the evil by running away. Therefore she ran away.</p>
+
+<p>The straight-going people of the world, in dealing with those who go
+crooked, are almost always unreasonable. "Because you have been bad,"
+say they who are not bad to those who are bad, "because you have
+hitherto indulged yourself with all pleasures within your reach,
+because you have never worked steadily or submitted yourself to
+restraint, because you have been a drunkard, and a gambler, and have
+lived in foul company, therefore now,&mdash;now that I have got a hold of
+you and can manipulate you in reference to your repentance and future
+conduct,&mdash;I will require from you a mode of life that, in its general
+attractions, shall be about equal to that of a hermit in the desert.
+If you flinch you are not only a monster of ingratitude towards me,
+who am taking all this trouble to save you, but you are also a poor
+wretch for whom no possible hope of grace can remain." When it is
+found that a young man is neglecting his duties, doing nothing,
+spending his nights in billiard rooms and worse places, and getting
+up at two o'clock in the day, the usual prescription of his friends
+is that he should lock himself up in his own dingy room, drink tea,
+and spend his hours in reading good books. It is hardly recognised
+that a sudden change from billiards to good books requires a strength
+of character which, if possessed, would probably have kept the young
+man altogether from falling into bad habits. If we left the doors of
+our prisons open, and then expressed disgust because the prisoners
+walked out, we should hardly be less rational. The hours at Mrs.
+Stiggs's house had been frightfully heavy to poor Carry Brattle, and
+at last she escaped.</p>
+
+<p>It was half-past ten on the Monday morning when she went out. It was
+her custom to go out at that hour. Mr. Fenwick had desired her to
+attend the morning services at the Cathedral. She had done so for a
+day or two, and had then neglected them. But she had still left the
+house always at that time; and once, when Mrs. Stiggs had asked some
+question on the subject, she had replied almost in anger that she was
+not a prisoner. On this occasion she made changes in her dress which
+were not usual, and therefore she was careful to avoid being seen as
+she went; but had she been interrogated she would have persevered.
+Who had a right to stop her?</p>
+
+<p>But where should she go? The reader may perhaps remember that once
+when Mr. Fenwick first found this poor girl, after her flight from
+home and her great disgrace, she had expressed a desire to go to the
+mill and just look at it,&mdash;even if she might do no more than that.
+The same idea was now in her mind, but as she left the city she had
+no concerted plan. There were two things between which she must
+choose at once,&mdash;either to go to London, or not to go to London. She
+had money enough for her fare, and perhaps a few shillings over. In a
+dim way she did understand that the choice was between going to the
+devil at once,&mdash;and not going quite at once; and then, weakly,
+wistfully, with uncertain step, almost without an operation of her
+mind, she did not take the turn which, from the end of Trotter's
+Buildings, would have brought her to the Railway Station, but did
+take that which led her by the Three Honest Men out on to the Devizes
+road,&mdash;the road which passes across Salisbury Plain, and leads from
+the city to many Wiltshire villages,&mdash;of which Bullhampton is one.</p>
+
+<p>She walked slowly, but she walked nearly the whole day. Nothing could
+be more truly tragical than the utterly purposeless tenour of her
+day,&mdash;and of her whole life. She had no plan,&mdash;nothing before her; no
+object even for the evening and night of that very day in which she
+was wasting her strength on the Devizes road. It is the lack of
+object, of all aim, in the lives of the houseless wanderers that
+gives to them the most terrible element of their misery. Think of it!
+To walk forth with, say, ten shillings in your pocket,&mdash;so that there
+need be no instant suffering from want of bread or shelter,&mdash;and have
+no work to do, no friend to see, no place to expect you, no duty to
+accomplish, no hope to follow, no bourn to which you can draw
+nigher,&mdash;except that bourn which, in such circumstances, the
+traveller must surely regard as simply the end of his weariness! But
+there is nothing to which humanity cannot attune itself. Men can live
+upon poison, can learn to endure absolute solitude, can bear
+contumely, scorn, and shame, and never show it. Carry Brattle had
+already become accustomed to misery, and as she walked she thought
+more of the wretchedness of the present hour, of her weary feet, of
+her hunger, and of the nature of the rest which she might purchase
+for herself at some poor wayside inn, than she did of her future
+life.</p>
+
+
+<div class="center"><a name="il17" id="il17"></a>
+<table style="margin: 0 auto" cellpadding="4px">
+  <tr>
+    <td align="center">
+      <a href="images/il17.jpg">
+      <img src="images/il17-t.jpg" height="500"
+      alt="Carry Brattle." /></a>
+    </td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="center">
+      <span class="caption">Carry Brattle.<br />
+      Click to <a href="images/il17.jpg">ENLARGE</a></span>
+    </td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>She got a lump of bread and a glass of beer in the middle of the day,
+and then she walked on and on till the evening came. She went very
+slowly, stopping often and sitting down when the road side would
+afford her some spot of green shade. At eight o'clock she had walked
+fifteen miles, straight along the road, and, as she knew well, had
+passed the turn which would have taken her by the nearest way from
+Salisbury to Bullhampton. She had formed no plan, but entertained a
+hope that if she continued to walk they would not catch her so as to
+take her to Heytesbury on the morrow. She knew that if she went on
+she might get to Pycroft Common by this road; and though there was no
+one in the whole world whom she hated worse than Mrs. Burrows, still
+at Pycroft Common she might probably be taken in and sheltered. At
+eight she reached a small village which she remembered to have seen
+before, of which she saw the name written up on a board, and which
+she knew to be six miles from Bullhampton. She was so tired and weary
+that she could go no further, and here she asked for a bed. She told
+them that she was walking from Salisbury to the house of a friend who
+lived near Devizes, and that she had thought she could do it in one
+day and save her railway fare. She was simply asked to pay for her
+bed and supper beforehand, and then she was taken in and fed and
+sheltered. On the next morning she got up very late and was unwilling
+to leave the house. She paid for her breakfast, and, as she was not
+told to go her way, she sat on the chair in which she had been
+placed, without speaking, almost without moving, till late in the
+afternoon. At three o'clock she roused herself, asked for some bread
+and cheese which she put in her pocket, and started again upon her
+journey. She thought that she would be safe, at any rate for that
+day, from the magistrates and the policemen, from the sight of her
+brother, and from the presence of that other man at Heytesbury. But
+whither she would go when she left the house,&mdash;whether on to the
+hated cottage at Pycroft Common, or to her father's house, she had
+not made up her mind when she tied on her hat. She went on along the
+road towards Devizes, and about two miles from the village she came
+to a lane turning to the left, with a finger-post. On this was
+written a direction,&mdash;To Bullhampton and Imber; and here she turned
+short off towards the parish in which she had been born. It was then
+four o'clock, and when she had travelled a mile further she found a
+nook under the wall of a little bridge, and there she seated herself,
+and ate her dinner of bread and cheese. While she was there a
+policeman on foot passed along the road. The man did not see her,
+and had he seen her would have taken no more than a policeman's
+ordinary notice of her; but she saw him, and in consequence did not
+leave her hiding-place for hours.</p>
+
+<p>About nine o'clock she crept on again, but even then her mind was not
+made up. She did not even yet know where she would bestow herself for
+that night. It seemed to her that there would be an inexpressible
+pleasure to her, even in her misery, in walking round the precincts
+of the mill, in gazing at the windows of the house, in standing on
+the bridge where she had so often loitered, and in looking once more
+on the scene of her childhood. But, as she thought of this, she
+remembered the darkness of the stream, and the softly-gurgling but
+rapid flow with which it hurried itself on beneath the black abyss of
+the building. She had often shuddered as she watched it, indulging
+herself in the luxury of causeless trepidation. But now, were she
+there, she would surely take that plunge into the blackness, which
+would bring her to the end of all her misery!</p>
+
+<p>And yet, as she went on towards her old home, through the twilight,
+she had no more definite idea than that of looking once more on the
+place which had been cherished in her memory through all her
+sufferings. As to her rest for the night she had no plan,&mdash;unless,
+indeed, she might find her rest in the hidden mill-pool of that dark,
+softly-gurgling stream.</p>
+
+<p>On that same day, between six and seven in the evening, the miller
+was told by Mr. Fenwick that his son was no longer accused of the
+murder. He had not received the information in the most gracious
+manner; but not the less quick was he in making it known at the mill.
+"Them dunderheads over at He'tsbry has found out at last as our Sam
+had now't to do with it." This he said, addressing no one in
+particular, but in the hearing of his wife and Fanny Brattle. Then
+there came upon him a torrent of questions and a torrent also of
+tears. Mrs. Brattle and Fanny had both made up their minds that Sam
+was innocent; but the mother had still feared that he would be made
+to suffer in spite of his innocence. Fanny, however, had always
+persisted that the goodness of the Lord would save him and them from
+such injustice. To the old man himself they had hardly dared to talk
+about it, but now they strove to win him to some softness. Might not
+a struggle be made to bring Sam back to the mill? But it was very
+hard to soften the miller. "After what's come and gone, the lad is
+better away," he said, at last. "I didn't think as he'd ever raised
+his hand again an old man," he said, shortly afterwards; "but he's
+kep' company with them as did. It's a'most as bad." Beyond this the
+miller would not go; but, when they separated for the night, the
+mother took herself for awhile into the daughter's chamber in order
+that they might weep and rejoice together. It was now all but
+midsummer, and the evenings were long and sultry. The window of
+Fanny's bedroom looked out on to the garden of the mill, and was but
+a foot or two above the ground. This ground had once been pleasant to
+them all, and profitable withal. Of late, since the miller had become
+old, and Sam had grown to be too restive and self-willed to act as
+desired for the general welfare of the family, but little of
+pleasure, or profit either, had been forthcoming from the patch of
+ground. There were a few cabbages there, and rows of untended
+gooseberry and currant bushes, and down towards the orchard there was
+a patch of potatoes; but no one took pride now in the garden. As for
+Fanny, if she could provide that there should always be a sufficient
+meal on the table for her father and mother, it was as much as she
+could do. The days were clean gone by in which she had had time and
+spirits to tend her roses, pinks, and pansies. Now she sat at the
+open window with her mother, and with bated breath they spoke of the
+daughter and sister that was lost to them.</p>
+
+<p>"He wouldn't take it amiss, mother, if I was to go over to
+Salisbury?"</p>
+
+<p>"If you was to ask him, Fan, he'd bid you not," said the mother.</p>
+
+<p>"But I wouldn't ask him. I wouldn't tell him till I was back. She was
+to be before the magistrates to-day. Mr. Fenwick told me so on
+Sunday."</p>
+
+<p>"It will about be the death of her."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know, mother. She's bolder now, mother, I fear, than what
+she was in old days. And she was always sprightly,&mdash;speaking up to
+the quality, with no fear like. Maybe it was what she said that got
+them to let Sam go. She was never a coward, such as me."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Fan, if she'd only a taken after thee!"</p>
+
+<p>"The Lord, mother, makes us different for purposes of his own. Of all
+the lasses I ever see, to my eyes she was the comeliest." The old
+woman couldn't speak now, but rubbed her moist cheeks with her raised
+apron. "I'll ask Mr. Toffy to-morrow, mother," continued Fanny, "and
+if she be still at that place in Salisbury where Mr. Fenwick put her,
+I'll just go to her. Father won't turn me out of the house along of
+it."</p>
+
+<p>"Turn thee out, Fan! He'll never turn thee out. What 'd a do, or what
+'d I do if thee was to go away from us? If thou dost go, Fan, take
+her a few bits of things that are lying there in the big press, and
+'ll never be used other gait. I warrant the poor child 'll be but
+badly off for under-clothing."</p>
+
+<p>And then they planned how the journey on the morrow should be
+made,&mdash;after the constable should have been questioned, and the Vicar
+should have been consulted. Fanny would leave home immediately after
+breakfast, and when the miller should ask after her at dinner his
+wife should tell him that his daughter had gone to Salisbury. If
+further question should be asked,&mdash;and it was thought possible that
+no further question would be asked, as the father would then guess
+the errand on which his daughter would have gone,&mdash;but if the subject
+were further mooted, Mrs. Brattle, with such courage as she might be
+able to assume, should acknowledge the business that had taken Fanny
+to Salisbury. Then there arose questions about money. Mr. Fenwick had
+owned, thinking that he might thereby ease the mother's heart, that
+for the present Carry was maintained by him. To take this task upon
+themselves the mother and daughter were unable. The money which they
+had in hand, very small in amount, was, they knew, the property of
+the head of the family. That they could do no permanent good to Carry
+was a great grief. But it might be something if they could comfort
+her for awhile.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think but what her heart 'll still be soft to thee, Fan; and
+who knows but what it may bring her round to see thy face, and hear
+thy voice."</p>
+
+<p>At that moment Fanny heard a sound in the garden, and stretched her
+head and shoulders quickly out of the window. They had been late at
+the mill that evening, and it was now eleven o'clock. It had been
+still daylight when the miller had left them at tea; but the night
+had crept on them as they had sat there. There was no moon, but there
+was still something left of the reflection of the last colours of the
+setting sun, and the night was by no means dark. Fanny saw at once
+the figure of a woman, though she did not at once recognise the
+person of her sister. "Oh, mother! oh, mother! oh, mother!" said a
+voice from the night; and in a moment Carry Brattle had stretched
+herself so far within the window that she had grasped her mother by
+the arm.</p>
+
+
+<p><a name="c53" id="c53"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>CHAPTER LIII.</h3>
+<h4>THE FATTED CALF.<br />&nbsp;</h4>
+
+
+<p><img class="left" src="images/ch53a.jpg" width="310" alt="Illustration" />
+Mrs. Brattle, when she heard her daughter's voice, was so confounded,
+dismayed, and frightened, that for awhile she could give no direction
+as to what should be done. She had screamed at first, having some dim
+idea in her mind that the form she saw was not of living flesh and
+blood. And Carry herself had been hardly more composed or mistress of
+herself than her mother. She had strayed thither, never having quite
+made up her mind to any settled purpose. From the spot in which she
+had hidden herself under the bridge when the policeman passed her she
+had started when the evening sun was setting, and had wandered on
+slowly till the old familiar landmarks of the parish were reached.
+And then she came to the river, and looking across could just see the
+eaves of the mill through the willows by the last gloaming of the
+sunlight. Then she stood and paused, and every now and again had
+crept on a few feet as her courage came to her, and at last, by the
+well known little path, she had crept down behind the mill, crossing
+the stream by the board which had once been so accustomed to her
+feet, and had made her way into the garden and had heard her mother
+and sister as they talked together at the open window. Any idea which
+she had hitherto entertained of not making herself known to them at
+the mill,&mdash;of not making herself known at any rate to her mother and
+sister,&mdash;left her at once at that moment. There had been upon her a
+waking dream, a horrid dream, that the waters of the mill-stream
+might flow over her head, and hide her wickedness and her misery from
+the eyes of men; and she had stood and shuddered as she saw the
+river; but she had never really thought that her own strength would
+suffice for that termination to her sorrows. It was more probable
+that she would be doomed to lie during the night beneath a hedge, and
+then perish of the morning cold! But now, as she heard the voices at
+the window, there could be no choice for her but that she should make
+herself known,&mdash;not though her father should kill her.</p>
+
+<p>Even Fanny was driven beyond the strength of her composure by the
+strangeness of this advent. "Carry! Carry!" she exclaimed over and
+over again, not aloud,&mdash;and indeed her voice was never loud,&mdash;but
+with bated wonder. The two sisters held each other by the hand, and
+Carry's other hand still grasped her mother's arm. "Oh, mother, I am
+so tired," said the girl. "Oh, mother, I think that I shall die."</p>
+
+<p>"My child;&mdash;my poor child. What shall we do, Fan?"</p>
+
+<p>"Bring her in, of course," said Fanny.</p>
+
+<p>"But your father&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"We couldn't turn her away from the very window, and she like that,
+mother."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't turn me away, Fanny. Dear Fanny, do not turn me away," said
+Carry, striving to take her sister by the other hand.</p>
+
+<p>"No, Carry, we will not," said Fanny, trying to settle her mind to
+some plan of action. Any idea of keeping the thing long secret from
+her father she knew that she could not entertain; but for this night
+she resolved at last that shelter should be given to the discarded
+daughter without the father's knowledge. But even in doing this there
+would be difficulty. Carry must be brought in through the window, as
+any disturbance at the front of the house would arouse the miller.
+And then Mrs. Brattle must be made to go to her own room, or her
+absence would create suspicion and confusion. Fanny, too, had
+terrible doubts as to her mother's powers of going to her bed and
+lying there without revealing to her husband that some cause of great
+excitement had arisen. And then it might be that the miller would
+come to his daughter's room, and insist that the outcast should be
+made an outcast again, even in the middle of the night. He was a man
+so stern, so obstinate, so unforgiving, so masterful, that Fanny,
+though she would face any danger as regarded herself, knew that
+terrible things might happen. It seemed to her that Carry was very
+weak. If their father came to them in his wrath, might she not die in
+her despair? Nevertheless it was necessary that something should be
+done. "We must let her get in at the window, mother," she said. "It
+won't do, nohow, to unbar the door."</p>
+
+<p>"But what if he was to kill her outright! Oh, Carry; oh, my child. I
+dunna know as she can get in along of her weakness." But Carry was
+not so tired as that. She had been in and out of that window scores
+of times; and now, when she heard that the permission was accorded to
+her, she was not long before she was in her mother's arms. "My own
+Carry, my own bairn;&mdash;my girl, my darling." And the poor mother
+satisfied the longings of her heart with infinite caresses.</p>
+
+<p>Fanny in the meantime had crept out to the kitchen, and now returned
+with food in a plate and cold tea. "My girl," she said, "you must eat
+a bit, and then we will have you to bed. When the morn comes, we must
+think about it."</p>
+
+<p>"Fanny, you was always the best that there ever was," said Carry,
+speaking from her mother's bosom.</p>
+
+<p>"And now, mother," continued Fanny, "you must creep off. Indeed you
+must, or of course father'll wake up. And mother, don't say a word
+to-morrow when he rises. I'll go to him in the mill myself. That'll
+be best." Then, with longings that could hardly be repressed, with
+warm, thick, clinging kisses, with a hot, rapid, repeated assurance
+that everything,&mdash;everything had been forgiven, that her own Carry
+was once more her own, own Carry, the poor mother allowed herself to
+be banished. There seemed to her to be such a world of cruelty in the
+fact that Fanny might remain for the whole of that night with the
+dear one who had returned to them, while she must be sent
+away,&mdash;perhaps not to see her again if the storm in the morning
+should rise too loudly! Fanny, with great craft, accompanied her
+mother to her room, so that if the old man should speak she might be
+there to answer;&mdash;but the miller slept soundly after his day of
+labour, and never stirred.</p>
+
+<p>"What will he do to me, Fan?" the wanderer asked as soon as her
+sister returned.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't think of it now, my pet," said Fanny, softened almost as her
+mother was softened by the sight of her sister.</p>
+
+<p>"Will he kill me, Fan?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, dear; he will not lay a hand upon you. It is his words that are
+so rough! Carry, Carry, will you be good?"</p>
+
+<p>"I will, dear; indeed I will. I have not been bad since Mr. Fenwick
+came."</p>
+
+<p>"My sister,&mdash;if you will be good, I will never leave you. My heart's
+darling, my beauty, my pretty one! Carry, you shall be the same to me
+as always, if you'll be good. I'll never cast it up again you, if
+you'll be good." Then she, too, filled herself full, and satisfied
+the hungry craving of her love with the warmth of her caresses. "But
+thee'll be famished, lass. I'll see thee eat a bit, and then I'll put
+thee comfortable to bed."</p>
+
+<p>Poor Carry Brattle was famished, and ate the bread and bacon which
+were set before her, and drank the cold tea, with an appetite which
+was perhaps unbecoming the romance of her position. Her sister stood
+over her, cutting a slice now and then from the loaf, telling her
+that she had taken nothing, smoothing her hair, and wishing for her
+sake that the fire were better. "I'm afeard of father, Fan,&mdash;awfully;
+but for all that, it's the sweetest meal as I've had since I left the
+mill." Then Fanny was on her knees beside the returned profligate,
+covering even the dear one's garments with her kisses.</p>
+
+<p>It was late before Fanny laid herself down by her sister's side that
+night. "Carry," she whispered when her sister was undressed, "will
+you kneel here and say your prayers as you used to?" Carry, without a
+word, did as she was bidden, and hid her face upon her hands in her
+sister's lap. No word was spoken out loud, but Fanny was satisfied
+that her sister had been in earnest. "Now sleep, my darling;&mdash;and
+when I've just tidied your things for the morning, I will be with
+you." The wanderer again obeyed, and in a few moments the work of the
+past two days befriended her, and she was asleep. Then the sister
+went to her task with the soiled frock and the soiled shoes, and
+looked up things clean and decent for the morrow. It would be at any
+rate well that Carry should appear before her father without the
+stain of the road upon her.</p>
+
+<p>As the lost one lay asleep there, with her soft ringlets all loose
+upon the pillow, still beautiful, still soft, lovely though an
+outcast from the dearest rights of womanhood, with so much of
+innocence on her brow, with so much left of the grace of childhood
+though the glory of the flower had been destroyed by the unworthy
+hand that had ravished its sweetness, Fanny, sitting in the corner of
+the room over her work, with her eye from moment to moment turned
+upon the sleeper, could not keep her mind from wandering away in
+thoughts on the strange destiny of woman. She knew that there had
+been moments in her life in which her great love for her sister had
+been tinged with envy. No young lad had ever waited in the dusk to
+hear the sound of her footfall; no half-impudent but half-bashful
+glances had ever been thrown after her as she went through the
+village on her business. To be a homely, household thing, useful
+indeed in this world, and with high hopes for the future,&mdash;but still
+to be a drudge; that had been her destiny. There was never a woman to
+whom the idea of being loved was not the sweetest thought that her
+mind could produce. Fate had made her plain, and no man had loved
+her. The same chance had made Carry pretty,&mdash;the belle of the
+village, the acknowledged beauty of Bullhampton. And there she lay, a
+thing said to be so foul that even a father could not endure to have
+her name mentioned in his ears! And yet, how small had been her fault
+compared with other crimes for which men and women are forgiven
+speedily, even if it has been held that pardon has ever been
+required.</p>
+
+<p>She came over, and knelt down and kissed her sister on her brow; and
+as she did so she swore to herself that by her, even in the inmost
+recesses of her bosom, Carry should never be held to be evil, to be a
+castaway, to be one of whom, as her sister, it would behove her to be
+ashamed. She had told Carry that she would "never cast it up against
+her." She now resolved that there should be no such casting up even
+in her own judgment. Had she, too, been fair, might not she also have
+fallen?</p>
+
+<p>At five o'clock on the following morning the miller went out from the
+house to his mill, according to his daily practice. Fanny heard his
+heavy step, heard the bar withdrawn, heard the shutters removed from
+the kitchen window, and knew that her father was as yet in ignorance
+of the inmate who had been harboured. Fanny at once arose from her
+bed, careful not to disturb her companion. She had thought it all
+out, whether she would have Carry ready dressed for an escape, should
+it be that her father would demand imperiously that she should be
+sent adrift from the mill, or whether it might not be better that she
+should be able to plead at the first moment that her sister was in
+bed, tired, asleep,&mdash;at any rate undressed,&mdash;and that some little
+time must be allowed. Might it not be that even in that hour her
+father's heart might be softened? But she must lose no time in going
+to him. The hired man who now tended the mill with her father came
+always at six, and that which she had to say to him must be said with
+no ear to hear her but his own. It would have been impossible even
+for her to remind him of his daughter before a stranger. She slipped
+her clothes on, therefore, and within ten minutes of her father's
+departure followed him into the mill.</p>
+
+<p>The old man had gone aloft, and she heard his slow, heavy feet as he
+was moving the sacks which were above her head. She considered for a
+moment, and thinking it better that she should not herself ascend the
+little ladder,&mdash;knowing that it might be well that she should have
+the power of instant retreat to the house,&mdash;she called to him from
+below. "What's wanted now?" demanded the old man as soon as he heard
+her. "Father, I must speak to you," she said. "Father, you must come
+down to me." Then he came down slowly, without a word, and stood
+before her waiting to hear her tidings. "Father," she said, "there is
+some one in the house, and I have come to tell you."</p>
+
+<p>"Sam has come, then?" said he; and she could see that there was a
+sparkle of joy in his eye as he spoke. Oh, if she could only make the
+return of that other child as grateful to him as would have been the
+return of his son!</p>
+
+<p>"No, father; it isn't Sam."</p>
+
+<p>"Who be it, then?" The tone of his voice, and the colour and bearing
+of his face were changed as he asked the question. She saw at once
+that he had guessed the truth. "It isn't&mdash;it
+<span class="nowrap">isn't&mdash;?"</span></p>
+
+<p>"Yes, father; it is Carry." As she spoke she came close to him, and
+strove to take his hand; but he thrust both his hands into his
+pockets and turned himself half away from her. "Father, she is our
+flesh and blood; you will not turn against her now that she has come
+back to us, and is sorry for her faults."</p>
+
+<p>"She is a&mdash;" But his other daughter had stopped his mouth with her
+hand before the word had been uttered.</p>
+
+<p>"Father, who among us has not done wrong at times?"</p>
+
+<p>"She has disgraced my gray hairs, and made me a reproach and a shame.
+I will not see her. Bid her begone. I will not speak to her or look
+at her. How came she there? When did she come?"</p>
+
+<p>Then Fanny told her father the whole story,&mdash;everything as it
+occurred, and did not forget to add her own conviction that Carry's
+life had been decent in all respects since the Vicar had found a home
+for her in Salisbury. "You would not have it go on like that, father.
+She is naught to our parson."</p>
+
+<p>"I will pay. As long as there is a shilling left, I will pay for her.
+She shall not live on the charity of any man, whether parson or no
+parson. But I will not see her. While she be here you may just send
+me my vittels to the mill. If she be not gone afore night, I will
+sleep here among the sacks."</p>
+
+<p>She stayed with him till the labourer came, and then she returned to
+the house, having failed as yet to touch his heart. She went back and
+told her story to her mother, and then a part of it to Carry who was
+still in bed. Indeed, she had found her mother by Carry's bedside,
+and had to wait till she could separate them before she could tell
+any story to either. "What does he say of me, Fan?" asked the poor
+sinner. "Does he say that I must go? Will he never speak to me again?
+I will just throw myself into the mill-race and have done with it."
+Her sister bade her to rise and dress herself, but to remain where
+she was. It could not be expected, she said, but that their father
+would be hard to persuade. "I know that he will kill me when he sees
+me," said Carry.</p>
+
+<p>At eight o'clock Fanny took the old man his breakfast to the mill,
+while Mrs. Brattle waited on Carry, as though she had deserved all
+the good things which a mother could do for a child. The miller sat
+upon a sack at the back of the building, while the hired man took his
+meal of bread and cheese in the front, and Fanny remained close at
+his elbow. While the old man was eating she said nothing to him. He
+was very slow, and sat with his eyes fixed upon the morsel of sky
+which was visible through the small aperture, thinking evidently of
+anything but the food that he was swallowing. Presently he returned
+the empty bowl and plate to his daughter, as though he were about at
+once to resume his work. Hitherto he had not uttered a single word
+since she had come to him.</p>
+
+<p>"Father," she said, "think of it. Is it not good to have mercy and to
+forgive? Would you drive your girl out again upon the streets?"</p>
+
+<p>The miller still did not speak, but turned his face round upon his
+daughter with a gaze of such agony that she threw herself on the sack
+beside him, and clung to him with her arms round his neck.</p>
+
+<p>"If she were such as thee, Fan," he said. "Oh, if she were such as
+thee!" Then again he turned away his face that she might not see the
+tear that was forcing itself into the corner of his eye.</p>
+
+<p>She remained with him an hour before he moved. His companion in the
+mill did not come near them, knowing, as the poor do know on such
+occasions, there was something going on which would lead them to
+prefer that he should be absent. The words that were said between
+them were not very many; but at the end of the hour Fanny returned to
+the house.</p>
+
+<p>"Carry," she said, "father is coming in."</p>
+
+<p>"If he looks at me, it will kill me," said Carry.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Brattle was so lost in her hopes and fears that she knew not
+what to do, or how to bestow herself. A minute had hardly passed when
+the miller's step was heard, and Carry knew that she was in the
+presence of her father. She had been sitting, but now she rose, and
+went to him and knelt at his feet.</p>
+
+<p>"Father," she said, "if I may bide with you,&mdash;if I may bide with
+you&mdash;." But her voice was lost in sobbing, and she could make no
+promise as to her future conduct.</p>
+
+
+<div class="center"><a name="il18" id="il18"></a>
+<table style="margin: 0 auto" cellpadding="4px">
+  <tr>
+    <td align="center">
+      <a href="images/il18.jpg">
+      <img src="images/il18-t.jpg" height="500"
+      alt='"If I may bide with you,&mdash;
+      if I may bide with you&mdash;."' /></a>
+    </td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="center">
+      <span class="caption">"If I may bide with you,&mdash;if
+      I may bide with you&mdash;."<br />
+      Click to <a href="images/il18.jpg">ENLARGE</a></span>
+    </td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>"She may stay with us," the father said, turning to his eldest
+daughter; "but I shall never be able to show my face again about the
+parish."</p>
+
+<p>He had uttered no words of forgiveness to his daughter, nor had he
+bestowed upon her any kiss. Fanny had raised her when she was on the
+ground at his feet, and had made her seat herself apart.</p>
+
+<p>"In all the whole warld," he said, looking round upon his wife and
+his elder child, raising his hand as he uttered the words, and
+speaking with an emphasis that was terrible to the hearers, "there is
+no thing so vile as a harlot." All the dreaded fierceness of his
+manner had then come back to him, and neither of them had dared to
+answer him. After that he at once went back to the mill, and to Fanny
+who followed him he vouchsafed to repeat the permission that his
+daughter should be allowed to remain beneath his roof.</p>
+
+<p>Between twelve and one she again went to fetch him to his dinner. At
+first he declared that he would not come, that he was busy, and that
+he would eat a morsel, where he was, in the mill. But Fanny argued
+the matter with him.</p>
+
+<p>"Is it always to be so, father?"</p>
+
+<p>"I do not know. What matters it, so as I have strength to do a turn
+of work?"</p>
+
+<p>"It must not be that her presence should drive you from the house.
+Think of mother, and what she will suffer. Father, you must come."</p>
+
+<p>Then he allowed himself to be led into the house, and he sat in his
+accustomed chair, and ate his dinner in gloomy silence. But after
+dinner he would not smoke.</p>
+
+<p>"I tell 'ee, lass, I do not want the pipe to-day. Now't has got
+itself done. D'ye think as grist 'll grind itself without hands?"</p>
+
+<p>When Carry said that it would be better than this that she should go
+again, Fanny told her to remember that evil things could not be cured
+in a day. With the mother that afternoon was, on the whole, a happy
+time, for she sat with her lost child's hand within her own. Late in
+the evening, when the miller returned to his rest, Carry moved about
+the house softly, resuming some old task to which in former days she
+had been accustomed; and as she did so the miller's eyes would wander
+round the room after her; but he did not speak to her on that day,
+nor did he pronounce her name.</p>
+
+<p>Two other circumstances which bear upon our story occurred at the
+mill that afternoon. After their tea, at which the miller did not
+make his appearance, Fanny Brattle put on her bonnet and ran across
+the fields to the vicarage. After all the trouble that Mr. Fenwick
+had taken, it was, she thought, necessary that he should be told what
+had happened.</p>
+
+<p>"That is the best news," said he, "that I have heard this many a
+day."</p>
+
+<p>"I knew that you would be glad to hear that the poor child has found
+her home again." Then Fanny told the whole story,&mdash;how Carry had
+escaped from Salisbury, being driven to do so by fear of the law
+proceedings at which she had been summoned to attend, how her father
+had sworn that he would not yield, and how at length he had yielded.
+When Fanny told the Vicar and Mrs. Fenwick that the old man had as
+yet not spoken to his daughter, they both desired her to be of good
+cheer.</p>
+
+<p>"That will come, Fanny," said Mrs. Fenwick, "if she once be allowed
+to sit at table with him."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course it will come," said the Vicar. "In a week or two you will
+find that she is his favourite."</p>
+
+<p>"She was the favourite with us all, sir, once," said Fanny, "and may
+God send that it shall be so again. A winsome thing like her is made
+to be loved. You'll come and see her, Mr. Fenwick, some day?" Mr.
+Fenwick promised that he would, and Fanny returned to the mill.</p>
+
+<p>The other circumstance was the arrival of Constable Toffy at the mill
+during Fanny's absence. In the course of the day news had travelled
+into the village that Carry Brattle was again at the mill;&mdash;and
+Constable Toffy, who in regard to the Brattle family, was somewhat
+discomfited by the transactions of the previous day at Heytesbury,
+heard the news. He was aware,&mdash;being in that respect more capable
+than Lord Trowbridge of receiving enlightenment,&mdash;that the result of
+all the inquiries made, in regard to the murder, did, in truth,
+contain no tittle of evidence against Sam. As constables go,
+Constable Toffy was a good man, and he would be wronged if it were to
+be said of him that he regretted Sam's escape; but his nature was as
+is the nature of constables, and he could not rid himself of that
+feeling of disappointment which always attends baffled efforts. And
+though he saw that there was no evidence against Sam, he did not,
+therefore, necessarily think that the young man was innocent. It may
+be doubted whether, to the normal policeman's mind, any man is ever
+altogether absolved of any crime with which that man's name has been
+once connected. He felt, therefore, somewhat sore against the
+Brattles;&mdash;and then there was the fact that Carry Brattle, who had
+been regularly "subp&oelig;naed," had kept herself out of the way,&mdash;most
+flagitiously, illegally and damnably. She had run off from Salisbury,
+just as though she were a free person to do as she pleased with
+herself, and not subject to police orders! When, therefore, he heard
+that Carry was at the mill,&mdash;she having made herself liable to some
+terribly heavy fine by her contumacy,&mdash;it was manifestly his duty to
+see after her and let her know that she was wanted.</p>
+
+<p>At the mill he saw only the miller himself, and his visit was not
+altogether satisfactory. Old Brattle, who understood very little of
+the case, but who did understand that his own son had been made clear
+in reference to that accusation, had no idea that his daughter had
+any concern with that matter, other than what had fallen to her lot
+in reference to her brother. When, therefore, Toffy inquired after
+Caroline Brattle, and desired to know whether she was at the mill,
+and also was anxious to be informed why she had not attended at
+Heytesbury in accordance with the requirements of the law, the miller
+turned upon him and declared that if anybody said a word against Sam
+Brattle in reference to the murder,&mdash;the magistrates having settled
+that matter,&mdash;he, Jacob Brattle, old as he was, would "see it out"
+with that malignant slanderer. Constable Toffy did his best to make
+the matter clear to the miller, but failed utterly. Had he a warrant
+to search for anybody? Toffy had no warrant. Toffy only desired to
+know whether Caroline Brattle was or was not beneath her father's
+roof. The old miller, declaring to himself that, though his child had
+shamed him, he would not deny her now that she was again one of the
+family, acknowledged so much, but refused the constable admittance to
+the house.</p>
+
+<p>"But, Mr. Brattle," said the constable, "she was subp&oelig;naed."</p>
+
+<p>"I know now't o' that," answered the miller, not deigning to turn his
+face round to his antagonist.</p>
+
+<p>"But you know, Mr. Brattle, the law must have its course."</p>
+
+<p>"No, I don't. And it ain't law as you should come here a hindering o'
+me; and it ain't law as you should walk that unfortunate young woman
+off with you to prison."</p>
+
+<p>"But she's wanted, Mr. Brattle;&mdash;not in the way of going to prison,
+but before the magistrates."</p>
+
+<p>"There's a deal of things is wanted as ain't to be had. Anyways, you
+ain't no call to my house now, and as them as is there is in trouble,
+I'll ax you to be so kind as&mdash;as just to leave us alone."</p>
+
+<p>Toffy, pretending that he was satisfied with the information
+received, and merely adding that Caroline Brattle must certainly, at
+some future time, be made to appear before the magistrates at
+Heytesbury, took his departure with more good-humour than the miller
+deserved from him, and returned to the village.</p>
+
+
+<p><a name="c54" id="c54"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>CHAPTER LIV.</h3>
+<h4>MR. GILMORE'S RUBIES.<br />&nbsp;</h4>
+
+
+<p>Mary Lowther struggled hard for a week to reconcile herself to her
+new fate, and at the end of the week had very nearly given way. The
+gloom which had fallen upon her acted upon her lover and then reacted
+upon herself. Could he have been light in hand, could he have talked
+to her about ordinary subjects, could he have behaved towards her
+with any even of the light courtesies of the every-day lover, she
+would have been better able to fight her battle. But when he was with
+her there was a something in his manner which always seemed to accuse
+her in that she, to whom he was giving so much, would give him
+nothing in return. He did not complain in words. He did not wilfully
+resent her coldness to him. But he looked, and walked, and spoke, and
+seemed to imply by every deed that he was conscious of being an
+injured man. At the end of the week he made her a handsome present,
+and in receiving it she had to assume some pleasure. But the failure
+was complete, and each of the two knew how great was the failure. Of
+course, there would be other presents. And he had already,&mdash;already,
+though no allusion to the day for the marriage had yet been
+made,&mdash;begun to press on for those changes in his house for which she
+would not ask, but which he was determined to effect for her comfort.
+There had been another visit to the house and gardens, and he had
+told her that this should be done,&mdash;unless she objected; and that
+that other change should be made, if it were not opposed to her
+wishes. She made an attempt to be enthusiastic,&mdash;enthusiastic on the
+wrong side, to be zealous to save him money, and the whole morning
+was beyond measure sad and gloomy. Then she asked herself whether she
+meant to go through with it. If not, the sooner that she retreated
+and hid herself and her disgrace for the rest of her life the better.
+She had accepted him at last, because she had been made to believe
+that by doing so she would benefit him, and because she had taught
+herself to think that it was her duty to disregard herself. She had
+thought of herself till she was sick of the subject. What did it
+matter,&mdash;about herself,&mdash;as long as she could be of some service to
+some one? And so thinking, she had accepted him. But now she had
+begun to fear that were she to marry this man she could not be of
+service to him. And when the thing should be done,&mdash;if ever it were
+done,&mdash;there would be no undoing it. Would not her life be a life of
+sin if she were to live as the wife of a man whom she did not
+love,&mdash;while, perhaps, she would be unable not to love another man?</p>
+
+<p>Nothing of all this was told to the Vicar, but Mrs. Fenwick knew what
+was going on in her friend's mind, and spoke her own very freely.
+"Hitherto," she said, "I have given you credit all through for good
+conduct and good feeling; but I shall be driven to condemn you if you
+now allow a foolish, morbid, sickly idea to interfere with his
+happiness and your own."</p>
+
+<p>"But what if I can do nothing for his happiness?"</p>
+
+<p>"That is nonsense. He is not a man whom you despise or dislike. If
+you will only meet him half-way you will soon find that your
+sympathies will grow."</p>
+
+<p>"There never will be a spark of sympathy between us."</p>
+
+<p>"Mary, that is most horribly wicked. What you mean is this, that he
+is not light and gay as a lover. Of course he remembers the
+occurrences of the last six months. Of course he cannot be so happy
+as he might have been had Walter Marrable never been at Loring. There
+must be something to be conquered, something to be got over, after
+such an episode. But you may set your face against doing that, or you
+may strive to do it. For his sake, if not for your own, the struggle
+should be made."</p>
+
+<p>"A man may struggle to draw a loaded wagon, but he won't move it."</p>
+
+<p>"The load in this case is of your own laying on. One hour of frank
+kindness on your part would dispel his gloom. He is not gloomy by
+nature."</p>
+
+<p>Then Mary Lowther tried to achieve that hour of frank kindness and
+again failed. She failed and was conscious of her failure, and there
+came a time,&mdash;and that within three weeks of her engagement,&mdash;in
+which she had all but made up her mind to return the ring which he
+had given her, and to leave Bullhampton for ever. Could it be right
+that she should marry a man that she did not love?</p>
+
+<p>That was her argument with herself, and yet she was deterred from
+doing as she contemplated by a circumstance which could have had no
+effect on that argument. She received from her Aunt Marrable the
+following letter, in which was certainly no word capable of making
+her think that now, at last, she could love the man whom she had
+promised to marry. And yet this letter so affected her, that she told
+herself that she would go on and become the wife of Harry Gilmore.
+She would struggle yet again, and force herself to succeed. The
+wagon, no doubt, was heavily laden, but still, with sufficient
+labour, it might perhaps be moved.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Marrable had been asked to go over to Dunripple, when Mary
+Lowther went to Bullhampton. It had been long since she had been
+there, and she had not thought ever to make such a visit. But there
+came letters, and there were rejoinders,&mdash;which were going on before
+Mary's departure,&mdash;and at last it was determined that Miss Marrable
+should go to Dunripple, and pay a visit to her cousin. But she did
+not do this till long after Walter Marrable had left the place. She
+had written to Mary soon after her arrival, and in this first letter
+there had been no word about Walter; but in her second letter she
+spoke very freely of Walter Marrable,&mdash;as the reader shall
+see.<br />&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+<blockquote>
+<p class="jright">Dunripple, 2nd July, 1868.</p>
+
+<p class="noindent"><span class="smallcaps">Dear Mary</span>,</p>
+
+<p>I got your letter on Saturday, and cannot help wishing
+that it had been written in better spirits. However, I do
+not doubt but that it will all come right soon. I am quite
+sure that the best thing you can do is to let Mr. Gilmore
+name an early day. Of course you never intended that there
+should be a long engagement. Such a thing, where there is
+no possible reason for it, must be out of the question.
+And it will be much better to take advantage of the fine
+weather than to put it off till the winter has nearly
+come. Fix some day in August or early in September. I am
+sure you will be much happier married than you are single;
+and he will be gratified, which is, I suppose, to count
+for something.</p>
+
+<p>I am very happy here, but yet I long to get home. At my
+time of life, one must always be strange among strangers.
+Nothing can be kinder than Sir Gregory, in his sort of
+fashion. Gregory Marrable, the son, is, I fear, in a bad
+way. He is unlike his father, and laughs at his own
+ailments, but everybody in the house,&mdash;except perhaps Sir
+Gregory,&mdash;knows that he is very ill. He never comes down
+at all now, but lives in two rooms, which he has together
+up-stairs. We go and see him every day, but he is hardly
+able to talk to any one. Sir Gregory never mentions the
+subject to me, but Mrs. Brownlow is quite confident that
+if anything were to happen to Gregory Marrable, Walter
+would be asked to come to Dunripple as the heir, and to
+give up the army altogether.</p>
+
+<p>I get on very well with Mrs. Brownlow, but of course we
+cannot be like old friends. Edith is a very nice girl, but
+rather shy. She never talks about herself, and is too
+silent to be questioned. I do not, however, doubt for a
+moment but that she will be Walter Marrable's wife. I
+think it likely that they are not engaged as yet, as in
+that case I think Mrs. Brownlow would tell me; but many
+things have been said which leave on my mind a conviction
+that it will be so. He is to be here again in August, and
+from the way in which Mrs. Brownlow speaks of his coming,
+there is no doubt that she expects it. That he paid great
+attention to Edith when he was here before, I am quite
+sure; and I take it he is only waiting
+<span class="nowrap">till&mdash;</span><br />&nbsp;</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+
+<p class="noindent">In writing
+so far, Miss Marrable had intended to signify that Captain
+Marrable had been slow to ask Edith Brownlow to be his wife while he
+was at Dunripple, because he could not bring himself so soon to show
+himself indifferent to his former love; but that now he would not
+hesitate, knowing as he would know, that his former love had bestowed
+herself elsewhere; but in this there would have been a grievous
+accusation against Mary, and she was therefore compelled to fill up
+her sentence in some other
+<span class="nowrap">form;&mdash;</span><br />&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+<blockquote>
+<p class="noindent">till things should
+have arranged themselves a little.</p>
+
+<p>And it will be all for the best. She is a very nice,
+quiet, lady-like girl, and so great a favourite with her
+uncle, that should his son die before him, his great
+object in life will be her welfare. Walter Marrable, as
+her husband, would live at Dunripple, just as though the
+place were his own. And indeed there would be no one
+between him and the property except his own father. Some
+arrangement could be made as to buying out his life
+interest,&mdash;for which indeed he has taken the money
+beforehand with a vengeance,&mdash;and then Walter would be
+settled for life. Would not this be all for the best?</p>
+
+<p>I shall go home about the 14th. They want me to stay, but
+I shall have been away quite long enough. I don't know
+whether people ought to go from home at all after a
+certain age. I get cross because I can't have the sort of
+chair I like to sit on; and then they don't put any green
+tea into the pot, and I don't like to ask to have any
+made, as I doubt whether they have any green tea in the
+house. And I find it bad to be among invalids with whom,
+indeed, I can sympathise, but for whom I cannot pretend
+that I feel any great affection. As we grow old we become
+incapable of new tenderness, and rather resent the calls
+that are made upon us for pity. The luxury of devotion to
+misery is as much the privilege of the young as is that of
+devotion to love.</p>
+
+<p>Write soon, dearest; and remember that the best news I can
+have, will be tidings as to the day fixed for your
+marriage. And remember, too, that I won't have any
+question about your being married at Bullhampton. It would
+be quite improper. He must come to Loring; and I needn't
+say how glad I shall be to see the Fenwicks. Parson John
+will expect to marry you, but Mr. Fenwick might come and
+assist.</p>
+
+<p class="ind10">Your most affectionate aunt,</p>
+
+<p class="ind15"><span class="smallcaps">Sarah
+Marrable</span>.<br />&nbsp;</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+
+<p>It was not the entreaty made by her aunt that an early day should be
+fixed for the marriage which made Mary Lowther determine that she
+would yet once more attempt to drag the wagon. She could have
+withstood such entreaty as that, and, had the letter gone no further,
+would probably have replied to it by saying that no day could be
+fixed at all. But, with the letter there came an assurance that
+Walter Marrable had forgotten her, was about to marry Edith Brownlow,
+and that therefore all ideas of love and truth and sympathy and joint
+beating of mutual hearts, with the rest of it, might be thrown to the
+winds. She would marry Harry Gilmore, and take care that he had good
+dinners, and would give her mind to flannel petticoats and coal for
+the poor of Bullhampton, and would altogether come down from the
+pedestal which she had once striven to erect for herself. From that
+high but tottering pedestal, propped up on shafts of romance and
+poetry, she would come down; but there would remain for her the
+lower, firmer standing block, of which duty was the sole support. It
+was no doubt most unreasonable that any such change should come upon
+her in consequence of her aunt's letter. She had never for a moment
+told herself that Walter Marrable could ever be anything to her,
+since that day on which she had by her own deed liberated him from
+his troth; and, indeed, had done more than that, had forced him to
+accept that liberation. Why then should his engagement with another
+woman have any effect with her either in one direction or in the
+other? She herself had submitted to a new engagement,&mdash;had done so
+before he had shown any sign of being fickle. She could not therefore
+be angry with him. And yet, because he could be fickle, because he
+could do that very thing which she had openly declared her purpose of
+doing, she persuaded herself,&mdash;for a week or two,&mdash;that any sacrifice
+made to him would be a sacrifice to folly, and a neglect of duty.</p>
+
+<p>At this time, during this week or two, there came to her direct from
+the jewellers in London, a magnificent set of rubies,&mdash;ear-rings,
+brooch, bracelets, and necklace. The rubies she had seen before, and
+knew that they had belonged to Mr. Gilmore's mother. Mrs. Fenwick had
+told him that the setting was so old that no lady could wear them
+now, and there had been a presentiment that they would be forthcoming
+in a new form. Mary had said that, of course, such ornaments as these
+would come into her hands only when she became Mrs. Gilmore. Mrs.
+Fenwick had laughed and told her that she did not understand the
+romantic generosity of her lover. And now the jewellery had come to
+her at the parsonage without a word from Gilmore, and was spread out
+in its pretty cases on the vicarage drawing-room table. Now, if ever,
+must she say that she could not do as she had promised.</p>
+
+<p>"Mary," said Mrs. Fenwick, "you must go up to him to-morrow, and tell
+him how noble he is."</p>
+
+<p>Mary waited, perhaps, for a whole minute before she answered. She
+would willingly have given the jewels away for ever and ever, so that
+they might not have been there now to trouble her. But she did answer
+at last, knowing, as she did so, that her last chance was gone.</p>
+
+<p>"He is noble," she said, slowly; "and I will go and tell him so. I'll
+go now, if it is not too late."</p>
+
+<p>"Do, do. You'll be sure to find him." And Mrs. Fenwick, in her
+enthusiasm, embraced her friend and kissed her.</p>
+
+<p>Mary put on her hat and walked off at once through the garden and
+across the fields, and into the Privets; and close to the house she
+met her lover. He did not see her till he heard her step, and then
+turned short round, almost as though fearing something.</p>
+
+<p>"Harry," she said, "those jewels have come. Oh, dear. They are not
+mine yet. Why did you have them sent to me?"</p>
+
+<p>There was something in the word yet, or in her tone as she spoke it,
+which made his heart leap as it had never leaped before.</p>
+
+<p>"If they're not yours, I don't know whom they belong to," he said.
+And his eye was bright, and his voice almost shook with emotion.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you doing anything?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing on earth."</p>
+
+<p>"Then come and see them."</p>
+
+<p>So they walked off, and he, at any rate, on that occasion was a happy
+lover. For a few minutes,&mdash;perhaps for an hour,&mdash;he did allow himself
+to believe that he was destined to enjoy that rapture of requited
+affection, in longing for which his very soul had become sick. As she
+walked back with him to the vicarage her hand rested heavily on his
+arm, and when she asked him some question about his land, she was
+able so to modulate her voice as to make him believe that she was
+learning to regard his interests as her own. He stopped her at the
+gate leading into the vicarage garden, and once more made to her an
+assurance of his regard.</p>
+
+<p>"Mary," he said, "if love will beget love, I think that you must love
+me at last."</p>
+
+<p>"I will love you," she said, pressing his arm still more closely. But
+even then she could not bring herself to tell him that she did love
+him.</p>
+
+
+<p><a name="c55" id="c55"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>CHAPTER LV.</h3>
+<h4>GLEBE LAND.<br />&nbsp;</h4>
+
+
+<p>The fifteenth of July was a Sunday, and it had been settled for some
+time past that on this day Mr. Puddleham would preach for the first
+time in his new chapel. The building had been hurried on through the
+early summer in order that this might be achieved; and although the
+fittings were not completed, and the outward signs of the masons and
+labourers had not been removed,&mdash;although the heaps of mortar were
+still there, and time had not yet sufficed to have the chips cleared
+away,&mdash;on Sunday the fifteenth of July the chapel was opened. Great
+efforts were made to have it filled on the occasion. The builder from
+Salisbury came over with all his family, not deterred by the
+consideration that whereas the Puddlehamites of Bullhampton were
+Primitive Methodists, he was a regular Wesleyan. And many in the
+parish were got to visit the chapel on this the day of its glory, who
+had less business there than even the builder from Salisbury. In most
+parishes there are some who think it well to let the parson know that
+they are independent and do not care for him, though they profess to
+be of his flock; and then, too, the novelty of the thing had its
+attraction, and the well-known fact that the site chosen for the
+building had been as gall and wormwood to the parson and his family.
+These causes together brought a crowd to the vicarage-gate on that
+Sunday morning, and it was quite clear that the new chapel would be
+full, and that Mr. Puddleham's first Sunday would be a success. And
+the chapel, of course, had a bell,&mdash;a bell which was declared by Mrs.
+Fenwick to be the hoarsest, loudest, most unmusical, and ill-founded
+miscreant of a bell that was ever suspended over a building for the
+torture of delicate ears. It certainly was a loud and brazen bell;
+but Mr. Fenwick expressed his opinion that there was nothing amiss
+with it. When his wife declared that it sounded as though it came
+from the midst of the shrubs at their own front gate, he reminded her
+that their own church bells sounded as though they came from the
+lower garden. That one sound should be held by them to be musical and
+the other abominable, he declared to be a prejudice. Then there was a
+great argument about the bells, in which Mrs. Fenwick, and Mary
+Lowther, and Harry Gilmore were all against the Vicar. And,
+throughout the discussion, it was known to them all that there were
+no ears in the parish to which the bells were so really odious as
+they were to the ears of the Vicar himself. In his heart of hearts he
+hated the chapel, and, in spite of all his endeavours to the
+contrary, his feelings towards Mr. Puddleham were not those which the
+Christian religion requires one neighbour to bear to another. But he
+made the struggle, and for some weeks past had not said a word
+against Mr. Puddleham. In regard to the Marquis the thing was
+different. The Marquis should have known better, and against the
+Marquis he did say a great many words.</p>
+
+<p>They began to ring the bell on that Sunday morning before ten
+o'clock. Mrs. Fenwick was still sitting at the breakfast-table, with
+the windows open, when the sound was first heard,&mdash;first heard, that
+is, on that morning. She looked at Mary, groaned, and put her hands
+to her ears. The Vicar laughed, and walked about the room.</p>
+
+<p>"At what time do they begin?" said Mary.</p>
+
+<p>"Not till eleven," said Mrs. Fenwick. "There, it wants a quarter to
+ten now, and they mean to go on with that music for an hour and a
+quarter."</p>
+
+<p>"We shall be keeping them company by-and-by," said the Vicar.</p>
+
+<p>"The poor old church bells won't be heard through it," said Mrs.
+Fenwick.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Fenwick was in the habit of going to the village school for half
+an hour before the service on Sunday mornings, and on this morning
+she started from the house according to her custom at a little after
+ten. Mary Lowther went with her, and as the school was in the village
+and could be reached much more shortly by the front gate than by the
+path round by the church, the two ladies walked out boldly before the
+new chapel. The reader may perhaps remember that Mrs. Fenwick had
+promised her husband to withdraw that outward animosity to the chapel
+which she had evinced by not using the vicarage entrance. As they
+went there was a crowd collected, and they found that after the
+manner of the Primitive Methodists in their more enthusiastic days, a
+procession of worshippers had been formed in the village, which at
+this very moment was making its way to the chapel. Mrs. Fenwick, as
+she stood aside to make way for them, declared that the bell sounded
+as though it were within her bonnet. When they reached the school
+they found that many a child was absent who should have been there,
+and Mrs. Fenwick knew that the truant urchins were amusing themselves
+at the new building. And with those who were not truant the clang of
+the new bell distracted terribly that attention which was due to the
+collect. Mrs. Fenwick herself confessed afterwards that she hardly
+knew what she was teaching.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Fenwick, according to his habit, went into his own study when the
+ladies went to the school, and there, according to custom also on
+Sunday mornings, his letters were brought to him, some few minutes
+before he started on his walk through the garden to the church. On
+this morning there were a couple of letters for himself, and he
+opened them both. One was from a tradesman in Salisbury, and the
+other was from his wife's brother-in-law, Mr. Quickenham. Before he
+started he read Mr. Quickenham's letter, and then did his best to
+forget it and put it out of his mind till the morning service should
+be over. The letter was as
+<span class="nowrap">follows:&mdash;</span><br />&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+<blockquote>
+<p class="jright">Pump Court, June 30, 1868.</p>
+
+<p class="noindent"><span class="smallcaps">Dear Fenwick</span>,</p>
+
+<p>I have found, as I thought I should, that Lord Trowbridge
+has no property in, or right whatever to, the bit of
+ground on which your enemies have been building their new
+Ebenezer. The spot is a part of the glebe, and as such
+seems to have been first abandoned by a certain parson
+named Brandon, who was your predecessor's predecessor.
+There can, however, be no doubt that the ground is glebe,
+and that you are bound to protect it as such, on behalf of
+your successors, and of the patrons of the living.</p>
+
+<p>I found some difficulty in getting at the terrier of the
+parish,&mdash;which you, who consider yourself to be a model
+parson, I dare say, have never seen. I have, however,
+found it in duplicate. The clerk of the Board of
+Guardians, who should, I believe, have a copy of it, knew
+nothing about it; and had never heard of such a document.
+Your bishop's registrar was not much more learned,&mdash;but I
+did find it in the bishop's chancery; and there is a copy
+of it also at Saint John's, which seems to imply that
+great attention has been paid by the college as patron to
+the interests of the parish priest. This is more than has
+been done by the incumbent, who seems to be an ignorant
+fellow in such matters. I wonder how many parsons there
+are in the Church who would let a Marquis and a Methodist
+minister between them build a chapel on the parish glebe?</p>
+
+<p class="ind10">Yours ever,</p>
+
+<p class="ind12"><span class="smallcaps">Richard Quickenham</span>.</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">If I were
+to charge you through an attorney for my trouble
+you'd have to mortgage your life interest in the bit of
+land to pay me. I enclose a draft from the terrier as far
+as the plot of ground and the vicarage-gate are concerned.<br />&nbsp;</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+
+<p>Here was information! This detestable combination of dissenting and
+tyrannically territorial influences had been used to build a
+Methodist Chapel upon land of which he, during his incumbency in the
+parish, was the freehold possessor! What an ass he must have been not
+to know his own possessions! How ridiculous would he appear when he
+should come forward to claim as a part of the glebe a morsel of land
+to which he had paid no special attention whatever since he had been
+in the parish! And then, what would it be his duty to do? Mr.
+Quickenham had clearly stated that on behalf of the college, which
+was the patron of the living, and on behalf of his successors, it was
+his duty to claim the land. And was it possible that he should not do
+so after such usage as he had received from Lord Trowbridge? So
+meditating,&mdash;but grieving that he should be driven at such a moment
+to have his mind forcibly filled with such matters,&mdash;still hearing
+the chapel bell, which in his ears drowned the sound from his own
+modest belfry, and altogether doubtful as to what step he would take,
+he entered his own church. It was manifest to him that of the poorer
+part of his usual audience, and of the smaller farmers, one half were
+in attendance upon Mr. Puddleham's triumph.</p>
+
+<p>During the whole of that afternoon he said not a word of the
+barrister's letter to any one. He struggled to banish the subject
+from his thoughts. Failing to do that, he did banish it from his
+tongue. The letter was in the pocket of his coat; but he showed it to
+no one. Gilmore dined at the vicarage; but even to him he was silent.
+Of course the conversation at dinner turned upon the chapel. It was
+impossible that on such a day they should speak of anything else.
+Even as they sat at their early dinner Mr. Puddleham's bell was
+ringing, and no doubt there was a vigour in the pulling of it which
+would not be maintained when the pulling of it should have become a
+thing of every week. There had been a compact made, in accordance
+with which the Vicar's wife was to be debarred from saying anything
+against the chapel, and, no doubt, when the compact was made, the
+understanding was that she should give over hating the chapel. This
+had, of course, been found to be impossible, but in a certain way she
+had complied with the compact. The noise of the bell however, was
+considered to be beyond the compact, and on this occasion she was
+almost violent in the expression of her wrath. Her husband listened
+to her, and sat without rebuking her, silent, with the lawyer's
+letter in his pocket. This bell had been put up on his own land, and
+he could pull it down to-morrow. It had been put up by the express
+agency of Lord Trowbridge, and with the direct view of annoying him;
+and Lord Trowbridge had behaved to him in a manner which set all
+Christian charity at defiance. He told himself plainly that he had no
+desire to forgive Lord Trowbridge,&mdash;that life in this world, as it is
+constituted, would not be compatible with such forgiveness,&mdash;that he
+would not, indeed, desire to injure Lord Trowbridge otherwise than by
+exacting such penalty as would force him and such as he to restrain
+their tyranny; but that to forgive him, till he should have been so
+forced, would be weak and injurious to the community. As to that, he
+had quite made up his mind, in spite of all doctrine to the contrary.
+Men in this world would have to go naked if they gave their coats to
+the robbers who took their cloaks; and going naked is manifestly
+inexpedient. His office of parish priest would be lowered in the
+world if he forgave, out of hand, such offences as these which had
+been committed against him by Lord Trowbridge. This he understood
+clearly. And now he might put down, not only the bell, but with the
+bell the ill-conditioned peer who had caused it to be put up&mdash;on
+glebe land. All this went through his mind again and again, as he
+determined that on that day, being Sunday, he would think no more
+about it.</p>
+
+<p>When the Monday came it was necessary that he should show the letter
+to his wife,&mdash;to his wife, and to the Squire, and to Mary Lowther. He
+had no idea of keeping the matter secret from his near friends and
+advisers; but he had an idea that it would be well that he should
+make up his mind as to what he would do before he asked their advice.
+He started, therefore, for a turn through the parish before breakfast
+on Monday morning,&mdash;and resolved as to his course of action. On no
+consideration whatever would he have the chapel pulled down. It was
+necessary for his purpose that he should have his triumph over the
+Marquis,&mdash;and he would have it. But the chapel had been built for a
+good purpose which it would adequately serve, and let what might be
+said to him by his wife or others, he would not have a brick of it
+disturbed. No doubt he had no more power to give the land for its
+present or any other purpose than had the Marquis. It might very
+probably be his duty to take care that the land was not appropriated
+to wrong purposes. It might be that he had already neglected his
+duty, in not knowing, or in not having taken care to learn the
+precise limits of the glebe which had been given over to him for his
+use during his incumbency. Nevertheless, there was the chapel, and
+there it should stand, as far as he was concerned. If the
+churchwardens, or the archdeacon, or the college, or the bishop had
+power to interfere, as to which he was altogether ignorant, and chose
+to exercise that power, he could not help it. He was nearly sure that
+his own churchwardens would be guided altogether by himself,&mdash;and as
+far as he was concerned the chapel should remain unmolested. Having
+thus resolved he came back to breakfast and read Mr. Quickenham's
+letter aloud to his wife and Mary Lowther.</p>
+
+<p>"Glebe!" said the Vicar's wife.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mean that it is part of your own land?" asked Mary.</p>
+
+<p>"Exactly that," said the Vicar.</p>
+
+<p>"And that old thief of a Marquis has given away what belongs to us?"
+said Mrs. Fenwick.</p>
+
+<p>"He has given away what did not belong to himself," said the Vicar.
+"But I can't admit that he's a thief."</p>
+
+<p>"Surely he ought to have known," said Mary.</p>
+
+<p>"As for that, so ought I to have known, I suppose. The whole thing is
+one of the most ridiculous mistakes that ever was made. It has
+absolutely come to pass that here, in the middle of Wiltshire, with
+all our maps, and surveys, and parish records, no one concerned has
+known to whom belonged a quarter of an acre of land in the centre of
+the village. It is just a thing to write an article about in a
+newspaper; but I can't say that one party is more to blame than the
+other; that is, in regard to the ignorance displayed."</p>
+
+<p>"And what will you do, Frank?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing."</p>
+
+<p>"You will do nothing, Frank?"</p>
+
+<p>"I will do nothing; but I will take care to let the Marquis know the
+nature of his generosity. I fancy that I am bound to take on myself
+that labour, and I must say that it won't trouble me much to have to
+write the letter."</p>
+
+<p>"You won't pull it down, Frank?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, my dear."</p>
+
+<p>"I would, before a week was over."</p>
+
+<p>"So would I," said Mary. "I don't think it ought to be there."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course it ought not to be there," said Mrs. Fenwick.</p>
+
+<p>"They might as well have it here in the garden," said Mary.</p>
+
+<p>"Just the same," said Mrs. Fenwick.</p>
+
+<p>"It is not in the garden; and, as it has been built, it shall
+remain,&mdash;as far as I am concerned. I shall rather like it, now that I
+know I am the landlord. I think I shall claim a sitting." This was
+the Vicar's decision on the Monday morning, and from that decision
+the two ladies were quite unable to move him.</p>
+
+<p>This occurred a day or two after the affair of the rubies, and at a
+time when Mary was being very hard pressed to name a day for her
+wedding. Of course such pressure had been the result of Mr. Gilmore's
+success on that occasion. She had then resolutely gone to work to
+overcome her own, and his, melancholy gloom, and, having in a great
+degree succeeded, it was only natural that he should bring up that
+question of his marriage day. She, when she had accepted him, had
+done so with a stipulation that she should not be hurried; but we all
+know what such stipulations are worth. Who is to define what is and
+what is not hurry? They had now been engaged a month, and the Squire
+was clearly of opinion that there had been no hurry. "September was
+the nicest month in the year," he said, "for getting married and
+going abroad. September in Switzerland, October among the Italian
+lakes, November in Florence and Rome. So that they might get home
+before Christmas after a short visit to Naples." That was the
+Squire's programme, and his whole manner was altered as he made it.
+He thought he knew the nature of the girl well enough to be sure
+that, though she would profess no passionate love for him before
+starting on such a journey, she would change her tone before she
+returned. It should be no fault of his if she did not change it. Mary
+had at first declined to fix any day, had talked of next year, had
+declared that she would not be hurried. She had carried on the fight
+even after the affair of the rubies, but she had fought in opposition
+to strong and well-disciplined forces on the other side, and she had
+begun to admit to herself that it might be expedient that she should
+yield. The thing was to be done, and why not have it done at once?
+She had not as yet yielded, but she had begun to think that she would
+yield.</p>
+
+<p>At such a period it was of course natural that the Squire should be
+daily at the vicarage, and on this Monday morning he came down while
+the minds of all his friends there were intent on the strange
+information received from Mr. Quickenham. The Vicar was not by when
+Mr. Gilmore was told, and he was thus easily induced to join in the
+opinion that the chapel should be made to disappear. He had a
+landlord's idea about land, and was thoroughly well-disposed to stop
+any encroachment on the part of the Marquis.</p>
+
+<p>"Lord Trowbridge must pull it down himself, and put it up again
+elsewhere," said the Squire.</p>
+
+<p>"But Frank says that he won't let the Marquis pull it down," said
+Mrs. Fenwick, almost moved to tears by the tragedy of the occasion.</p>
+
+
+<div class="center"><a name="il19" id="il19"></a>
+<table style="margin: 0 auto" cellpadding="4px">
+  <tr>
+    <td align="center">
+      <a href="images/il19.jpg">
+      <img src="images/il19-t.jpg" width="540"
+      alt="Mr. Quickenham's letter discussed." /></a>
+    </td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="center">
+      <span class="caption">Mr. Quickenham's letter discussed.<br />
+      Click to <a href="images/il19.jpg">ENLARGE</a></span>
+    </td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Then the Vicar joined them, and the matter was earnestly debated;&mdash;so
+earnestly that, on that occasion, not a word was said as to the day
+of the wedding.</p>
+
+
+<p><a name="c56" id="c56"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>CHAPTER LVI.</h3>
+<h4>THE VICAR'S VENGEANCE.<br />&nbsp;</h4>
+
+
+<p>No eloquence on the part of the two ladies at the vicarage, or of the
+Squire, could turn Mr. Fenwick from his purpose, but he did consent
+at last to go over with the Squire to Salisbury, and to consult Mr.
+Chamberlaine. A proposition was made to him as to consulting the
+bishop, for whom personally he always expressed a liking, and whose
+office he declared that he held in the highest veneration; but he
+explained that this was not a matter in which the bishop should be
+invited to exercise authority.</p>
+
+<p>"The bishop has nothing to do with my freehold," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"But if you want an opinion," said the Squire, "why not go to a man
+whose opinion will be worth having?"</p>
+
+<p>Then the Vicar explained again. His respect for the bishop was so
+great, that any opinion coming from his lordship would, to him, be
+more than advice; it would be law. So great was his mingled
+admiration of the man and respect for the office!</p>
+
+<p>"What he means," said Mrs. Fenwick, "is, that he won't go to the
+bishop, because he has made up his mind already. You are, both of
+you, throwing away your time and money in going to Salisbury at all."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not sure but what she's right there," said the Vicar.
+Nevertheless they went to Salisbury.</p>
+
+<p>The Rev. Henry Fitzackerly Chamberlaine was very eloquent, clear, and
+argumentative on the subject, and perhaps a little overbearing. He
+insisted that the chapel should be removed without a moment's delay;
+and that notice as to its removal should be served upon all the
+persons concerned,&mdash;upon Mr. Puddleham, upon the builder, upon the
+chapel trustees, the elders of the congregation,&mdash;"if there be any
+elders," said Mr. Chamberlaine, with a delightful touch of
+irony,&mdash;and upon the Marquis and the Marquis's agent. He was
+eloquent, authoritative and loud. When the Vicar remarked that after
+all the chapel had been built for a good purpose, Mr. Chamberlaine
+became quite excited in his eloquence.</p>
+
+<p>"The glebe of Bullhampton, Mr. Fenwick," said he, "has not been
+confided to your care for the propagation of dissent."</p>
+
+<p>"Nor has the vicarage house been confided to me for the reading of
+novels; but that is what goes on there."</p>
+
+<p>"The house is for your private comfort," said the prebendary.</p>
+
+<p>"And so is the glebe," said the Vicar; "and I shall not be
+comfortable if I make these people put down a house of prayer."</p>
+
+<p>And there was another argument against the Vicar's views, very
+strong. This glebe was only given to him in trust. He was bound so to
+use it, that it should fall into the hands of his successor
+unimpaired and with full capability for fruition. "You have no right
+to leave to another the demolition of a building, the erection of
+which you should have prevented." This argument was more difficult of
+answer than the other, but Mr. Fenwick did answer it.</p>
+
+<p>"I feel all that," said he; "and I think it likely that my estate may
+be liable for the expense of removal. The chapel may be brought in as
+a dilapidation. But that which I can answer with my purse, need not
+lie upon my conscience. I could let the bit of land, I have no
+doubt,&mdash;though not on a building lease."</p>
+
+<p>"But they have built on it," said Mr. Chamberlaine.</p>
+
+<p>"No doubt, they have; and I can see that my estate may be called upon
+to restore the bit of ground to its former position. What I can't see
+is, that I am bound to enforce the removal now."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Chamberlaine took up the matter with great spirit, and gave a
+couple of hours to the discussion, but the Vicar was not shaken.</p>
+
+<p>The Vicar was not shaken, but his manner as he went out from the
+prebendary's presence, left some doubt as to his firmness in the mind
+both of that dignitary and of the Squire. He thanked Mr. Chamberlaine
+very courteously, and acknowledged that there was a great deal in the
+arguments which had been used.</p>
+
+<p>"I am sure you will find it best to clear your ground of the nuisance
+at once," said Mr. Chamberlaine, with that high tone which he knew so
+well how to assume; and these were the last words spoken.</p>
+
+<p>"Well?" said the Squire, as soon as they were out in the Close,
+asking his friend as to his decision.</p>
+
+<p>"It's a very knotty point," said Fenwick.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't much like my uncle's tone," said the Squire; "I never do.
+But I think he is right."</p>
+
+<p>"I won't say but what he may be."</p>
+
+<p>"It'll have to come down, Frank," said the Squire.</p>
+
+<p>"No doubt, some day. But I am quite sure as to this, Harry; that when
+you have a doubt as to your duty, you can't be wrong in delaying
+that, the doing of which would gratify your own ill will. Don't you
+go and tell this to the women; but to my eyes that conventicle at
+Bullhampton is the most hideous, abominable, and disagreeable object
+that ever was placed upon the earth!"</p>
+
+<p>"So it is to mine," said the Squire.</p>
+
+<p>"And therefore I won't touch a brick of it. It shall be my hair
+shirt, my fast day, my sacrifice of a broken heart, my little pet
+good work. It will enable me to take all the good things of the world
+that come in my way, and flatter myself that I am not self-indulgent.
+There is not a dissenter in Bullhampton will get so much out of the
+chapel as I will."</p>
+
+<p>"I fancy they can make you have it pulled down."</p>
+
+<p>"Then their making me shall be my hair shirt, and I shall be fitted
+just as well." Upon that they went back to Bullhampton, and the
+Squire told the two ladies what had passed; as to the hair shirt and
+all.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Fenwick in making for himself his hair shirt did not think it
+necessary to abstain from writing to the Marquis of Trowbridge. This
+he did on that same day after his return from Salisbury. In the
+middle of the winter he had written a letter to the Marquis,
+remonstrating against the building of the chapel opposite to his own
+gate. He now took out his copy of that letter, and the answer to it,
+in which the agent of the Marquis had told him that the Marquis
+considered that the spot in question was the most eligible site which
+his lordship could bestow for the purpose in question. Our Vicar was
+very anxious not to disturb the chapel now that it was built; but he
+was quite as anxious to disturb the Marquis. In the formation of that
+hair shirt which he was minded to wear, he did not intend to weave in
+any mercy towards the Marquis. It behoved him to punish the
+Marquis,&mdash;for the good of society in general. As a trespasser he
+forgave the Marquis, in a Christian point of view; but as a pestilent
+wasp on the earth, stinging folks right and left with an arrogance,
+the ignorance of which was the only excuse to be made for his
+cruelty, he thought it to be his duty to set his heel upon the
+Marquis; which he did by writing the following letter.<br />&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+<blockquote>
+<p class="jright">Bullhampton Vicarage, July 18, 186&mdash;.</p>
+
+<p class="noindent"><span class="smallcaps">My Lord Marquis</span>,</p>
+
+<p>On the 3rd of January last I ventured to write to your
+lordship with the object of saving myself and my family
+from a great annoyance, and of saving you also from the
+disgrace of subjecting me to it. I then submitted to you
+the expediency of giving in the parish some other site for
+the erection of a dissenting chapel than the small patch
+of ground immediately opposite to the vicarage gate,
+which, as I explained to you, I had always regarded as
+belonging to the vicarage. I did not for a moment question
+your lordship's right to give the land in question, but
+appealed simply to your good-feeling. I confess that I
+took it for granted that even your lordship, in so very
+high-handed a proceeding, would take care to have right on
+your side. In answer to this I received a letter from your
+man of business, of which, as coming from him, I do not
+complain, but which, as a reply to my letter to your
+lordship, was an insult. The chapel has been built, and on
+last Sunday was opened for worship.</p>
+
+<p>I have now learned that the land which you have given away
+did not belong to your lordship, and never formed a
+portion of the Stowte estate in this parish. It was, and
+is, glebe land; and formed, at the time of your bestowal,
+a portion of my freehold as Vicar. I acknowledge that I
+was remiss in presuming that you as a landlord knew the
+limits of your own rights, and that you would not trespass
+beyond them. I should have made my inquiry more urgently.
+I have made it now, and your lordship may satisfy yourself
+by referring to the maps of the parish lands, which are to
+be found in the bishop's chancery, and also at St. John's,
+Oxford, if you cannot do so by any survey of the estate in
+your own possession. I enclose a sketch showing the exact
+limits of the glebe in respect to the vicarage entrance
+and the patch of ground in question. The fact is, that the
+chapel in question has been built on the glebe land by
+authority&mdash;illegally and unjustly given by your lordship.</p>
+
+<p>The chapel is there, and though it is a pity that it
+should have been built, it would be a greater pity that it
+should be pulled down. It is my purpose to offer to the
+persons concerned a lease of the ground for the term of my
+incumbency at a nominal rent. I presume that a lease may
+be so framed as to protect the rights of my successor.</p>
+
+<p>I will not conclude this letter without expressing my
+opinion that gross as has been your lordship's ignorance
+in giving away land which did not belong to you, your
+fault in that respect has been very trifling in comparison
+with the malice you have shown to a clergyman of your own
+church, settled in a parish partly belonging to yourself,
+in having caused the erection of this chapel on the
+special spot selected with no other object than that of
+destroying my personal comfort and that of my wife.</p>
+
+<p class="noindent"><span class="ind6">I have the honour to be</span><br />
+<span class="ind8">Your lordship's most obedient servant,</span></p>
+
+<p class="ind15"><span class="smallcaps">Francis
+Fenwick</span>.<br />&nbsp;</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+
+<p>When he had finished his epistle he read it over more than once, and
+was satisfied that it would be vexatious to the Marquis. It was his
+direct object to vex the Marquis, and he had set about it with all
+his vigour. "I would skin him if I knew how," he had said to Gilmore.
+"He has done that to me which no man should forgive. He has spoken
+ill of me, and calumniated me, not because he has thought ill of me,
+but because he has had a spite against me. They may keep their chapel
+as far as I am concerned. But as for his lordship, I should think ill
+of myself if I spared him." He had his lordship on the hip, and he
+did not spare him. He showed the letter to his wife.</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't malice a very strong word?" she said.</p>
+
+<p>"I hope so," answered the Vicar.</p>
+
+<p>"What I mean is, might you not soften it without hurting your cause?"</p>
+
+<p>"I think not. I conscientiously believe the accusation to be true. I
+endeavour so to live among my neighbours that I may not disgrace
+them, or you, or myself. This man has dared to accuse me openly of
+the grossest immorality and hypocrisy, when I am only doing my duty
+as I best know how to do it; and I do now believe in my heart that in
+making these charges he did not himself credit them. At any rate, no
+man can be justified in making such charges without evidence."</p>
+
+<p>"But all that had nothing to do with the bit of ground, Frank."</p>
+
+<p>"It is part and parcel of the same thing. He has chosen to treat me
+as an enemy, and has used all the influence of his wealth and rank to
+injure me. Now he must look to himself. I will not say a word of him,
+or to him, that is untrue; but as he has said evil of me behind my
+back which he did not believe, so will I say the evil of him, which I
+do believe, to his face." The letter was sent, and before the day was
+over the Vicar had recovered his good humour.</p>
+
+<p>And before the day was over the news was all through the parish.
+There was a certain ancient shoemaker in the village who had carried
+on business in Devizes, and had now retired to spend the evening of
+his life in his native place. Mr. Bolt was a quiet, inoffensive old
+man, but he was a dissenter, and was one of the elders and trustees
+who had been concerned in raising money for the chapel. To him the
+Vicar had told the whole story, declaring at the same time that, as
+far as he was concerned, Mr. Puddleham and his congregation should,
+at any rate for the present, be made welcome to their chapel. This he
+had done immediately on his return from Salisbury, and before the
+letter to the Marquis was written. Mr. Bolt, not unnaturally, saw his
+minister the same evening, and the thing was discussed in full
+conclave by the Puddlehamites. At the end of that discussion, Mr.
+Puddleham expressed his conviction that the story was a mare's nest
+from beginning to end. He didn't believe a word of it. The Marquis
+was not the man to give away anything that did not belong to him.
+Somebody had hoaxed the Vicar, or the Vicar had hoaxed Mr. Bolt; or
+else,&mdash;which Mr. Puddleham thought to be most likely,&mdash;the Vicar had
+gone mad with vexation at the glory and the triumph of the new
+chapel.</p>
+
+<p>"He was uncommon civil," said Mr. Bolt, who at this moment was
+somewhat inclined to favour the Vicar.</p>
+
+<p>"No doubt, Mr. Bolt; no doubt," said Mr. Puddleham, who had quite
+recovered from his first dismay, and had worked himself up to a state
+of eloquent enthusiasm. "I dare say he was civil. Why not? In old
+days when we hardly dared to talk of having a decent house of prayer
+of our own in which to worship our God, he was always civil. No one
+has ever heard me accuse Mr. Fenwick of incivility. But will any one
+tell me that he is a friend to our mode of worship? Gentlemen, we
+must look to ourselves, and I for one tell you that that chapel is
+ours. You won't find that his ban will keep me out of my pulpit.
+Glebe, indeed! why should the Vicar have glebe on the other side of
+the road from his house? Or, for the matter of that, why should he
+have glebe at all?" This was so decisive that no one at the meeting
+had a word to say after Mr. Puddleham had finished his speech.</p>
+
+<p>When the Marquis received his letter he was up in London. Lord
+Trowbridge was not much given to London life, but was usually
+compelled by circumstances,&mdash;the circumstances being the custom of
+society as pleaded by his two daughters,&mdash;to spend the months of May,
+June, and July at the family mansion in Grosvenor Square. Moreover,
+though the Marquis never opened his mouth in the House of Lords, it
+was, as he thought, imperative on him to give to the leader of his
+party the occasional support of his personal presence. Our Vicar,
+knowing this, had addressed his letter to Grosvenor Square, and it
+had thus reached its destination without loss of time. Lord
+Trowbridge by this time knew the handwriting of his enemy; and, as he
+broke the envelope, there came upon him an idea that it might be wise
+to refuse the letter, and to let it go back to its writer unopened.
+It was beneath his dignity to correspond with a man, or to receive
+letters from a man who would probably insult him. But before he could
+make up his mind, the envelope had been opened, and the letter had
+been read. His wrath, when he had read it, no writer of a simple
+prose narration should attempt to describe. "Disgrace," "insult,"
+"ignorance," and "malice,"&mdash;these were the words with which the
+Marquis found himself pelted by this pestilent, abominable, and most
+improper clergyman. As to the gist of the letter itself, it was some
+time before he understood it. And when he did begin to understand it,
+he did not as yet begin to believe it. His intelligence worked
+slowly, whereas his wrath worked quickly. But at last he began to ask
+himself whether the accusation made against him could possibly be
+based on truth. When the question of giving the land had been under
+consideration, it had never occurred to any one concerned that it
+could belong to the glebe. There had been some momentary suspicion
+that the spot might possibly have been so long used as common land as
+to give room for a question on that side; but no one had dreamed that
+any other claimant could arise. That the whole village of Bullhampton
+belonged to the Marquis was notorious. Of course there was the glebe.
+But who could think that the morsel of neglected land lying on the
+other side of the road belonged to the vicarage? The Marquis did not
+believe it now. This was some piece of wickedness concocted by the
+venomous brain of the iniquitous Vicar, more abominable than all his
+other wickednesses. The Marquis did not believe it; but he walked up
+and down his room all the morning thinking of it. The Marquis was
+sure that it was not true, and yet he could not for a moment get the
+idea out of his mind. Of course he must tell St. George. The language
+of the letter which had been sent to him was so wicked, that St.
+George must at least agree with him now in his anger against this
+man. And could nothing be done to punish the man? Prosecutions in
+regard to anonymous letters, threatening letters, begging letters,
+passed through his mind. He knew that punishment had been inflicted
+on the writers of insolent letters to royalty. And letters had been
+proved to be criminal as being libellous,&mdash;only then they must be
+published; and letters were sometimes held to form a conspiracy;&mdash;but
+he could not quite see his way to that. He knew that he was not
+royal; and he knew that the Vicar neither threatened him or begged
+aught from him. What if St. George should tell him again that this
+Vicar had right on his side! He cast the matter about in his mind all
+the day; and then, late in the afternoon, he got into his carriage,
+and had himself driven to the chambers of Messrs. Boothby, the family
+lawyers.</p>
+
+
+<p><a name="c57" id="c57"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>CHAPTER LVII.</h3>
+<h4>OIL IS TO BE THROWN UPON THE WATERS.<br />&nbsp;</h4>
+
+
+<p><img class="left" src="images/ch57a.jpg" width="310" alt="Illustration" />
+Messrs. Boothby in Lincoln's Inn had for very many years been the
+lawyers of the Stowte family, and probably knew as much about the
+property as any of the Stowtes themselves. They had not been
+consulted about the giving away of the bit of land for the chapel
+purposes, nor had they been instructed to draw up any deed of gift.
+The whole thing had been done irregularly. The land had been only
+promised, and not in truth as yet given, and the Puddlehamites, in
+their hurry, had gone to work and had built upon a promise. The
+Marquis, when, after the receipt of Mr. Fenwick's letter, his first
+rage was over, went at once to the chambers of Messrs. Boothby, and
+was forced to explain all the circumstances of the case to the senior
+partner before he could show the clergyman's wicked epistle. Old Mr.
+Boothby was a man of the same age as the Marquis, and, in his way,
+quite as great. Only the lawyer was a clever old man, whereas the
+Marquis was a stupid old man. Mr. Boothby sat, bowing his head, as
+the Marquis told his story. The story was rather confused, and for
+awhile Mr. Boothby could only understand that a dissenting chapel had
+been built upon his client's land.</p>
+
+<p>"We shall have to set it right by some scrap of a conveyance," said
+the lawyer.</p>
+
+<p>"But the Vicar of the parish claims it," said the Marquis.</p>
+
+<p>"Claims the chapel, my lord!"</p>
+
+<p>"He is a most pestilent, abominable man, Mr. Boothby. I have brought
+his letter here." Mr. Boothby held out his hand to receive the
+letter. From almost any client he would prefer a document to an oral
+explanation, but he would do so especially from his lordship. "But
+you must understand," continued the Marquis, "that he is quite unlike
+any ordinary clergyman. I have the greatest respect for the church,
+and am always happy to see clergymen at my own house. But this is a
+litigious, quarrelsome fellow. They tell me he's an infidel, and he
+<span class="nowrap">keeps&mdash;!</span> Altogether,
+Mr. Boothby, nothing can be worse."</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed!" said the lawyer, still holding out his hand for the letter.</p>
+
+<p>"He has taken the trouble to insult me continually. You heard how a
+tenant of mine was murdered? He was murdered by a young man whom this
+clergyman screens, because,&mdash;because,&mdash;he is the brother of,&mdash;of,&mdash;of
+the young woman."</p>
+
+<p>"That would be very bad, my lord."</p>
+
+<p>"It is very bad. He knows all about the murder;&mdash;I am convinced he
+does. He went bail for the young man. He used to associate with him
+on most intimate terms. As to the sister;&mdash;there's no doubt about
+that. They live on the land of a person who owns a small estate in
+the parish."</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Gilmore, my lord?"</p>
+
+<p>"Exactly so. This Mr. Fenwick has got Mr. Gilmore in his pocket. You
+can have no idea of such a state of things as this. And now he writes
+me this letter! I know his handwriting now, and any further
+communication I shall return." The Marquis ceased to speak, and the
+lawyer at once buried himself in the letter.</p>
+
+<p>"It is meant to be offensive," said the lawyer.</p>
+
+<p>"Most insolent, most offensive, most improper! And yet the bishop
+upholds him!"</p>
+
+<p>"But if he is right about the bit of land, my lord, it will be rather
+awkward." And as he spoke, the lawyer examined the sketch of the
+vicarage entrance. "He gives this as copied from the terrier of the
+parish, my lord."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't believe a word of it," said the Marquis.</p>
+
+<p>"You didn't look at the plan of the estate, my lord?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think we did; but Packer had no doubt. No one knows the
+property in Bullhampton so well as Packer, and Packer
+<span class="nowrap">said&mdash;"</span></p>
+
+<p>But while the Marquis was still speaking the lawyer rose, and begging
+his client's pardon, went to the clerk in the outer room. Nor did he
+return till the clerk had descended to an iron chamber in the
+basement, and returned from thence with a certain large tin box. Into
+this a search was made, and presently Mr. Boothby came back with a
+weighty lump of dusty vellum documents, and a manuscript map, or
+sketch of a survey of the Bullhampton estate, which he had had
+opened. While the search was being made he had retired to another
+room, and had had a little conversation with his partner about the
+weather. "I am afraid the parson is right, my lord," said Mr.
+Boothby, as he closed the door.</p>
+
+<p>"Right!"</p>
+
+<p>"Right in his facts, my lord. It is glebe, and is marked so here very
+plainly. There should have been a reference to us,&mdash;there should,
+indeed, my lord. Packer, and men like him, really know nothing. The
+truth is, in such matters nobody knows anything. You should always
+have documentary evidence."</p>
+
+<p>"And it is glebe?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not a doubt of it, my lord."</p>
+
+<p>Then the Marquis knew that his enemy had him on the hip, and he laid
+his old head down upon his folded arms and wept. In his weeping it is
+probable that no tears rolled down his cheeks, but he wept inward
+tears,&mdash;tears of hatred, remorse, and self-commiseration. His enemy
+had struck him with scourges, and, as far as he could see at present,
+he could not return a blow. And he must submit himself,&mdash;must restore
+the bit of land, and build those nasty dissenters a chapel elsewhere
+on his own property. He had not a doubt as to that for a moment.
+Could he have escaped the shame of it,&mdash;as far as the expense was
+concerned he would have been willing to build them ten chapels. And
+in doing this he would give a triumph, an unalloyed triumph, to a man
+whom he believed to be thoroughly bad. The Vicar had accused the
+Marquis of spreading reports which he, the Marquis, did not himself
+believe; but the Marquis believed them all. At this moment there was
+no evil that he could not have believed of Mr. Fenwick. While sitting
+there an idea, almost amounting to a conviction, had come upon him,
+that Mr. Fenwick had himself been privy to the murder of old
+Trumbull. What would not a parson do who would take delight in
+insulting and humiliating the nobleman who owned the parish in which
+he lived? To Lord Trowbridge the very fact that the parson of the
+parish which he regarded as his own was opposed to him, proved
+sufficiently that that parson was,&mdash;scum, dregs, riff-raff, a low
+radical, and everything that a parson ought not to be. The Vicar had
+been wrong there. The Marquis did believe it all religiously.</p>
+
+<p>"What must I do?" said the Marquis.</p>
+
+<p>"As to the chapel itself, my lord, the Vicar, bad as he is, does not
+want to move it."</p>
+
+<p>"It must come down," said the Marquis, getting up from his chair. "It
+shall come down. Do you think that I would allow it to stand when it
+has been erected on his ground,&mdash;through my error? Not for a
+day!&mdash;not for an hour! I'll tell you what, Mr. Boothby,&mdash;that man has
+known it all through;&mdash;has known it as well as you do now; but he has
+waited till the building was complete before he would tell me. I see
+it all as plain as the nose on your face, Mr. Boothby."</p>
+
+<p>The lawyer was meditating how best he might explain to his angry
+client that he had no power whatsoever to pull down the
+building,&mdash;that if the Vicar and the dissenting minister chose to
+agree about it the new building must stand, in spite of the
+Marquis,&mdash;must stand, unless the churchwardens, patron, or
+ecclesiastical authorities generally should force the Vicar to have
+it removed,&mdash;when a clerk came in and whispered a word to the
+attorney. "My lord," said Mr. Boothby, "Lord St. George is here.
+Shall he come in?"</p>
+
+<p>The Marquis did not wish to see his son exactly at this minute; but
+Lord St. George was, of course, admitted. This meeting at the
+lawyer's chambers was altogether fortuitous, and father and son were
+equally surprised. But so great was the anger and dismay and general
+perturbation of the Marquis at the time, that he could not stop to
+ask any question. St. George must, of course, know what had happened,
+and it was quite as well that he should be told at once.</p>
+
+<p>"That bit of ground they've built the chapel on at Bullhampton, turns
+out to be&mdash;glebe," said the Marquis. Lord St. George whistled. "Of
+course, Mr. Fenwick knew it all along," said the Marquis.</p>
+
+<p>"I should hardly think that," said his son.</p>
+
+<p>"You read his letter. Mr. Boothby, will you be so good as to show
+Lord St. George the letter? You never read such a production.
+Impudent scoundrel! Of course he knew it all the time."</p>
+
+<p>Lord St. George read the letter. "He is very impudent, whether he be
+a scoundrel or not."</p>
+
+<p>"Impudent is no word for it."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps he has had some provocation, my lord."</p>
+
+<p>"Not from me, St. George;&mdash;not from me. I have done nothing to him.
+Of course the chapel must be&mdash;removed."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you think the question might stand over for a while?"
+suggested Mr. Boothby. "Matters would become smoother in a month or
+two."</p>
+
+<p>"Not for an hour," said the Marquis.</p>
+
+<p>Lord St. George walked about the room with the letter in his hand,
+meditating. "The truth is," he said, at last, "we have made a
+mistake, and we must get out of it as best we can. I think my father
+is a little wrong about this clergyman's character."</p>
+
+<p>"St. George! Have you read his letter? Is that a proper letter to
+come from a clergyman of the Church of England
+to&mdash;to&mdash;to<span class="nowrap">&mdash;"</span> the
+Marquis longed to say to the Marquis of Trowbridge; but he did not
+dare so to express himself before his son,&mdash;"to the landlord of his
+parish?"</p>
+
+<p>"A red-brick chapel, just close to your lodge, isn't nice, you know."</p>
+
+<p>"He has got no lodge," said the Marquis.</p>
+
+<p>"And so we thought we'd build him one. Let me manage this. I'll see
+him, and I'll see the minister, and I'll endeavour to throw some oil
+upon the waters."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't want to throw oil upon the waters."</p>
+
+<p>"Lord St. George is in the right, my lord," said the attorney; "he
+really is. It is a case in which we must throw a little oil upon the
+waters. We've made a mistake, and when we've done that we should
+always throw oil upon the waters. I've no doubt Lord St. George will
+find a way out of it." Then the father and the son went away
+together, and before they had reached the Houses of Parliament Lord
+St. George had persuaded his father to place the matter of the
+Bullhampton chapel in his hands. "And as for the letter," said St.
+George, "do not you notice it."</p>
+
+<p>"I have not the slightest intention of noticing it," said the
+Marquis, haughtily.</p>
+
+
+<p><a name="c58" id="c58"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>CHAPTER LVIII.</h3>
+<h4>EDITH BROWNLOW'S DREAM.<br />&nbsp;</h4>
+
+
+<p>"My dear, sit down; I want to speak to you. Do you know I should like
+to see you&mdash;married." This speech was made at Dunripple to Edith
+Brownlow by her uncle, Sir Gregory, one morning in July, as she was
+attending him with his breakfast. His breakfast consisted always of a
+cup of chocolate, made after a peculiar fashion, and Edith was in the
+habit of standing by the old man's bedside while he took it. She
+would never sit down, because she knew that were she to do so she
+would be pretty nearly hidden out of sight in the old arm-chair that
+stood at the bed-head; but now she was specially invited to do so,
+and that in a manner which almost made her think that it would be
+well that she should hide herself for a space. But she did not sit
+down. There was the empty cup to be taken from Sir Gregory's hands,
+and, after the first moment of surprise, Edith was not quite sure
+that it would be good that she should hide herself. She took the cup
+and put it on the table, and then returned, without making any reply.
+"I should like very much to see you married, my dear," said Sir
+Gregory, in the mildest of voices.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you want to get rid of me, uncle?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, my dear; that is just what I don't want. Of course you'll marry
+somebody."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't see any of course, Uncle Gregory."</p>
+
+<p>"But why shouldn't you? I suppose you have thought about it."</p>
+
+<p>"Only in a general way, Uncle Gregory."</p>
+
+<p>Sir Gregory Marrable was not a wise man. His folly was of an order
+very different from that of Lord Trowbridge,&mdash;very much less likely
+to do harm to himself or others, much more innocent, and, folly
+though it was, a great deal more compatible with certain intellectual
+gifts. Lord Trowbridge, not to put too fine a point upon it, was a
+fool all round. He was much too great a fool to have an idea of his
+own folly. Now Sir Gregory distrusted himself in everything,
+conceived himself to be a poor creature, would submit himself to a
+child on any question of literature, and had no opinion of his own on
+any matter outside his own property,&mdash;and even as to that his opinion
+was no more than lukewarm. Yet he read a great deal, had much
+information stored away somewhere in his memory, and had learned at
+any rate to know how small a fly he was himself on the wheel of the
+world. But, alas, when he did meddle with anything he was apt to make
+a mess of it. There had been some conversation between him and his
+sister-in-law, Edith's mother, about Walter Marrable; some also
+between him and his son, and between him and Miss Marrable, his
+cousin. But as yet no one had spoken to Edith, and as Captain
+Marrable himself had not spoken, it would have been as well, perhaps,
+if Sir Gregory had held his tongue. After Edith's last answer the old
+man was silent for awhile, and then he returned to the subject with a
+downright <span class="nowrap">question,&mdash;</span></p>
+
+<p>"How did you like Walter when he was here?"</p>
+
+<p>"Captain Marrable?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes,&mdash;Captain Marrable."</p>
+
+<p>"I liked him well enough,&mdash;in a way, Uncle Gregory."</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing would please me so much, Edith, as that you should become
+his wife. You know that Dunripple will belong to him some day."</p>
+
+<p>"If Gregory does not marry." Edith had hardly known whether to say
+this or to leave it unsaid. She was well aware that her cousin
+Gregory would never marry,&mdash;that he was a confirmed invalid, a man
+already worn out, old before his time, and with one foot in the
+grave. But had she not said it, she would have seemed to herself to
+have put him aside as a person altogether out of the way.</p>
+
+<p>"Gregory will never marry. Of course while he lives Dunripple will be
+his; but if Walter were to marry he would make arrangements. I dare
+say you can't understand all about that, my dear; but it would be a
+very good thing. I should be so happy if I thought that you were to
+live at Dunripple always."</p>
+
+<p>Edith kissed him and escaped without giving any other answer. Ten
+days after that Walter Marrable was to be again at Dunripple,&mdash;only
+for a few days; but still in a few days the thing might be settled.
+Edith had heard something of Mary Lowther, but not much. There had
+been some idea of a match between Walter and his cousin Mary, but the
+idea had been blown away. So much Edith had heard. To herself Walter
+Marrable had been very friendly, and, in truth, she had liked him
+much. They two were not cousins, but they were so connected, and had
+for some weeks been so thrown together, as to be almost as good as
+cousins. His presence at Dunripple had been very pleasant to her, but
+she had never thought of him as a lover. And she had an idea of her
+own, that girls ought not to think of men as lovers without a good
+deal of provocation.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Gregory spoke to Mrs. Brownlow on the same subject, and as he
+told her what had taken place between him and Edith, she felt herself
+compelled to speak to her daughter.</p>
+
+<p>"If it should take place, my dear, it would be very well; but I would
+rather your uncle had not mentioned it."</p>
+
+<p>"It won't do any harm, mamma. I mean, that I shan't break my heart."</p>
+
+<p>"I believe him to be a very excellent young man,&mdash;not at all like his
+father, who has been as bad as he can be."</p>
+
+<p>"Wasn't he in love with Mary Lowther last winter?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know, my dear. I never believe stories of this kind. When I
+hear that a young man is going to be married to a young lady, then I
+believe that they are in love with each other."</p>
+
+<p>"It is to be hoped so then, mamma?"</p>
+
+<p>"But I never believe any thing before. And I think you may take it
+for granted that there is nothing in that."</p>
+
+<p>"It would be nothing to me, mamma."</p>
+
+<p>"It might be something. But I will say nothing more about it. You've
+so much good sense that I am quite sure you won't get into trouble. I
+wish Sir Gregory had not spoken to you; but as he has, it may be as
+well that you should know that the family arrangement would be very
+agreeable to your uncle and to cousin Gregory. The title and the
+property must go to Captain Marrable at last, and Sir Gregory would
+make immediate sacrifices for you, which perhaps he would not make
+for him."</p>
+
+<p>Edith understood all about it very clearly, and would have understood
+all about it with half the words. She would have little or no fortune
+of her own, and in money her uncle would have very little to give to
+her. Indeed, there was no reason why he should give her anything. She
+was not connected with any of the Marrables by blood, though chance
+had caused her to live at Dunripple almost all her life. She had
+become half a Marrable already, and it might be very well that she
+should become a Marrable altogether. Walter was a remarkably handsome
+man, would be a baronet, and would have an estate, and might,
+perhaps, have the enjoyment of the estate by marrying her earlier
+than he would were he to marry any one else. Edith Brownlow
+understood it all with sufficient clearness. But then she understood
+also that young women shouldn't give away their hearts before they
+are asked for them; and she was quite sure that Walter Marrable had
+made no sign of asking for hers. Nevertheless, within her own bosom
+she did become a little anxious about Mary Lowther, and she wished
+that she knew that story.</p>
+
+<p>On the fourth of August Walter Marrable reached Dunripple, and found
+the house given up almost entirely to the doctor. Both his uncle and
+his cousin were very ill. When he was able to obtain from the doctor
+information on which he could rely, he learned that Mr. Marrable was
+in real danger, but that Sir Gregory's ailment was no more than his
+usual infirmity heightened by anxiety on behalf of his son. "Your
+uncle may live for the next ten years," said the doctor; "but I do
+not know what to say about Mr. Marrable." All this time the care and
+time of the two ladies were divided between the invalids. Mrs.
+Brownlow tended her nephew, and Edith, as usual, waited upon Sir
+Gregory. In such circumstances it was not extraordinary that Edith
+Brownlow and Walter Marrable should be thrown much
+together,&mdash;especially as it was the desire of all concerned with them
+that they should become man and wife. Poor Edith was subject to a
+feeling that everybody knew that she was expected to fall in love
+with the man. She thought it probable, too, that the man himself had
+been instructed to fall in love with her. This no doubt created a
+great difficulty for her, a difficulty which she felt to be heavy and
+inconvenient;&mdash;but it was lessened by the present condition of the
+household. When there is illness in a house, the feminine genius and
+spirit predominates the male. If the illness be so severe as to cause
+a sense of danger, this is so strongly the case that the natural
+position of the two is changed. Edith, quite unconscious of the
+reason, was much less afraid of her proposed lover than she would
+have been had there been no going about on tiptoe, no questions asked
+with bated breath, no great need for womanly aid.</p>
+
+<p>Walter had been there four days, and was sitting with Edith one
+evening out on the lawn among the rhododendrons. When he had found
+what was the condition of the household, he had offered to go back at
+once to his regiment at Birmingham. But Sir Gregory would not hear of
+it. Sir Gregory hated the regiment, and had got an idea in his head
+that his nephew ought not to be there at all. He was too weak and
+diffident to do it himself; but if any one would have arranged it for
+him, he would have been glad to fix an income for Walter Marrable on
+condition that Walter should live at home, and look after the
+property, and be unto him as a son. But nothing had been fixed,
+nothing had been said, and on the day but one following, the captain
+was to return to Birmingham. Mrs. Brownlow was with her nephew, and
+Walter was sitting with Edith among the rhododendrons, the two having
+come out of the house together after such a dinner as is served in a
+house of invalids. They had become very intimate, but Edith Brownlow
+had almost determined that Walter Marrable did not intend to fall in
+love with her. She had quite determined that she would not fall in
+love with him till he did. What she might do in that case she had not
+told herself. She was not quite sure. He was very nice,&mdash;but she was
+not quite sure. One ought to be very fond of a young man, she said to
+herself, before one falls in love with him. Nevertheless her mind was
+by no means set against him. If one can oblige one's friends one
+ought, she said, again to herself.</p>
+
+<p>She had brought him out a cup of coffee, and he was sitting in a
+garden chair with a cigar in his mouth. They were Walter and Edith to
+each other, just as though they were cousins. Indeed, it was
+necessary that they should be cousins to each other, for the rest of
+their lives, if no more.</p>
+
+
+<div class="center"><a name="il20" id="il20"></a>
+<table style="margin: 0 auto" cellpadding="4px">
+  <tr>
+    <td align="center">
+      <a href="images/il20.jpg">
+      <img src="images/il20-t.jpg" height="500"
+      alt="She had brought him out a cup of coffee." /></a>
+    </td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="center">
+      <span class="caption">She had brought him out a
+      cup of coffee.<br />
+      Click to <a href="images/il20.jpg">ENLARGE</a></span>
+    </td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>"Let us drop the Captain and the Miss," he had said himself; "the
+mischief is in it if you and I can't suppose ourselves to be
+related." She had assented cordially, and had called him Walter
+without a moment's hesitation. "Edith," he said to her now, after he
+had sat for a minute or two with the coffee in his hand; "did you
+ever hear of a certain cousin of ours, called Mary Lowther?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, dear, yes; she lives with Aunt Sarah at Loring; only Aunt Sarah
+isn't my aunt, and Miss Lowther isn't my cousin."</p>
+
+<p>"Just so. She lives at Loring. Edith, I love you so much that I
+wonder whether I may tell you the great secret of my life?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course you may. I love secrets; and I specially love the secrets
+of those who love me." She said this with a voice perfectly clear,
+and a face without a sign of disappointment; but her little dream had
+already been dissipated. She knew the secret as well as though it had
+been told.</p>
+
+<p>"I was engaged to marry her."</p>
+
+<p>"And you will marry her?"</p>
+
+<p>"It was broken off,&mdash;when I thought that I should be forced to go to
+India. The story is very long, and very sad. It is my own father who
+has ruined me. But I will tell it you some day." Then he told it all,
+as he was sitting there with his cigar in his hand. Stories may seem
+to be very long, and yet be told very quickly.</p>
+
+<p>"But you will go back to her now?" said Edith.</p>
+
+<p>"She has not waited for me."</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"They tell me that she is to be married to a&mdash;to a&mdash;certain Mr.
+Gilmore."</p>
+
+<p>"Already!"</p>
+
+<p>"He had offered to her twenty times before I ever saw her. She never
+loved him, and does not now."</p>
+
+<p>"Who has told you this, Captain Marrable?" She had not intended to
+alter her form of speech, and when she had done so would have given
+anything to have called him then by his Christian name.</p>
+
+<p>"My Uncle John."</p>
+
+<p>"I would ask herself."</p>
+
+<p>"I mean to do so. But somehow, treated as I am here, I am bound to
+tell my uncle of it first. And I cannot do that while Gregory is so
+ill."</p>
+
+<p>"I must go up to my uncle now, Walter. And I do so hope she may be
+true to you. And I do so hope I may like her. Don't believe anything
+till she has told you herself." Saying this, Edith Brownlow returned
+to the house, and at once put her dream quietly out of her sight. She
+said nothing to her mother about it then. It was not necessary that
+she should tell her mother as yet.</p>
+
+
+<p><a name="c59" id="c59"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>CHAPTER LIX.</h3>
+<h4>NEWS FROM DUNRIPPLE.<br />&nbsp;</h4>
+
+
+<p>At the end of the first week in August news reached the vicarage at
+Bullhampton that was not indeed very important to the family of Mr.
+Fenwick, but which still seemed to have an immediate effect on their
+lives and comfort. The Vicar for some days past had been, as regarded
+himself, in a high good humour, in consequence of a communication
+which he had received from Lord St. George. Further mention of this
+communication must be made, but it may be deferred to the next
+chapter, as other matters, more momentous, require our immediate
+attention. Mr. Gilmore had pleaded very hard that a day might be
+fixed, and had almost succeeded. Mary Lowther, driven into a corner,
+had been able to give no reason why she should not fix a day, other
+than this,&mdash;that Mr. Gilmore had promised her that she should not be
+hurried. "What do you mean?" Mrs. Fenwick had said, angrily. "You
+speak of the man who is to be your husband as though your greatest
+happiness in life were to keep away from him." Mary Lowther had not
+dared to answer that such would be her greatest happiness. Then news
+had reached the vicarage of the illness of Gregory Marrable, and of
+Walter Marrable's presence at Dunripple. This had come of course from
+Aunt Sarah, at Loring; but it had come in such a manner as to seem to
+justify, for a time, Mary's silence in reference to that question of
+naming the day. The Marrables of Dunripple were not nearly related to
+her. She had no personal remembrance of either Sir Gregory or his
+son. But there was an importance attached to the tidings, which, if
+analysed, would have been found to attach itself to Captain Marrable,
+rather than to the two men who were ill; and this was tacitly allowed
+to have an influence. Aunt Sarah had expressed her belief that
+Gregory Marrable was dying; and had gone on to say,&mdash;trusting to the
+known fact that Mary had engaged herself to Mr. Gilmore, and to the
+fact, as believed to be a fact, that Walter was engaged to Edith
+Brownlow,&mdash;had gone on to say that Captain Marrable would probably
+remain at Dunripple, and would take immediate charge of the estate.
+"I think there is no doubt," said Aunt Sarah, "that Captain Marrable
+and Edith Brownlow will be married." Mary was engaged to Mr. Gilmore,
+and why should not Aunt Sarah tell her news?</p>
+
+<p>The Squire, who had become elated and happy at the period of the
+rubies, had, in three days, again fallen away into a state of angry
+gloom, rather than of melancholy. He said very little just now either
+to Fenwick or to Mrs. Fenwick about his marriage; and, indeed, he did
+not say very much to Mary herself. Men were already at work about the
+gardens at the Privets, and he would report to her what was done, and
+would tell her that the masons and painters would begin in a few
+days. Now and again he would ask for her company up to the place; and
+she had been there twice at his instance since the day on which she
+had gone after him of her own accord, and had fetched him down to
+look at the jewels. But there was little or no sympathy between them.
+Mary could not bring herself to care about the house or the gardens,
+though she told herself again and again that there was she to live
+for the remainder of her life.</p>
+
+<p>Two letters she received from her aunt at Loring within an interval
+of three days, and these letters were both filled with details as to
+the illness of Sir Gregory and his son, at Dunripple. Walter Marrable
+sent accounts to his uncle, the parson, and Mrs. Brownlow sent
+accounts to Miss Marrable herself. And then, on the day following the
+receipt of the last of these two letters, there came one from Walter
+Marrable himself, addressed to Mary Lowther. Gregory Marrable was
+dead, and the letter announcing the death of the baronet's only son
+was as <span class="nowrap">follows:&mdash;</span><br />&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+<blockquote>
+<p class="jright">Dunripple, August 12, 1868.</p>
+
+<p class="noindent"><span class="smallcaps">My dear Mary</span>,</p>
+
+<p>I hardly know whether you will have expected that the news
+which I have to tell you should reach you direct from me;
+but I think, upon the whole, that it is better that I
+should write. My cousin, Gregory Marrable, Sir Gregory's
+only son, died this morning. I do not doubt but that you
+know that he has been long ill. He has come to the end of
+all his troubles, and the old baronet is now childless. He
+also has been, and is still, unwell, though I do not know
+that he is much worse than usual. He has been an invalid
+for years and years. Of course he feels his son's death
+acutely; for he is a father who has ever been good to his
+son. But it always seems to me that old people become so
+used to death, that they do not think of it as do we who
+are younger. I have seen him twice to-day since the news
+was told to him, and though he spoke of his son with
+infinite sorrow, he was able to talk of other things.</p>
+
+<p>I write to you myself, especially, instead of getting one
+of the ladies here to do so, because I think it proper to
+tell you how things stand with myself. Everything is
+changed with me since you and I parted because it was
+necessary that I should seek my fortune in India. You
+already know that I have abandoned that idea; and I now
+find that I shall leave the army altogether. My uncle has
+wished it since I first came here, and he now proposes
+that I shall live here permanently. Of course the meaning
+is that I should assume the position of his heir. My
+father, with whom I personally will have no dealing in the
+matter, stands between us. But I do suppose that the
+family affairs will be so arranged that I may feel secure
+that I shall not be turned altogether adrift upon the
+world.</p>
+
+<p>Dear Mary,&mdash;I do not know how to tell you, that as regards
+my future everything now depends on you. They have told me
+that you have accepted an offer from Mr. Gilmore. I know
+no more than this,&mdash;that they have told me so. If you will
+tell me also that you mean to be his wife, I will say no
+more. But until you tell me so, I will not believe it. I
+do not think that you can ever love him as you certainly
+once loved me;&mdash;and when I think of it, how short a time
+ago that was! I know that I have no right to complain. Our
+separation was my doing as much as yours. But I will
+settle nothing as to my future life till I hear from
+yourself whether or no you will come back to me.</p>
+
+<p>I shall remain here till after the funeral, which will
+take place on Friday. On Monday I shall go back to
+Birmingham. This is Sunday, and I shall expect to hear
+from you before the week is over. If you bid me, I will be
+with you early next week. If you tell me that my coming
+will be useless,&mdash;why, then, I shall care very little what
+happens.</p>
+
+<p class="ind8">Yours, with all the love of my heart,</p>
+
+<p class="ind12"><span class="smallcaps">Walter
+Marrable</span>.<br />&nbsp;</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+
+<p>Luckily for Mary she was alone when she read the letter. Her first
+idea on reading it was to think of the words which she had used when
+she had most ungraciously consented to become the wife of Harry
+Gilmore. "Were he so placed that he could afford to marry a poor
+wife, I should leave you and go to him." She remembered them
+accurately. She had made up her mind at the time that she would say
+them, thinking that thus he would be driven from her, and that she
+would be at rest from his solicitation, from those of her friends,
+and from the qualms of her own conscience. He had chosen to claim her
+in spite of those words,&mdash;and now the thing had happened to the
+possibility of which she had referred. Poor as she was, Walter
+Marrable was able to make her his wife. She held in her hand his
+letter telling her that it was so. All her heart was his,&mdash;as much
+now as it had ever been; and it was impossible that she should not go
+to him. She had told Mr. Gilmore herself that she could never love
+again as she loved Walter Marrable. She had been driven to believe
+that she could never be his wife, and she had separated herself from
+him. She had separated herself from him, and persuaded herself that
+it would be expedient for her to become the wife of this other man.
+But up to this very moment she had never been able to overcome her
+horror at the prospect. From day to day she had thought that she must
+give it up, even when they were dinning into her ears the tidings
+that Walter Marrable was to marry that girl at Dunripple. But that
+had been a falsehood,&mdash;an absolute falsehood. There had been no such
+thought in his bosom. He had never been untrue to her. Ah! how much
+the nobler of the two had he been!</p>
+
+<p>And yet she had struggled hard to do right,&mdash;to think of others more
+than of herself;&mdash;so to dispose of herself that she might be of some
+use in the world. And it had come to this! It was quite impossible
+now that she should marry Harry Gilmore. There had hitherto been at
+any rate an attempt on her part to reconcile herself to that
+marriage; but now the attempt was impossible. What right could she
+have to refuse the man she loved when he told her that all his
+happiness depended on her love! She could see it now. With all her
+desire to do right, she had done foul wrong in accepting Mr. Gilmore.
+She had done foul wrong, though she had complied with the advice of
+all her friends. It could not but have been wrong, as it had brought
+her to this,&mdash;her and him. But for the future, she might yet be
+right,&mdash;if she only knew how. That it would be wrong to marry Harry
+Gilmore,&mdash;to think of marrying him when her heart was so stirred by
+the letter which she held in her hand,&mdash;of that she was quite sure.
+She had done the man an injury for which she could never atone. Of
+that she was well aware. But the injury was done and could not now be
+undone. And had she not told him when he came to her, that she would
+even yet return to Walter Marrable if Walter Marrable were able to
+take her?</p>
+
+<p>She went down stairs, slowly, just before the hour for the children's
+dinner, and found her friend, with one or two of the bairns, in the
+garden. "Janet," she said, "I have had a letter from Dunripple."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Fenwick looked into her face, and saw that it was sad and
+sorrowful. "What news, Mary?"</p>
+
+<p>"My cousin, Gregory Marrable, is&mdash;no more; he died on Sunday
+morning." This was on the Tuesday.</p>
+
+<p>"You expected it, I suppose, from your aunt's letter?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes;&mdash;it has been sudden at last, it seems."</p>
+
+<p>"And Sir Gregory?"</p>
+
+<p>"He is pretty well. He is getting better."</p>
+
+<p>"I pity him the loss of his son;&mdash;poor old man!" Mrs. Fenwick was far
+too clever not to see that the serious, solemn aspect of Mary's face
+was not due altogether to the death of a distant cousin, whom she
+herself did not even remember;&mdash;but she was too wise, also, to refer
+to what she presumed to be Mary's special grief at the moment. Mary
+was doubtless thinking of the altered circumstances of her cousin
+Walter; but it was as well now that she should speak as little as
+possible about that cousin. Mrs. Fenwick could not turn altogether to
+another subject, but she would, if possible, divert her friend from
+her present thoughts. "Shall you go into mourning?" she asked; "he
+was only your second cousin; but people have ideas so different about
+those things."</p>
+
+<p>"I do not know," said Mary, listlessly.</p>
+
+<p>"If I were you, I would consult Mr. Gilmore. He has a right to be
+consulted. If you do, it should be very slight."</p>
+
+<p>"I shall go into mourning," said Mary, suddenly,&mdash;remembering at the
+moment what was Walter's position in the household at Dunripple. Then
+the tears came up into her eyes, she knew not why; and she walked off
+by herself amidst the garden shrubs. Mrs. Fenwick watched her as she
+went, but could not quite understand it. Those tears had not been for
+a second cousin who had never been known. And then, during the last
+few weeks, Mary, in regard to herself, had been prone to do anything
+that Mr. Gilmore would advise, as though she could make up by
+obedience for the want of that affection which she owed to him. Now,
+when she was told that she ought to consult Mr. Gilmore, she flatly
+refused to do so.</p>
+
+<p>Mary came up the garden a few minutes afterwards, and as she passed
+towards the house, she begged to be excused from going into lunch
+that day. Lord St. George was coming up to lunch at the vicarage, as
+will be explained in the next chapter.</p>
+
+
+<p><a name="c60" id="c60"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>CHAPTER LX.</h3>
+<h4>LORD ST. GEORGE IS VERY CUNNING.<br />&nbsp;</h4>
+
+
+<p>Lord St. George began to throw his oil upon the waters in reference
+to that unfortunate chapel at Bullhampton a day or two after his
+interview with his father in the lawyer's chambers. His father had
+found himself compelled to yield; had been driven, as it were, by the
+Fates, to accord to his son permission to do as his son should think
+best. There came to be so serious a trouble in consequence of that
+terrible mistake of Packer's, that the poor old Marquis was unable to
+defend himself from the necessity of yielding. On that day, before he
+left his son at Westminster, when their roads lay into the different
+council-chambers of the state, he had prayed hard that the oil might
+not be very oily. But his son would not bate him an inch of his
+surrender.</p>
+
+<p>"He is so utterly worthless," the Marquis had said, pleading hard as
+he spoke of his enemy.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not quite sure, my lord, that you understand the man," St.
+George had said. "You hate him, and no doubt he hates you."</p>
+
+<p>"Horribly!" ejaculated the Marquis.</p>
+
+<p>"You intend to be as good as you know how to be to all those people
+at Bullhampton?"</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed I do, St. George," said the Marquis, almost with tears in his
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"And I shouldn't wonder if he did, too."</p>
+
+<p>"But look at his life," said the Marquis.</p>
+
+<p>"It isn't always easy to look at a man's life. We are always looking
+at men's lives, and always making mistakes. The bishop thinks he is a
+good sort of fellow, and the bishop isn't the man to like a
+debauched, unbelieving, reckless parson, who, according to your
+ideas, must be leading a life of open shame and profligacy. I'm
+inclined to think there must be a mistake."</p>
+
+<p>The unfortunate Marquis groaned deeply as he walked away to the
+august chamber of the Lords.</p>
+
+<p>These and such like are the troubles that sit heavy on a man's heart.
+If search for bread, and meat, and raiment, be set aside, then,
+beyond that, our happiness or misery here depends chiefly on success
+or failure in small things. Though a man when he turns into bed may
+be sure that he has unlimited thousands at his command, though all
+society be open to him, though he know himself to be esteemed
+handsome, clever, and fashionable, even though his digestion be good,
+and he have no doctor to deny him tobacco, champagne, or made dishes,
+still, if he be conscious of failure there where he has striven to
+succeed, even though it be in the humbling of an already humble
+adversary, he will stretch, and roll, and pine,&mdash;a wretched being.
+How happy is he who can get his fretting done for him by deputy!</p>
+
+<p>Lord St. George wrote to the parson a few days after his interview
+with his father. He and Lord Trowbridge occupied the same house in
+London, and always met at breakfast; but nothing further was said
+between them during the remaining days in town upon the subject. Lord
+St. George wrote to the parson, and his father had left London for
+Turnover before Mr. Fenwick's answer was received.<br />&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+<blockquote>
+<p class="noindent"><span class="smallcaps">My
+dear Sir</span>,&mdash;(Lord St. George had said,)&mdash;My father
+has put into my hands your letter about the dissenting chapel
+at Bullhampton. It seems to me, that he has made a
+mistake, and that you are very angry. Couldn't we arrange
+this little matter without fighting? There is not a
+landlord in England more desirous of doing good to his
+tenants than my father; and I am quite willing to believe
+that there is not an incumbent in England more desirous of
+doing good to his parishioners than you. I leave London
+for Wiltshire on Saturday the 11th. If you will meet me I
+will drive over to Bullhampton on Monday the 13th.</p>
+
+<p class="ind10">Yours truly,</p>
+
+<p class="ind15"><span class="smallcaps">St. George</span>.</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">No
+doubt you'll agree with me in thinking that internecine
+fighting in a parish between the landlord and the
+clergyman cannot be for the good of the people.<br />&nbsp;</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+
+<p>Thus it was that Lord St. George began to throw his oil upon the
+waters.</p>
+
+<p>It may be a doubt whether it should be ascribed to Mr. Fenwick as a
+weakness or a strength that, though he was very susceptible of anger,
+and though he could maintain his anger at glowing heat as long as
+fighting continued, it would all evaporate and leave him harmless as
+a dove at the first glimpse of an olive-branch. He knew this so well
+of himself, that it would sometimes be a regret to him in the
+culmination of his wrath that he would not be able to maintain it
+till the hour of his revenge should come. On receiving Lord St.
+George's letter, he at once sat down and wrote to that nobleman,
+telling him that he would be happy to see him at lunch on the Monday
+at two o'clock. Then there came a rejoinder from Lord St. George,
+saying that he would be at the vicarage at the hour named.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Fenwick was of course there to entertain the nobleman, whom she
+had never seen before, and during the lunch very little was said
+about the chapel, and not a word was said about other causes of
+complaint.</p>
+
+<p>"That is a terrible building, Mrs. Fenwick," Lord St. George had
+remarked.</p>
+
+<p>"We're getting used to it now," Mrs. Fenwick had replied; "and Mr.
+Fenwick thinks it good for purposes of mortification."</p>
+
+<p>"We must see and move the sackcloth and ashes a little further off,"
+said his lordship.</p>
+
+<p>Then they ate their lunch, and talked about the parish, and expressed
+a joint hope that the Grinder would be hung at Salisbury.</p>
+
+<p>"Now let us go and see the corpus delicti," said the Vicar as soon as
+they had drawn their chairs from the table.</p>
+
+<p>The two men went out and walked round the chapel, and, finding it
+open, walked into it. Of course there were remarks made by both of
+them. It was acknowledged that it was ugly, misplaced, uncomfortable,
+detestable to the eye, and ear, and general feeling,&mdash;except in so
+far as it might suit the wants of people who were not sufficiently
+educated to enjoy the higher tone, and more elaborate language of the
+Church of England services. It was thus that they spoke to each
+other, quite in an &aelig;sthetic manner.</p>
+
+<p>Lord St. George had said as he entered the chapel, that it must come
+down as a matter of course; and the Vicar had suggested that there
+need be no hurry.</p>
+
+<p>"They tell me that it must be removed some day," said the Vicar, "but
+as I am not likely to leave the parish, nobody need start the matter
+for a year or two." Lord St. George was declaring that advantage
+could not be taken of such a concession on Mr. Fenwick's part, when a
+third person entered the building, and walked towards them with a
+quick step.</p>
+
+<p>"Here is Mr. Puddleham, the minister," said Mr. Fenwick; and the
+future lord of Bullhampton was introduced to the present owner of the
+pulpit under which they were standing.</p>
+
+<p>"My lord," said the minister, "I am proud, indeed, to have the honour
+of meeting your lordship in our new chapel, and of expressing to your
+lordship the high sense entertained by me and my congregation of your
+noble father's munificent liberality to us in the matter of the
+land."</p>
+
+<p>In saying this Mr. Puddleham never once turned his face upon the
+Vicar. He presumed himself at the present moment to be at feud with
+the Vicar in most deadly degree. Though the Vicar would occasionally
+accost him in the village, he always answered the Vicar as though
+they two were enemies. He had bowed when he came up the chapel, but
+he had bowed to the stranger. If the Vicar took any of that courtesy
+to himself, that was not his fault.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid we were a little too quick there," said Lord St. George.</p>
+
+<p>"I hope not, my lord; I hope not. I have heard a rumour; but I have
+inquired. I have inquired,
+<span class="nowrap">and&mdash;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"The truth is, Mr. Puddleham, that we are standing on Mr. Fenwick's
+private ground this moment."</p>
+
+<p>"You are quite welcome to the use of it, Mr. Puddleham," said the
+Vicar. Mr. Puddleham assumed a look of dignity, and frowned. He could
+not even yet believe that his friend the Marquis had made so fatal a
+mistake.</p>
+
+<p>"We must build you another chapel,&mdash;that will be about the long and
+short of it, Mr. Puddleham."</p>
+
+<p>"My lord, I should think there must be some&mdash;mistake. Some error must
+have crept in somewhere, my lord. I have made
+<span class="nowrap">inquiry&mdash;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"It has been a very big error," said Lord St. George, "and it has
+crept into Mr. Fenwick's glebe in a very palpable form. There is no
+use in discussing it, Mr. Puddleham."</p>
+
+<p>"And why didn't the reverend gentleman claim the ground when the
+works were commenced?" demanded the indignant minister, turning now
+for the first time to the Vicar, and doing so with a visage full of
+wrath, and a graceful uplifting of his right hand.</p>
+
+<p>"The reverend gentleman was very ignorant of matters with which he
+ought to have been better acquainted," said Mr. Fenwick himself.</p>
+
+<p>"Very ignorant, indeed," said Mr. Puddleham. "My lord, I am inclined
+to think that we can assert our right to this chapel and maintain it.
+My lord, I am of opinion that the whole hierarchy of the Episcopal
+Established Church in England cannot expel us. My lord, who will be
+the man to move the first brick from this sacred edifice?" And Mr.
+Puddleham pointed up to the pulpit as though he knew well where that
+brick was ever to be found when duty required its presence. "My lord,
+I would propose that nothing should be done; and then let us see who
+will attempt to close this chapel door against the lambs of the Lord
+who come here for pasture in their need."</p>
+
+<p>"The lambs shall have pasture and shall have their pastor," said St.
+George, laughing. "We'll move this chapel to ground that is our own,
+and make everything as right as a trivet for you. You don't want to
+intrude, I'm sure."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Puddleham's eloquence was by no means exhausted; but at last,
+when they had left the chapel, and the ground immediately around the
+chapel which Mr. Puddleham would insist upon regarding as his own,
+they did manage to shake him off.</p>
+
+<p>"And now, Mr. Fenwick," said Lord St. George, in his determined
+purpose to throw oil upon the waters, "what is this unfortunate
+quarrel between you and my father?"</p>
+
+<p>"You had better ask him that, my lord."</p>
+
+<p>"I have asked him, of course,&mdash;and of course he has no answer to
+make. No doubt you intended to enrage him when you wrote him that
+letter which he showed me."</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly I did."</p>
+
+<p>"I hardly see how good is to be done by angering an old man who
+stands high in the world's esteem."</p>
+
+<p>"Had he not stood high, my lord, I should probably have passed him
+by."</p>
+
+<p>"I can understand all that,&mdash;that one man should be a mark for
+another's scorn because he is a Marquis, and wealthy. But what I
+can't understand is, that such a one as you should think that good
+can come from it."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know what your father has said of me?"</p>
+
+<p>"I've no doubt you both say very hard things of each other."</p>
+
+<p>"I never said an evil thing of him behind his back that I have not
+said as strongly to his face," said Mr. Fenwick, with much of
+indignation in his tone.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you really think that that mitigates the injury done to my
+father?" said Lord St. George.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know that he has complained of me to the bishop?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes,&mdash;and the bishop took your part."</p>
+
+<p>"No thanks to your father, Lord St. George. Do you know that he has
+accused me publicly of the grossest vices; that he has,&mdash;that he
+has,&mdash;that he has&mdash;. There is nothing so bad that he hasn't said it
+of me."</p>
+
+<p>"Upon my word, I think you are even with him, Mr. Fenwick, I do
+indeed."</p>
+
+<p>"What I have said, I have said to his face. I have made no accusation
+against him. Come, my lord, I am willing enough to let bygones be
+bygones. If Lord Trowbridge will condescend to say that he will drop
+all animosity to me, I will forgive him the injuries he has done me.
+But I cannot admit myself to have been wrong."</p>
+
+<p>"I never knew any man who would," said Lord St. George.</p>
+
+<p>"If the Marquis will put out his hand to me, I will accept it," said
+the Vicar.</p>
+
+<p>"Allow me to do so on his behalf," said the son.</p>
+
+<p>And thus the quarrel was presumed to be healed. Lord St. George went
+to the inn for his horse, and the Vicar, as he walked across to the
+vicarage, felt that he had been&mdash;done. This young lord had been very
+clever,&mdash;and had treated the quarrel as though on even terms, as if
+the offences on each side had been equal. And yet the Vicar knew very
+well that he had been right,&mdash;right without a single slip,&mdash;right
+from the beginning to the end. "He has been clever," he said to
+himself, "and he shall have the advantage of his cleverness." Then he
+resolved that as far as he was concerned the quarrel should in truth
+be over.</p>
+
+
+<p><a name="c61" id="c61"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>CHAPTER LXI.</h3>
+<h4>MARY LOWTHER'S TREACHERY.<br />&nbsp;</h4>
+
+
+<p>While the Vicar was listening to the eloquence of Mr. Puddleham in
+the chapel, and was being cozened out of his just indignation by Lord
+St. George, a terrible scene was going on in the drawing-room of the
+vicarage. Mary Lowther, as the reader knows, had declared that she
+would wear mourning for her distant cousin, and had declined to
+appear at lunch before Lord St. George. Mrs. Fenwick, putting these
+things together, knew that much was the matter, but she did not know
+how much. She did not as yet anticipate the terrible state of things
+which was to be made known to her that afternoon.</p>
+
+<p>Mary was quite aware that the thing must be settled. In the first
+place she must answer Captain Marrable's letter. And then it was her
+bounden duty to let Mr. Gilmore know her mind as soon as she knew it
+herself. It might be easy enough for her to write to Walter Marrable.
+That which she had to say to him would be pleasant enough in the
+saying. But that could not be said till the other thing should be
+unsaid. And how was that unsaying to be accomplished? Nothing could
+be done without the aid of Mrs. Fenwick; and now she was afraid of
+Mrs. Fenwick,&mdash;as the guilty are always afraid of those who will have
+to judge their guilt. While the children were at dinner, and while
+the lord was sitting at lunch, she remained up in her own room. From
+her window she could see the two men walking across the vicarage
+grounds towards the chapel, and she knew that her friend would be
+alone. Her story must be told to Mrs. Fenwick, and to Mrs. Fenwick
+only. It would be impossible for her to speak of her determination
+before the Vicar till he should have received a first notice of it
+from his wife. And there certainly must be no delay. The men were
+hardly out of sight before she had resolved to go down at once. She
+looked at herself in the glass, and spunged the mark of tears from
+her eyes, and smoothed her hair, and then descended. She never before
+had felt so much in fear of her friend; and yet it was her friend who
+was mainly the cause of this mischief which surrounded her, and who
+had persuaded her to evil. At Janet Fenwick's instance she had
+undertaken to marry a man whom she did not love; and yet she feared
+to go to Janet Fenwick with the story of her repentance. Why not
+indignantly demand of her friend assistance in extricating herself
+from the injury which that friend had brought upon her?</p>
+
+<p>She found Mrs. Fenwick with the children in the little breakfast
+parlour to which they had been banished by the coming of Lord St.
+George. "Janet," she said, "come and take a turn with me in the
+garden." It was now the middle of August, and life at the vicarage
+was spent almost as much out of doors as within. The ladies went
+about with parasols, and would carry their hats hanging in their
+hands. There was no delay therefore, and the two were on the
+gravel-path almost as soon as Mary's request was made. "I did not
+show you my letter from Dunripple," she said, putting her hand into
+her pocket; "but I might as well do so now. You will have to read
+it."</p>
+
+<p>She took out the document, but did not at once hand it to her
+companion. "Is there anything wrong, Mary?" said Mrs. Fenwick.</p>
+
+<p>"Wrong. Yes;&mdash;very, very wrong. Janet, it is no use your talking to
+me. I have quite made up my mind. I cannot and I will not marry Mr.
+Gilmore."</p>
+
+<p>"Mary, this is insanity."</p>
+
+<p>"You may say what you please, but I am determined. I cannot and I
+will not. Will you help me out of my difficulty?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly not in the way you mean;&mdash;certainly not. It cannot be
+either for your good or for his. After what has passed, how on earth
+could you bring yourself to make such a proposition to him?"</p>
+
+<p>"I do not know; that is what I feel the most. I do not know how I
+shall tell him. But he must be told. I thought that perhaps Mr.
+Fenwick would do it."</p>
+
+<p>"I am quite sure he will do nothing of the kind. Think of it, Mary.
+How can you bring yourself to be so false to a man?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have not been false to him. I have been false to myself, but never
+to him. I told him how it was. When you drove me
+<span class="nowrap">on&mdash;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"Drove you on, Mary?"</p>
+
+<p>"I do not mean to be ungrateful, or to say hard things; but when you
+made me feel that if he were satisfied I also might put up with it, I
+told him that I could never love him. I told him that I did love, and
+ever should love, Walter Marrable. I told him that I had
+nothing&mdash;nothing&mdash;nothing to give him. But he would take no answer
+but the one; and I did&mdash;I did give it him. I know I did; and I have
+never had a moment of happiness since. And now has come this letter.
+Janet, do not be cruel to me. Do not speak to me as though everything
+must be stern and hard and cruel." Then she handed up the letter, and
+Mrs. Fenwick read it as they walked.</p>
+
+<p>"And is he to be made a tool, because the other man has changed his
+mind?" said Mrs. Fenwick.</p>
+
+<p>"Walter has never changed his mind."</p>
+
+<p>"His plans, then. It comes to the same thing. Do you know that you
+will have to answer for his life, or for his reason? Have you not
+learned yet to understand the constancy of his nature?"</p>
+
+<p>"Is it my fault that he should be constant? I told him when he
+offered to me that if Walter were to come back to me and ask me
+again, I should go to him in spite of any promise that I had made. I
+said so as plain as I am saying this to you."</p>
+
+<p>"I am quite sure that he did not understand it so."</p>
+
+<p>"Janet, indeed he did."</p>
+
+<p>"No man would have submitted himself to an engagement with such a
+condition. It is quite impossible. What! Mr. Gilmore knew when you
+took him that if this gentleman should choose to change his mind at
+any moment before you were actually married, you would walk off and
+go back to him!"</p>
+
+<p>"I told him so, Janet. He will not deny that I told him so. When I
+told him so, I was sure that he would have declined such an
+engagement. But he did not, and I had no way of escape. Janet, if you
+could know what I have been suffering, you would not be cruel to me.
+Think what it would have been to you to have to marry a man you did
+not love, and to break the heart of one you did love. Of course Mr.
+Gilmore is your friend."</p>
+
+<p>"He is our friend!"</p>
+
+<p>"And, of course, you do not care for Captain Marrable?"</p>
+
+<p>"I never even saw him."</p>
+
+<p>"But you might put yourself in my place, and judge fairly between us.
+There has not been a thought or a feeling in my heart concealed from
+you since first all this began. You have known that I have never
+loved your friend."</p>
+
+<p>"I know that, after full consideration, you have accepted him; and I
+know also, that he is a man who will devote his whole life to make
+you happy."</p>
+
+<p>"It can never be. You may as well believe me. If you will not help
+me, nor Mr. Fenwick, I must tell him myself;&mdash;or I must write to him
+and leave the place suddenly. I know that I have behaved badly. I
+have tried to do right, but I have done wrong. When I came here I was
+very unhappy. How could I help being unhappy when I had lost all that
+I cared for in the world? Then you told me that I might at any rate
+be of some use to some one, by marrying your friend. You do not know
+how I strove to make myself fond of him! And then, at last, when the
+time came that I had to answer him, I thought that I would tell him
+everything. I thought that if I told him the truth he would see that
+we had better be apart. But when I told him, leaving him, as I
+imagined, no choice but to reject me,&mdash;he chose to take me. Well,
+Janet; at any rate, then, as I was taught to believe, there was no
+one to be ruined by this,&mdash;no one to be broken on the wheel,&mdash;but
+myself: and I thought that if I struggled, I might so do my duty that
+he might be satisfied. I see that I was wrong, but you should not
+rebuke me for it. I had tried to do as you bade me. But I did tell
+him that if ever this thing happened I should leave him. It has
+happened, and I must leave him." Mrs. Fenwick had let her speak on
+without interrupting her, intending when she had finished, to say
+definitely, that they at the vicarage could not make themselves
+parties to any treason towards Mr. Gilmore; but when Mary had come to
+the end of her story her friend's heart was softened towards her. She
+walked silently along the path, refraining at any rate from those
+bitter arguments with which she had at first thought to confound Mary
+in her treachery. "I do think you love me," said Mary.</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed I love you."</p>
+
+<p>"Then help me; do help me. I will go on my knees to him to beg his
+pardon."</p>
+
+<p>"I do not know what to say to it. Begging his pardon will be of no
+avail. As for myself, I should not dare to tell him. We used to
+think, when he was hopeless before, that dwelling on it all would
+drive him to some absolute madness. And it will be worse now. Of
+course it will be worse."</p>
+
+<p>"What am I to do?" Mary paused a moment, and then added,
+sharply,&mdash;"There is one thing I will not do; I will not go to the
+altar and become his wife."</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose I had better tell Frank," said Mrs. Fenwick, after another
+pause.</p>
+
+<p>This was, of course, what Mary Lowther desired, but she begged for
+and obtained permission not to see the Vicar herself that evening.
+She would keep her own room that night, and meet him the next morning
+before prayers as best she might.</p>
+
+<p>When the Vicar came back to the house, his mind was so full of the
+chapel, and Lord St. George, and the admirable manner in which he had
+been cajoled out of his wrath without the slightest admission on the
+part of the lord that his father had ever been wrong,&mdash;his thoughts
+were so occupied with all this, and with Mr. Puddleham's oratory,
+that he did not at first give his wife an opportunity of telling Mary
+Lowther's story.</p>
+
+<p>"We shall all of us have to go over to Turnover next week," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"You may go. I won't."</p>
+
+<p>"And I shouldn't wonder if the Marquis were to offer me a better
+living, so that I might be close to him. We are to be the lamb and
+the wolf sitting down together."</p>
+
+<p>"And which is to be the lamb?"</p>
+
+<p>"That does not matter. But the worst of it is, Puddleham won't come
+and be a lamb too. Here am I, who have suffered pretty nearly as much
+as St. Paul, have forgiven all my enemies all round, and shaken hands
+with the Marquis by proxy, while Puddleham has been man enough to
+maintain the dignity of his indignation. The truth is, that the
+possession of a grievance is the one state of human blessedness. As
+long as the chapel was there, malgr&eacute; moi, I could revel in my wrong.
+It turns out now that I can send poor Puddleham adrift to-morrow, and
+he immediately becomes the hero of the hour. I wish your
+brother-in-law had not been so officious in finding it all out."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Fenwick postponed her story till the evening.</p>
+
+<p>"Where is Mary?" Fenwick asked, when dinner was announced.</p>
+
+<p>"She is not quite well, and will not come down. Wait awhile, and you
+shall be told." He did wait; but the moment that they were alone
+again he asked his question. Then Mrs. Fenwick told the whole story,
+hardly expressing an opinion herself as she told it. "I don't think
+she is to be shaken," she said at last.</p>
+
+<p>"She is behaving very badly,&mdash;very badly,&mdash;very badly."</p>
+
+<p>"I am not quite sure, Frank, whether we have behaved wisely," said
+his wife.</p>
+
+<p>"If it must be told him, it will drive him mad," said Fenwick.</p>
+
+<p>"I think it must be told."</p>
+
+<p>"And I am to tell it?"</p>
+
+<p>"That is what she asks."</p>
+
+<p>"I can't say that I have made up my mind; but, as far as I can see at
+present, I will do nothing of the kind. She has no right to expect
+it."</p>
+
+<p>Before they went to bed, however, he also had been somewhat softened.
+When his wife declared, with tears in her eyes, that she would never
+interfere at match-making again, he began to perceive that he also
+had endeavoured to be a match-maker and had failed.</p>
+
+
+<p><a name="c62" id="c62"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>CHAPTER LXII.</h3>
+<h4>UP AT THE PRIVETS.<br />&nbsp;</h4>
+
+
+<p>The whole of the next day was passed in wretchedness by the party at
+the vicarage. The Vicar, as he greeted Miss Lowther in the morning,
+had not meant to be severe, having been specially cautioned against
+severity by his wife; but he had been unable not to be silent and
+stern. Not a word was spoken about Mr. Gilmore till after breakfast,
+and then it was no more than a word.</p>
+
+<p>"I would think better of this, Mary," said the Vicar.</p>
+
+<p>"I cannot think better of it," she replied.</p>
+
+<p>He refused, however, to go to Mr. Gilmore that day, demanding that
+she should have another day in which to revolve the matter in her
+mind. It was understood, however, that if she persisted he would
+break the matter to her lover. Then this trouble was aggravated by
+the coming of Mr. Gilmore to the vicarage, though it may be that the
+visit was of use by preparing him in some degree for the blow. When
+he came Mary was not to be seen. Fancying that he might call, she
+remained up-stairs all day, and Mrs. Fenwick was obliged to say that
+she was unwell. "Is she really ill?" the poor man had asked. Mrs.
+Fenwick, driven hard by the difficulty of her position, had said that
+she did not believe Mary to be very ill, but that she was so
+discomposed by news from Dunripple that she could not come down. "I
+should have thought that I might have seen her," said Mr. Gilmore,
+with that black frown upon his brow which now they all knew so well.
+Mrs. Fenwick made no reply, and then the unhappy man went away. He
+wanted no further informant to tell him that the woman to whom he was
+pledged regarded her engagement to him with aversion.</p>
+
+<p>"I must see her again before I go," Fenwick said to his wife the next
+morning. And he did see her. But Mary was absolutely firm. When he
+remarked that she was pale and worn and ill, she acknowledged that
+she had not closed her eyes during those two nights.</p>
+
+<p>"And it must be so?" he asked, holding her hand tenderly.</p>
+
+<p>"I am so grieved that you should have such a mission," she replied.</p>
+
+<p>Then he explained to her that he was not thinking of himself, sad as
+the occasion would be to him. But if this great sorrow could have
+been spared to his friend! It could not, however, be spared. Mary was
+quite firm, at any rate as to that. No consideration should induce
+her now to marry Mr. Gilmore. Mr. Fenwick, on her behalf, might
+express his regret for the grief she had caused in any terms that he
+might think fit to use,&mdash;might humiliate her to the ground if he
+thought it proper. And yet, had not Mr. Gilmore sinned more against
+her than had she against him? Had not the manner in which he had
+grasped at her hand been unmanly and unworthy? But of this, though
+she thought much of it, she said nothing now to Mr. Fenwick. This
+commission to the Vicar was that he should make her free; and in
+doing this he might use what language, and make what confessions he
+pleased. He must, however, make her free.</p>
+
+<p>After breakfast he started upon his errand with a very heavy heart.
+He loved his friend dearly. Between these two there had grown up now
+during a period of many years, that undemonstrative, unexpressed,
+almost unconscious affection which, with men, will often make the
+greatest charm of their lives, but which is held by women to be quite
+unsatisfactory and almost nugatory. It may be doubted whether either
+of them had ever told the other of his regard. "Yours always," in
+writing, was the warmest term that was ever used. Neither ever
+dreamed of suggesting that the absence of the other would be a cause
+of grief or even of discomfort. They would bicker with each other,
+and not unfrequently abuse each other. Chance threw them much
+together, but they never did anything to assist chance. Women, who
+love each other as well, will always be expressing their love, always
+making plans to be together, always doing little things each for the
+gratification of the other, constantly making presents backwards and
+forwards. These two men had never given any thing, one to the other,
+beyond a worn-out walking-stick, or a cigar. They were rough to each
+other, caustic, and almost ill-mannered. But they thoroughly trusted
+each other; and the happiness, prosperity, and, above all, the honour
+of the one were, to the other, matters of keenest moment. The bigger
+man of the two, the one who felt rather than knew himself to be the
+bigger, had to say that which would go nigh to break his friend's
+heart, and the task which he had in hand made him sick at his own
+heart. He walked slowly across the fields, turning over in his own
+mind the words he would use. His misery for his friend was infinitely
+greater than any that he had suffered on his own account, either in
+regard to Mr. Puddleham's chapel or the calumny of the Marquis.</p>
+
+<p>He found Gilmore sauntering about the stable yard. "Old fellow," he
+said, "come along, I have got something to say to you."</p>
+
+<p>"It is about Mary, I suppose?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, yes; it is about Mary. You mustn't be a woman, Harry, or let a
+woman make you seriously wretched."</p>
+
+<p>"I know it all. That will do. You need not say anything more." Then
+he put his hands into the pockets of his shooting coat, and walked
+off as though all had been said that was necessary. Fenwick had told
+his message and might now go away. As for himself, in the sharpness
+of his agony he had as yet made no scheme for a future purpose. Only
+this he had determined. He would see that false woman once again, and
+tell her what he thought of her conduct.</p>
+
+<p>But Fenwick knew that his task was not yet done. Gilmore might walk
+off, but he was bound to follow the unhappy man.</p>
+
+<p>"Harry," he said, "you had better let me come with you for awhile.
+You had better hear what I have to say."</p>
+
+<p>"I want to hear nothing more. What good can it be? Like a fool, I had
+set my fortune on one cast of the die, and I have lost it. Why she
+should have added on the misery and disgrace of the last few weeks to
+the rest, I cannot imagine. I suppose it has been her way of
+punishing me for my persistency."</p>
+
+<p>"It has not been that, Harry."</p>
+
+<p>"God knows what it has been. I do not understand it." He had turned
+from the stables towards the house, and had now come to a part of the
+grounds in which workmen were converting a little paddock in front of
+the house into a garden. The gardener was there with four or five
+labourers, and planks, and barrows, and mattocks, and heaps of
+undistributed earth and gravel were spread about. "Give over with
+this," he said to the gardener, angrily. The man touched his hat, and
+stood amazed. "Leave it, I say, and send these men away. Pay them for
+the work, and let them go."</p>
+
+<p>"You don't mean as we are to leave it all like this, sir?"</p>
+
+<p>"I do mean that you are to leave it just as it is." There was a man
+standing with a shovel in his hand levelling some loose earth, and
+the Squire, going up to him, took the shovel from him and threw it
+upon the ground. "When I say a thing, I mean it. Ambrose, take these
+men away. I will not have another stroke of work done here." The
+Vicar came up to him and whispered into his ear a prayer that he
+would not expose himself before the men; but the Squire cared nothing
+for his friend's whisper. He shook off the Vicar's hand from his arm
+and stalked away into the house.</p>
+
+<p>Two rooms, the two drawing-rooms as they were called, on the ground
+floor had been stripped of the old paper, and were now in that state
+of apparent ruin which always comes upon such rooms when workmen
+enter them with their tools. There were tressels with a board across
+them, on which a man was standing at this moment, whose business it
+was to decorate the ceiling.</p>
+
+<p>"That will do," said the Squire. "You may get down, and leave the
+place." The man stood still on his board with his eyes open and his
+brush in his hand. "I have changed my mind, and you may come down,"
+said Mr. Gilmore. "Tell Mr. Cross to send me his bill for what he has
+done, and it shall be paid. Come down, when I tell you. I will have
+nothing further touched in the house." He went from room to room and
+gave the same orders, and, after a while, succeeded in turning the
+paper-hangers and painters out of the house. Fenwick had followed him
+from room to room, making every now and then an attempt at
+remonstrance; but the Squire had paid no attention either to his
+words or to his presence.</p>
+
+<p>At last they were alone together in Gilmore's own study or office,
+and then the Vicar spoke. "Harry," he said, "I am, indeed, surprised
+that such a one as you should not have more manhood at his command."</p>
+
+<p>"Were you ever tried as I am?"</p>
+
+<p>"What matters that? You are responsible for your own conduct, and I
+tell you that your conduct is unmanly."</p>
+
+<p>"Why should I have the rooms done up? I shall never live here. What
+is it to me how they are left? The sooner I stop a useless
+expenditure the better. It was being done for her, not for me."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course you will live here."</p>
+
+<p>"You know nothing about it. You cannot know anything about it. Why
+has she treated me in this way? To send up to a man and simply tell
+him that she has changed her mind! God in heaven!&mdash;that you should
+bring me such a message!"</p>
+
+<p>"You have not allowed me to give my message yet."</p>
+
+<p>"Give it me, then, and have done with it. Has she not sent you to
+tell me that she has changed her mind?"</p>
+
+<p>Now that opportunity was given to him, the Vicar did not know how to
+tell his message. "Perhaps it would have been better that Janet
+should have come to you."</p>
+
+<p>"It don't make much difference who comes. She'll never come again. I
+don't suppose, Frank, you can understand the sort of love I have had
+for her. You have never been driven by failure to such longing as
+mine has been. And then I thought it had come at last!"</p>
+
+<p>"Will you be patient while I speak to you, Harry?" said the Vicar,
+again taking him by the arm. They had now left the house, and were
+out alone among the shrubs.</p>
+
+<p>"Patient! yes; I think I am patient. Nothing further can hurt me
+now;&mdash;that's one comfort."</p>
+
+<p>"Mary bids me remind you,"&mdash;Gilmore shuddered and shook himself when
+Mary Lowther's name was mentioned, but he did not attempt to stop the
+Vicar,&mdash;"she bids me remind you that when the other day she consented
+to be your wife, she did so&mdash;." He tried to tell it all, but he could
+not. How could he tell the man the story which Mary had told to him?</p>
+
+<p>"I understand," said Gilmore. "It's all of no use, and you are
+troubling yourself for nothing. She told me that she did not care a
+straw for me;&mdash;but she accepted me."</p>
+
+<p>"If that was the case, you were both wrong."</p>
+
+<p>"It was the case. I don't say who was wrong, but the punishment has
+come upon me only. Look here, Frank; I will not take this message
+from you. I will not even give her up yet. I have a right, at least,
+to see her, and see her I will. I don't suppose you will try to
+prevent me?"</p>
+
+<p>"She must do as she pleases, Harry, as long as she is in my house."</p>
+
+<p>"She shall see me. She is self-willed enough, but she shall not
+refuse me that. Be so good as to tell her with my compliments, that I
+expect her to see me. A man is not going to be treated like this, and
+then not speak his own mind. Be good enough to tell her that from me.
+I demand an interview." So saying he turned upon his heel, and walked
+quickly away through the shrubbery.</p>
+
+<p>The Vicar stood for awhile to think, and then slowly returned to the
+vicarage by himself. What Gilmore had said to him was true enough. He
+had, indeed, never been tried after that fashion. It did seem to him
+that his friend was in fact broken-hearted. Harry Gilmore might live
+on,&mdash;as is the way with men and women who are broken-hearted;&mdash;but
+life for the present, life for some years to come, could be to him
+only a burden.</p>
+
+
+<p><a name="c63" id="c63"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>CHAPTER LXIII.</h3>
+<h4>THE MILLER TELLS HIS TROUBLES.<br />&nbsp;</h4>
+
+
+<p>When the Vicar went on his unhappy mission to the Squire's house
+Carry Brattle had been nearly two months at the mill. During that
+time both Mr. and Mrs. Fenwick had seen her more than once, and at
+last she had been persuaded to go to church with her sister. On the
+previous Sunday she had crept through the village at Fanny's side,
+and had taken a place provided for her in the dark corner of a dark
+pew under the protection of a thick veil. Fanny walked with her
+boldly across the village street, as though she were not in any
+slightest degree ashamed of her companion, and sat by her side, and
+then conveyed her home. On the next Sunday the sacrament would be
+given, and this was done in preparation for that day.</p>
+
+<p>Things had not gone very pleasantly at the mill. Up to this moment
+old Brattle had expressed no forgiveness towards his daughter, had
+uttered no word of affection to her, had made no sign that he had
+again taken her to his bosom as his own child. He had spoken to her,
+because in the narrow confines of their home it was almost impossible
+that he should live in the house with her without doing so. Carry had
+gradually fallen into the way of doing her share of the daily work.
+She cooked, and baked, and strove hard that her presence in the house
+should be found to be a comfort. She was useful, and the very fact of
+her utility brought her father into a certain state of communion with
+her; but he never addressed her specially, never called her by her
+name, and had not yet even acknowledged to his wife or to Fanny that
+he recognised her as one of the family. They had chosen to bring her
+in against his will, and he would not turn their guest from the door.
+It was thus that he seemed to regard his daughter's presence in the
+mill-house.</p>
+
+<p>Under this treatment Carry was becoming restive and impatient. On
+such an occasion as that of going to church and exposing herself to
+the eyes of those who had known her as an innocent, laughing, saucy
+girl, she could not but be humble, quiet, and awestruck; but at home
+she was beginning again gradually to assert her own character. "If
+father won't speak to me, I'd better go," she said to Fanny.</p>
+
+<p>"And where will you go to, Carry?"</p>
+
+<p>"I dun' know;&mdash;into the mill-pond would be best for them as belongs
+to me. I suppose there ain't anybody as 'd have me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nobody can have you as will love you as we do, Carry."</p>
+
+<p>"Why won't father come round and speak to me? You can't tell what it
+is to have him looking at one that way. I sometimes feels like
+getting up and telling him to turn me out if he won't speak a word to
+me." But Fanny had softened her, and encouraged her, bidding her wait
+still again, explaining the sorrow that weighed upon their father's
+heart as well as she could without saying a single cruel word as to
+Carry's past life. Fanny's task was not easy, and it was made the
+harder by their mother's special tenderness towards Carry. "The less
+she says and the more she does, the better for her," said Fanny to
+her mother. "You shouldn't let her talk about father." Mrs. Brattle
+did not attempt to argue the matter with her elder daughter, but she
+found it to be quite out of her power to restrain Carry's talking.</p>
+
+<p>During these two months old Brattle had not even seen either his
+landlord or the Vicar. They had both been at the mill, but the miller
+had kept himself up among his grist, and had not condescended to come
+down to them. Nor had he even, since Carry's return, been seen in
+Bullhampton, or even up on the high road leading to it. He held no
+communion with men other than was absolutely necessary for his
+business, feeling himself to be degraded, not so much by his
+daughter's fall as by his concession to his fallen daughter. He would
+sit out in the porch of an evening, and smoke his pipe; but if he
+heard a footstep on the lane he would retreat, and cross the plank
+and get among the wheels of his mill, or out into the orchard. Of Sam
+nothing had been heard. He was away, it was believed in Durham,
+working at some colliery engine. He gave no sign of himself to his
+mother or sister; but it was understood that he would appear at the
+assizes, towards the end of the present month, as he had been
+summoned there as a witness at the trial of the two men for the
+murder of Mr. Trumbull.</p>
+
+<p>And Carry, also, was to be a witness at the assizes; and, as it was
+believed, a witness much more material than her brother. Indeed, it
+was beginning to be thought that after all Sam would have no evidence
+to give. If, indeed, he had had nothing to do with the murder, it was
+not probable that any of the circumstances of the murder would have
+been confided to him. He had, it seemed, been on intimate terms with
+the man Acorn,&mdash;and, through Acorn, had known Burrows and the old
+woman who lived at Pycroft Common, the mother of Burrows. He had been
+in their company when they first visited Bullhampton, and had, as we
+know, invited them into the Vicar's garden,&mdash;much to the damage of
+Mr. Burrows' shoulder-blade; but it was believed that beyond this he
+could say nothing as to the murder. But Carry Brattle was presumed to
+have a closer knowledge of at least one of the men. She had now
+confessed to her sister that, after leaving Bullhampton, she had
+consented to become Acorn's wife. She had known then but little of
+his mode of life or past history; but he was young, good-looking,
+fairly well-dressed, and had promised to marry her. By him she was
+taken to the cottage on Pycroft Common, and by him she had certainly
+been visited on the morning after the murder. He had visited her and
+given her money;&mdash;and since that, according to her own story, she had
+neither seen him nor heard from him. She had never cared for him, she
+told her sister; but what was that to one such as her as long as he
+would make her an honest woman? All this was repeated by Fanny
+Brattle to Mrs. Fenwick;&mdash;and now the assizes were at hand, and how
+was Carry to demean herself there? Who would take her? Who would
+stand near her and support her, and save her from falling into that
+abyss of self-abasement and almost of self-annihilation which would
+be her doom, unless there were some one there to give her strength
+and aid?</p>
+
+<p>"I would not go to Salisbury at all during the assizes, if I were
+you," Mrs. Fenwick had said to her husband. The Vicar understood
+thoroughly what was meant. Because of the evil things which had been
+said of him by that stupid old Marquis whom he had been cheated into
+forgiving, he was not to be allowed to give a helping hand to his
+parishioner! Nevertheless, he acknowledged his wife's
+wisdom,&mdash;tacitly, as is fitting when such acknowledgments have to be
+made; and he contented himself with endeavouring to find for her some
+other escort. It had been hoped from day to day that the miller would
+yield, that he would embrace poor Carry, and promise her that she
+should again be to him as a daughter. If this could be brought about,
+then,&mdash;so thought the Vicar and Fanny too,&mdash;the old man would steel
+himself to bear the eyes of the whole county, and would accompany the
+girl himself. But now the day was coming on, and Brattle seemed to be
+as far from yielding as ever. Fanny had dropped a word or two in his
+hearing about the assizes, but he had only glowered at her, taking no
+other notice whatever of her hints.</p>
+
+<p>When the Vicar left his friend Gilmore, as has been told in the last
+chapter, he did not return to the vicarage across the fields, but
+took the carriage road down to the lodge, and from thence crossed the
+stile that led into the path down to the mill. This was on the 15th
+of August, a Wednesday, and Carry was summoned to be at Salisbury on
+that day week. As the day drew near she became very nervous. At the
+Vicar's instance Fanny had written to her brother George, asking him
+whether he would be good to his poor sister, and take her under his
+charge. He had written back,&mdash;or rather his wife had written for
+him,&mdash;sending Carry a note for &pound;20 as a present, but declining, on
+the score of his own children, to be seen with her in Salisbury on
+the occasion. "I shall go with her myself, Mr. Fenwick," Fanny had
+said to the Vicar; "it'll just be better than nobody at all to be
+along with her." The Vicar was now going down to the mill to give his
+assent to this. He could see nothing better. Fanny at any rate would
+be firm; would not be prevented by false shame from being a very
+sister to her sister; and would perhaps be admitted where a brother's
+attendance might be refused. He had promised to see the women at the
+mill as early in the week as he could, and now he went thither intent
+on giving them advice as to their proceedings at Salisbury. It would
+doubtless be necessary that they should sleep there, and he hoped
+that they might be accommodated by Mrs. Stiggs.</p>
+
+<p>As he stepped out from the field path on to the lane, almost
+immediately in front of the mill, he came directly upon the miller.
+It was between twelve and one o'clock, and old Brattle was wandering
+about for a minute or two waiting for his dinner. The two men met so
+that it was impossible that they should not speak; and on this
+occasion the miller did not seem to avoid his visitor. "Muster
+Fenwick," said he, as he took the Vicar's hand, "I am bound to say as
+I'm much obliged to ye for all y' have done for that poor lass in
+there."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't say a word about that, Mr. Brattle."</p>
+
+<p>"But I must say a word. There's money owing as I knows. There was ten
+shilling a week for her keep all that time she was at Salsbry
+yonder."</p>
+
+<p>"I will not hear a word as to any money."</p>
+
+<p>"Her brother George has sent her a gift, Muster Fenwick,&mdash;twenty
+pound."</p>
+
+<p>"I am very glad to hear it."</p>
+
+<p>"George is a well-to-do man, they tell me," continued the father,
+"and can afford to part with his money. But he won't come forward to
+help the girl any other gait. I'll thank you just to take what's due,
+Muster Fenwick, and you can give her sister the change. Our Fanny has
+got the note as George sent."</p>
+
+<p>Then there was a dispute about the money, as a matter of course.
+Fenwick swore that nothing was due, and the miller protested that as
+the money was there all his daughter's expenses at Salisbury should
+be repaid. And the miller at last got the best of it. Fenwick
+promised that he would look to his book, see how much he had paid,
+and mention the sum to Fanny at some future time. He positively
+refused to take the note at present, protesting that he had no
+change, and that he would not burden himself with the responsibility
+of carrying so much money about with him in his pocket. Then he asked
+whether, if he went into the house, he would be able to say a word or
+two to the women before dinner. He had made up his mind that he would
+make no further attempt at reconciling the father to his daughter. He
+had often declared to his wife that there could be nothing so hateful
+to a man as the constant interference of a self-constituted adviser.
+"I so often feel that I am making myself odious when I am telling
+them to do this or that; and then I ask myself what I should say if
+anybody were to come and advise me how to manage you and the bairns."
+And he had told his wife more than once how very natural and
+reasonable had been the expression of the lady's wrath at Startup,
+when he had taken upon himself to give her advice. "People know what
+is good for them to do, well enough, without being dictated to by a
+clergyman!" He had repeated the words to himself and to his wife a
+dozen times, and talked of having them put up in big red letters over
+the fire-place in his own study. He had therefore quite determined to
+say never another word to old Brattle in reference to his daughter
+Carry. But now the miller himself began upon the subject.</p>
+
+<p>"You can see 'em, Muster Fenwick, in course. It don't make no odds
+about dinner. But I was wanting just to say a word to you about that
+poor young ooman there." This he said in a slow, half-hesitating
+voice, as though he could hardly bring himself to speak of the
+unfortunate one to whom he alluded. The Vicar muttered some word of
+assent, and then the miller went on. "You knows, of course, as how
+she be back here at the mill?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly I do. I've seen her more than once."</p>
+
+<p>"Muster Fenwick, I don't suppose as any one as asn't tried it knows
+what it is. I hopes you mayn't never know it; nor it ain't likely.
+Muster Fenwick, I'd sooner see her dead body stretched afore me,&mdash;and
+I loved her a'most as well as any father ever loved his da'ter,&mdash;I'd
+sooner a see'd her brought home to the door stiff and stark than know
+her to be the thing she is." His hesitation had now given way to
+emphasis, and he raised his hand as he spoke. The Vicar caught it and
+held it in his own, and strove to find some word to say as the old
+man paused in his speech. But to Jacob Brattle it was hard for a
+clergyman to find any word to say on such an occasion. Of what use
+could it be to preach of repentance to one who believed nothing; or
+to tell of the opportunity which forgiveness by an earthly parent
+might afford to the sinner of obtaining lasting forgiveness
+elsewhere? But let him have said what he might, the miller would not
+have listened. He was full of that which lay upon his own heart. "If
+they only know'd what them as cares for 'em 'd has to bear, maybe
+they'd think a little. But it ain't natural they should know, Muster
+Fenwick, and one's a'most tempted to say that a man 'd better have no
+child at all."</p>
+
+<p>"Think of your son George, Mr. Brattle, and of Mrs. Jay."</p>
+
+<p>"What's them to me? He sends the girl a twenty-pun'-note, and I wish
+he'd a kep' it. As for t'other, she wouldn't let the girl inside her
+door! It's here she has to come."</p>
+
+<p>"What comfort would you have, Mr. Brattle, without Fanny?"</p>
+
+<p>"Fanny! I'm not saying nothing against Fanny. Not but what she hadn't
+no business to let the girl into the house in the middle of the night
+without saying a word to me."</p>
+
+<p>"Would you have had her leave her sister outside in the cold and damp
+all night?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why didn't she come and ax? All the same, I ain't a saying nowt
+again Fanny. But, Muster Fenwick, if you ever come to have one foot
+bad o' the gout, it won't make you right to know that the other ain't
+got it. Y'll have the pain a gnawing of you from the bad foot till
+you clean forget all the rest o' your body. It's so with me, I
+knows."</p>
+
+<p>"What can I say to you, Mr. Brattle? I do feel for you. I do,&mdash;I do."</p>
+
+<p>"Not a doubt on it, Muster Fenwick. They all on 'em feels for me.
+They all on 'em knows as how I'm bruised and mangled a'most as though
+I'd fallen through into that water-wheel. There ain't one in all
+Bull'ompton as don't know as Jacob Brattle is a broken man along of
+his da'ter that is <span class="nowrap">a&mdash;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"Silence, Mr. Brattle. You shall not say it. She is not that;&mdash;at any
+rate not now. Have you no knowledge that sin may be left behind and
+deserted as well as virtue?"</p>
+
+<p>"It ain't easy to leave disgrace behind, any ways. For ought I knows
+a girl may be made right arter a while; but as for her father,
+nothing 'll ever make him right again. It's in here, Muster
+Fenwick,&mdash;in here. There's things as is hard on us; but when they
+comes one can't send 'em away just because they is hardest of all to
+bear. I'd a put up with aught, only this, and defied all Bull'ompton
+to say as it broke me;&mdash;but I'm about broke now. If I hadn't more nor
+a crust at home, nor a decent coat to my back, I'd a looked 'em all
+square in the face as ever I did. But I can't look no man square in
+the face now;&mdash;and as for other folk's girls, I can't bear 'em near
+me,&mdash;no how. They makes me think of my own." Fenwick had now turned
+his back to the miller, in order that he might wipe away his tears
+without showing them. "I'm thinking of her always, Muster
+Fenwick;&mdash;day and night. When the mill's agoing, it's all the same.
+It's just as though there warn't nothing else in the whole world as I
+minded to think on. I've been a man all my life, Muster Fenwick; and
+now I ain't a man no more."</p>
+
+
+<div class="center"><a name="il21" id="il21"></a>
+<table style="margin: 0 auto" cellpadding="4px">
+  <tr>
+    <td align="center">
+      <a href="images/il21.jpg">
+      <img src="images/il21-t.jpg" height="500"
+      alt="'It's in here, Muster Fenwick,&mdash;in here.'" /></a>
+    </td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="center">
+      <span class="caption">"It's in here, Muster
+      Fenwick,&mdash;in here."<br />
+      Click to <a href="images/il21.jpg">ENLARGE</a></span>
+    </td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Our friend the Vicar never before felt himself so utterly unable to
+administer comfort in affliction. There was nothing on which he could
+take hold. He could tell the man, no doubt, that beyond all this
+there might be everlasting joy, not only for him, but for him and the
+girl together;&mdash;joy which would be sullied by no touch of disgrace.
+But there was a stubborn strength in the infidelity of this old Pagan
+which was utterly impervious to any adjuration on that side. That
+which he saw and knew and felt, he would believe; but he would
+believe nothing else. He knew now that he was wounded and sore and
+wretched, and he understood the cause. He knew that he must bear his
+misery to the last, and he struggled to make his back broad for the
+load. But even the desire for ease, which is natural to all men,
+would not make him flinch in his infidelity. As he would not believe
+when things went well with him, and when the comfort of hope for the
+future was not imperatively needed for his daily solace,&mdash;so would he
+not believe now, when his need for such comfort was so pressing.</p>
+
+<p>The upshot of it all was, that the miller thought that he would take
+his own daughter into Salisbury, and was desirous of breaking the
+matter in this way to the friend of his family. The Vicar, of course,
+applauded him much. Indeed, he applauded too much;&mdash;for the miller
+turned on him and declared that he was by no means certain that he
+was doing right. And when the Vicar asked him to be gentle with the
+girl, he turned upon him again.</p>
+
+<p>"Why ain't she been gentle along of me? I hates such gentility,
+Muster Fenwick. I'll be honest with her, any way." But he thought
+better of it before he let the Vicar go. "I shan't do her no hurt,
+Muster Fenwick. Bad as she's been, she's my own flesh and blood
+still."</p>
+
+<p>After what he had heard, Mr. Fenwick declined going into the
+mill-house, and returned home without seeing Mrs. Brattle and her
+daughters. The miller's determination should be told by himself; and
+the Vicar felt that he could hardly keep the secret were he now to
+see the women.</p>
+
+
+<p><a name="c64" id="c64"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>CHAPTER LXIV.</h3>
+<h4>IF I WERE YOUR SISTER!<br />&nbsp;</h4>
+
+
+<p>Mr. Gilmore in his last words to his friend Fenwick, declared that he
+would not accept the message which the Vicar delivered to him as the
+sufficient expression of Mary's decision. He would see Mary Lowther
+herself, and force her to confess her own treachery face to face with
+him,&mdash;to confess it or else to deny it. So much she could not refuse
+to grant him. Fenwick had indeed said that as long as the young lady
+was his guest she must be allowed to please herself as to whom she
+would see or not see. Gilmore should not be encouraged to force
+himself upon her at the vicarage. But the Squire was quite sure that
+so much as that must be granted to him. It was impossible that even
+Mary Lowther should refuse to see him after what had passed between
+them. And then, as he walked about his own fields, thinking of it
+all, he allowed himself to feel a certain amount of hope that after
+all she might be made to marry him. His love for her had not
+dwindled,&mdash;or rather his desire to call her his own, and to make her
+his wife; but it had taken an altered form out of which all its
+native tenderness had been pressed by the usage to which he had been
+subjected. It was his honour rather than his love that he now desired
+to satisfy. All those who knew him best were aware that he had set
+his heart upon this marriage, and it was necessary to him that he
+should show them that he was not to be disappointed. Mary's conduct
+to him from the day on which she had first engaged herself to him had
+been of such a kind as naturally to mar his tenderness and to banish
+from him all those prettinesses of courtship in which he would have
+indulged as pleasantly as any other man. She had told him in so many
+words that she intended to marry him without loving him, and on these
+terms he had accepted her. But in doing so he had unconsciously
+flattered himself that she would be better than her words,&mdash;that as
+she submitted herself to him as his affianced bride she would
+gradually become soft and loving in his hands. She had, if possible,
+been harder to him even than her words. She had made him understand
+thoroughly that his presence was not a joy to her, and that her
+engagement to him was a burden on her which she had taken on her
+shoulders simply because the romance of her life had been nipped in
+the bud in reference to the man whom she did love. Still he had
+persevered. He had set his heart sturdily on marrying this girl, and
+marry her he would, if, after any fashion, such marriage should come
+within his power. Mrs. Fenwick, by whose judgment and affection he
+had been swayed through all this matter, had told him again and
+again, that such a girl as Mary Lowther must love her husband,&mdash;if
+her husband loved her and treated her with tenderness. "I think I can
+answer for myself," Gilmore had once replied, and his friend had
+thoroughly believed in him. Trusting to the assurance he had
+persevered; he had persevered even when his trust in that assurance
+had been weakened by the girl's hardness. Anything would be better
+than breaking from an engagement on which he had so long rested all
+his hopes of happiness. She was pledged to be his wife; and, that
+being so, he could reform his gardens and decorate his house, and
+employ himself about his place with some amount of satisfaction. He
+had at least a purpose in his life. Then by degrees there grew upon
+him a fear that she still meant to escape from him, and he swore to
+himself,&mdash;without any tenderness,&mdash;that this should not be so. Let
+her once be his wife and she should be treated with all
+consideration,&mdash;with all affection, if she would accept it; but she
+should not make a fool of him now. Then the Vicar had come with his
+message, and he had been simply told that the engagement between them
+was over!</p>
+
+<p>Of course he would see her,&mdash;and that at once. As soon as Fenwick had
+left him, he went with rapid steps over his whole place, and set the
+men again upon their work. This took place on a Wednesday, and the
+men should be continued at their work, at any rate, till Saturday. He
+explained this clearly to Ambrose, his gardener, and to the foreman
+in the house.</p>
+
+<p>"It may be," said he to Ambrose, "that I shall change my mind
+altogether about the place;&mdash;but as I am still in doubt, let
+everything go on till Saturday."</p>
+
+<p>Of course they all knew why it was that the conduct of the Squire was
+so like the conduct of a madman.</p>
+
+<p>He sent down a note to Mary Lowther that evening.<br />&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+<blockquote>
+<p class="noindent"><span class="smallcaps">Dear Mary</span>,</p>
+
+<p>I have seen Fenwick, and of course I must see you. Will
+you name an hour for to-morrow morning?</p>
+
+<p class="ind10">Yours, H. G.<br />&nbsp;</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+
+<p>When Mary read this, which she did as they were sitting on the lawn
+after dinner, she did not hesitate for a moment. Hardly a word had
+been said to her by Fenwick, or his wife, since his return from the
+Privets. They did not wish to show themselves to be angry with her,
+but they found conversation to be almost impossible. "You have told
+him?" Mary had asked. "Yes, I have told him," the Vicar had replied;
+and that had been nearly all. In the course of the afternoon she had
+hinted to Janet Fenwick that she thought she had better leave
+Bullhampton. "Not quite yet, dear," Mrs. Fenwick had said, and Mary
+had been afraid to urge her request.</p>
+
+<p>"Shall I name eleven to-morrow?" she said, as she handed the Squire's
+note to Mrs. Fenwick. Mrs. Fenwick and the Vicar both assented, and
+then she went in and wrote her answer.<br />&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+<blockquote>
+<p>I will be at home at the vicarage at eleven.&mdash;M. L.<br />&nbsp;</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+
+<p>She would have given much to escape what was coming, but she had not
+expected to escape it.</p>
+
+<p>The next morning after breakfast Fenwick himself went away. "I've had
+more than enough of it," he said, to his wife, "and I won't be near
+them."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Fenwick was with her friend up to the moment at which the bell
+was heard at the front door. There was no coming up across the lawn
+now.</p>
+
+<p>"Dear Janet," Mary said, when they were alone, "how I wish that I had
+never come to trouble you here at the vicarage!"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Fenwick was not without a feeling that much of all this
+unhappiness had come from her own persistency on behalf of her
+husband's friend, and thought that some expression was due from her
+to Mary to that effect. "You are not to suppose that we are angry
+with you," she said, putting her arm round Mary's waist.</p>
+
+<p>"Pray,&mdash;pray do not be angry with me."</p>
+
+<p>"The fault has been too much ours for that. We should have left this
+alone, and not have pressed it. We have meant it for the best, dear."</p>
+
+<p>"And I have meant to do right;&mdash;but, Janet, it is so hard to do
+right."</p>
+
+<p>When the ring at the door was heard, Mrs. Fenwick met Harry Gilmore
+in the hall, and told him that he would find Mary in the
+drawing-room. She pressed his hand warmly as she looked into his
+face, but he spoke no word as he passed on to the room which she had
+just left. Mary was standing in the middle of the floor, half-way
+between the window and the door, to receive him. When she heard the
+door-bell she put her hand to her heart, and there she held it till
+he was approaching; but then she dropped it and stood without
+support, with her face upraised to meet him. He came up to her very
+quickly and took her by the hand. "Mary," he said, "I am not to
+believe this message that has been sent to me. I do not believe it. I
+will not believe it. I will not accept it. It is out of the
+question;&mdash;quite out of the question. It shall be withdrawn, and
+nothing more shall be said about it."</p>
+
+<p>"That cannot be, Mr. Gilmore."</p>
+
+<p>"What cannot be? I say that it must be. You cannot deny, Mary, that
+you are betrothed to me as my wife. Are such betrothals to be
+nothing? Are promises to go for nothing because there has been no
+ceremony? You might as well come and tell me that you would leave me
+even though you were my wife."</p>
+
+<p>"But I am not your wife."</p>
+
+<p>"What does it mean? Have I not been patient with you? Have I been
+hard to you, or cruel? Have you heard anything of me that is to my
+discredit?" She shook her head, eagerly. "Then what does it mean? Are
+you aware that you are proposing to yourself to make an utter wreck
+of me&mdash;to send me adrift upon the world without a purpose or a hope?
+What have I done to deserve such treatment?"</p>
+
+<p>He pleaded his cause very well,&mdash;better than she had ever heard him
+plead a cause before. He held her still by the hand, not with a grasp
+of love, but with a retention which implied his will that she should
+not pass away from out of his power. He looked her full in the face,
+and she did not quail before his eyes. Nevertheless she would have
+given the world to have been elsewhere, and to have been free from
+the necessity of answering him. She had been fortifying herself
+throughout the morning with self-expressed protests that on no
+account would she yield, whether she had been right before or
+wrong;&mdash;of this she was convinced, that she must be right now to save
+herself from a marriage that was so distasteful to her.</p>
+
+<p>"You have deserved nothing but good at my hands," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"And is this good that you are doing to me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes,&mdash;certainly. It is the best that I know how to do now."</p>
+
+<p>"Why is it to be done now? What is it that has changed you?"</p>
+
+<p>She withdrew her hand from him, and waited a while before she
+answered. It was necessary that she should tell him all the tidings
+that had been conveyed to her in the letter which she had received
+from her cousin Walter; but in order that he should perfectly
+understand them and be made to know their force upon herself she must
+remind him of the stipulation which she had made when she consented
+to her engagement. But how could she speak words which would seem to
+him to be spoken only to remind him of the abjectness of his
+submission to her?</p>
+
+<p>"I was broken-hearted when I came here," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"And therefore you would leave me broken-hearted now."</p>
+
+<p>"You should spare me, Mr. Gilmore. You remember what I told you. I
+loved my cousin Walter entirely. I did not hide it from you. I begged
+you to leave me because it was so. I told you that my heart would not
+change. When I said so, I thought that you would&mdash;desist."</p>
+
+<p>"I am to be punished, then, for having been too true to you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I will not defend myself for accepting you at last. But you must
+remember that when I did so I said that I should go&mdash;back&mdash;to him, if
+he could take me."</p>
+
+<p>"And you are going back to him?"</p>
+
+<p>"If he will have me."</p>
+
+<p>"You can stand there and look me in the face and tell me that you are
+false as that! You can confess to me that you will change like a
+weathercock;&mdash;be his one day, and then mine, and his again the next!
+You can own that you give yourself about first to one man, and then
+to another, just as may suit you at the moment! I would not have
+believed it of any woman. When you tell it me of yourself, I begin to
+think that I have been wrong all through in my ideas of a woman's
+character."</p>
+
+<p>The time had now come in which she must indeed speak up. And speech
+seemed to be easier with her now that he had allowed himself to
+express his anger. He had expressed more than his anger. He had dared
+to shower his scorn upon her, and the pelting of the storm gave her
+courage. "You are unjust upon me, Mr. Gilmore,&mdash;unjust and cruel. You
+know in your heart that I have not changed."</p>
+
+<p>"Were you not betrothed to me?"</p>
+
+<p>"I was;&mdash;but in what way? Have I told you any untruth? Have I
+concealed anything? When I accepted you, did I not explain to you how
+and why it was so,&mdash;against my own wish, against my own
+judgment,&mdash;because then I had ceased to care what became of me. I do
+care now. I care very much."</p>
+
+<p>"And you think that is justice to me?"</p>
+
+<p>"If you will bandy accusations with me, why did you accept me when I
+told you that I could not love you? But, indeed, indeed, I would not
+say a word to displease you, if you would only spare me. We were both
+wrong; but the wrong must now be put right. You would not wish to
+take me for your wife when I tell you that my heart is full of
+affection for another man. Then, when I yielded, I was struggling to
+cure that as a great evil. Now I welcome it as the sweetest blessing
+of my life. If I were your sister, what would you have me do?"</p>
+
+<p>He stood silent for a moment, and then the colour rose to his
+forehead as he answered her. "If you were my sister, my ears would
+tingle with shame when your name was mentioned in my presence."</p>
+
+<p>The blood rushed also over her face, suffusing her whole countenance,
+forehead and all, and fire flashed from her eyes, and her lips were
+parted, and even her nostrils seemed to swell with anger. She looked
+full into his face for a second, and then she turned and walked
+speechless away from him. When the handle of the door was in her
+hand, she turned again to address him. "Mr. Gilmore," she said, "I
+will never willingly speak to you again." Then the door was opened
+and closed behind her before a word had escaped from his lips.</p>
+
+<p>He knew that he had insulted her. He knew that he had uttered words
+so hard, that it might be doubted whether, under any circumstances,
+they could be justified from a gentleman to a lady. And certainly he
+had not intended to insult her as he was coming down to the vicarage.
+As far as any settled purpose had been formed in his mind, he had
+meant to force her back to her engagement with himself, by showing to
+her how manifest would be her injustice, and how great her treachery,
+if she persisted in leaving him. But he knew her character well
+enough to be aware that any word of insult addressed to her as a
+woman, would create offence which she herself would be unable to
+quell. But his anger had got the better of his judgment, and when the
+suggestion was made to him of a sister of his own, he took the
+opportunity which was offered to him of hitting her with all his
+force. She had felt the blow, and had determined that she would never
+encounter another.</p>
+
+<p>He was left alone, and he must retreat. He waited a while, thinking
+that perhaps Mrs. Fenwick or the Vicar would come to him; but nobody
+came. The window of the room was open, and it was easy for him to
+leave the house by the garden. But as he prepared to do so, his eye
+caught the writing materials on a side table, and he sat down and
+addressed a note to Mrs. Fenwick. "Tell Mary," he said, "that in a
+matter which to me is of life and death, I was forced to speak
+plainly. Tell her, also, that if she will be my wife, I know well
+that I shall never have to blush for a deed of hers,&mdash;or for a
+word,&mdash;or for a thought.&mdash;H. G." Then he went out on to the lawn, and
+returned home by the path at the back of the church farm.</p>
+
+<p>He had left the vicarage, making another offer for the girl's hand,
+as it were, with his last gasp. But as he went, he told himself that
+it was impossible that it should be accepted. Every chance had now
+gone from him, and he must look his condition in the face as best he
+could. It had been bad enough with him before, when no hope had ever
+been held out to him; when the answers of the girl he loved had
+always been adverse to him; when no one had been told that she was to
+be his bride. Even then the gnawing sense of disappointment and of
+failure,&mdash;just there, when only he cared for success,&mdash;had been more
+than he could endure without derangement of the outer tranquillity of
+his life. Even then he had been unable so to live that men should not
+know that his sorrow had disturbed him. When he had gone to Loring,
+travelling with a forlorn hope into the neighbourhood of the girl he
+loved, he had himself been aware that he had lacked strength to
+control himself in his misfortune. But if his state then had been
+grievous, what must it be now? It had been told to all the world
+around him that he had at last won his bride, and he had proceeded,
+as do jolly thriving bridegrooms, to make his house ready for her
+reception. Doubting nothing he had mingled her wishes, her tastes,
+his thoughts of her, with every action of his life. He had prepared
+jewels for her, and decorated chambers, and laid out pleasure
+gardens. He was a man, simple in his own habits, and not given to
+squandering his means; but now, at this one moment of his life, when
+everything was to be done for the delectation of her who was to be
+his life's companion, he could afford to let prudence go by the
+board. True that his pleasure in doing this had been sorely marred by
+her coldness, by her indifference, even by her self-abnegation; but
+he had continued to buoy himself up with the idea that all would come
+right when she should be his wife. Now she had told him that she
+would never willingly speak to him again,&mdash;and he believed her.</p>
+
+<p>He went up to his house, and into his bedroom, and then he sat
+thinking of it all. And as he thought he heard the voices and the
+tools of the men at their work; and knew that things were being done
+which, for him, would never be of avail. He remained there for a
+couple of hours without moving. Then he got up and gave the
+housekeeper instructions to pack up his portmanteau, and the groom
+orders to bring his gig to the door. "He was going away," he said,
+and his letters were to be addressed to his club in London. That
+afternoon he drove himself into Salisbury that he might catch the
+evening express train up, and that night he slept at a hotel in
+London.</p>
+
+
+<p><a name="c65" id="c65"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>CHAPTER LXV.</h3>
+<h4>MARY LOWTHER LEAVES BULLHAMPTON.<br />&nbsp;</h4>
+
+
+<p><img class="left" src="images/ch65a.jpg" width="310" alt="Illustration" />
+It was considerably past one o'clock, and the children's dinner was
+upon the table in the dining parlour before anyone in the vicarage
+had seen Mary Lowther since the departure of the Squire. When she
+left Mr. Gilmore, she had gone to her own room, and no one had
+disturbed her. As the children were being seated, Fenwick returned,
+and his wife put into his hand the note which Gilmore had left for
+her.</p>
+
+<p>"What passed between them?" he asked in a whisper.</p>
+
+<p>His wife shook her head. "I have not seen her," she said, "but he
+talks of speaking plainly, and I suppose it was bitter enough."</p>
+
+<p>"He can be very bitter if he's driven hard," said the Vicar; "and he
+has been driven very hard," he added, after a while.</p>
+
+<p>As soon as the children had eaten their dinner, Mrs. Fenwick went up
+to Mary's room with the Squire's note in her hand. She knocked, and
+was at once admitted, and she found Mary sitting at her writing-desk.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you not come to lunch, Mary?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes,&mdash;if I ought. I suppose I might not have a cup of tea brought up
+here?"</p>
+
+<p>"You shall have whatever you like,&mdash;here or anywhere else, as far as
+the vicarage goes. What did he say to you this morning?"</p>
+
+<p>"It is of no use that I should tell you, Janet."</p>
+
+<p>"You did not yield to him, then?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly, I did not. Certainly I never shall yield to him. Dear
+Janet, pray take that as a certainty. Let me make you sure at any
+rate of that. He must be sure of it himself."</p>
+
+<p>"Here is his note to me, written, I suppose, after you left him."
+Mary took the scrap of paper from her hand and read it. "He is not
+sure, you see," continued Mrs. Fenwick. "He has written to me, and I
+suppose that I must answer him."</p>
+
+<p>"He shall certainly never have to blush for me as his wife," said
+Mary. But she would not tell her friend of the hard words that had
+been said to her. She understood well the allusion in Mr. Gilmore's
+note, but she would not explain it. She had determined, as she
+thought about it in her solitude, that it would be better that she
+should never repeat to anyone the cruel words which her lover had
+spoken to her. Doubtless he had received provocation. All his anger,
+as well as all his suffering, had come from a constancy in his love
+for her, which was unsurpassed, if not unequalled, in all that she
+had read of among men. He had been willing to accept her on
+conditions most humiliating to himself; and had then been told, that,
+even with those conditions, he was not to have her. She was bound to
+forgive him almost any offence that he could bestow upon her. He had
+spoken to her in his wrath words which she thought to be not only
+cruel but unmanly. She had told him that she would never speak
+willingly to him again; and she would keep her word. But she would
+forgive him. She was bound to forgive him any injury, let it be what
+it might. She would forgive him;&mdash;and as a sign to herself of her
+pardon she would say no word of his offence to her friends, the
+Fenwicks. "He shall certainly never have to blush for me as his
+wife," she said, as she returned the note to Mrs. Fenwick.</p>
+
+<p>"You mean, that you never will be his wife?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly I mean that."</p>
+
+<p>"Have you quarrelled with him, Mary?"</p>
+
+<p>"Quarrelled? How am I to answer that? It will be better that we
+should not meet again. Of course, our interview could not be pleasant
+for either of us. I do not wish him to think that there has been a
+quarrel."</p>
+
+<p>"No man ever did a woman more honour than he has done to you."</p>
+
+<p>"Dearest Janet, let it be dropped;&mdash;pray let it be dropped. I am sure
+you believe me now when I say that it can do no good. I am writing to
+my aunt this moment to tell her that I will return. What day shall I
+name?"</p>
+
+<p>"Have you written to your cousin?"</p>
+
+<p>"No I have not written to my cousin. I have not been able to get
+through it all, Janet, quite so easily as that."</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose you had better go now."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes;&mdash;I must go now. I should be a thorn in his side if I were to
+remain here."</p>
+
+<p>"He will not remain, Mary."</p>
+
+<p>"He shall have the choice as far as I am concerned. You must let him
+know at once that I am going. I think I will say Saturday,&mdash;the day
+after to-morrow. I could hardly get away to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly not. Why should you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yet I am bound to hurry myself,&mdash;to release him. And, Janet, will
+you give him these? They are all here,&mdash;the rubies and all. Ah, me!
+he touched me that day."</p>
+
+<p>"How like a gentleman he has behaved always."</p>
+
+<p>"It was not that I cared for the stupid stones. You know that I care
+nothing for anything of the kind. But there was a sort of trust in
+it,&mdash;a desire to show me that everything should be mine,&mdash;which would
+have made me love him,&mdash;if it had been possible."</p>
+
+<p>"I would give one hand that you had never seen your cousin."</p>
+
+<p>"And I will give one hand because I have," said Mary, stretching out
+her right arm. "Nay, I will give both; I will give all, because,
+having seen him, he is what he is to me. But, Janet, when you return
+to him these things say a gentle word from me. I have cost him money,
+I fear."</p>
+
+<p>"He will think but little of that. He would have given you willingly
+the last acre of his land, had you wanted it."</p>
+
+<p>"But I did not want it. That was the thing. And all these have been
+altered, as they would not have been altered, but for me. I do repent
+that I have brought all this trouble upon him. I cannot do more now
+than ask you to say so when you restore to him his property."</p>
+
+<p>"He will probably pitch them into the cart-ruts. Indeed, I will not
+give them to him. I will simply tell him that they are in my hands,
+and Frank shall have them locked up at the banker's. Well;&mdash;I suppose
+I had better go down and write him a line."</p>
+
+<p>"And I will name Saturday to my aunt," said Mary.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Fenwick immediately went to her desk, and wrote to her
+friend.<br />&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+<blockquote>
+<p class="noindent"><span class="smallcaps">Dear Harry</span>,</p>
+
+<p>I am sure it is of no use. Knowing how persistent is your
+constancy, I would not say so were I not quite, quite
+certain. She goes to Loring on Saturday. Will it not be
+better that you should come to us for awhile after she has
+left us. You will be less desolate with Frank than you
+would be alone.</p>
+
+<p class="ind10">Ever yours,</p>
+
+<p class="ind15"><span class="smallcaps">Janet Fenwick</span>.</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">She has
+left your jewels with me. I merely tell you this
+for your information;&mdash;not to trouble you with the things
+now.<br />&nbsp;</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+
+<p>And then she added a second postscript.<br />&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+<blockquote>
+<p class="noindent">She regrets
+deeply what you have suffered on her account,
+and bids me beg you to forgive her.<br />&nbsp;</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+
+<p>Thus it was settled that Mary Lowther should leave Bullhampton, again
+returning to Loring, as she had done before, in order that she might
+escape from her suitor. In writing to her aunt she had thought it
+best to say nothing of Walter Marrable. She had not as yet written to
+her cousin, postponing that work for the following day. She would
+have postponed it longer had it been possible; but she felt herself
+to be bound to let him have her reply before he left Dunripple. She
+would have much preferred to return to Loring, to have put miles
+between herself and Bullhampton, before she wrote a letter which must
+contain words of happy joy. It would have gratified her to have
+postponed for awhile all her future happiness, knowing that it was
+there before her, and that it would come to her at last. But it could
+not be postponed. Her cousin's letter was burning her pocket. She
+already felt that she was treating him badly in keeping it by her
+without sending him the reply that would make him happy. She could
+not bring herself to write the letter till the other matter was
+absolutely settled; and yet, all delay was treachery to him; for,&mdash;as
+she repeated to herself again and again,&mdash;there could be no answer
+but one. She had, however, settled it all now. On the Saturday
+morning she would start for Loring, and she would write her letter on
+the Friday in time for that day's post. Walter would still be at
+Dunripple on the Sunday, and on the Sunday morning her letter would
+reach him. She had studied the course of post between Bullhampton and
+her lover's future residence, and knew to an hour when her letter
+would be in his hands.</p>
+
+<p>On that afternoon she could hardly maintain the tranquillity of her
+usual demeanour when she met the Vicar before dinner. Not a word,
+however, was said about Gilmore. Fenwick partly understood that he
+and his wife were in some degree responsible for the shipwreck that
+had come, and had determined that Mary was to be forgiven,&mdash;at any
+rate by him. He and his wife had taken counsel together, and had
+resolved that, unless circumstances should demand it, they would
+never again mention the Squire's name in Mary Lowther's hearing. The
+attempt had been made and had utterly failed, and now there must be
+an end of it. On the next morning he heard that Gilmore had gone up
+to London, and he went up to the Privets to learn what he could from
+the servants there. No one knew more than that the Squire's letters
+were to be directed to him at his Club. The men were still at work
+about the place; but Ambrose told him that they were all at sea as to
+what they should do, and appealed to him for orders. "If we shut off
+on Saturday, sir, the whole place'll be a muck of mud and nothin'
+else all winter," said the gardener. The Vicar suggested that after
+all a muck of mud outside the house wouldn't do much harm. "But
+master ain't the man to put up with that all'ays, and it'll cost
+twice as much to have 'em about the place again arter a bit." This,
+however, was the least trouble. If Ambrose was disconsolate out of
+doors, the man who was looking after the work indoors was twice more
+so. "If we be to work on up to Saturday night," he said, "and then do
+never a stroke more, we be a doing nothing but mischief. Better leave
+it at once nor that, sir." Then Fenwick was obliged to take upon
+himself to give certain orders. The papering of the rooms should be
+finished where the walls had been already disturbed, and the cornices
+completed, and the wood-work painted. But as for the furniture,
+hangings, and such like, they should be left till further orders
+should be received from the owner. As for the mud and muck in the
+garden, his only care was that the place should not be so left as to
+justify the neighbours in saying that Mr. Gilmore was demented. But
+he would be able to get instructions from his friend, or perhaps to
+see him, in time to save danger in that respect.</p>
+
+<p>In the meantime Mary Lowther had gone up to her room, and seated
+herself with her blotting-book and pens and ink. She had now before
+her the pleasure,&mdash;or was it a task?&mdash;of answering her cousin's
+letter. She had that letter in her hand, and had already read it
+twice this morning. She had thought that she would so well know how
+to answer it; but, now that the pen was in her hand, she found that
+the thing to be done was not so easy. How much must she tell him, and
+how should she tell it? It was not that there was anything which she
+desired to keep back from him. She was willing,&mdash;nay, desirous,&mdash;that
+he should know all that she had said, and done, and thought; but it
+would have been a blessing if all could have been told to him by
+other agency than her own. He would not condemn her. Nor, as she
+thought of her own conduct back from one scene to another, did she
+condemn herself. Yet there was that of which she could not write
+without a feeling of shame. And then, how could she be happy, when
+she had caused so much misery? And how could she write her letter
+without expressing her happiness? She wished that her own identity
+might be divided, so that she might rejoice over Walter's love with
+the one moiety, and grieve with the other at all the trouble she had
+brought upon the man whose love to her had been so constant. She sat
+with the open letter in her hand, thinking over all this, till she
+told herself at last that no further thinking could avail her. She
+must bend herself over the table, and take the pen in her hand, and
+write the words, let them come as they would.</p>
+
+<p>Her letter, she thought, must be longer than his. He had a knack of
+writing short letters; and then there had been so little for him to
+say. He had merely a single question to ask; and, although he had
+asked it more than once,&mdash;as is the manner of people in asking such
+questions,&mdash;still, a sheet of note-paper loosely filled had sufficed.
+Then she read it again. "If you bid me, I will be with you early next
+week." What if she told him nothing, but only bade him come to her?
+After all, would it not be best to write no more than that? Then she
+took her pen, and in three minutes her letter was completed.<br />&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+<blockquote>
+<p class="jright">The Vicarage, Friday.</p>
+
+<p class="noindent"><span class="smallcaps">Dearest, dearest Walter</span>,</p>
+
+<p>Do come to me,&mdash;as soon as you can, and I will never send
+you away again. I go to Loring to-morrow, and, of course,
+you must come there. I cannot write it all; but I will
+tell you everything when we meet. I am very sorry for your
+cousin Gregory, because he was so good.</p>
+
+<p class="ind12">Always your own,</p>
+
+<p class="ind18"><span class="smallcaps">Mary</span>.</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">But do not think that
+I want to hurry you. I have said
+come at once; but I do not mean that so as to interfere
+with you. You must have so many things to do; and if I get
+one line from you to say that you will come, I can be ever
+so patient. I have not been happy once since we parted. It
+is easy for people to say that they will conquer their
+feelings, but it has seemed to me to be quite impossible
+to do it. I shall never try again.<br />&nbsp;</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+
+<p>As soon as the body of her letter was written, she could have
+continued her postscript for ever. It seemed to her then as though
+nothing would be more delightful than to let the words flow on with
+full expressions of all her love and happiness. To write to him was
+pleasant enough, as long as there came on her no need to mention Mr.
+Gilmore's name.</p>
+
+<p>That was to be her last evening at Bullhampton; and though no
+allusion was made to the subject, they were all thinking that she
+could never return to Bullhampton again. She had been almost as much
+at home with them as with her aunt at Loring; and now she must leave
+the place for ever. But they said not a word; and the evening passed
+by almost as had passed all other evenings. The remembrance of what
+had taken place since she had been at Bullhampton made it almost
+impossible to speak of her departure.</p>
+
+<p>In the morning she was to be again driven to the railway-station at
+Westbury. Mr. Fenwick had work in his parish which would keep him at
+home, and she was to be trusted to the driving of the groom. "If I
+were to be away to-morrow," he said, as he parted from her that
+evening, "the churchwardens would have me up to the archdeacon, and
+the archdeacon might tell the Marquis, and where should I be then?"
+Of course she begged him not to give it a second thought. "Dear
+Mary," he said, "I should of all things have liked to have seen the
+last of you,&mdash;that you might know that I love you as well as ever."
+Then she burst into tears, and kissed him, and told him that she
+would always look to him as to a brother.</p>
+
+<p>She called Mrs. Fenwick into her own room before she undressed.
+"Janet," she said, "dearest Janet, we are not to part for ever?"</p>
+
+<p>"For ever! No, certainly. Why for ever?"</p>
+
+<p>"I shall never see you, unless you will come to me. Promise me that
+if ever I have a house you will come to me."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course you will have a house, Mary."</p>
+
+<p>"And you will come and see me,&mdash;will you not? Promise that you will
+come to me. I can never come back to dear, dear Bullhampton."</p>
+
+<p>"No doubt we shall meet, Mary."</p>
+
+<p>"And you must bring the children&mdash;my darling Flos! How else ever
+shall I see her? And you must write to me, Janet."</p>
+
+<p>"I will write,&mdash;as often as you do, I don't doubt."</p>
+
+<p>"You must tell me how he is, Janet. You must not suppose that I do
+not care for his welfare because I have not loved him. I know that my
+coming here has been a curse to him. But I could not help it. Could I
+have helped it, Janet?"</p>
+
+<p>"Poor fellow! I wish it had not been so."</p>
+
+<p>"But you do not blame me;&mdash;not much? Oh, Janet, say that you do not
+condemn me."</p>
+
+<p>"I can say that with most perfect truth. I do not blame you. It has
+been most unfortunate; but I do not blame you. I am sure that you
+have struggled to do the best that you could."</p>
+
+<p>"God bless you, my dearest, dearest friend! If you could only know
+how anxious I have been not to be wrong. But things have been wrong,
+and I could not put them right."</p>
+
+<p>On the next morning they packed her into the little four-wheeled
+phaeton, and so she left Bullhampton. "I believe her to be as good a
+girl as ever lived," said the Vicar; "but all the same, I wish with
+all my heart that she had never come to Bullhampton."</p>
+
+
+<p><a name="c66" id="c66"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>CHAPTER LXVI.</h3>
+<h4>AT THE MILL.<br />&nbsp;</h4>
+
+
+<p>The presence of Carry Brattle was required in Salisbury for the trial
+of John Burrows and Lawrence Acorn on Wednesday the 22nd of August.
+Our Vicar, who had learned that the judges would come into the city
+only late on the previous evening, and that the day following their
+entrance would doubtless be so fully occupied with other matters as
+to render it very improbable that the affair of the murder would then
+come up, had endeavoured to get permission to postpone Carry's
+journey; but the little men in authority are always stern on such
+points, and witnesses are usually treated as persons who are not
+entitled to have any views as to their own personal comfort or
+welfare. Lawyers, who are paid for their presence, may plead other
+engagements, and their pleas will be considered; and if a witness be
+a lord, it may perhaps be thought very hard that he should be dragged
+away from his amusements. But the ordinary commonplace witness must
+simply listen and obey&mdash;at his peril. It was thus decided that Carry
+must be in Salisbury on the Wednesday, and remain there, hanging
+about the Court, till her services should be wanted. Fenwick, who had
+been in Salisbury, had seen that accommodation should be provided for
+her and for the miller at the house of Mrs. Stiggs.</p>
+
+<p>The miller had decided upon going with his daughter. The Vicar did
+not go down to the mill again; but Mrs. Fenwick had seen Brattle, and
+had learned that such was to be the case. The old man said nothing to
+his own people about it till the Monday afternoon, up to which time
+Fanny was prepared to accompany her sister. He was then told, when he
+came in from the mill for his tea, that word had come down from the
+vicarage that there would be two bed-rooms for them at Mrs. Stiggs'
+house. "I don't know why there should be the cost of a second room,"
+said Fanny; "Carry and I won't want two beds."</p>
+
+<p>Up to this time there had been no reconciliation between the miller
+and his younger daughter. Carry would ask her father whether she
+should do this or that, and the miller would answer her as a surly
+master will answer a servant whom he does not like; but the father,
+as a father, had never spoken to the child; nor, up to this moment,
+had he said a word even to his wife of his intended journey to
+Salisbury. But now he was driven to speak. He had placed himself in
+the arm chair, and was sitting with his hands on his knees gazing
+into the empty fire-grate. Carry was standing at the open window,
+pulling the dead leaves off three or four geraniums which her mother
+kept there in pots. Fanny was passing in and out from the back
+kitchen, in which the water for their tea was being boiled, and Mrs.
+Brattle was in her usual place with her spectacles on, and a darning
+needle in her hand. A minute was allowed to pass by before the miller
+answered his eldest daughter.</p>
+
+<p>"There'll be two beds wanted," he said; "I told Muster Fenwick as I'd
+go with the girl myself;&mdash;and so I wull."</p>
+
+<p>Carry started so that she broke the flower which she was touching.
+Mrs. Brattle immediately stopped her needle, and withdrew her
+spectacles from her nose. Fanny, who was that instant bringing the
+tea-pot out of the back kitchen, put it down among the tea cups, and
+stood still to consider what she had heard.</p>
+
+<p>"Dear, dear, dear!" said the mother.</p>
+
+<p>"Father," said Fanny, coming up to him, and just touching him with
+her hand; "'twill be best for you to go, much best. I am heartily
+glad on it, and so will Carry be."</p>
+
+<p>"I knows nowt about that," said the miller; "but I mean to go, and
+that's all about it. I ain't a been to Salsbry these fifteen year and
+more, and I shan't be there never again."</p>
+
+<p>"There's no saying that, father," said Fanny.</p>
+
+<p>"And it ain't for no pleasure as I'm agoing now. Nobody 'll s'pect
+that of me. I'd liever let the millstone come on my foot."</p>
+
+<p>There was nothing more said about it that evening, nothing more at
+least in the miller's hearing. Carry and her sister were discussing
+it nearly the whole night. It was very soon plain to Fanny that Carry
+had heard the tidings with dismay. To be alone with her father for
+two, three, or perhaps four days, seemed to her to be so terrible,
+that she hardly knew how to face the misery and gloom of his
+company,&mdash;in addition to the fears she had as to what they would say
+and do to her in the Court. Since she had been home, she had learned
+almost to tremble at the sound of her father's foot; and yet she had
+known that he would not harm her, would hardly notice her, would not
+do more than look at her. But now, for three long frightful days to
+come, she would be subject to his wrath during every moment of her
+life.</p>
+
+<p>"Will he speak to me, Fanny, d'ye think?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course he'll speak to you, child."</p>
+
+<p>"But he hasn't, you know,&mdash;not since I've been home; not once; not as
+he does to you and mother. I know he hates me, and wishes I was dead.
+And, Fanny, I wishes it myself every day of my life."</p>
+
+<p>"He wishes nothing of the kind, Carry."</p>
+
+<p>"Why don't he say one kind word to me, then? I know I've been bad.
+But I ain't a done a single thing since I've been home as 'd a' made
+him angry if he seed it, or said a word as he mightn't a' heard."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think you have, dear."</p>
+
+<p>"Then why can't he come round, if it was ever so little? I'd sooner
+he'd beat me; that I would."</p>
+
+<p>"He'll never do that, Carry. I don't know as he ever laid a hand upon
+one of us since we was little things."</p>
+
+<p>"It 'd be better than never speaking to a girl. Only for you and
+mother, Fan, I'd be off again."</p>
+
+<p>"You would not. You know you would not. How dare you say that?"</p>
+
+<p>"But why shouldn't he say a word to one, so that one shouldn't go
+about like a dead body in the house?"</p>
+
+<p>"Carry dear, listen to this. If you'll manage well; if you'll be good
+to him, and patient while you are with him; if you'll bear with him,
+and yet be gentle when <span class="nowrap">he&mdash;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"I am gentle,&mdash;always,&mdash;now."</p>
+
+<p>"You are, dear; but when he speaks, as he'll have to speak when
+you're all alone like, be very gentle. Maybe, Carry, when you've come
+back, he will be gentle with you."</p>
+
+<p>They had ever so much more to discuss. Would Sam be at the trial?
+And, if so, would he and his father speak to each other? They had
+both been told that Sam had been summoned, and that the police would
+enforce his attendance; but they were neither of them sure whether he
+would be there in custody or as a free man. At last they went to
+sleep, but Carry's slumbers were not very sound. As has been told
+before, it was the miller's custom to be up every morning at five.
+The two girls would afterwards rise at six, and then, an hour after
+that, Mrs. Brattle would be instructed that her time had come. On the
+Tuesday morning, however, the miller was not the first of the family
+to leave his bed. Carry crept out of hers by the earliest dawn of
+daylight, without waking her sister, and put on her clothes
+stealthily. Then she made her way silently to the front door, which
+she opened, and stood there outside waiting till her father should
+come. The morning, though it was in August, was chill, and the time
+seemed to be very long. She had managed to look at the old clock as
+she passed, and had seen that it wanted a quarter to five. She knew
+that her father was never later than five. What, if on this special
+morning he should not come, just because she had resolved, after many
+inward struggles, to make one great effort to obtain his pardon.</p>
+
+<p>At last he was coming. She heard his step in the passage, and then
+she was aware that he had stopped when he found the fastenings of the
+door unloosed. She perceived too that he delayed to examine the
+lock,&mdash;as it was natural that he should do; and she had forgotten
+that he would be arrested by the open door. Thinking of this in the
+moment of time that was allowed to her, she hurried forward and
+encountered him.</p>
+
+<p>"Father," she said; "it is I."</p>
+
+<p>He was angry that she should have dared to unbolt the door, or to
+withdraw the bars. What was she, that she should be trusted to open
+or to close the house? And there came upon him some idea of wanton
+and improper conduct. Why was she there at that hour? Must it be that
+he should put her again from the shelter of his roof?</p>
+
+<p>Carry was clever enough to perceive in a moment what was passing in
+the old man's mind. "Father," she said, "it was to see you. And I
+thought,&mdash;perhaps,&mdash;I might say it out here." He believed her at
+once. In whatever spirit he might accept her present effort, that
+other idea had already vanished. She was there that they two might be
+alone together in the fresh morning air, and he knew that it was so.
+"Father," she said, looking up into his face. Then she fell on the
+ground at his feet, and embraced his knees, and lay there sobbing.
+She had intended to ask him for forgiveness, but she was not able to
+say a word. Nor did he speak for awhile; but he stooped and raised
+her up tenderly; and then, when she was again standing by him, he
+stepped on as though he were going to the mill without a word. But he
+had not rebuked her, and his touch had been very gentle. "Father,"
+she said, following him, "if you could forgive me! I know I have been
+bad, but if you could forgive me!"</p>
+
+<p>He went to the very door of the mill before he turned; and she, when
+she saw that he did not come back to her, paused upon the bridge. She
+had used all her eloquence. She knew no other words with which to
+move him. She felt that she had failed, but she could do no more. But
+he stopped again without entering the mill.</p>
+
+<p>"Child," he said at last, "come here, then." She ran at once to meet
+him. "I will forgive thee. There. I will forgive thee, and trust thou
+may'st be a better girl than thou hast been."</p>
+
+<p>She flew to him and threw her arms round his neck and kissed his face
+and breast. "Oh, father," she said, "I will be good. I will try to be
+good. Only you will speak to me."</p>
+
+
+<div class="center"><a name="il22" id="il22"></a>
+<table style="margin: 0 auto" cellpadding="4px">
+  <tr>
+    <td align="center">
+      <a href="images/il22.jpg">
+      <img src="images/il22-t.jpg" height="500"
+      alt='"Oh, father," she said, "I will be good."' /></a>
+    </td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="center">
+      <span class="caption">"Oh, father," she said, "I will be good."<br />
+      Click to <a href="images/il22.jpg">ENLARGE</a></span>
+    </td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>"Get thee into the house now. I have forgiven thee." So saying he
+passed on to his morning's work.</p>
+
+<p>Carry, running into the house, at once roused her sister. "Fanny,"
+she exclaimed, "he has forgiven me at last; he has said that he will
+forgive me."</p>
+
+<p>But to the miller's mind, and to his sense of justice, the
+forgiveness thus spoken did not suffice. When he returned to
+breakfast, Mrs. Brattle had, of course, been told of the morning's
+work, and had rejoiced greatly. It was to her as though the greatest
+burden of her life had now been taken from her weary back. Her girl,
+to her loving motherly heart, now that he who had in all things been
+the lord of her life had vouchsafed his pardon to the poor sinner,
+would be as pure as when she had played about the mill in all her
+girlish innocence. The mother had known that her child was still
+under a cloud, but the cloud to her had consisted in the father's
+wrath rather than in the feeling of any public shame. To her a sin
+repented was a sin no more, and her love for her child made her sure
+of the sincerity of that repentance. But there could be no joy over
+the sinner in this world till the head of the house should again have
+taken her to his heart. When the miller came in to his breakfast the
+three women were standing together, not without some outward marks of
+contentment. Mrs. Brattle's cap was clean, and even Fanny, who was
+ever tidy and never smart, had managed in some way to add something
+bright to her appearance. Where is the woman who, when she has been
+pleased, will not show her pleasure by some sign in her outward
+garniture? But still there was anxiety. "Will he call me Carry?" the
+girl had asked. He had not done so when he pronounced her pardon at
+the mill door. Though they were standing together they had not
+decided on any line of action. The pardon had been spoken and they
+were sure that it would not be revoked; but how it would operate at
+first none of them had even guessed.</p>
+
+<p>The miller, when he had entered the room and come among them, stood
+with his two hands resting on the round table, and thus he addressed
+them: "It was a bad time with us when the girl, whom we had all loved
+a'most too well, forgot herself and us, and brought us to shame,&mdash;we
+who had never known shame afore,&mdash;and became a thing so vile as I
+won't name it. It was well nigh the death o' me, I know."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, father!" exclaimed Fanny.</p>
+
+<p>"Hold your peace, Fanny, and let me say my say out. It was very bad
+then; and when she come back to us, and was took in, so that she
+might have her bit to eat under an honest roof, it was bad
+still;&mdash;for she was a shame to us as had never been shamed afore. For
+myself I felt so, that though she was allays near me, my heart was
+away from her, and she was not one with me, not as her sister is one,
+and her mother, who never know'd a thought in her heart as wasn't fit
+for a woman to have there." By this time Carry was sobbing on her
+mother's bosom, and it would be difficult to say whose affliction was
+the sharpest. "But them as falls may right themselves, unless they be
+chance killed as they falls. If my child be sorry for her
+<span class="nowrap">sin&mdash;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"Oh, father, I am sorry."</p>
+
+<p>"I will bring myself to forgive her. That it won't stick here," and
+the miller struck his heart violently with his open palm, "I won't be
+such a liar as to say. For there ain't no good in a lie. But there
+shall be never a word about it more out o' my mouth,&mdash;and she may
+come to me again as my child."</p>
+
+<p>There was a solemnity about the old man's speech which struck them
+all with so much awe that none of them for a while knew how to move
+or to speak. Fanny was the first to stir, and she came to him and put
+her arm through his and leaned her head upon his shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"Get me my breakfast, girl," he said to her. But before he had moved
+Carry had thrown herself weeping on his bosom. "That will do," he
+said. "That will do. Sit down and eat thy victuals." Then there was
+not another word said, and the breakfast passed off in silence.</p>
+
+<p>Though the women talked of what had occurred throughout the day, not
+a word more dropped from the miller's mouth upon the subject. When he
+came in to dinner he took his food from Carry's hand and thanked
+her,&mdash;as he would have thanked his elder daughter,&mdash;but he did not
+call her by her name. Much had to be done in preparing for the
+morrow's journey, and for the days through which they two might be
+detained at the assizes. The miller had borrowed a cart in which he
+was to drive himself and his daughter to the Bullhampton road
+station, and, when he went to bed, he expressed his determination of
+starting at nine, so as to catch a certain train into Salisbury. They
+had been told that it would be sufficient if they were in the city
+that day at one o'clock.</p>
+
+<p>On the next morning the miller was in his mill as usual in the
+morning. He said nothing about the work, but the women knew that it
+must in the main stand still. Everything could not be trusted to one
+man, and that man a hireling. But nothing was said of this. He went
+into his mill, and the women prepared his breakfast, and the clean
+shirt and the tidy Sunday coat in which he was to travel. And Carry
+was ready dressed for the journey;&mdash;so pretty, with her bright curls
+and sweet dimpled cheeks, but still with that look of fear and sorrow
+which the coming ordeal could not but produce. The miller returned,
+dressed himself as he was desired, and took his place at the table in
+the kitchen; when the front door was again opened,&mdash;and Sam Brattle
+stood among them!</p>
+
+<p>"Father," said he, "I've turned up just in time."</p>
+
+<p>Of course the consternation among them was great; but no reference
+was made to the quarrel which had divided the father and son when
+last they had parted. Sam explained that he had come across the
+country from the north, travelling chiefly by railway, but that he
+had walked from the Swindon station to Marlborough on the preceding
+evening, and from thence to Bullhampton that morning. He had come by
+Birmingham and Gloucester, and thence to Swindon.</p>
+
+<p>"And now, mother, if you'll give me a mouthful of some'at to eat, you
+won't find that I'm above eating of it."</p>
+
+<p>He had been summoned to Salisbury, he said, for that day, but nothing
+should induce him to go there till the Friday. He surmised that he
+knew a thing or two, and as the trial wouldn't come off before Friday
+at the earliest, he wouldn't show his face in Salisbury before that
+day. He strongly urged Carry to be equally sagacious, and used some
+energetic arguments to the same effect on his father, when he found
+that his father was also to be at the assizes; but the miller did not
+like to be taught by his son, and declared that as the legal document
+said Wednesday, on the Wednesday his daughter should be there.</p>
+
+<p>"And what about the mill?" asked Sam. The miller only shook his head.
+"Then there's only so much more call for me to stay them two days,"
+said Sam. "I'll be at it hammer and tongs, father, till it's time for
+me to start o' Friday. You tell 'em as how I'm coming. I'll be there
+afore they want me. And when they've got me they won't get much out
+of me, I guess."</p>
+
+<p>To all this the miller made no reply, not forbidding his son to work
+the mill, nor thanking him for the offer. But Mrs. Brattle and Fanny,
+who could read every line in his face, knew that he was well-pleased.</p>
+
+<p>And then there was the confusion of the start. Fanny, in her
+solicitude for her father, brought out a little cushion for his seat.
+"I don't want no cushion to sit on," said he; "give it here to
+Carry." It was the first time that he had called her by her name, and
+it was not lost on the poor girl.</p>
+
+
+<p><a name="c67" id="c67"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>CHAPTER LXVII.</h3>
+<h4>SIR GREGORY MARRABLE HAS A HEADACHE.<br />&nbsp;</h4>
+
+
+<p>Mary Lowther, in her letter to her aunt, had in one line told the
+story of her rupture with Mr. Gilmore. This line had formed a
+postscript, and the writer had hesitated much before she added it.
+She had not intended to write to her aunt on this subject; but she
+had remembered at the last moment how much easier it would be to tell
+the remainder of her story on her arrival at Loring, if so much had
+already been told beforehand. Therefore it was that she had added
+these words. "Everything has been broken off between me and Mr.
+Gilmore&mdash;for ever."</p>
+
+<p>This was a terrible blow upon poor Miss Marrable, who, up to the
+moment of her receiving that letter, thought that her niece was
+disposed of in the manner that had seemed most desirable to all her
+friends. Aunt Sarah loved her niece dearly, and by no means looked
+forward to improved happiness in her own old age when she should be
+left alone in the house at Uphill; but she entertained the view about
+young women which is usual with old women who have young women under
+their charge, and she thought it much best that this special young
+woman should get herself married. The old women are right in their
+views on this matter; and the young women, who on this point are not
+often refractory, are right also. Miss Marrable, who entertained a
+very strong opinion on the subject above-mentioned, was very unhappy
+when she was thus abruptly told by her own peculiar young woman that
+this second engagement had been broken off and sent to the winds. It
+had become a theory on the part of Mary's friends that the Gilmore
+match was the proper thing for her. At last, after many difficulties,
+the Gilmore match had been arranged. The anxiety as to Mary's future
+life was at an end, and the theory of the elders concerned with her
+welfare was to be carried out. Then there came a short note,
+proclaiming her return home, and simply telling as a fact almost
+indifferent,&mdash;in a single line,&mdash;that all the trouble hitherto taken
+as to her own disposition had entirely been thrown away. "Everything
+has been broken off between me and Mr. Gilmore." It was a cruel and a
+heartrending postscript!</p>
+
+<p>Poor Miss Marrable knew very well that she was armed with no parental
+authority. She could hold her theory, and could advise; but she could
+do no more. She could not even scold. And there had been some qualm
+of conscience on her part as to Walter Marrable, now that Walter
+Marrable had been taken in hand and made much of by the baronet,&mdash;and
+now, also, that poor Gregory had been removed from the path. No doubt
+she, Aunt Sarah, had done all in her power to aid the difficulties
+which had separated the two cousins;&mdash;and while she thought that the
+Gilmore match had been the consequence of such aiding on her part,
+she was happy enough in reflecting upon what she had done. Old Sir
+Gregory would not have taken Walter by the hand unless Walter had
+been free to marry Edith Brownlow; and though she could not quite
+resolve that the death of the younger Gregory had been part of the
+family arrangement due to the happy policy of the elder Marrables
+generally, still she was quite sure that Walter's present position at
+Dunripple had come entirely from the favour with which he had
+regarded the baronet's wishes as to Edith. Mary was provided for with
+the Squire, who was in immediate possession; and Walter with his
+bride would become as it were the eldest son of Dunripple. It was all
+as comfortable as could be till there came this unfortunate
+postscript.</p>
+
+<p>The letter reached her on Friday, and on Saturday Mary arrived. Miss
+Marrable determined that she would not complain. As regarded her own
+comfort it was doubtless all for the best. But old women are never
+selfish in regard to the marriage of young women. That the young
+women belonging to them should be settled,&mdash;and thus got rid of,&mdash;is
+no doubt the great desire; but, whether the old woman be herself
+married or a spinster, the desire is founded on an adamantine
+confidence that marriage is the most proper and the happiest thing
+for the young woman. The belief is so thorough that the woman would
+cease to be a woman, would already have become a brute, who would
+desire to keep any girl belonging to her out of matrimony for the
+sake of companionship to herself. But no woman does so desire in
+regard to those who are dear and near to her. A dependant, distant in
+blood, or a paid assistant, may find here and there a want of the
+true feminine sympathy; but in regard to a daughter, or one held as a
+daughter, it is never wanting. "As the pelican loveth her young do I
+love thee; and therefore will I give thee away in marriage to some
+one strong enough to hold thee, even though my heartstrings be torn
+asunder by the parting." Such is always the heart's declaration of
+the mother respecting her daughter. The match-making of mothers is
+the natural result of mother's love; for the ambition of one woman
+for another is never other than this,&mdash;that the one loved by her
+shall be given to a man to be loved more worthily. Poor Aunt Sarah,
+considering of these things during those two lonely days, came to the
+conclusion that if ever Mary were to be so loved again that she might
+be given away, a long time might first elapse; and then she was aware
+that such gifts given late lose much of their value, and have to be
+given cheaply.</p>
+
+<p>Mary herself, as she was driven slowly up the hill to her aunt's
+door, did not share her aunt's melancholy. To be returned as a bad
+shilling, which has been presented over the counter and found to be
+bad, must be very disagreeable to a young woman's feelings. That was
+not the case with Mary Lowther. She had, no doubt, a great sorrow at
+heart. She had created a shipwreck which she did regret most
+bitterly. But the sorrow and the regret were not humiliating, as they
+would have been had they been caused by failure on her own part. And
+then she had behind her the strong comfort of her own rock, of which
+nothing should now rob her,&mdash;which should be a rock for rest and
+safety, and not a rock for shipwreck, and as to the disposition of
+which Aunt Sarah's present ideas were so very erroneous!</p>
+
+<p>It was impossible that the first evening should pass without a word
+or two about poor Gilmore. Mary knew well enough that she had told
+her aunt nothing of her renewed engagement with her cousin; but she
+could not bring herself at once to utter a song of triumph, as she
+would have done had she blurted out all her story. Not a word was
+said about either lover till they were seated together in the
+evening. "What you tell me about Mr. Gilmore has made me so unhappy,"
+said Miss Marrable, sadly.</p>
+
+<p>"It could not be helped, Aunt Sarah. I tried my best, but it could
+not be helped. Of course I have been very, very unhappy myself."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't pretend to understand it."</p>
+
+<p>"And yet it is so easily understood!" said Mary, pleading hard for
+herself. "I did not love him,
+<span class="nowrap">and&mdash;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"But you had accepted him, Mary."</p>
+
+<p>"I know I had. It is so natural that you should think that I have
+behaved badly."</p>
+
+<p>"I have not said so, my dear."</p>
+
+<p>"I know that, Aunt Sarah; but if you think so,&mdash;and of course you
+do,&mdash;write and ask Janet Fenwick. She will tell you everything. You
+know how devoted she is to Mr. Gilmore. She would have done anything
+for him. But even she will tell you that at last I could not help it.
+When I was so very wretched I thought that I would do my best to
+comply with other people's wishes. I got a feeling that nothing
+signified for myself. If they had told me to go into a convent or to
+be a nurse in a hospital I would have gone. I had nothing to care
+for, and if I could do what I was told perhaps it might be best."</p>
+
+<p>"But why did you not go on with it, my dear?"</p>
+
+<p>"It was impossible&mdash;after Walter had written to me."</p>
+
+<p>"But Walter is to marry Edith Brownlow."</p>
+
+<p>"No, dear aunt; no. Walter is to marry me. Don't look like that, Aunt
+Sarah. It is true;&mdash;it is, indeed." She had now dragged her chair
+close to her aunt's seat upon the sofa, so that she could put her
+hands upon her aunt's knees. "All that about Miss Brownlow has been a
+fable."</p>
+
+<p>"Parson John told me that it was fixed."</p>
+
+<p>"It is not fixed. The other thing is fixed. Parson John tells many
+fables. He is to come here."</p>
+
+<p>"Who is to come here?"</p>
+
+<p>"Walter,&mdash;of course. He is to be here,&mdash;I don't know how soon; but I
+shall hear from him. Dear aunt, you must be good to him;&mdash;indeed you
+must. He is your cousin just as much as mine."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not in love with him, Mary."</p>
+
+<p>"But I am, Aunt Sarah. Oh dear, how much I am in love with him! It
+never changed in the least, though I struggled, and struggled not to
+think of him. I broke his picture and burned it;&mdash;and I would not
+have a scrap of his handwriting;&mdash;I would not have near me anything
+that he had even spoken of. But it was no good. I could not get away
+from him for an hour. Now I shall never want to get away from him
+again. As for Mr. Gilmore, it would have come to the same thing at
+last, had I never heard another word from Walter Marrable. I could
+not have done it."</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose we must submit to it," said Aunt Sarah, after a pause.
+This certainly was not the most exhilarating view which might have
+been taken of the matter as far as Mary was concerned; but as it did
+not suggest any open opposition to her scheme, and as there was no
+refusal to see Walter when he should again appear at Uphill as her
+lover, she made no complaint. Miss Marrable went on to inquire how
+Sir Gregory would like these plans, which were so diametrically
+opposed to his own. As to that, Mary could say nothing. No doubt
+Walter would make a clean breast of it to Sir Gregory before he left
+Dunripple, and would be able to tell them what had passed when he
+came to Loring. Mary, however, did not forget to argue that the
+ground on which Walter Marrable stood was his own ground. After the
+death of two men, the youngest of whom was over seventy, the property
+would be his property, and could not be taken from him. If Sir
+Gregory chose to quarrel with him,&mdash;as to the probability of which,
+Mary and her aunt professed very different opinions,&mdash;they must wait.
+Waiting now would be very different from what it had been when their
+prospects in life had not seemed to depend in any degree upon the
+succession to the family property. "And I know myself better now than
+I did then," said Mary. "Though it were to be for all my life, I
+would wait."</p>
+
+<p>On the Monday she got a letter from her cousin. It was very short,
+and there was not a word in it about Sir Gregory or Edith Brownlow.
+It only said that he was the happiest man in the world, and that he
+would be at Loring on the following Saturday. He must return at once
+to Birmingham, but would certainly be at Loring on Saturday. He had
+written to his uncle to ask for hospitality. He did not suppose that
+Parson John would refuse; but should this be the case, he would put
+up at The Dragon. Mary might be quite sure that she would see him on
+Saturday.</p>
+
+<p>And on the Saturday he came. The parson had consented to receive him;
+but, not thinking highly of the wisdom of the proposed visit, had
+worded his letter rather coldly. But of that Walter in his present
+circumstances thought but little. He was hardly within the house
+before he had told his story. "You haven't heard, I suppose," he
+said, "that Mary and I have made it up?"</p>
+
+<p>"How made it up?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well,&mdash;I mean that you shall make us man and wife some day."</p>
+
+<p>"But I thought you were to marry Edith Brownlow."</p>
+
+<p>"Who told you that, sir? I am sure Edith did not, nor yet her mother.
+But I believe these sort of things are often settled without
+consulting the principals."</p>
+
+<p>"And what does my brother say?"</p>
+
+<p>"Sir Gregory, you mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course I mean Sir Gregory. I don't suppose you'd ask your
+father."</p>
+
+<p>"I never had the slightest intention, sir, of asking either one or
+the other. I don't suppose that I am to ask his leave to be married,
+like a young girl; and it isn't likely that any objection on family
+grounds could be made to such a woman as Mary Lowther."</p>
+
+<p>"You needn't ask leave of any one, most noble Hector. That is a
+matter of course. You can marry the cook-maid to-morrow, if you
+please. But I thought you meant to live at Dunripple?"</p>
+
+<p>"So I shall,&mdash;part of the year; if Sir Gregory likes it."</p>
+
+<p>"And that you were to have an allowance and all that sort of thing.
+Now, if you do marry the
+<span class="nowrap">cook-maid&mdash;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"I am not going to marry the cook-maid,&mdash;as you know very well."</p>
+
+<p>"Or if you marry any one else in opposition to my brother's wishes, I
+don't suppose it likely that he'll bestow that which he intended to
+give as a reward to you for following his wishes."</p>
+
+<p>"He can do as he pleases. The moment that it was settled I told him."</p>
+
+<p>"And what did he say?"</p>
+
+<p>"He complained of headache. Sir Gregory very often does complain of
+headache. When I took leave of him, he said I should hear from him."</p>
+
+<p>"Then it's all up with Dunripple for you,&mdash;as long as he lives. I've
+no doubt that since poor Gregory's death your father's interest in
+the property has been disposed of among the Jews to the last
+farthing."</p>
+
+<p>"I shouldn't wonder."</p>
+
+<p>"And you are,&mdash;just where you were, my boy."</p>
+
+<p>"That depends entirely upon Sir Gregory. You may be sure of this,
+sir,&mdash;that I shall ask him for nothing. If the worst comes to the
+worst, I can go to the Jews as well as my father. I won't, unless I
+am driven."</p>
+
+<p>He was with Mary, of course, that evening, walking again along the
+banks of the Lurwell, as they had first done now nearly twelve months
+since. Then the autumn had begun, and now the last of the summer
+months was near its close. How very much had happened to her, or had
+seemed to happen, during the interval. At that time she had thrice
+declined Harry Gilmore's suit; but she had done so without any weight
+on her own conscience. Her friends had wished her to marry the man,
+and therefore she had been troubled; but the trouble had lain light
+upon her, and as she looked back at it all, she felt that at that
+time there had been something of triumph at her heart. A girl when
+she is courted knows at any rate that she is thought worthy of
+courtship, and in this instance she had been at least courted
+worthily. Since then a whole world of trouble had come upon her from
+that source. She had been driven hither and thither, first by love,
+and then by a false idea of duty, till she had come almost to
+shipwreck. And in her tossing she had gone against another barque
+which, for aught she knew, might even yet go down from the effects of
+the collision. She could not be all happy, even though she were again
+leaning on Walter Marrable's arm, or again sitting with it round her
+waist, beneath the shade of the trees on the banks of the Lurwell.</p>
+
+<p>"Then we must wait, and this time we must be patient," she said, when
+he told her of poor Sir Gregory's headache.</p>
+
+<p>"I cannot ask him for anything," said Walter.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course not. Do not ask anybody for anything,&mdash;but just wait. I
+have quite made up my mind that forty-five for the gentleman, and
+thirty-five for the lady, is quite time enough for marrying."</p>
+
+<p>"The grapes are sour," said Walter.</p>
+
+<p>"They are not sour at all, sir," said Mary.</p>
+
+<p>"I was speaking of my own grapes, as I look at them when I use that
+argument for my own comfort. The worst of it is that when we know
+that the grapes are not sour,&mdash;that they are the sweetest grapes in
+the world,&mdash;the argument is of no use. I won't tell any lies about
+it, to myself or anybody else. I want my grapes at once."</p>
+
+<p>"And so do I," said Mary, eagerly; "of course I do. I am not going to
+make any pretence with you. Of course I want them at once. But I have
+learned to know that they are precious enough to be worth the waiting
+for. I made a fool of myself once; but I shall not do it again, let
+Sir Gregory make himself ever so disagreeable."</p>
+
+<p>This was all very pleasant for Captain Marrable. Ah, yes! what other
+moment in a man's life is at all equal to that in which he is being
+flattered to the top of his bent by the love of the woman he loves.
+To be flattered by the love of a woman whom he does not love is
+almost equally unpleasant,&mdash;if the man be anything of a man. But at
+the present moment our Captain was supremely happy. His Thais was
+telling him that he was indeed her king, and should he not take the
+goods with which the gods provided him? To have been robbed of his
+all by a father, and to have an uncle who would have a headache
+instead of making settlements,&mdash;these indeed were drawbacks; but the
+pleasure was so sweet that even such drawbacks as these could hardly
+sully his bliss. "If you knew what your letter was to me!" she said,
+as she leaned against his shoulder. His father and his uncle and all
+the Marrables on the earth might do their worst, they could not rob
+the present hour of its joy.</p>
+
+
+<p><a name="c68" id="c68"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>CHAPTER LXVIII.</h3>
+<h4>THE SQUIRE IS VERY OBSTINATE.<br />&nbsp;</h4>
+
+
+<p>Mr. Gilmore left his own home on a Thursday afternoon, and on the
+Monday when the Vicar again visited the Privets nothing had been
+heard of him. Money had been left with the bailiff for the Saturday
+wages of the men working about the place, but no provision for
+anything had been made beyond that. The Sunday had been wet from
+morning to night, and nothing could possibly be more disconsolate
+than the aspect of things round the house, or more disreputable if
+they were to be left in their present condition. The barrows, and the
+planks, and the pickaxes had been taken away, which things, though
+they are not in themselves beautiful, are safeguards against the
+ill-effects of ugliness, as they inform the eyes why it is that such
+disorder lies around. There was the disorder at the Privets now
+without any such instruction to the eye. Pits were full of muddy
+water, and half-formed paths had become the beds of stagnant pools.
+The Vicar then went into the house, and though there was still a
+workman and a boy who were listlessly pulling about some rolls of
+paper, there were ample signs that misfortune had come and that
+neglect was the consequence. "And all this," said Fenwick to himself,
+"because the man cannot get the idea of a certain woman out of his
+head!" Then he thought of himself and his own character, and asked
+himself whether, in any position of life, he could have been thus
+overruled to misery by circumstances altogether outside himself.
+Misfortunes might come which would be very heavy; his wife or
+children might die; or he might become a pauper; or subject to some
+crushing disease. But Gilmore's trouble had not fallen upon him from
+the hands of Providence. He had set his heart upon the gaining of a
+thing, and was now absolutely broken-hearted because he could not
+have it. And the thing was a woman. Fenwick admitted to himself that
+the thing itself was the most worthy for which a man can struggle;
+but would not admit that even in his search for that a man should
+allow his heart to give way, or his strength to be broken down.</p>
+
+<p>He went up to the house again on the Wednesday, and again on the
+Thursday,&mdash;but nothing had been heard from the Squire. The bailiff
+was very unhappy. Even though there might come a cheque on the
+Saturday morning, which both Fenwick and the bailiff thought to be
+probable, still there would be grave difficulties.</p>
+
+<p>"Here'll be the first of September on us afore we know where we are,"
+said the bailiff, "and is we to go on with the horses?"</p>
+
+<p>For the Squire was of all men the most regular, and began to get his
+horses into condition on the first of September as regularly as he
+began to shoot partridges. The Vicar went home and then made up his
+mind that he would go up to London after his friend. He must provide
+for his next Sunday's duty, but he could do that out of a
+neighbouring parish, and he would start on the morrow. He arranged
+the matter with his wife and with his friend's curate, and on the
+Friday he started.</p>
+
+<p>He drove himself into Salisbury instead of to the Bullhampton Road
+station in order that he might travel by the express train. That at
+least was the reason which he gave to himself and to his wife. But
+there was present to his mind the idea that he might look into the
+court and see how the trial was going on. Poor Carry Brattle would
+have a bad time of it beneath a lawyer's claws. Such a one as Carry,
+of the evil of whose past life there was no doubt, and who would
+appear as a witness against a man whom she had once been engaged to
+marry, would certainly meet with no mercy from a cross-examining
+barrister. The broad landmarks between the respectable and the
+disreputable may guide the tone of a lawyer somewhat, when he has a
+witness in his power; but the finer lines which separate that which
+is at the moment good and true from that which is false and bad
+cannot be discerned amidst the turmoil of a trial, unless the eyes,
+and the ears, and the inner touch of him who has the handling of the
+victim be of a quality more than ordinarily high.</p>
+
+<p>The Vicar drove himself over to Salisbury and had an hour there for
+strolling into the court. He had heard on the previous day that the
+case would be brought on the first thing on the Friday, and it was
+half-past eleven when he made his way in through the crowd. The train
+by which he was to be taken on to London did not start till half-past
+twelve. At that moment the court was occupied in deciding whether a
+certain tradesman, living at Devizes, should or should not be on the
+jury. The man himself objected that, being a butcher, he was, by
+reason of the second nature acquired in his business, too cruel, and
+bloody-minded to be entrusted with an affair of life and death. To a
+proposition in itself so reasonable no direct answer was made; but it
+was argued with great power on behalf of the crown, which seemed to
+think at the time that the whole case depended on getting this one
+particular man into the jury box, that the recalcitrant juryman was
+not in truth a butcher, that he was only a dealer in meat, and that
+though the stain of the blood descended the cruelty did not. Fenwick
+remained there till he heard the case given against the
+pseudo-butcher, and then retired from the court. He had, however,
+just seen Carry Brattle and her father seated side by side on a bench
+in a little outside room appropriated to the witnesses, and there had
+been a constable there seeming to stand on guard over them. The
+miller was sitting, leaning on his stick, with his eyes fixed upon
+the ground, and Carry was pale, wretched, and draggled. Sam had not
+yet made his appearance.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afeard, sir, he'll be in trouble," said Carry to the Vicar.</p>
+
+<p>"Let 'un alone," said the miller; "when they wants 'im he'll be here.
+He know'd more about it nor I did."</p>
+
+<p>That afternoon Fenwick went to the club of which he and Gilmore were
+both members, and found that his friend was in London. He had been
+so, at least, that morning at nine o'clock. According to the porter
+at the club door, Mr. Gilmore called there every morning for his
+letters as soon as the club was open. He did not eat his breakfast
+in the house, nor, as far as the porter's memory went, did he even
+enter the club. Fenwick had lodged himself at an hotel in the
+immediate neighbourhood of Pall-Mall, and he made up his mind that
+his only chance of catching his friend was to be at the steps of the
+club door when it was opened at nine o'clock. So he eat his
+dinner,&mdash;very much in solitude, for on the 28th of August it is not
+often that the coffee rooms of clubs are full,&mdash;and in the evening
+took himself to one of the theatres which was still open. His club
+had been deserted, and it had seemed to him that the streets also
+were empty. One old gentleman, who, together with himself, had
+employed the forces of the establishment that evening, had told him
+that there wasn't a single soul left in London. He had gone to his
+tailor's and had found that both the tailor and the foreman were out
+of town. His publisher,&mdash;for our Vicar did a little in the way of
+light literature on social subjects, and had brought out a pretty
+volume in green and gold on the half-profit system, intending to give
+his share to a certain county hospital,&mdash;his publisher had been in
+the north since the 12th, and would not be back for three weeks. He
+found, however, a confidential young man who was able to tell him
+that the hospital need not increase the number of its wards on this
+occasion. He had dropped down to Dean's Yard to see a clerical
+friend,&mdash;but the house was shut up and he could not even get an
+answer. He sauntered into the Abbey, and found them mending the
+organ. He got into a cab and was driven hither and thither because
+all the streets were pulled up. He called at the War-Office to see a
+young clerk, and found one old messenger fast asleep in his
+arm-chair. "Gone for his holiday, sir," said the man in the
+arm-chair, speaking amidst his dreams, without waiting to hear the
+particular name of the young clerk who was wanted. And yet, when he
+got to the theatre, it was so full that he could hardly find a seat
+on which to sit. In all the world around us there is nothing more
+singular than the emptiness and the fullness of London.</p>
+
+<p>He was up early the next morning and breakfasted before he went out,
+thinking that even should he succeed in catching the Squire, he would
+not be able to persuade the unhappy man to come and breakfast with
+him. At a little before nine he was in Pall-Mall, walking up and down
+before the club, and as the clocks struck the hour he began to be
+impatient. The porter had said that Gilmore always came exactly at
+nine, and within two minutes after that hour the Vicar began to feel
+that his friend was breaking an engagement and behaving badly to him.
+By ten minutes past, the idea had got into his head that all the
+people in Pall-Mall were watching him, and at the quarter he was
+angry and unhappy. He had just counted the seconds up to twenty
+minutes, and had begun to consider that it would be absurd for him to
+walk there all the day, when he saw the Squire coming slowly along
+the street. He had been afraid to make himself comfortable within the
+club, and there to wait for his friend's coming, lest Gilmore should
+have escaped him, not choosing to be thus caught by any one;&mdash;and
+even now he had his fear lest his quarry should slip through his
+fingers. He waited till the Squire had gone up to the porter and
+returned to the street, and then he crossed over and seized him by
+the arm. "Harry," he said, "you didn't expect to see me in
+London;&mdash;did you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly not," said the other, implying very plainly by his looks
+that the meeting had given him no special pleasure.</p>
+
+<p>"I came up yesterday afternoon, and I was at Cutcote's the tailor's,
+and at Messrs. Bring&eacute;mout and Neversell's. Bring&eacute;mout has retired,
+but it's Neversell that does the business. And then I went down to
+see old Drybird, and I called on young Dozey at his office. But
+everybody is out of town. I never saw anything like it. I vote that
+we take to having holidays in the country, and all come to London,
+and live in the empty houses."</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose you came up to look after me?" said Gilmore, with a brow
+as black as a thunder-cloud.</p>
+
+<p>Fenwick perceived that he need not carry on any further his lame
+pretences. "Well, I did. Come, old fellow, this won't do, you know.
+Everything is not to be thrown overboard because a girl doesn't know
+her own mind. Aren't your anchors better than that?"</p>
+
+<p>"I haven't an anchor left," said Gilmore.</p>
+
+<p>"How can you be so weak and so wicked as to say so? Come, Harry, take
+a turn with me in the park. You may be quite sure I shan't let you go
+now I've got you."</p>
+
+<p>"You'll have to let me go," said the other.</p>
+
+<p>"Not till I've told you my mind. Everybody is out of town, so I
+suppose even a parson may light a cigar down here. Harry, you must
+come back with me."</p>
+
+<p>"No;&mdash;I cannot."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mean to say that you will yield up all your strength, all
+your duty, all your life, and throw over every purpose of your
+existence because you have been ill-used by a wench? Is that your
+idea of manhood,&mdash;of that manhood you have so often preached?"</p>
+
+<p>"After what I have suffered there I cannot bear the place."</p>
+
+<p>"You must force yourself to bear it. Do you mean to say that because
+you are unhappy you will not pay your debts?"</p>
+
+<p>"I owe no man a shilling;&mdash;or, if I do, I will pay it to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p>"There are debts you can only settle by daily payments. To every man
+living on your land you owe such a debt. To every friend connected
+with you by name, or blood, or love, you owe such a debt. Do you
+suppose that you can cast yourself adrift, and make yourself a
+by-word, and hurt no one but yourself? Why is it that we hate a
+suicide?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because he sins."</p>
+
+<p>"Because he is a coward, and runs away from the burden which he ought
+to bear gallantly. He throws his load down on the roadside, and does
+not care who may bear it, or who may suffer because he is too poor a
+creature to struggle on! Have you no feeling that, though it may be
+hard with you here,"&mdash;and the Vicar, as he spoke, struck his
+breast,&mdash;"you should so carry your outer self, that the eyes of those
+around you should see nothing of the sorrow within? That is my idea
+of manliness, and I have ever taken you to be a man."</p>
+
+<p>"We work for the esteem of others while we desire it. I desire
+nothing now. She has so knocked me about that I should be a liar if I
+were to say that there is enough manhood left in me to bear it. I
+shan't kill myself."</p>
+
+<p>"No, Harry, you won't do that."</p>
+
+<p>"But I shall give up the place, and go abroad."</p>
+
+<p>"Whom will you serve by that?"</p>
+
+<p>"It is all very well to preach, Frank. Bad as I am I could preach to
+you if there were a matter to preach about. I don't know that there
+is anything much easier than preaching. But as for practising, you
+can't do it if you have not got the strength. A man can't walk if you
+take away his legs. If you break a bird's wing he can't fly, let the
+bird be ever so full of pluck. All that there was in me she has taken
+out of me. I could fight him, and would willingly, if I thought there
+was a chance of his meeting me."</p>
+
+<p>"He would not be such a fool."</p>
+
+<p>"But I could not stand up and look at her."</p>
+
+<p>"She has left Bullhampton, you know."</p>
+
+<p>"It does not matter, Frank. There is the place that I was getting
+ready for her. And if I were there, you and your wife would always be
+thinking about it. And every fellow about the estate knows the whole
+story. It seems to me to be almost inconceivable that a woman should
+have done such a thing."</p>
+
+<p>"She has not meant to act badly, Harry."</p>
+
+<p>"To tell the truth, when I look back at it all, I blame myself more
+than her. A man should never be ass enough to ask any woman a second
+time. But I had got it into my head that it was a disgraceful thing
+to ask and not to have. It is that which kills me now. I do not think
+that I will ever again attempt anything, because failure is so hard
+to me to bear. At any rate, I won't go back to the Privets." This he
+added after a pause, during which the Vicar had been thinking what
+new arguments he could bring up to urge his friend's return.</p>
+
+<p>Fenwick learned that Gilmore had sent a cheque to his bailiff by the
+post of the preceding night. He acknowledged that in sending the
+cheque he had said no more than to bid the man pay what wages were
+due. He had not as yet made up his mind as to any further steps. As
+they walked round the enclosure of St. James's Park together, and as
+the warmth of their old friendship produced freedom of intercourse,
+Gilmore acknowledged a dozen wild schemes that had passed through his
+brain. That to which he was most wedded was a plan for meeting Walter
+Marrable and cudgelling him pretty well to death. Fenwick pointed out
+three or four objections to this. In the first place, Marrable had
+committed no offence whatever against Gilmore. And then, in all
+probability, Marrable might be as good at cudgelling as the Squire
+himself. And thirdly, when the cudgelling was over, the man who began
+the row would certainly be put into prison, and in atonement for that
+would receive no public sympathy. "You can't throw yourself on the
+public pity as a woman might," said the Vicar.</p>
+
+<p>"D&mdash;&mdash; the public pity," said the Squire, who was not
+often driven to
+make his language forcible after that fashion.</p>
+
+<p>Another scheme was that he would publish the whole transaction. And
+here again his friend was obliged to remind him, that a man in his
+position should be reticent rather than outspoken. "You have already
+declared," said the Vicar, "that you can't endure failure, and yet
+you want to make your failure known to all the world." His third
+proposition was more absurd still. He would write such a letter to
+Mary Lowther as would cover her head with red hot coals. He would
+tell her that she had made the world utterly unbearable to him, and
+that she might have the Privets for herself and go and live there. "I
+do not doubt but that such a letter would annoy her," said the Vicar.</p>
+
+<p>"Why should I care how much she is annoyed?"</p>
+
+<p>"Just so;&mdash;but everyone who saw the letter would know that it was
+pretence and bombast. Of course you will do nothing of the kind."</p>
+
+<p>They were together pretty nearly the whole day. Gilmore, no doubt,
+would have avoided the Vicar in the morning had it been possible; but
+now that he had been caught, and had been made to undergo his
+friend's lectures, he was rather grateful than otherwise for
+something in the shape of society. It was Fenwick's desire to induce
+him to return to Bullhampton. If this could not be done, it would no
+doubt be well that some authority should be obtained from him as to
+the management of the place. But this subject had not been mooted as
+yet, because Fenwick felt that if he once acknowledged that the
+runaway might continue to be a runaway, his chance of bringing the
+man back to his own home would be much lessened. As yet, however, he
+had made no impression in that direction. At last they parted on an
+understanding that they were to breakfast together the next morning
+at Fenwick's hotel, and then go to the eleven o'clock Sunday service
+at a certain noted metropolitan church. At breakfast, and during the
+walk to church, Fenwick said not a word to his friend about
+Bullhampton. He talked of church services, of ritual, of the
+quietness of a Sunday in London, and of the Sunday occupations of
+three millions of people not a fourth of whom attend divine service.
+He chose any subject other than that of which Gilmore was thinking.
+But as soon as they were out of church he made another attack upon
+him. "After that, Harry, don't you feel like trying to do your duty?"</p>
+
+<p>"I feel that I can't fly because my wing is broken," said the Squire.</p>
+
+<p>They spent the whole of the afternoon and evening together, but no
+good was done. Gilmore, as far as he had a plan, intended to go
+abroad, travel to the East, or to the West,&mdash;or to the South, if so
+it came about. The Privets might be let if any would choose to take
+the place. As far as he was concerned his income from his tenants
+would be more than he wanted. "As for doing them any good, I never
+did them any good," he said, as he parted from the Vicar for the
+night. "If they can't live on the land without my being at home, I am
+sure they won't if I stay there."</p>
+
+
+<p><a name="c69" id="c69"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>CHAPTER LXIX.</h3>
+<h4>THE TRIAL.<br />&nbsp;</h4>
+
+
+<p>The miller, as he was starting from his house door, had called his
+daughter by her own name for the first time since her return
+home,&mdash;and Carry had been comforted. But no further comfort came to
+her during her journey to Salisbury from her father's speech. He
+hardly spoke the whole morning, and when he did say a word as to any
+matter on the work they had in hand, his voice was low and
+melancholy. Carry knew well, as did every one at Bullhampton, that
+her father was a man not much given to conversation, and she had not
+expected him to talk to her; but the silence, together with the load
+at her heart as to the ordeal of her examination, was very heavy on
+her. If she could have asked questions, and received encouragement,
+she could have borne her position comparatively with ease.</p>
+
+<p>The instructions with which the miller was furnished required that
+Carry Brattle should present herself at a certain office in Salisbury
+at a certain hour on that Wednesday. Exactly at that hour she and her
+father were at the place indicated, already having visited their
+lodgings at Mrs. Stiggs'. They were then told that they would not be
+again wanted on that day, but that they must infallibly be in the
+Court the next morning at half-past nine. The attorney's clerk whom
+they saw, when he learned that Sam Brattle was not yet in Salisbury,
+expressed an opinion as to that young man's iniquity which led Carry
+to think that he was certainly in more danger than either of the
+prisoners. As they left the office, she suggested to her father that
+a message should be immediately sent to Bullhampton after Sam. "Let
+'un be," said the miller; and it was all that he did say. On that
+evening they retired to the interior of one of the bedrooms at
+Trotter's Buildings, at four o'clock in the afternoon, and did not
+leave the house again. Anything more dreary than those hours could
+not be imagined. The miller, who was accustomed to work hard all day
+and then to rest, did not know what to do with his limbs. Carry,
+seeing his misery, and thinking rather of that than her own,
+suggested to him that they should go out and walk round the town.
+"Bide as thee be," said the miller; "it ain't no time now for showing
+theeself." Carry took the rebuke without a word, but turned her head
+to hide her tears.</p>
+
+<p>And the next day was worse, because it was longer. Exactly at
+half-past nine they were down at the court; and there they hung about
+till half-past ten. Then they were told that their affair would not
+be brought on till the Friday, but that at half-past nine on that
+day, it would undoubtedly be commenced; and that if Sam was not there
+then, it would go very hard with Sam. The miller, who was beginning
+to lose his respect for the young man from whom he received these
+communications, muttered something about Sam being all right. "You'll
+find he won't be all right if he isn't here at half-past nine
+to-morrow," said the young man. "There is them as their bark is worse
+than their bite," said the miller. Then they went back to Trotter's
+Buildings, and did not stir outside of Mrs. Stiggs' house throughout
+the whole day.</p>
+
+<p>On the Friday, which was in truth to be the day of the trial, they
+were again in court at half-past nine; and there, as we have seen,
+they were found, two hours later, by Mr. Fenwick, waiting patiently
+while the great preliminary affair of the dealer in meat was being
+settled. At that hour Sam had not made his appearance; but between
+twelve and one he sauntered into the comfortless room in which Carry
+was still sitting with her father. The sight of him was a joy to poor
+Carry, as he would speak to her, and tell her something of what was
+going on. "I'm about in time for the play, father," he said, coming
+up to them. The miller picked up his hat, and scratched his head, and
+muttered something. But there had been a sparkle in his eye when he
+saw Sam. In truth, the sight in all the world most agreeable to the
+old man's eyes was the figure of his youngest son. To the miller no
+Apollo could have been more perfect in beauty, and no Hercules more
+useful in strength. Carry's sweet woman's brightness had once been as
+dear to him,&mdash;but all that had now passed away.</p>
+
+<p>"Is it a'going all through?" asked the miller, referring to the mill.</p>
+
+<p>"Running as pretty as a coach-and-four when I left at seven this
+morning," said Sam.</p>
+
+<p>"And how did thee come?"</p>
+
+<p>"By the marrow-bone stage, as don't pay no tolls; how else?" The
+miller did not express a single word of approbation, but he looked up
+and down at his son's legs and limbs, delighted to think that the
+young man was at work in the mill this morning, had since that walked
+seventeen miles, and now stood before them showing no sign of
+fatigue.</p>
+
+<p>"What are they a'doing on now, Sam?" asked Carry, in a whisper. Sam
+had already been into the court, and was able to inform them that the
+"big swell of all was making a speech, in which he was telling
+everybody every 'varsal thing about it. And what do you think,
+father?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think nothing," said the miller.</p>
+
+<p>"They've been and found Trumbull's money-box buried in old mother
+Burrows's garden at Pycroft." Carry uttered the slightest possible
+scream as she heard this, thinking of the place which she had known
+so well. "Dash my buttons if they ain't," continued Sam. "It's about
+up with 'em now."</p>
+
+<p>"They'll be hung&mdash;of course," said the miller.</p>
+
+<p>"What asses men is," said Sam; "&mdash;to go to bury the box there! Why
+didn't they smash it into atoms?"</p>
+
+<p>"Them as goes crooked in big things is like to go crooked in little,"
+said the miller.</p>
+
+<p>At about two Sam and Carry were told to go into Court, and way was
+made for the old man to accompany them. At that moment the
+cross-examination was being continued of the man who, early on the
+Sunday morning, had seen the Grinder with his companion in the cart
+on the road leading towards Pycroft Common. A big burly barrister,
+with a broad forehead and grey eyes, was questioning this witness as
+to the identity of the men in the cart; and at every answer that he
+received he turned round to the jury as though he would say "There,
+then, what do you think of the case now, when such a man as that is
+brought before you to give evidence?" "You will swear, then, that
+these two men who are here in the dock were the two men you saw that
+morning in that cart?" The witness said that he would so swear. "You
+knew them both before, of course?" The witness declared that he had
+never seen either of them before in his life. "And you expect the
+jury to believe, now that the lives of these men depend on their
+believing it, that after the lapse of a year you can identify these
+two men, whom you had never seen before, and who were at that time
+being carried along the road at the rate of eight or ten miles an
+hour?" The witness, who had already encountered a good many of these
+questions, and who was inclined to be rough rather than timid, said
+that he didn't care twopence what the jury believed. It was simply
+his business to tell what he knew. Then the judge looked at that
+wicked witness,&mdash;who had talked in this wretched, jeering way about
+twopence!&mdash;looked at him over his spectacles, and shaking his head as
+though with pity at that witness's wickedness, cautioned him as to
+the peril of his body, making, too, a marked reference to the peril
+of his soul by that melancholy wagging of the head. Then the burly
+barrister with the broad forehead looked up beseechingly to the jury.
+Was it right that any man should be hung for any offence against whom
+such a witness as this was brought up to give testimony? It was the
+manifest feeling of the crowd in the court that the witness himself
+ought to be hung immediately. "You may go down, sir," said the burly
+barrister, giving an impression to those who looked on, but did not
+understand, that the case was over as far as it depended on that
+man's evidence. The burly barrister himself was not so sanguine. He
+knew very well that the judge who had wagged his head in so
+melancholy a way at the iniquity of a witness who had dared to say
+that he didn't care twopence, would, when he was summing up, refer to
+the presence of the two prisoners in the cart as a thing fairly
+supported by evidence. The amount of the burly barrister's
+achievement was simply this,&mdash;that for the moment a sort of sympathy
+was excited on behalf of the prisoners by the disapprobation which
+was aroused against the wicked man who hadn't cared twopence.
+Sympathy, like electricity, will run so quick that no man may stop
+it. If sympathy might be made to run through the jury-box there might
+perchance be a man or two there weak enough to entertain it to the
+prejudice of his duty on that day. The hopes of the burly barrister
+in this matter did not go further than that.</p>
+
+<p>Then there was another man put forward who had seen neither of the
+prisoners, but had seen the cart and pony at Pycroft Common, and had
+known that the cart and pony were for the time in the possession of
+the Grinder. He was questioned by the burly barrister about himself
+rather than about his evidence; and when he had been made to own that
+he had been five times in prison, the burly barrister was almost
+justified in the look he gave to the jury, and he shook his head as
+though in sorrow that his learned friend on the other side should
+have dared to bring such a man as that before them as a witness.</p>
+
+<p>Various others were brought up and examined before poor Carry's turn
+had come; and on each occasion, as one after another was dismissed
+from the hands of the burly barrister, here one crushed and
+confounded, there another loud and triumphant, her heart was almost
+in her throat. And yet though she so dreaded the moment when it
+should come, there was a sense of wretched disappointment in that she
+was kept waiting. It was now between four and five, and whispers
+began to be rife that the Crown would not finish their case that day.
+There was much trouble and more amusement with the old woman who had
+been Trumbull's housekeeper. She was very deaf; but it had been
+discovered that there was an old friendship between her and the
+Grinder's mother, and that she had at one time whispered the fact of
+the farmer's money into the ears of Mrs. Burrows of Pycroft Common.
+Deaf as she was, she was made to admit this. Mrs. Burrows was also
+examined, but she would admit nothing. She had never heard of the
+money, or of Farmer Trumbull, or of the murder,&mdash;not till the world
+heard of it, and she knew nothing about her son's doings or comings
+or goings. No doubt she had given shelter to a young woman at the
+request of a friend of her son, the young woman paying her ten
+shillings a week for her board and lodging. That young woman was
+Carry Brattle. Her son and that young man had certainly been at her
+house together; but she could not at all say whether they had been
+there on that Sunday morning. Perhaps, of all who had been examined
+Mrs. Burrows was the most capable witness, for the lawyer who
+examined her on behalf of the Crown was able to extract absolutely
+nothing from her. When she turned herself round with an air of
+satisfaction, to face the questions of the burly barrister, she was
+told that he had no question to ask her. "It's all as one to me,
+sir," said Mrs. Burrows, as she smoothed her apron and went down.</p>
+
+<p>And then it was poor Carry's turn. When the name of Caroline Brattle
+was called she turned her eyes beseechingly to her father, as though
+hoping that he would accompany her in this the dreaded moment of her
+punishment. She caught him convulsively by the sleeve of the coat, as
+she was partly dragged and partly shoved on towards the little box in
+which she was to take her stand. He accompanied her to the foot of
+the two or three steps which she was called on to ascend, but of
+course he could go no further with her.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll bide nigh thee, Carry," he said; and it was the only word which
+he had spoken to comfort her that day. It did, however, serve to
+lessen her present misery, and added something to her poor stock of
+courage. "Your name is Caroline Brattle?" "And you were living on the
+thirty-first of last August with Mrs. Burrows at Pycroft Common?" "Do
+you remember Sunday the thirty-first of August?" These, and two or
+three other questions like them were asked by a young barrister in
+the mildest tone he could assume. "Speak out, Miss Brattle," he said,
+"and then there will be nothing to trouble you." "Yes, sir," she
+said, in answer to each of the questions, still almost in a whisper.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing to trouble her, and all the eyes of that cruel world around
+fixed upon her! Nothing to trouble her, and every ear on the alert to
+hear her,&mdash;young and pretty as she was,&mdash;confess her own shame in
+that public court! Nothing to trouble her, when she would so
+willingly have died to escape the agony that was coming on her! For
+she knew that it would come. Though she had never been in a court of
+law before, and had had no one tell her what would happen, she knew
+that the question would be asked. She was sure that she would be made
+to say what she had been before all that crowd of men.</p>
+
+<p>The evidence which she could give, though it was material, was very
+short. John Burrows and Lawrence Acorn had come to the cottage on
+Pycroft Common on that Sunday morning, and there she had seen both of
+them. It was daylight when they came, but still it was very early.
+She had not observed the clock, but she thought that it may have been
+about five. The men were in and out of the house, but they had some
+breakfast. She had risen from bed to help to get them their
+breakfast. If anything had been buried by them in the garden, she had
+known nothing of it. She had then received three sovereigns from
+Acorn, whom she was engaged to marry. From that day to the present
+she had never seen either of the men. As soon as she heard of the
+suspicion against Acorn, and that he had fled, she conceived her
+engagement to be at an end. All this she testified, with infinite
+difficulty, in so low a voice that a man was sworn to stand by her
+and repeat her answers aloud to the jury;&mdash;and then she was handed
+over to the burly barrister.</p>
+
+<p>She had been long enough in the court to perceive, and had been
+clever enough to learn, that this man would be her enemy. Though she
+had been unable to speak aloud in answering the counsel for the
+prosecution, she had quite understood that the man was her
+friend,&mdash;that he was only putting to her those questions which must
+be asked,&mdash;and questions which she could answer without much
+difficulty. But when she was told to attend to what the other
+gentleman would say to her, then, indeed, her poor heart failed her.</p>
+
+<p>It came at once. "My dear, I believe you have been indiscreet?" The
+words, perhaps, had been chosen with some idea of mercy, but
+certainly there was no mercy in the tone. The man's voice was loud,
+and there was something in it almost of a jeer,&mdash;something which
+seemed to leave an impression on the hearer that there had been
+pleasure in the asking it. She struggled to make an answer, and the
+monosyllable, yes, was formed by her lips. The man who was acting as
+her mouthpiece stooped down his ears to her lips, and then shook his
+head. Assuredly no sound had come from them that could have reached
+his sense, had he been ever so close. The burly barrister waited in
+patience, looking now at her, and now round at the court. "I must
+have an answer. I say that I believe you have been indiscreet. You
+know, I dare say, what I mean. Yes or no will do; but I must have an
+answer." She glanced round for an instant, trying to catch her
+father's eye; but she could see nothing; everything seemed to swim
+before her except the broad face of that burly barrister. "Has she
+given any answer?" he asked of the mouthpiece; and the mouthpiece
+again shook his head. The heart of the mouthpiece was tender, and he
+was beginning to hate the burly barrister. "My dear," said the burly
+barrister, "the jury must have the information from you."</p>
+
+<p>Then gradually there was heard through the court the gurgling sounds
+of irrepressible sobs,&mdash;and with them there came a moan from the old
+man, who was only divided from his daughter by the few steps,&mdash;which
+was understood by the whole crowd. The story of the poor girl, in
+reference to the trial, had been so noised about that it was known to
+all the listeners. That spark of sympathy, of which we have said that
+its course cannot be arrested when it once finds its way into a
+crowd, had been created, and there was hardly present then one,
+either man or woman, who would not have prayed that Carry Brattle
+might be spared if it were possible. There was a juryman there, a
+father with many daughters, who thought that it might not misbecome
+him to put forward such a prayer himself.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps it mayn't be necessary," said the soft-hearted juryman.</p>
+
+<p>But the burly barrister was not a man who liked to be taught his duty
+by any one in court,&mdash;not even by a juryman,&mdash;and his quick intellect
+immediately told him that he must seize the spark of sympathy in its
+flight. It could not be stopped, but it might be turned to his own
+purpose. It would not suffice for him now that he should simply
+defend the question he had asked. The court was showing its aptitude
+for pathos, and he also must be pathetic on his own side. He knew
+well enough that he could not arrest public opinion which was going
+against him, by shewing that his question was a proper question; but
+he might do so by proving at once how tender was his own heart.</p>
+
+<p>"It is a pain and grief to me," said he, "to bring sorrow upon any
+one. But look at those prisoners at the bar, whose lives are
+committed to my charge, and know that I, as their advocate, love them
+while they are my clients as well as any father can love his child. I
+will spend myself for them, even though it may be at the risk of the
+harsh judgment of those around me. It is my duty to prove to the jury
+on their behalf that the life of this young woman has been such as to
+invalidate her testimony against them;&mdash;and that duty I shall do,
+fearless of the remarks of any one. Now I ask you again, Caroline
+Brattle, whether you are not one of the unfortunates?"</p>
+
+<p>This attempt of the burly barrister was to a certain extent
+successful. The juryman who had daughters of his own had been put
+down, and the barrister had given, at any rate, an answer to the
+attack that had been silently made on him by the feeling of the
+court. Let a man be ready with a reply, be it ever so bad a reply,
+and any attack is parried. But Carry had given no answer to the
+question, and those who looked at her thought it very improbable that
+she would be able to do so. She had clutched the arm of the man who
+stood by her, and in the midst of her sobs was looking round with
+snatched, quick, half-completed glances for protection to the spot on
+which her father and brother were standing. The old man had moaned
+once; but after that he uttered no sound. He stood leaning on his
+stick with his eyes fixed upon the ground, quite motionless. Sam was
+standing with his hands grasping the woodwork before him and his bold
+gaze fastened on the barrister's face, as though he were about to fly
+at him. The burly barrister saw it all and perceived that more was to
+be gained by sparing than by persecuting his witness, and resolved to
+let her go.</p>
+
+<p>"I believe that will do," he said. "Your silence tells all that I
+wish the jury to know. You may go down." Then the man who had acted
+as mouthpiece led Carry away, delivered her up to her father, and
+guided them both out of court.</p>
+
+<p>They went back to the room in which they had before been seated, and
+there they waited for Sam, who was called into the witness-box as
+they left the court.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, father," said Carry, as soon as the old man was again placed
+upon the bench. And she stood over him, and put her hand upon his
+neck.</p>
+
+<p>"We've won through it, girl, and let that be enough," said the
+miller. Then she sat down close by his side, and not another word was
+spoken by them till Sam returned.</p>
+
+<p>Sam's evidence was, in fact, but of little use. He had had dealings
+with Acorn, who had introduced him to Burrows, and had known the two
+men at the old woman's cottage on the Common. When he was asked, what
+these dealings had been, he said they were honest dealings.</p>
+
+<p>"About your sister's marriage?" suggested the crown lawyer.</p>
+
+<p>"Well,&mdash;yes," said Sam. And then he stated that the men had come over
+to Bullhampton and that he had accompanied them as they walked round
+Farmer Trumbull's house. He had taken them into the Vicar's garden;
+and then he gave an account of the meeting there with Mr. Fenwick.
+After that he had known and seen nothing of the men. When he
+testified so far he was handed over to the burly barrister.</p>
+
+<p>The burly barrister tried all he knew, but he could make nothing of
+this witness. A question was asked him, the true answer to which
+would have implied that his sister's life had been disreputable. When
+this was asked Sam declared that he would not say a word about his
+sister one way or the other. His sister had told them all she knew
+about the murder, and now he had told them all he knew. He protested
+that he was willing to answer any questions they might ask him about
+himself; but about his sister he would answer none. When told that
+the information desired might be got in a more injurious way from
+other sources, he became rather impudent.</p>
+
+<p>"Then you may go to&mdash;other sources," he said.</p>
+
+<p>He was threatened with all manner of pains and penalties; but he made
+nothing of these threats, and was at last allowed to leave the box.
+When his evidence was completed the trial was adjourned for another
+day.</p>
+
+<p>Though it was then late in the afternoon the three Brattles returned
+home that night. There was a train which took them to the Bullhampton
+Road station, and from thence they walked to the mill. It was a weary
+journey both for the poor girl and for the old man; but anything was
+better than delay for another night in Trotter's Buildings. And then
+the miller was unwilling to be absent from his mill one hour longer
+than was necessary. When there came to be a question whether he could
+walk, he laughed the difficulty to scorn in his quiet way. "Why
+shouldn't I walk it? Ain't I got to 'arn my bread every day?"</p>
+
+<p>It was ten o'clock when they reached the mill, and Mrs. Brattle, not
+expecting them at that hour, was in bed. But Fanny was up, and did
+what she could to comfort them. But no one could ever comfort old
+Brattle. He was not susceptible to soft influences. It may almost be
+said that he condemned himself because he gave way to the daily
+luxury of a pipe. He believed in plenty of food, because food for the
+workman is as coals to the steam-engine, as oats to the horse,&mdash;the
+raw material out of which the motive power of labour must be made.
+Beyond eating and working a man had little to do, but just to wait
+till he died. That was his theory of life in these his latter days;
+and yet he was a man with keen feelings and a loving heart.</p>
+
+<p>But Carry was comforted when her sister's arms were around her. "They
+asked me if I was bad," she said, "and I thought I should a' died,
+and I never answered them a word,&mdash;and at last they let me go." When
+Fanny inquired whether their father had been kind to her, she
+declared that he had been "main kind." "But, oh, Fanny! if he'd only
+say a word, it would warm one's heart; wouldn't it?"</p>
+
+<p>On the following evening news reached Bullhampton that the Grinder
+had been convicted and sentenced to death, but that Lawrence Acorn
+had been acquitted. The judge, in his summing up, had shown that
+certain evidence which applied to the Grinder had not applied to his
+comrade in the dock, and the jury had been willing to take any excuse
+for saving one man from the halter.</p>
+
+
+<p><a name="c70" id="c70"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>CHAPTER LXX.</h3>
+<h4>THE FATE OF THE PUDDLEHAMITES.<br />&nbsp;</h4>
+
+
+<p>Fenwick and Gilmore breakfasted together on the morning that the
+former left London for Bullhampton; and by that time the Vicar had
+assured himself that it would be quite impossible to induce his
+friend to go back to his home. "I shall turn up after some years if I
+live," said the Squire; "and I suppose I shan't think so much about
+it then; but for the present I will not go to the place."</p>
+
+<p>He authorised Fenwick to do what he pleased about the house and the
+gardens, and promised to give instructions as to the sale of his
+horses. If the whole place were not let, the bailiff might, he
+suggested, carry on the farm himself. When he was urged as to his
+duty, he again answered by his illustration of the man without a leg.
+"It may be all very true," he said, "that a man ought to walk, but if
+you cut off his leg he can't walk." Fenwick at last found that there
+was nothing more to be said, and he was constrained to take his
+leave.</p>
+
+<p>"May I tell her that you forgive her?" the Vicar asked, as they were
+walking together up and down the station in the Waterloo Road.</p>
+
+<p>"She will not care a brass farthing for my forgiveness," said
+Gilmore.</p>
+
+<p>"You wrong her there. I am sure that nothing would give her so much
+comfort as such a message."</p>
+
+<p>Gilmore walked half the length of the platform before he replied.
+"What is the good of telling a lie about it?"&mdash;he said, at last.</p>
+
+<p>"I certainly would not tell a lie."</p>
+
+<p>"Then I can't say that I forgive her. How is a man to forgive such
+treatment? If I said that I did, you wouldn't believe me. I will keep
+out of her way, and that will be better for her than forgiving her."</p>
+
+<p>"Some of your wrath, I fear, falls to my lot?" said the Vicar.</p>
+
+<p>"No, Frank. You and your wife have done the best for me all
+through,&mdash;as far as you thought was best."</p>
+
+<p>"We have meant to do so."</p>
+
+<p>"And if she has been false to me as no woman was ever false before,
+that is not your fault. As for the jewels, tell your wife to lock
+them up,&mdash;or to throw them away if she likes that better. My
+brother's wife will have them some day, I suppose." Now his brother
+was in India, and his brother's wife he had never seen. Then there
+was a pledge given that Gilmore would inform his friend by letter of
+his future destination, and so they parted.</p>
+
+<p>This was on the Tuesday, and Fenwick had desired that his gig might
+meet him at the Bullhampton Road station. He had learned by this time
+of the condemnation of one man for the murder, and the acquittal of
+the other, and was full of the subject when his groom was seated
+beside him. Had the Brattles come back to the mill? And what of Sam?
+And what did the people say about Acorn's escape? These, and many
+other questions he asked, but he found that his servant was so
+burdened with a matter of separate and of infinitely greater
+interest, that he could not be got to give his mind to the late
+trial. He believed the Brattles were back; he had seen nothing of
+Sam; he didn't know anything about Acorn; but the new chapel was
+going to be pulled down.</p>
+
+<p>"What!" exclaimed the Vicar;&mdash;"not at once?"</p>
+
+<p>"So they was saying, sir, when I come away. And the men was at
+it,&mdash;that is, standing all about. And there is to be no more
+preaching, sir. And missus was out in the front looking at 'em as I
+drove out of the yard."</p>
+
+<p>Fenwick asked twenty questions, but could obtain no other information
+than was given in the first announcement of these astounding news.
+And as he entered the vicarage he was still asking questions, and the
+man was still endeavouring to express his own conviction that that
+horrible, damnable, and most heart-breaking red brick building would
+be demolished, and carted clean away before the end of the week. For
+the servants and dependents of the vicarage were staunch to the
+interests of the church establishment, with a degree of fervour of
+which the Vicar himself knew nothing. They hated Puddleham and
+dissent. This groom would have liked nothing better than a commission
+to punch the head of Mr. Puddleham's eldest son, a young man who had
+been employed in a banker's office at Warminster, but had lately come
+home because he had been found to have a taste for late hours and
+public-house parlours; and had made himself busy on the question of
+the chapel. The maid servants at the vicarage looked down as from a
+mighty great height on the young women of Bullhampton who attended
+the chapel, and the vicarage gardener, since he had found out that
+the chapel stood on glebe land, and ought therefore, to be placed
+under his hands, had hardly been able to keep himself off the ground.
+His proposed cure for the evil that had been done,&mdash;as an immediate
+remedy before erection and demolition could be carried out, was to
+form the vicarage manure pit close against the chapel door,&mdash;"and
+then let anybody touch our property who dares!" He had, however, been
+too cautious to carry out any such strategy as this, without direct
+authority from the Commander-in-Chief. "Master thinks a deal too much
+on 'em," he had said to the groom, almost in disgust at the Vicar's
+pusillanimity.</p>
+
+<p>When Fenwick reached his own gate there was a crowd of men loitering
+around the chapel, and he got out from his gig and joined them. His
+eye first fell upon Mr. Puddleham, who was standing directly in front
+of the door, with his back to the building, wearing on his face an
+expression of infinite displeasure. The Vicar was desirous of
+assuring the minister that no steps need be taken, at any rate, for
+the present, towards removing the chapel from its present situation.
+But before he could speak to Mr. Puddleham he perceived the builder
+from Salisbury, who appeared to be very busy,&mdash;Grimes, the
+Bullhampton tradesman, so lately discomfited, but now
+triumphant,&mdash;Bolt, the elder, close at Mr. Puddleham's elbow,&mdash;his
+own churchwarden, with one or two other farmers,&mdash;and lastly, Lord
+St. George himself, walking in company with Mr. Packer, the agent.
+Many others from the village were there, so that there was quite a
+public meeting on the bit of ground which had been appropriated to
+Mr. Puddleham's preachings. Fenwick, as soon as he saw Lord St.
+George, accosted him before he spoke to the others.</p>
+
+<p>"My friend Mr. Puddleham," said he, "seems to have the benefit of a
+distinguished congregation this morning."</p>
+
+<p>"The last, I fear, he will ever have on this spot," said the lord, as
+he shook hands with the Vicar.</p>
+
+<p>"I am very sorry to hear you say so, my lord. Of course, I don't know
+what you are doing, and I can't make Mr. Puddleham preach here, if he
+be not willing."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Puddleham had now joined them. "I am ready and willing," said he,
+"to do my duty in that sphere of life to which it has pleased God to
+call me." And it was evident that he thought that the sphere to which
+he had been called was that special chapel opposite to the vicarage
+entrance.</p>
+
+<p>"As I was saying," continued the Vicar, "I have neither the wish nor
+the power to control my neighbour; but, as far as I am concerned, no
+step need be taken to displace him. I did not like this site for the
+chapel at first; but I have got quit of all that feeling, and Mr.
+Puddleham may preach to his heart's content,&mdash;as he will, no doubt,
+to his hearers' welfare, and will not annoy me in the least." On
+hearing this, Mr. Puddleham pushed his hat off his forehead and
+looked up and frowned, as though the levity of expression in which
+his rival indulged, was altogether unbecoming the solemnity of the
+occasion.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Fenwick," said the lord, "we have taken advice, and we find the
+thing ought to be done,&mdash;and to be done instantly. The leading men of
+the congregation are quite of that view."</p>
+
+<p>"They are of course unwilling to oppose your noble father, my lord,"
+said the minister.</p>
+
+<p>"And to tell you the truth, Mr. Fenwick," continued Lord St. George,
+"you might be put, most unjustly, into a peck of troubles if we did
+not do this. You have no right to let the glebe on a building lease,
+even if you were willing, and high ecclesiastical authority would
+call upon you at once to have the nuisance removed."</p>
+
+<p>"Nuisance, my lord!" said Mr. Puddleham, who had seen with half an
+eye that the son was by no means worthy of the father.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, yes,&mdash;placed in the middle of the Vicar's ground! What would
+you say if Mr. Fenwick demanded leave to use your parlour for his
+vestry room, and to lock up his surplice in your cupboard?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sure he'd try it on before he'd had it a day," said the Vicar,
+"and very well he'd look in it," whereupon the minister again raised
+his hat, and again frowned.</p>
+
+<p>"The long and the short of it is," continued the lord, "that we've,
+among us, made a most absurd mistake, and the sooner we put it right
+the better. My father, feeling that our mistake has led to all the
+others, and that we have caused all this confusion, thinks it to be
+his duty to pull the chapel down and build it up on the site before
+proposed near the cross roads. We'll begin at once, and hope to get
+it done by Christmas. In the mean time, Mr. Puddleham has consented
+to go back to the old chapel."</p>
+
+<p>"Why not let him stay here till the other is finished?" asked the
+Vicar.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear sir," replied the lord, "we are going to transfer the chapel
+body and bones. If we were Yankees we should know how to do it
+without pulling it in pieces. As it is, we've got to do it piecemeal.
+So now, Mr. Hickbody," he continued, turning round to the builder
+from Salisbury, "you may go to work at once. The Marquis will be much
+obliged to you if you will press it on."</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly, my lord," said Mr. Hickbody, taking off his hat. "We'll
+put on quite a body of men, my lord, and his lordship's commands
+shall be obeyed."</p>
+
+<p>After which Lord St. George and Mr. Fenwick withdrew together from
+the chapel and walked into the vicarage.</p>
+
+<p>"If all that be absolutely necessary&mdash;" began the Vicar.</p>
+
+<p>"It is, Mr. Fenwick; we've made a mistake." Lord St. George always
+spoke of his father as "we," when there came upon him the necessity
+of retrieving his father's errors. "And our only way out of it is to
+take the bull by the horns at once and put the thing right. It will
+cost us about &pound;700, and then there is the bore of having to own
+ourselves to be wrong. But that is much better than a fight."</p>
+
+<p>"I should not have fought."</p>
+
+<p>"You would have been driven to fight. And then there is the one
+absolute fact;&mdash;the chapel ought not to be there. And now I've one
+other word to say. Don't you think this quarrelling between clergyman
+and landlord is bad for the parish?"</p>
+
+<p>"Very bad indeed, Lord St. George."</p>
+
+<p>"Now I'm not going to measure out censure, or to say that we have
+been wrong, or that you have been wrong."</p>
+
+<p>"If you do I shall defend myself," said the Vicar.</p>
+
+<p>"Exactly so. But if bygones can be bygones there need be neither
+offence nor defence."</p>
+
+<p>"What can a clergyman think, Lord St. George, when the landlord of
+his parish writes letters against him to his bishop, maligning his
+private character, and spreading reports for which there is not the
+slightest foundation?"</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Fenwick, is that the way in which you let bygones be bygones?"</p>
+
+<p>"It is very hard to say that I can forget such an injury."</p>
+
+<p>"My father, at any rate, is willing to forget,&mdash;and, as he hopes, to
+forgive. In all disputes each party of course thinks that he has been
+right. If you, for the sake of the parish, and for the sake of
+Christian charity and goodwill, are ready to meet him half way, all
+this ill-will may be buried in the ground."</p>
+
+<p>What could the Vicar do? He felt that he was being cunningly cheated
+out of his grievance. He would have had not a minute's hesitation as
+to forgiving the Marquis, had the Marquis owned himself to be wrong.
+But he was now invited to bury the hatchet on even terms, and he knew
+that the terms should not be even. And he resented all this the more
+in his heart because he understood very well how clever and cunning
+was the son of his enemy. He did not like to be cheated out of his
+forgiveness. But after all, what did it matter? Would it not be
+enough for him to know, himself, that he had been right? Was it not
+much to feel himself free from all pricks of conscience in the
+matter?</p>
+
+<p>"If Lord Trowbridge is willing to let it all pass," said he, "so am
+I."</p>
+
+<p>"I am delighted," said Lord St. George, with spirit; "I will not come
+in now, because I have already overstayed my time, but I hope you may
+hear from my father before long in a spirit of kindness."</p>
+
+
+<p><a name="c71" id="c71"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>CHAPTER LXXI.</h3>
+<h4>THE END OF MARY LOWTHER'S STORY.<br />&nbsp;</h4>
+
+
+<p>Sir Gregory Marrable's headache was not of long duration. Allusion is
+here made to that especial headache under the acute effects of which
+he had taken so very unpromising a farewell of his nephew and heir.
+It lasted, however, for two or three days, during which he had
+frequent consultations with Mrs. Brownlow, and had one conversation
+with Edith. He was disappointed, sorry, and sore at heart because the
+desire on which he had set his mind could not be fulfilled; but he
+was too weak to cling either to his hope or to his anger. His own son
+had gone from him, and this young man must be his heir and the owner
+of Dunripple. No doubt he might punish the young man by excluding him
+from any share of ownership for the present; but there would be
+neither comfort nor advantage in that. It is true that he might save
+any money that Walter would cost him, and give it to Edith,&mdash;but such
+a scheme of saving for such a purpose was contrary to the old man's
+nature. He wanted to have his heir near him at Dunripple. He hated
+the feeling of desolation which was presented to him by the idea of
+Dunripple without some young male Marrable at hand to help him. He
+desired, unconsciously, to fill up the void made by the death of his
+son with as little trouble as might be. And therefore he consulted
+Mrs. Brownlow.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Brownlow was clearly of opinion that he had better take his
+nephew, with the encumbrance of Mary Lowther, and make them both
+welcome to the house. "We have all heard so much good of Miss
+Lowther, you know," said Mrs. Brownlow, "and she is not at all the
+same as a stranger."</p>
+
+<p>"That is true," said Sir Gregory, willing to be talked over.</p>
+
+<p>"And then, you know, who can say whether Edith would ever have liked
+him or not. You never can tell what way a young woman's feelings will
+go."</p>
+
+<p>On hearing this Sir Gregory uttered some sound intended to express
+mildly a divergence of opinion. He did not doubt but what Edith would
+have been quite willing to fall in love with Walter, had all things
+been conformable to her doing so. Mrs. Brownlow did not notice this
+as she continued,&mdash;"At any rate the poor girl would suffer dreadfully
+now if she were allowed to think that you should be divided from your
+nephew by your regard for her. Indeed, she could hardly stay at
+Dunripple if that were so."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Brownlow in a mild way suggested that nothing should be said to
+Edith, and Sir Gregory gave half a promise that he would be silent.
+But it was against his nature not to speak. When the moment came the
+temptation to say something that could be easily said, and which
+would produce some mild excitement, was always too strong for him.
+"My dear," he said, one evening, when Edith was hovering round his
+chair, "you remember what I once said to you about your cousin
+Walter?"</p>
+
+<p>"About Captain Marrable, uncle?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well,&mdash;he is just the same as a cousin;&mdash;it turns out that he is
+engaged to marry another cousin,&mdash;Mary Lowther."</p>
+
+<p>"She is his real cousin, Uncle Gregory."</p>
+
+<p>"I never saw the young lady,&mdash;that I know of."</p>
+
+<p>"Nor have I,&mdash;but I've heard so much about her! And everybody says
+she is nice. I hope they'll come and live here."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know yet, my dear."</p>
+
+<p>"He told me all about it when he was here."</p>
+
+<p>"Told you he was going to be married?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, uncle, he did not tell me that exactly;&mdash;but he said
+that&mdash;that&mdash;. He told me how much he loved Mary Lowther, and a great
+deal about her, and I felt sure it would come so."</p>
+
+<p>"Then you are aware that what I had hinted about you and
+<span class="nowrap">Walter&mdash;"</span></p>
+
+<p>"Don't talk about that, Uncle Gregory. I knew that it was ever so
+unlikely, and I didn't think about it. You are so good to me that of
+course I couldn't say anything. But you may be sure he is ever so
+much in love with Miss Lowther; and I do hope we shall be so fond of
+her!"</p>
+
+<p>Sir Gregory was pacified and his headache for the time was cured. He
+had had his little scheme, and it had failed. Edith was very good,
+and she should still be his pet and his favourite,&mdash;but Walter
+Marrable should be told that he might marry and bring his bride to
+Dunripple, and that if he would sell out of his regiment, the family
+lawyer should be instructed to make such arrangements for him as
+would have been made had he actually been a son. There would be some
+little difficulty about the colonel's rights; but the colonel had
+already seized upon so much that it could not but be easy to deal
+with him. On the next morning the letter was written to Walter by
+Mrs. Brownlow herself.</p>
+
+<p>About a week after this Mary Lowther, who was waiting at Loring with
+an outward show of patience, but with much inward anxiety for further
+tidings from her lover, received two letters, one from Walter, and
+the other from her friend, Janet Fenwick. The reader shall see those,
+and the replies which Mary made to them, and then our whole story
+will have been told as far as the loves, and hopes, and cares, and
+troubles of Mary Lowther are concerned.<br />&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+<blockquote>
+<p class="jright">Bullhampton, 1st September.</p>
+
+<p class="noindent"><span class="smallcaps">Dearest Mary</span>,</p>
+
+<p>I write a line just because I said I would. Frank went up
+to London last week and was away one Sunday. He found his
+poor friend in town and was with him for two or three
+days. He has made up his mind to let the Privets, and go
+abroad, and nothing that Frank could say would move him. I
+do not know whether it may not be for the best. We shall
+lose such a neighbour as we never shall have again. He was
+the same as a brother to both of us; and I can only say,
+that loving him like a brother, I endeavoured to do the
+best for him that I could. This I do know;&mdash;that nothing
+on earth shall ever tempt me to set my hand at
+match-making again. But it was alluring,&mdash;the idea of
+bringing my two dearest friends near me together.</p>
+
+<p>If you have anything to tell me of your happiness, I shall
+be delighted to hear it; I will not set my heart against
+this other man;&mdash;but you can hardly expect me to say that
+he will be as much to me as might have been that other.
+God bless you,</p>
+
+<p class="ind8">Your most affectionate friend,</p>
+
+<p class="ind15"><span class="smallcaps">Janet Fenwick</span>.</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">I must
+tell you the fate of the chapel. They are already
+pulling it down, and carting away the things to the other
+place. They are doing it so quick, that it will all be
+gone before we know where we are. I own I am glad. As for
+Frank, I really believe he'd rather let it remain. But
+this is not all. The Marquis has promised that we shall
+hear from him "in a spirit of kindness." I wonder what
+this will come to? It certainly was not a spirit of
+kindness that made him write to the bishop and call Frank
+an infidel.<br />&nbsp;</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+
+<p>And this was the other letter.<br />&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+<blockquote>
+<p class="jright">Barracks, 1st September, 186&mdash;.</p>
+
+<p class="noindent"><span class="smallcaps">Dearest Love</span>,</p>
+
+<p>I hope this will be one of the last letters I shall write
+from this abominable place, for I am going to sell out at
+once. It is all settled, and I'm to be a sort of deputy
+Squire at Dunripple, under my uncle. As that is to be my
+fate in life, I may as well begin it at once. But that's
+not the whole of my fate, nor the best of it. You are to
+be admitted as deputy Squiress,&mdash;or rather as Squiress in
+chief, seeing that you will be mistress of the house.
+Dearest Mary, may I hope that you won't object to the
+promotion?</p>
+
+<p>I have had a long letter from Mrs. Brownlow; and I ran
+over yesterday and saw my uncle. I was so hurried that I
+could not write from Dunripple. I would send you Mrs.
+Brownlow's letter, only perhaps it would not be quite
+fair. I dare say you will see it some day. She says ever
+so much about you, and as complimentary as possible. And
+then she declares her purpose to resign all rights,
+honours, pains, privileges, and duties of mistress of
+Dunripple into your hands as soon as you are Mrs.
+Marrable. And this she repeated yesterday with some
+stateliness, and a great deal of high-minded resignation.
+But I don't mean to laugh at her, because I know she means
+to do what is right.</p>
+
+<p>My own, own, Mary, write me a line instantly to say that
+it is right,&mdash;and to say also that you agree with me that
+as it is to be done, 'twere well it were done quickly.</p>
+
+<p class="ind8">Yours always, with all my heart,</p>
+
+<p class="ind18">W. M.<br />&nbsp;</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+
+<p>It was of course necessary that Mary should consult with her aunt
+before she answered the second letter. Of that which she received
+from Mrs. Fenwick she determined to say nothing. Why should she ever
+mention to her aunt again a name so painful to her as that of Mr.
+Gilmore? The thinking of him could not be avoided. In this, the great
+struggle of her life, she had endeavoured to do right, and yet she
+could not acquit herself of evil. But the pain, though it existed,
+might at least be kept out of sight.</p>
+
+<p>"And so you are to go and live at Dunripple at once," said Miss
+Marrable.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose we shall."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, well! It's all right, I'm sure. Of course there is not a word to
+be said against it. I hope Sir Gregory won't die before the Colonel.
+That's all."</p>
+
+<p>"The Colonel is his father, you know."</p>
+
+<p>"I hope there may not come to be trouble about it, that's all. I
+shall be very lonely, but of course I had to expect that."</p>
+
+<p>"You'll come to us, Aunt Sarah? You'll be as much there as here."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, dear. I don't quite know about that. Sir Gregory is all
+very well; but one does like one's own house."</p>
+
+<p>From all which Mary understood that her dear aunt still wished that
+she might have had her own way in disposing of her niece's hand,&mdash;as
+her dear friends at Bullhampton had wished to have theirs.</p>
+
+<p>The following were the answers from Mary to the two letters given
+<span class="nowrap">above;&mdash;</span><br />&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+<blockquote>
+<p class="jright">Loring, 3rd September, 186&mdash;.</p>
+
+<p class="noindent"><span class="smallcaps">Dear Janet</span>,</p>
+
+<p>I am very, very, very sorry. I do not know what more I can
+say. I meant to do well all through. When I first told Mr.
+Gilmore that it could not be as he wished it, I was right.
+When I made up my mind that it must be so at last, I was
+right also. I fear I cannot say so much of myself as to
+that middle step which I took, thinking it was best to do
+as I was bidden. I meant to be right, but of course I was
+wrong, and I am very, very sorry. Nevertheless, I am much
+obliged to you for writing to me. Of course I cannot but
+desire to know what he does. If he writes and seems to be
+happy on his travels, pray tell me.</p>
+
+<p>I have much to tell you of my own happiness,&mdash;though, in
+truth, I feel a remorse at being happy when I have caused
+so much unhappiness. Walter is to sell out and to live at
+Dunripple, and I also am to live there when we are
+married. I suppose it will not be long now. I am writing
+to him to-day, though I do not yet know what I shall say
+to him. Sir Gregory has assented, and arrangements are to
+be made, and lawyers are to be consulted, and we are to be
+what Walter calls deputy Squire and Squiress at Dunripple.
+Mrs. Brownlow and Edith Brownlow are still to live there,
+but I am to have the honour of ordering the dinner, and
+looking wise at the housekeeper. Of course I shall feel
+very strange at going into such a house. To you I may say
+how much nicer it would be to go to some place that Walter
+and I could have to ourselves,&mdash;as you did when you
+married. But I am not such a simpleton as to repine at
+that. So much has gone as I would have it that I only feel
+myself to be happier than I deserve. What I shall chiefly
+look forward to will be your first visit to Dunripple.</p>
+
+<p class="ind8">Your most affectionate friend,</p>
+
+<p class="ind15"><span class="smallcaps">Mary
+Lowther</span>.<br />&nbsp;</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+
+<p>The other letter, as to which Mary had declared that she had not as
+yet made up her own mind when she wrote to Mrs. Fenwick, was more
+difficult in composition.<br />&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+<blockquote>
+<p class="jright">Loring, 2nd September, 186&mdash;.</p>
+
+<p class="noindent"><span class="smallcaps">Dearest Walter</span>,</p>
+
+<p>So it is all settled, and I am to be a deputy Squiress! I
+have no objection to urge. As long as you are the deputy
+Squire, I will be the deputy Squiress. For your sake, my
+dearest, I do most heartily rejoice that the affair is
+settled. I think you will be happier as a county gentleman
+than you would have been in the army; and as Dunripple
+must ultimately be your home,&mdash;I will say our
+home,&mdash;perhaps it is as well that you, and I also, should
+know it as soon as possible. Of course I am very nervous
+about Mrs. Brownlow and her daughter; but though nervous I
+am not fearful; and I shall prepare myself to like them.</p>
+
+<p>As to that other matter, I hardly know what answer to make
+on so very quick a questioning. It was only the other day
+that it was decided that it was to be;&mdash;and there ought to
+be breathing time before one also decides when. But, dear
+Walter, I will do nothing to interfere with your
+prospects. Let me know what you think yourself; but
+remember, in thinking, that a little interval for purposes
+of sentiment and of stitching is always desired by the
+weaker vessel on such an occasion.</p>
+
+<p>God bless you, my own one,</p>
+
+<p class="ind8">Yours always and always, M. L.</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">In real
+truth, I will do whatever you bid me.<br />&nbsp;</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+
+<p>Of course, after that, the marriage was not very long postponed.
+Walter Marrable allowed that some grace should be given for
+sentiment, and some also for stitching, but as to neither did he feel
+that any long delay was needed. A week for sentiment, and two more
+for the preparation of bridal adornments, he thought would be
+sufficient. There was a compromise at last, as is usual in such
+cases, and the marriage took place about the middle of October. No
+doubt, at that time of year they went to Italy,&mdash;but of that the
+present narrator is not able to speak with any certainty. This,
+however, is certain,&mdash;that if they did travel abroad, Mary Marrable
+travelled in daily fear lest her unlucky fate should bring her face
+to face with Mr. Gilmore. Wherever they went, their tour, in
+accordance with a contract made by the baronet, was terminated within
+two months. For on Christmas Day Mrs. Walter Marrable was to take her
+place as mistress of the house at the dinner table.</p>
+
+<p>The reader may, perhaps, desire to know whether things were made
+altogether smooth with the Colonel. On this matter Messrs. Block and
+Curling, the family lawyers, encountered very much trouble indeed.
+The Colonel, when application was made to him, was as sweet as honey.
+He would do anything for the interests of his dearest son. There did
+not breathe a father on earth who cared less for himself or his own
+position. But still he must live. He submitted to Messrs. Block and
+Curling whether it was not necessary that he should live. Messrs.
+Block and Curling explained to him very clearly that his brother, the
+baronet, had nothing to do with his living or dying,&mdash;and that
+towards his living he had already robbed his son of a large property.
+At last, however, he would not make over his life interest in the
+property, as it would come to him in the event of his brother dying
+before him, except on payment of an annuity on and from that date of
+&pound;200 a year. He began by asking &pound;500, and was then told that the
+Captain would run the chance and would sue his father for the &pound;20,000
+in the event of Sir Gregory dying before the Colonel.</p>
+
+<p>Now the narrator will bid adieu to Mary Lowther, to Loring, and to
+Dunripple. The conduct of his heroine, as depicted in these pages,
+will, he fears, meet with the disapprobation of many close and good
+judges of female character. He has endeavoured to describe a young
+woman, prompted in all her doings by a conscience wide awake, guided
+by principle, willing, if need be, to sacrifice herself, struggling
+always to keep herself from doing wrong, but yet causing infinite
+grief to others, and nearly bringing herself to utter shipwreck,
+because, for a while, she allowed herself to believe that it would be
+right for her to marry a man whom she did not love.</p>
+
+
+<p><a name="c72" id="c72"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>CHAPTER LXXII.</h3>
+<h4>AT TURNOVER CASTLE.<br />&nbsp;</h4>
+
+
+<p>Mrs. Fenwick had many quips and quirks with her husband as to those
+tidings to be made in a pleasant spirit which were expected from
+Turnover Castle. From the very moment that Lord St. George had given
+the order,&mdash;upon the authority chiefly of the unfortunate Mr. Bolt,
+who on this occasion found it to be impossible to refuse to give an
+authority which a lord demanded from him,&mdash;the demolition of the
+building had been commenced. Before the first Sunday came any use of
+the new chapel for divine service was already impossible. On that day
+Mr. Puddleham preached a stirring sermon about tabernacles in
+general. "It did not matter where the people of the Lord met," he
+said, "so long as they did meet to worship the Lord in a proper
+spirit of independent resistance to any authority that had not come
+to them from revelation. Any hedge-side was a sufficient tabernacle
+for a devout Christian. But&mdash;," and then, without naming any name, he
+described the Church of England as a Upas tree which, by its poison,
+destroyed those beautiful flowers which strove to spring up amidst
+the rank grass beneath it and to make the air sweet within its
+neighbourhood. Something he said, too, of a weak sister tottering to
+its base, only to be followed in its ruin by the speedy prostration
+of its elder brother. All this was of course told in detail to the
+Vicar; but the Vicar refused even to be interested by it. "Of course
+he did," said the Vicar. "If a man is to preach, what can he preach
+but his own views?"</p>
+
+<p>The tidings to be made in a pleasant spirit were not long waited
+for,&mdash;or, at any rate, the first instalment of them. On the 2nd of
+September there arrived a large hamper full of partridges, addressed
+to Mrs. Fenwick in the Earl's own handwriting. "The very first
+fruits," said the Vicar, as he went down to inspect the plentiful
+provision thus made for the vicarage larder. Well;&mdash;it was certainly
+better to have partridges from Turnover than accusations of
+immorality and infidelity. The Vicar so declared at once, but his
+wife would not at first agree with him. "I really should have such
+pleasure in packing them up and sending them back," said she.</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed, you shall do nothing of the kind."</p>
+
+<p>"The idea of a basket of birds to atone for such insults and calumny
+as that man has heaped on you!"</p>
+
+<p>"The birds will be only a first instalment," said the Vicar,&mdash;and
+then there were more quips and quirks about that. It was presumed by
+Mr. Fenwick that the second instalment would be the first pheasants
+shot in October. But the second instalment came before September was
+over in the shape of the following
+<span class="nowrap">note:&mdash;</span><br />&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+<blockquote>
+<p class="jright">Turnover Park, 20th September, 186&mdash;.</p>
+
+<p>The Marquis of Trowbridge and the Ladies Sophie and
+Carolina Stowte request that Mr. and Mrs. Fenwick will do
+them the honour of coming to Turnover Park on Monday the
+6th October, and staying till Saturday the 11th.<br />&nbsp;</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+
+<p>"That's an instalment indeed," said Mrs. Fenwick. "And now what on
+earth are we to do?" The Vicar admitted that it had become very
+serious. "We must either go, and endure a terrible time of it,"
+continued Mrs. Fenwick, "or we must show him very plainly that we
+will have nothing more to do with him. I don't see why we are to be
+annoyed, merely because he is a Marquis."</p>
+
+<p>"It won't be because he is a Marquis."</p>
+
+<p>"Why then? You can't say that you love the old man, or that the
+Ladies Sophie and Carolina Stowte are the women you'd have me choose
+for companions, or that that soapy, silky, humbugging Lord St. George
+is to your taste."</p>
+
+<p>"I am not sure about St. George. He can be everything to everybody,
+and would make an excellent bishop."</p>
+
+<p>"You know you don't like him, and you know also that you will have a
+very bad time of it at Turnover."</p>
+
+<p>"I could shoot pheasants all the week."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes,&mdash;with a conviction at the time that the Ladies Sophie and
+Carolina were calling you an infidel behind your back for doing so.
+As for myself I feel perfectly certain that I should spar with them."</p>
+
+<p>"It isn't because he's a Marquis," said the Vicar, carrying on his
+argument after a long pause. "If I know myself, I think I may say
+that that has no allurement for me. And, to tell the truth, had he
+been simply a Marquis, and had I been at liberty to indulge my own
+wishes, I would never have allowed myself to be talked out of my
+righteous anger by that soft-tongued son of his. But to us he is a
+man of the very greatest importance, because he owns the land on
+which the people live with whom we are concerned. It is for their
+welfare that he and I should be on good terms together; and therefore
+if you don't mind the sacrifice, I think we'll go."</p>
+
+<p>"What;&mdash;for the whole week, Frank?"</p>
+
+<p>The Vicar was of opinion that the week might be judiciously curtailed
+by two days; and, consequently, Mrs. Fenwick presented her
+compliments to the Ladies Sophie and Carolina Stowte, and expressed
+the great pleasure which she and Mr. Fenwick would have in going to
+Turnover Park on the Tuesday, and staying till the Friday.</p>
+
+<p>"So that I shall only be shooting two days," said the Vicar, "which
+will modify the aspect of my infidelity considerably."</p>
+
+<p>They went to Turnover Castle. The poor old Marquis had rather a bad
+time of it for the hour or two previous to their arrival. It had
+become an acknowledged fact now in the county that Sam Brattle had
+had nothing to do with the murder of Farmer Trumbull, and that his
+acquaintance with the murderers had sprung from his desire to see his
+unfortunate sister settled in marriage with a man whom he at the time
+did not know to be disreputable. There had therefore been a reaction
+in favour of Sam Brattle, whom the county now began to regard as
+something of a hero. The Marquis, understanding all that, had come to
+be aware that he had wronged the Vicar in that matter of the murder.
+And then, though he had been told upon very good authority,&mdash;no less
+than that of his daughters, who had been so informed by the sisters
+of a most exemplary neighbouring curate,&mdash;that Mr. Fenwick was a man
+who believed "just next to nothing," and would just as soon associate
+with a downright Pagan like old Brattle, as with any professing
+Christian,&mdash;still there was the fact of the Bishop's good opinion;
+and, though the Marquis was a self-willed man, to him a bishop was
+always a bishop. It was also clear to him that he had been misled in
+those charges which he had made against the Vicar in that matter of
+poor Carry Brattle's residence at Salisbury. Something of the truth
+of the girl's history had come to the ears of the Marquis, and he had
+been made to believe that he had been wrong. Then there was the
+affair of the chapel, in which, under his son's advice, he was at
+this moment expending &pound;700 in rectifying the mistake which he had
+made. In giving the Marquis his due we must acknowledge that he cared
+but little about the money. Marquises, though they may have large
+properties, are not always in possession of any number of loose
+hundreds which they can throw away without feeling the loss. Nor was
+the Marquis of Trowbridge so circumstanced now. But that trouble did
+not gall him nearly so severely as the necessity which was on him to
+rectify an error made by himself. He had done a foolish thing. Under
+no circumstances should the chapel have been built on that spot. He
+knew it now, and he knew that he must apologise. Noblesse oblige. The
+old lord was very stupid, very wrong-headed, and sometimes very
+arrogant; but he would not do a wrong if he knew it, and nothing on
+earth would make him tell a wilful lie. The epithet indeed might have
+been omitted; for a lie is not a lie unless it be wilful.</p>
+
+<p>Lord Trowbridge passed the hours of this Tuesday morning under the
+frightful sense of the necessity for apologising;&mdash;and yet he
+remembered well the impudence of the man, how he had ventured to
+allude to the Ladies Stowte, likening them to&mdash;to&mdash;to&mdash;! It was
+terrible to be thought of. And his lordship remembered, too, how this
+man had written about the principal entrance to his own mansion as
+though it had been no more than the entrance to any other man's
+house! Though the thorns still rankled in his own flesh, he had to
+own that he himself had been wrong.</p>
+
+<p>And he did it,&mdash;with an honesty that was beyond the reach of his much
+more clever son. When the Fenwicks arrived, they were taken into the
+drawing-room, in which were sitting the Ladies Sophie and Carolina
+with various guests already assembled at the Castle. In a minute or
+two the Marquis shuffled in and shook hands with the two new comers.
+Then he shuffled about the room for another minute or two, and at
+last got his arm through that of the Vicar, and led him away into his
+own sanctum. "Mr. Fenwick," he said, "I think it best to express my
+regret at once for two things that have occurred."</p>
+
+
+<div class="center"><a name="il23" id="il23"></a>
+<table style="margin: 0 auto" cellpadding="4px">
+  <tr>
+    <td align="center">
+      <a href="images/il23.jpg">
+      <img src="images/il23-t.jpg" width="540"
+      alt="The drawing-room at Turnover Castle." /></a>
+    </td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="center">
+      <span class="caption">The drawing-room at Turnover Castle.<br />
+      Click to <a href="images/il23.jpg">ENLARGE</a></span>
+    </td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>"It does not signify, my lord."</p>
+
+<p>"But it does signify to me, and if you will listen to me for a moment
+I shall take your doing so as a favour added to that which you have
+conferred upon me in coming here." The Vicar could only bow and
+listen. "I am sorry, Mr. Fenwick, that I should have written to the
+bishop of this diocese in reference to your conduct." Fenwick found
+it very difficult to hold his tongue when this was said. He imagined
+that the Marquis was going to excuse himself about the chapel,&mdash;and
+about the chapel he cared nothing at all. But as to that letter to
+the bishop, he did feel that the less said about it the better. He
+restrained himself, however, and the Marquis went on. "Things had
+been told me, Mr. Fenwick;&mdash;and I thought that I was doing my duty."</p>
+
+<p>"It did me no harm, my lord."</p>
+
+<p>"I believe not. I had been misinformed,&mdash;and I apologise." The
+Marquis paused, and the Vicar bowed. It is probable that the Vicar
+did not at all know how deep at that moment were the sufferings of
+the Marquis. "And now as to the chapel," continued the Marquis.</p>
+
+<p>"My lord, that is such a trifle that you must let me say that it is
+not and has not been of the slightest consequence."</p>
+
+<p>"I was misled as to that bit of ground."</p>
+
+<p>"I only wish, my lord, that the chapel could stand there."</p>
+
+<p>"That is impossible. The land has been appropriated to other
+purposes, and though we have all been a little in the dark about our
+own rights, right must be done. I will only add that I have the
+greatest satisfaction in seeing you and Mrs. Fenwick at Turnover, and
+that I hope the satisfaction may often be repeated." Then he led the
+way back into the drawing-room, and the evil hour had passed over his
+head.</p>
+
+<p>Upon the whole, things went very well with both the Vicar and his
+wife during their visit. He did go out shooting one day, and was
+treated very civilly by the Turnover gamekeeper, though he was
+prepared with no five-pound note at the end of his day's amusement.
+When he returned to the house, his host congratulated him on his
+performance just as cordially as though he had been one of the laity.
+On the next day he rode over with Lord St. George to see the County
+Hunt kennels, which were then at Charleycoats, and nobody seemed to
+think him very wicked because he ventured to have an opinion about
+hounds. Mrs. Fenwick's amusements were, perhaps, less exciting, but
+she went through them with equanimity. She was taken to see the
+parish schools, and was walked into the parish church,&mdash;in which the
+Stowte family were possessed of an enormous recess called a pew, but
+which was in truth a room, with a fireplace in it. Mrs. Fenwick
+thought it did not look very much like a church; but as the Ladies
+Stowte were clearly very proud of it she held her peace as to that
+idea. And so the visit to Turnover Park was made, and the Fenwicks
+were driven home.</p>
+
+<p>"After all, there's nothing like burying the hatchet," said he.</p>
+
+<p>"But who sharpened the hatchet?" asked Mrs. Fenwick.</p>
+
+<p>"Never mind who sharpened it. We've buried it."</p>
+
+
+<p><a name="c73" id="c73"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>CHAPTER LXXIII.</h3>
+<h4>CONCLUSION.<br />&nbsp;</h4>
+
+
+<p>There is nothing further left to be told of this story of the village
+of Bullhampton and its Vicar beyond what may be necessary to satisfy
+the reader as to the condition and future prospects of the Brattle
+family. The writer of these pages ventures to hope that whatever may
+have been the fate in the readers' mind of that couple which are
+about to settle themselves peaceably at Dunripple, and to wait there
+in comfort till their own time for reigning shall have come, some
+sympathy may have been felt with those humbler personages who have
+lived with orderly industry at the mill,&mdash;as, also, with those who,
+led away by disorderly passions, have strayed away from it, and have
+come back again to the old home.</p>
+
+<p>For a couple of days after the return of the miller with his daughter
+and son, very little was said about the past;&mdash;very little, at least,
+in which either the father or Sam took any part. Between the two
+sisters there were no doubt questions and answers by the hour
+together as to every smallest detail of the occurrences at Salisbury.
+And the mother almost sang hymns of joy over her child, in that the
+hour which she had so much dreaded had passed by. But the miller said
+not a word;&mdash;and Sam was almost equally silent. "But it be all over,
+Sam?" asked his mother, anxiously one day. "For certain sure it be
+all over now?"</p>
+
+<p>"There's one, mother, for whom it ain't all over yet;&mdash;poor devil."</p>
+
+<p>"But he was the&mdash;murderer, Sam."</p>
+
+<p>"So was t'other fellow. There weren't no difference. If one was more
+spry to kill t'old chap than t'other, Acorn was the spryest. That's
+what I think. But it's done now, and there ain't been much justice in
+it. As far as I sees, there never ain't much justice. They was nigh
+a-hanging o' me; and if those chaps had thought o' bringing t'old
+man's box nigh the mill, instead of over by t'old woman's cottage,
+they would a hung me;&mdash;outright. And then they was twelve months
+about it! I don't think much on 'em." When his mother tried to
+continue the conversation,&mdash;which she would have loved to do with
+that morbid interest which we always take in a matter which has been
+nearly fatal to us, but from which we have escaped,&mdash;Sam turned into
+the mill, saying that he had had enough of it, and wouldn't have any
+more.</p>
+
+<p>Then, on the third day, a report of the trial in a county newspaper
+reached them. This the miller read all through, painfully, from the
+beginning to the end, omitting no detail of the official occurrences.
+At last, when he came to the account of Sam's evidence, he got up
+from the chair on which he was sitting close to the window, and
+striking his fist upon the table, made his first and last comment
+upon the trial. "It was well said, Sam. Yes; though thou be'est my
+own, it was well said." Then he put the paper down and walked out of
+doors, and they could see that his eyes were full of tears.</p>
+
+<p>But from that time forth there came a great change in his manner to
+his youngest daughter. "Well, Carry," he would say to her in the
+morning, with as much outward sign of affection as he ever showed to
+any one; and at night, when she came and stood over him before he
+lifted his weary limbs out of his chair to take himself away to his
+bed, he turned his forehead to her to be kissed, as he did to that
+better daughter who had needed no forgiveness from him. Nevertheless,
+they who knew him,&mdash;and there were none who knew him better than
+Fanny did,&mdash;were aware that he never for a moment forgot the disgrace
+which had fallen upon his household. He had forgiven the sinner, but
+the shame of the sin was always on him; and he carried himself as a
+man who was bound to hide himself from the eyes of his neighbours
+because there had come upon him a misfortune which made it fit that
+he should live in retirement.</p>
+
+<p>Sam took up his abode in the house, and worked daily in the mill, and
+for weeks nothing was said either of his going away or of his return.
+He would talk to his sisters of the manner in which he had worked
+among the machinery of the Durham mine at which he had found
+employment; but he said nothing for awhile of the cause which had
+taken him north, or of his purpose of remaining where he was. He ate
+and drank in the house, and from time to time his father paid him
+small sums as wages. At last, sitting one evening after the work of
+the day was done, he spoke out his mind. "Father," said he, "I'm
+about minded to get me a wife." His mother and sisters were all there
+and heard the proposition made.</p>
+
+<p>"And who is the girl as is to have thee, Sam?" asked his mother.</p>
+
+<p>As Sam did not answer at once, Carry replied for him. "Who should it
+be, mother;&mdash;but only Agnes Pope?"</p>
+
+<p>"It ain't that 'un?" said the miller, surlily.</p>
+
+<p>"And why shouldn't it be that 'un, father? It is that 'un, and no
+other. If she be not liked here, why, we'll just go further, and
+perhaps not fare worse."</p>
+
+<p>There was nothing to be said against poor Agnes Pope,&mdash;only this,
+that she had been in Trumbull's house on the night of the murder, and
+had for awhile been suspected by the police of having communicated to
+her lover the tidings of the farmer's box of money. Evil things had
+of course been said of her then, but the words spoken of her had been
+proved to be untrue. She had been taken from the farmer's house into
+that of the Vicar,&mdash;who had, indeed, been somewhat abused by the
+Puddlehamites for harbouring her; but as the belief in Sam's guilt
+had gradually been abandoned, so, of course, had the ground
+disappeared for supposing that poor Agnes had had ought to do in
+bringing about the murder of her late master. For two days the miller
+was very gloomy, and made no reply when Sam declared his purpose of
+leaving the mill before Christmas unless Agnes should be received
+there as his wife;&mdash;but at last he gave way. "As the old 'uns go into
+their graves," he said, "it's no more than nature that the young 'uns
+should become masters." And so Sam was married, and was taken, with
+his wife, to live with the other Brattles at the mill. It was well
+for the miller that it should be so, for Sam was a man who would
+surely earn money when he put his shoulder in earnest to the wheel.</p>
+
+<p>As for Carry, she lived still with them, doomed by her beauty, as was
+her elder sister by the want of it, to expect that no lover should
+come and ask her to establish with him a homestead of their own.</p>
+
+<p>Our friend the Vicar married Sam and his sweetheart, and is still
+often at the mill. From time to time he has made efforts to convert
+the unbelieving old man whose grave is now so near to his feet; but
+he has never prevailed to make the miller own even the need of any
+change. "I've struv' to be honest," he said, when last he was thus
+attacked, "and I've wrought for my wife and bairns. I ain't been a
+drunkard, nor yet, as I knows on, neither a tale-bearer, nor yet a
+liar. I've been harsh-tempered and dour enough I know, and maybe it's
+fitting as they shall be hard and dour to me where I'm going. I don't
+say again it, Muster Fenwick;&mdash;but nothing as I can do now 'll change
+it." This, at any rate, was clear to the Vicar,&mdash;that Death, when it
+came, would come without making the old man tremble.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Gilmore has been some years away from Bullhampton; but when I
+last heard from my friends in that village I was told that at last he
+was expected home.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="narrow" />
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h5><span class="smallcaps">Bradbury, Evans,
+and Co., Printers, Whitefriars.</span></h5>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="narrow" />
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h4>Transcriber's note:</h4>
+
+<div class="small">
+<p class="noindent">Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">Chapter I, paragraph 10.
+The reader should note that the
+town of Haylesbury named in this paragraph is henceforth
+called Haytesbury.</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">Chapter IV, paragraph 1.
+The gardener is here called
+"Jem;" in the rest of the text he is called "Jim". We
+do not know whether this is a typographical error or
+an example of Trollope's inconsistency with the
+names of minor characters.</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">Chapter XL, paragraph 28.
+The astute reader of Trollope
+will recognize the "Dragon of Wantley" as the name of
+the hostelry inherited by Mr. Harding's daughter Eleanor
+in the "Barsetshire" novels.</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">Specific changes in wording of the text
+are listed below.</p>
+
+<p class="noindentind">Chapter I, next-to-last paragraph.
+The name "Chamerblaine"
+was changed to "Chamberlaine" in the sentence: His mother
+had been the sister of the Rev. Henry Fitzackerly
+Chamberlaine; and as Mr. CHAMBERLAINE had never married,
+much of his solicitude was bestowed upon his nephew.</p>
+
+<p class="noindentind">Chapter III, paragraph 7.
+Full stop after "bugglary"
+was changed to a question mark in the sentence: Not
+bugglary?"</p>
+
+<p class="noindentind">Chapter IX, paragraph 6.
+The word "could't" was changed
+to "couldn't" in the sentence: She drank two glasses of
+Marsala every day, and let it be clearly understood that
+she COULDN'T afford sherry.</p>
+
+<p class="noindentind">Chapter XXII, paragraph 1.
+"Bullhampton" was changed to
+"Lavington" in the sentence: He, being an energetic man,
+carried on a long and angry correspondence with the
+authorities aforesaid; but the old man from LAVINGTON
+continued to toddle into the village just at eleven
+o'clock.</p>
+
+<p class="noindentind">Chapter XXVIII, paragraph 9.
+The word "shoudn't" was
+changed to "shouldn't" in the sentence: "I suppose
+not, Mr. Fenwick. I SHOULDN'T ought;&mdash;ought I, now?</p>
+
+<p class="noindentind">Chapter XXXII, paragraph 26.
+The word "friend's" was
+changed to the plural "friends'" in the sentence:
+Had not this dangerous captain come up, Mary, no
+doubt,&mdash;so thought Miss Marrable,&mdash;would at last have
+complied with her FRIENDS' advice, and have accepted
+a marriage which was in all respects advantageous.</p>
+
+<p class="noindentind">Chapter XXXV, paragraph 3.
+The word "began" was
+changed to "begun" in the sentence:
+<span class="nowrap">&#8230; and</span> had
+long since BEGUN to feel that a few cabbages and
+peaches did not repay him for the loss of those
+pleasant and bitter <span class="nowrap">things, &#8230;</span></p>
+
+<p class="noindentind">Chapter XXXIX, paragraph 13.
+"Gay" was changed to "Jay"
+in the sentence: Mrs. JAY, no doubt, is a religious
+woman. We do not know whether this was a typographical
+error or another example of Trollope's inconsistency
+with names of minor characters.</p>
+
+<p class="noindentind">Chapter XLII, paragraph 5.
+A hyphen was removed from
+"any-rate" in the sentence: His gown was of silk, and
+his income almost greater than his desires; but he
+would fain sit upon the Bench, and have at ANY RATE
+his evenings for his own enjoyment.</p>
+
+<p class="noindentind">Chapter XLII, paragraph 6.
+The word "that" was
+removed from the sentence: Mr. Quickenham was a tall,
+thin man, with eager gray eyes, and a long projecting
+nose, on which, his enemies in the courts of law were
+wont to say, [THAT] his wife would hang a kettle, in
+order that the unnecessary heat coming from his mouth
+might not be wasted.</p>
+
+<p class="noindentind">Chapter XLVIII, paragraph 2.
+The word "injustice" was
+changed to "justice" in the sentence: He reminded
+himself, too, of the murderer's present escape from
+JUSTICE by aid of this pestilent
+<span class="nowrap">clergyman; &#8230;</span></p>
+
+<p class="noindentind">Chapter XLVIII, paragraph 4.
+"St." was added to the
+sentence: He had already told St. George of Fenwick's
+letter to him and of his letter to the bishop, and
+ST. George had whistled.</p>
+
+<p class="noindentind">Chapter XLIX, paragraph 21.
+The words "much as" were
+added to the sentence: I believe I owe as much to
+you,&mdash;almost as MUCH AS a woman can owe to a man;
+but still, were my cousin so placed that he could
+afford to marry a poor wife, I should leave you and
+go to him at once.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
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@@ -0,0 +1,23031 @@
+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Vicar of Bullhampton, by Anthony
+Trollope, Illustrated by H. Woods
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Vicar of Bullhampton
+
+
+Author: Anthony Trollope
+
+
+
+Release Date: September 5, 2008  [eBook #26541]
+Most recently updated October 5, 2017
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE VICAR OF BULLHAMPTON***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Delphine Lettau and Joseph E. Loewenstein, M.D.
+
+
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+      file which includes the original illustrations.
+      See 26541-h.htm or 26541-h.zip:
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/6/5/4/26541/26541-h/26541-h.htm)
+      or
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/6/5/4/26541/26541-h.zip)
+
+
+
+
+
+THE VICAR OF BULLHAMPTON.
+
+by
+
+ANTHONY TROLLOPE.
+
+With Thirty Illustrations by H. Woods.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: Waiting-Room at the Assize Court. (frontispiece)]
+
+
+[Illustration for title page]
+
+
+
+London:
+Bradbury, Evans, and Co., 11, Bouverie Street.
+1870.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+The writing of prefaces is, for the most part, work thrown away; and
+the writing of a preface to a novel is almost always a vain thing.
+Nevertheless, I am tempted to prefix a few words to this novel on
+its completion, not expecting that many people will read them, but
+desirous, in doing so, of defending myself against a charge which may
+possibly be made against me by the critics,--as to which I shall be
+unwilling to revert after it shall have been preferred.
+
+I have introduced in the Vicar of Bullhampton the character of a girl
+whom I will call,--for want of a truer word that shall not in its
+truth be offensive,--a castaway. I have endeavoured to endow her with
+qualities that may create sympathy, and I have brought her back at
+last from degradation at least to decency. I have not married her to
+a wealthy lover, and I have endeavoured to explain that though there
+was possible to her a way out of perdition, still things could not be
+with her as they would have been had she not fallen.
+
+There arises, of course, the question whether a novelist, who
+professes to write for the amusement of the young of both sexes,
+should allow himself to bring upon his stage such a character as that
+of Carry Brattle? It is not long since,--it is well within the memory
+of the author,--that the very existence of such a condition of life,
+as was hers, was supposed to be unknown to our sisters and daughters,
+and was, in truth, unknown to many of them. Whether that ignorance
+was good may be questioned; but that it exists no longer is beyond
+question. Then arises that further question,--how far the condition
+of such unfortunates should be made a matter of concern to the sweet
+young hearts of those whose delicacy and cleanliness of thought is a
+matter of pride to so many of us. Cannot women, who are good, pity
+the sufferings of the vicious, and do something perhaps to mitigate
+and shorten them, without contamination from the vice? It will be
+admitted probably by most men who have thought upon the subject that
+no fault among us is punished so heavily as that fault, often so
+light in itself but so terrible in its consequences to the less
+faulty of the two offenders, by which a woman falls. All her own sex
+is against her,--and all those of the other sex in whose veins runs
+the blood which she is thought to have contaminated, and who, of
+nature, would befriend her were her trouble any other than it is.
+
+She is what she is, and remains in her abject, pitiless, unutterable
+misery, because this sentence of the world has placed her beyond
+the helping hand of Love and Friendship. It may be said, no doubt,
+that the severity of this judgment acts as a protection to female
+virtue,--deterring, as all known punishments do deter, from vice. But
+this punishment, which is horrible beyond the conception of those who
+have not regarded it closely, is not known beforehand. Instead of the
+punishment there is seen a false glitter of gaudy life,--a glitter
+which is damnably false,--and which, alas, has been more often
+portrayed in glowing colours, for the injury of young girls, than
+have those horrors, which ought to deter, with the dark shadowings
+which belong to them.
+
+To write in fiction of one so fallen as the noblest of her sex, as
+one to be rewarded because of her weakness, as one whose life is
+happy, bright, and glorious, is certainly to allure to vice and
+misery. But it may perhaps be possible that if the matter be handled
+with truth to life, some girl, who would have been thoughtless, may
+be made thoughtful, or some parent's heart may be softened. It may
+also at last be felt that this misery is worthy of alleviation, as is
+every misery to which humanity is subject.
+
+A. T.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+      I. BULLHAMPTON
+     II. FLO'S RED BALL
+    III. SAM BRATTLE
+     IV. THERE IS NO ONE ELSE
+      V. THE MILLER
+     VI. BRATTLE'S MILL
+    VII. THE MILLER'S WIFE
+   VIII. THE LAST DAY
+     IX. MISS MARRABLE
+      X. CRUNCH'EM CAN'T BE HAD
+     XI. DON'T YOU BE AFEARD ABOUT ME
+    XII. BONE'M AND HIS MASTER
+   XIII. CAPTAIN MARRABLE AND HIS FATHER
+    XIV. COUSINHOOD
+     XV. THE POLICE AT FAULT
+    XVI. MISS LOWTHER ASKS FOR ADVICE
+   XVII. THE MARQUIS OF TROWBRIDGE
+  XVIII. BLANK PAPER
+    XIX. SAM BRATTLE RETURNS HOME
+     XX. I HAVE A JUPITER OF MY OWN NOW
+    XXI. WHAT PARSON JOHN THINKS ABOUT IT
+   XXII. WHAT THE FENWICKS THOUGHT ABOUT IT
+  XXIII. WHAT MR. GILMORE THOUGHT ABOUT IT
+   XXIV. THE REV. HENRY FITZACKERLEY CHAMBERLAINE
+    XXV. CARRY BRATTLE
+   XXVI. THE TURNOVER CORRESPONDENCE
+  XXVII. "I NEVER SHAMED NONE OF THEM"
+ XXVIII. MRS. BRATTLE'S JOURNEY
+   XXIX. THE BULL AT LORING
+    XXX. THE AUNT AND THE UNCLE
+   XXXI. MARY LOWTHER FEELS HER WAY
+  XXXII. MR. GILMORE'S SUCCESS
+ XXXIII. FAREWELL
+  XXXIV. BULLHAMPTON NEWS
+   XXXV. MR. PUDDLEHAM'S NEW CHAPEL
+  XXXVI. SAM BRATTLE GOES OFF AGAIN
+ XXXVII. FEMALE MARTYRDOM
+XXXVIII. A LOVER'S MADNESS
+  XXXIX. THE THREE HONEST MEN
+     XL. TROTTER'S BUILDINGS
+    XLI. STARTUP FARM
+   XLII. MR. QUICKENHAM, Q.C.
+  XLIII. EASTER AT TURNOVER CASTLE
+   XLIV. THE MARRABLES OF DUNRIPPLE
+    XLV. WHAT SHALL I DO WITH MYSELF?
+   XLVI. MR. JAY OF WARMINSTER
+  XLVII. SAM BRATTLE IS WANTED
+ XLVIII. MARY LOWTHER RETURNS TO BULLHAMPTON
+   XLIX. MARY LOWTHER'S DOOM
+      L. MARY LOWTHER INSPECTS HER FUTURE HOME
+     LI. THE GRINDER AND HIS COMRADE
+    LII. CARRY BRATTLE'S JOURNEY
+   LIII. THE FATTED CALF
+    LIV. MR. GILMORE'S RUBIES
+     LV. GLEBE LAND
+    LVI. THE VICAR'S VENGEANCE
+   LVII. OIL IS TO BE THROWN UPON THE WATERS
+  LVIII. EDITH BROWNLOW'S DREAM
+    LIX. NEWS FROM DUNRIPPLE
+     LX. LORD ST. GEORGE IS VERY CUNNING
+    LXI. MARY LOWTHER'S TREACHERY
+   LXII. UP AT THE PRIVETS
+  LXIII. THE MILLER TELLS HIS TROUBLES
+   LXIV. IF I WERE YOUR SISTER!
+    LXV. MARY LOWTHER LEAVES BULLHAMPTON
+   LXVI. AT THE MILL
+  LXVII. SIR GREGORY MARRABLE HAS A HEADACHE
+ LXVIII. THE SQUIRE IS VERY OBSTINATE
+   LXIX. THE TRIAL
+    LXX. THE FATE OF THE PUDDLEHAMITES
+   LXXI. THE END OF MARY LOWTHER'S STORY
+  LXXII. AT TURNOVER CASTLE
+ LXXIII. CONCLUSION
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
+
+   WAITING-ROOM AT THE ASSIZE COURT.               (_frontispiece_)
+
+   "YOU SHOULD GIVE HIM AN ANSWER, DEAR, ONE WAY
+   OR THE OTHER."                                      (Chapter II)
+
+   "I THOUGHT I SHOULD CATCH YOU IDLE JUST AT THIS
+   MOMENT," SAID THE CLERGYMAN.                        (Chapter VI)
+
+   MR. FENWICK CAME ROUND FROM FARMER TRUMBULL'S
+   SIDE OF THE CHURCH, AND GOT OVER THE STILE
+   INTO THE CHURCHYARD.                              (Chapter VIII)
+
+   "I HOPE IT WILL BE ALL RIGHT NOW,
+   MR. FENWICK," THE GIRL SAID.                        (Chapter XI)
+
+   "HOW DARE YOU MENTION MY DAUGHTERS?"              (Chapter XVII)
+
+   "IT IS ALL BLANK PAPER WITH YOU?"                (Chapter XVIII)
+
+   "I HAVE COME TO SAY A WORD, IF I CAN,
+   TO COMFORT YOU."                                 (Chapter XXIII)
+
+   "CARRY," HE SAID, COMING BACK TO HER, "IT
+   WASN'T ALL FOR HIM THAT I CAME."                   (Chapter XXV)
+
+   PARSON JOHN AND WALTER MARRABLE.                  (Chapter XXIX)
+
+   MARY LOWTHER WRITES TO WALTER MARRABLE.         (Chapter XXXIII)
+
+   SITE OF MR. PUDDLEHAM'S NEW CHAPEL.            (Chapter XXXVIII)
+
+   "DO COME IN, HARRY."                           (Chapter XXXVIII)
+
+   "I DARE SAY NOT," SAID MR. QUICKENHAM.            (Chapter XLII)
+
+   SUNDAY MORNING AT DUNRIPPLE.                      (Chapter XLIV)
+
+   "WHO ARE YOU, SIR, THAT YOU SHOULD
+   INTERPRET MY WORDS?"                             (Chapter XLVII)
+
+   CARRY BRATTLE.                                     (Chapter LII)
+
+   "IF I MAY BIDE WITH YOU,--IF I MAY
+   BIDE WITH YOU--."                                 (Chapter LIII)
+
+   MR. QUICKENHAM'S LETTER DISCUSSED.                  (Chapter LV)
+
+   SHE HAD BROUGHT HIM OUT A CUP OF COFFEE.         (Chapter LVIII)
+
+   "IT'S IN HERE, MUSTER FENWICK,--IN HERE."        (Chapter LXIII)
+
+   "OH, FATHER," SHE SAID, "I WILL BE GOOD."         (Chapter LXVI)
+
+   THE DRAWING-ROOM AT TURNOVER CASTLE.             (Chapter LXXII)
+
+
+
+
+THE VICAR OF BULLHAMPTON.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+BULLHAMPTON.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+I am disposed to believe that no novel reader in England has seen the
+little town of Bullhampton, in Wiltshire, except such novel readers
+as live there, and those others, very few in number, who visit it
+perhaps four times a year for the purposes of trade, and who are
+known as commercial gentlemen. Bullhampton is seventeen miles from
+Salisbury, eleven from Marlborough, nine from Westbury, seven from
+Haylesbury, and five from the nearest railroad station, which is
+called Bullhampton Road, and lies on the line from Salisbury to
+Yeovil. It is not quite on Salisbury Plain, but probably was so once,
+when Salisbury Plain was wider than it is now. Whether it should be
+called a small town or a large village I cannot say. It has no mayor,
+and no market, but it has a fair. There rages a feud in Bullhampton
+touching this want of a market, as there are certain Bullhamptonites
+who aver that the charter giving all rights of a market to
+Bullhampton does exist; and that at one period in its history the
+market existed also,--for a year or two; but the three bakers and
+two butchers are opposed to change; and the patriots of the place,
+though they declaim on the matter over their evening pipes and
+gin-and-water, have not enough of matutinal zeal to carry out their
+purpose. Bullhampton is situated on a little river, which meanders
+through the chalky ground, and has a quiet, slow, dreamy prettiness
+of its own. A mile above the town,--for we will call it a town,--the
+stream divides itself into many streamlets, and there is a district
+called the Water Meads, in which bridges are more frequent than
+trustworthy, in which there are hundreds of little sluice-gates for
+regulating the irrigation, and a growth of grass which is a source
+of much anxiety and considerable trouble to the farmers. There is a
+water-mill here, too, very low, with ever a floury, mealy look, with
+a pasty look often, as the flour becomes damp with the spray of the
+water as it is thrown by the mill-wheel. It seems to be a tattered,
+shattered, ramshackle concern, but it has been in the same family
+for many years; and as the family has not hitherto been in distress,
+it may be supposed that the mill still affords a fair means of
+livelihood. The Brattles,--for Jacob Brattle is the miller's
+name,--have ever been known as men who paid their way, and were able
+to hold up their heads. But nevertheless Jacob Brattle is ever at
+war with his landlord in regard to repairs wanted for his mill,
+and Mr. Gilmore, the landlord in question, declares that he wishes
+that the Avon would some night run so high as to carry off the mill
+altogether. Bullhampton is very quiet. There is no special trade
+in the place. Its interests are altogether agricultural. It has
+no newspaper. Its tendencies are altogether conservative. It is
+a good deal given to religion; and the Primitive Methodists have
+a very strong holding there, although in all Wiltshire there is
+not a clergyman more popular in his own parish than the Rev. Frank
+Fenwick. He himself, in his inner heart, rather likes his rival,
+Mr. Puddleham, the dissenting minister; because Mr. Puddleham is an
+earnest man, who, in spite of the intensity of his ignorance, is
+efficacious among the poor. But Mr. Fenwick is bound to keep up the
+fight; and Mr. Puddleham considers it to be his duty to put down Mr.
+Fenwick and the Church Establishment altogether.
+
+The men of Bullhampton, and the women also, are aware that the glory
+has departed from them, in that Bullhampton was once a borough, and
+returned two members to Parliament. No borough more close, or shall
+we say more rotten, ever existed. It was not that the Marquis of
+Trowbridge had, what has often delicately been called, an interest in
+it; but he held it absolutely in his breeches pocket, to do with it
+as he liked; and it had been the liking of the late Marquis to sell
+one of the seats at every election to the highest bidder on his side
+in politics. Nevertheless, the people of Bullhampton had gloried
+in being a borough, and the shame, or at least the regret of their
+downfall, had not yet altogether passed away when the tidings of
+a new Reform Bill came upon them. The people of Bullhampton are
+notoriously slow to learn, and slow to forget. It was told of a
+farmer of Bullhampton, in old days, that he asked what had become of
+Charles I., when told that Charles II. had been restored. Cromwell
+had come and gone, and had not disturbed him at Bullhampton.
+
+At Bullhampton there is no public building, except the church, which
+indeed is a very handsome edifice with a magnificent tower, a thing
+to go to see, and almost as worthy of a visit as its neighbour the
+cathedral at Salisbury. The body of the church is somewhat low, but
+its yellow-gray colour is perfect, and there is, moreover, a Norman
+door, and there are Early English windows in the aisle, and a
+perfection of perpendicular architecture in the chancel, all of which
+should bring many visitors to Bullhampton; and there are brasses in
+the nave, very curious, and one or two tombs of the Gilmore family,
+very rare in their construction, and the churchyard is large and
+green, and bowery, with the Avon flowing close under it, and nooks in
+it which would make a man wish to die that he might be buried there.
+The church and churchyard of Bullhampton are indeed perfect, and yet
+but few people go to see it. It has not as yet had its own bard to
+sing its praises. Properly it is called Bullhampton Monachorum, the
+living having belonged to the friars of Chiltern. The great tithes
+now go to the Earl of Todmorden, who has no other interest in the
+place whatever, and who never saw it. The benefice belongs to St.
+John's, Oxford, and as the vicarage is not worth more than L400 a
+year, it happens that a clergyman generally accepts it before he has
+lived for twenty or thirty years in the common room of his college.
+Mr. Fenwick took it on his marriage, when he was about twenty-seven,
+and Bullhampton has been lucky.
+
+The bulk of the parish belongs to the Marquis of Trowbridge, who,
+however, has no residence within ten miles of it. The squire of the
+parish is Squire Gilmore,--Harry Gilmore,--and he possesses every
+acre in it that is not owned by the Marquis. With the village, or
+town as it may be, Mr. Gilmore has no concern; but he owns a large
+tract of the water meads, and again has a farm or two up on the
+downs as you go towards Chiltern. But they lie out of the parish of
+Bullhampton. Altogether he is a man of about fifteen hundred a year,
+and as he is not as yet married, many a Wiltshire mother's eye is
+turned towards Hampton Privets, as Mr. Gilmore's house is, somewhat
+fantastically, named.
+
+Mr. Gilmore's character must be made to develope itself in these
+pages,--if such developing may be accomplished. He is to be our
+hero,--or at least one of two. The author will not, in these early
+words, declare that the squire will be his favourite hero, as he
+will wish that his readers should form their own opinions on that
+matter. At this period he was a man somewhat over thirty,--perhaps
+thirty-three years of age, who had done fairly well at Harrow and at
+Oxford, but had never done enough to make his friends regard him as a
+swan. He still read a good deal; but he shot and fished more than he
+read, and had become, since his residence at the Privets, very fond
+of the outside of his books. Nevertheless, he went on buying books,
+and was rather proud of his library. He had travelled a good deal,
+and was a politician,--somewhat scandalising his own tenants and
+other Bullhamptonites by voting for the liberal candidates for his
+division of the county. The Marquis of Trowbridge did not know him,
+but regarded him as an objectionable person, who did not understand
+the nature of the duties which devolved upon him as a country
+gentleman; and the Marquis himself was always spoken of by Mr.
+Gilmore as--an idiot. On these various grounds the squire has
+hitherto regarded himself as being a little in advance of other
+squires, and has, perhaps, given himself more credit than he has
+deserved for intellectuality. But he is a man with a good heart, and
+a pure mind, generous, desirous of being just, somewhat sparing of
+that which is his own, never desirous of that which is another's. He
+is good-looking, though, perhaps, somewhat ordinary in appearance;
+tall, strong, with dark-brown hair, and dark-brown whiskers, with
+small, quick grey eyes, and teeth which are almost too white and too
+perfect for a man. Perhaps it is his greatest fault that he thinks
+that as a liberal politician and as an English country gentleman he
+has combined in his own position all that is most desirable upon
+earth. To have the acres without the acre-laden brains, is, he
+thinks, everything.
+
+And now it may be as well told at once that Mr. Gilmore is over head
+and ears in love with a young lady to whom he has offered his hand
+and all that can be made to appertain to the future mistress of
+Hampton Privets. And the lady is one who has nothing to give in
+return but her hand, and her heart, and herself. The neighbours all
+round the country have been saying for the last five years that Harry
+Gilmore was looking out for an heiress; for it has always been told
+of Harry, especially among those who have opposed him in politics,
+that he had a keen eye for the main chance. But Mary Lowther has not,
+and never can have, a penny with which to make up for any deficiency
+in her own personal attributes. But Mary is a lady, and Harry Gilmore
+thinks her the sweetest woman on whom his eye ever rested. Whatever
+resolutions as to fortune-hunting he may have made,--though probably
+none were ever made,--they have all now gone to the winds. He is so
+absolutely in love that nothing in the world is, to him, at present
+worth thinking about except Mary Lowther. I do not doubt that he
+would vote for a conservative candidate if Mary Lowther so ordered
+him; or consent to go and live in New York if Mary Lowther would
+accept him on no other condition. All Bullhampton parish is nothing
+to him at the present moment, except as far as it is connected with
+Mary Lowther. Hampton Privets is dear to him only as far as it can be
+made to look attractive in the eyes of Mary Lowther. The mill is to
+be repaired, though he knows he will never get any interest on the
+outlay, because Mary Lowther has said that Bullhampton water-meads
+would be destroyed if the mill were to tumble down. He has drawn for
+himself mental pictures of Mary Lowther till he has invested her with
+every charm and grace and virtue that can adorn a woman. In very
+truth he believes her to be perfect. He is actually and absolutely in
+love. Mary Lowther has hitherto neither accepted nor rejected him.
+In a very few lines further on we will tell how the matter stands
+between them.
+
+It has already been told that the Rev. Frank Fenwick is Vicar of
+Bullhampton. Perhaps he was somewhat guided in his taking of the
+living by the fact that Harry Gilmore, the squire of the parish,
+had been his very intimate friend at Oxford. Fenwick, at the period
+with which we are about to begin our story, had been six years at
+Bullhampton, and had been married about five and a half. Of him
+something has already been said, and perhaps it may be only necessary
+further to state that he is a tall, fair-haired man, already becoming
+somewhat bald on the top of his head, with bright eyes, and the
+slightest possible amount of whiskers, and a look about his nose and
+mouth which seems to imply that he could be severe if he were not so
+thoroughly good-humoured. He has more of breeding in his appearance
+than his friend,--a show of higher blood; though whence comes such
+show, and how one discerns that appearance, few of us can tell. He
+was a man who read more and thought more than Harry Gilmore, though
+given much to athletics and very fond of field sports. It shall
+only further be said of Frank Fenwick that he esteemed both his
+churchwardens and his bishop, and was afraid of neither.
+
+His wife had been a Miss Balfour, from Loring, in Gloucestershire,
+and had had some considerable fortune. She was now the mother of
+four children, and, as Fenwick used to say, might have fourteen for
+anything he knew. But as he also had possessed some small means
+of his own, there was no poverty, or prospect of poverty at the
+vicarage, and the babies were made welcome as they came. Mrs. Fenwick
+is as good a specimen of an English country parson's wife as you
+shall meet in a county,--gay, good-looking, fond of the society
+around her, with a little dash of fun, knowing in blankets and
+corduroys and coals and tea; knowing also as to beer and gin and
+tobacco; acquainted with every man and woman in the parish; thinking
+her husband to be quite as good as the squire in regard to position,
+and to be infinitely superior to the squire, or any other man in
+the world, in regard to his personal self;--a handsome, pleasant,
+well-dressed lady, who has no nonsense about her. Such a one was, and
+is, Mrs. Fenwick.
+
+Now the Balfours were considerable people at Loring, though their
+property was not county property; and it was always considered that
+Janet Balfour might have done better than she did, in a worldly point
+of view. Of that, however, little had been said at Loring, because it
+soon became known there that she and her husband stood rather well in
+the country round about Bullhampton; and when she asked Mary Lowther
+to come and stay with her for six months, Mary Lowther's aunt, Miss
+Marrable, had nothing to say against the arrangement, although she
+herself was a most particular old lady, and always remembered that
+Mary Lowther was third or fourth cousin to some earl in Scotland.
+Nothing more shall be said of Miss Marrable at present, as it is
+expedient, for the sake of the story, that the reader should fix his
+attention on Bullhampton till he find himself quite at home there.
+I would wish him to know his way among the water meads, to be quite
+alive to the fact that the lodge of Hampton Privets is a mile and a
+quarter to the north of Bullhampton church, and half a mile across
+the fields west from Brattle's mill; that Mr. Fenwick's parsonage
+adjoins the churchyard, being thus a little farther from Hampton
+Privets than the church; and that there commences Bullhampton street,
+with its inn,--the Trowbridge Arms, its four public-houses, its three
+bakers, and its two butchers. The bounds of the parsonage run down
+to the river, so that the Vicar can catch his trout from his own
+bank,--though he much prefers to catch them at distances which admit
+of the appurtenances of sport.
+
+Now there must be one word of Mary Lowther, and then the story shall
+be commenced. She had come to the vicarage in May, intending to stay
+a month, and it was now August, and she had been already three months
+with her friend. Everybody said that she was staying because she
+intended to become the mistress of Hampton Privets. It was a month
+since Harry Gilmore had formally made his offer, and as she had not
+refused him, and as she still stayed on, the folk of Bullhampton were
+justified in their conclusions. She was a tall girl, with dark brown
+hair, which she wore fastened in a knot at the back of her head,
+after the simplest fashion. Her eyes were large and grey, and full
+of lustre; but they were not eyes which would make you say that Mary
+Lowther was especially a bright-eyed girl. They were eyes, however,
+which could make you think, when they looked at you, that if Mary
+Lowther would only like you, how happy your lot would be,--that if
+she would love you, the world would have nothing higher or better to
+offer. If you judged her face by any rules of beauty, you would say
+that it was too thin; but feeling its influence with sympathy, you
+could never wish it to be changed. Her nose and mouth were perfect.
+How many little noses there are on young women's faces which of
+themselves cannot be said to be things of beauty, or joys for ever,
+although they do very well in their places! There is the softness
+and colour of youth, and perhaps a dash of fun, and the eyes above
+are bright, and the lips below alluring. In the midst of such sweet
+charms, what does it matter that the nose be puggish,--or even a
+nose of putty, such as you think you might improve in the original
+material by a squeeze of your thumb and forefinger? But with Mary
+Lowther her nose itself was a feature of exquisite beauty, a feature
+that could be eloquent with pity, reverence, or scorn. The curves of
+the nostrils, with their almost transparent membranes, told of the
+working of the mind within, as every portion of human face should
+tell--in some degree. And the mouth was equally expressive, though
+the lips were thin. It was a mouth to watch, and listen to, and read
+with curious interest, rather than a mouth to kiss. Not but that
+the desire to kiss would come, when there might be a hope to kiss
+with favour;--but they were lips which no man would think to ravage
+in boisterous play. It might have been said that there was a want
+of capability for passion in her face, had it not been for the
+well-marked dimple in her little chin,--that soft couch in which one
+may be always sure, when one sees it, that some little imp of Love
+lies hidden.
+
+It has already been said that Mary Lowther was tall,--taller than
+common. Her back was as lovely a form of womanhood as man's eye ever
+measured and appreciated. Her movements, which were never naturally
+quick, had a grace about them which touched men and women alike. It
+was the very poetry of motion; but its chief beauty consisted in
+this, that it was what it was by no effort of her own. We have all
+seen those efforts, and it may be that many of us have liked them
+when they have been made on our own behalf. But no man as yet could
+ever have felt himself to be so far flattered by Miss Lowther. Her
+dress was very plain; as it became her that it should be, for she was
+living on the kindness of an aunt who was herself not a rich woman.
+But it may be doubted whether dress could have added much to her
+charms.
+
+She was now turned one-and-twenty, and though, doubtless, there were
+young men at Loring who had sighed for her smiles, no young man had
+sighed with any efficacy. It must be acknowledged, indeed, that she
+was not a girl for whom the most susceptible of young men would sigh.
+Young men given to sigh are generally attracted by some outward and
+visible sign of softness which may be taken as an indication that
+sighing will produce some result, however small. At Loring it was
+said that Mary Lowther was cold and repellent, and, on that account,
+one who might very probably descend to the shades as an old maid in
+spite of the beauty of which she was the acknowledged possessor. No
+enemy, no friend, had ever accused her of being a flirt.
+
+Such as she was, Harry Gilmore's passion for her much astonished his
+friends. Those who knew him best had thought that, as regarded his
+fate matrimonial,--or non-matrimonial,--there were three chances
+before him: he might carry out their presumed intention of marrying
+money; or he might become the sudden spoil of the bow and spear of
+some red-cheeked lass; or he might walk on as an old bachelor, too
+cautious to be caught at all. But none believed that he would become
+the victim of a grand passion for a poor, reticent, high-bred,
+high-minded specimen of womanhood. Such, however, was now his
+condition.
+
+He had an uncle, a clergyman, living at Salisbury, a prebendary
+there, who was a man of the world, and in whom Harry trusted more
+than in any other member of his own family. His mother had been
+the sister of the Rev. Henry Fitzackerly Chamberlaine; and as Mr.
+Chamberlaine had never married, much of his solicitude was bestowed
+upon his nephew.
+
+"Don't, my dear fellow," had been the prebendary's advice when he was
+taken over to see Miss Lowther. "She is a lady, no doubt; but you
+would never be your own master, and you would be a poor man till you
+died. An easy temper and a little money are almost as common in our
+rank of life as destitution and obstinacy." On the day after this
+advice was given, Harry Gilmore made his formal offer.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+FLO'S RED BALL.
+
+
+"You should give him an answer, dear, one way or the other." These
+wise words were spoken by Mrs. Fenwick to her friend as they sat
+together, with their work in their hands, on a garden seat under a
+cedar tree. It was an August evening after dinner, and the Vicar was
+out about his parish. The two elder children were playing in the
+garden, and the two young women were alone together.
+
+
+[Illustration: "You should give him an answer, dear, one way
+or the other."]
+
+
+"Of course I shall give him an answer. What answer does he wish?"
+
+"You know what answer he wishes. If any man was ever in earnest he
+is."
+
+"Am I not doing the best I can for him then in waiting--to see
+whether I can say yes?"
+
+"It cannot be well for him to be in suspense on such a matter; and,
+dear Mary, it cannot be well for you either. One always feels that
+when a girl bids a man to wait, she will take him after a while. It
+always comes to that. If you had been at home at Loring, the time
+would not have been much; but, being so near to him, and seeing him
+every day, must be bad. You must both be in a state of fever."
+
+"Then I will go back to Loring."
+
+"No; not now, till you have positively made up your mind, and given
+him an answer one way or the other. You could not go now and leave
+him in doubt. Take him at once, and have done with it. He is as good
+as gold."
+
+In answer to this, Mary for a while said nothing, but went sedulously
+on with her work.
+
+"Mamma," said a little girl, running up, followed by a nursery-maid,
+"the ball's in the water!"
+
+The child was a beautiful fair-haired little darling about
+four-and-a-half years old, and a boy, a year younger, and a little
+shorter, and a little stouter, was toddling after her.
+
+"The ball in the water, Flo! Can't Jim get it out?"
+
+"Jim's gone, mamma."
+
+Then Jane, the nursery-maid, proceeded to explain that the ball had
+rolled in and had been carried down the stream to some bushes, and
+that it was caught there just out of reach of all that she, Jane,
+could do with a long stick for its recovery. Jim, the gardener, was
+not to be found; and they were in despair lest the ball should become
+wet through and should perish.
+
+Mary at once saw her opportunity of escape,--her opportunity for that
+five minutes of thought by herself which she needed. "I'll come, Flo,
+and see what can be done," said Mary.
+
+"Do; 'cause you is so big," said the little girl.
+
+"We'll see if my long arms won't do as well as Jim's," said Mary;
+"only Jim would go in, perhaps, which I certainly shall not do." Then
+she took Flo by the hand, and together they ran down to the margin of
+the river.
+
+There lay the treasure, a huge red inflated ball, just stopped in its
+downward current by a short projecting stick. Jim could have got it
+certainly, because he could have suspended himself over the stream
+from a bough, and could have dislodged the ball, and have floated it
+on to the bank.
+
+"Lean over, Mary,--a great deal, and we'll hold you," said Flo, to
+whom her ball was at this moment worth any effort. Mary did lean
+over, and poked at it, and at last thought that she would trust
+herself to the bough, as Jim would have done, and became more
+and more venturous, and at last touched the ball, and then, at
+last,--fell into the river! Immediately there was a scream and a
+roar, and a splashing about of skirts and petticoats, and by the
+time that Mrs. Fenwick was on the bank, Mary Lowther had extricated
+herself, and had triumphantly brought out Flo's treasure with her.
+
+"Mary, are you hurt?" said her friend.
+
+"What should hurt me? Oh dear, oh dear! I never fell into a river
+before. My darling Flo, don't be unhappy. It's such good fun. Only
+you mustn't fall in yourself, till you're as big as I am." Flo was in
+an agony of tears, not deigning to look at the rescued ball.
+
+"You do not mean that your head has been under?" said Mrs. Fenwick.
+
+"My face was, and I felt so odd. For about half a moment I had a
+sound of Ophelia in my ears. Then I was laughing at myself for being
+such a goose."
+
+"You'd better come up and go to bed, dear; and I'll get you something
+warm."
+
+"I won't go to bed, and I won't have anything warm; but I will change
+my clothes. What an adventure! What will Mr. Fenwick say?"
+
+"What will Mr. Gilmore say?" To this Mary Lowther made no answer, but
+went straight up to the house, and into her room, and changed her
+clothes.
+
+While she was there Fenwick and Gilmore both appeared at the open
+window of the drawing-room in which Mrs. Fenwick was sitting. She had
+known well enough that Harry Gilmore would not let the evening pass
+without coming to the vicarage, and at one time had hoped to persuade
+Mary Lowther to give her verdict on this very day. Both she and her
+husband were painfully anxious that Harry might succeed. Fenwick had
+loved the man dearly for many years, and Janet Fenwick had loved him
+since she had known him as her husband's friend. They both felt that
+he was showing more of manhood than they had expected from him in the
+persistency of his love, and that he deserved his reward. And they
+both believed also that for Mary herself it would be a prosperous and
+a happy marriage. And then, where is the married woman who does not
+wish that the maiden friend who comes to stay with her should find a
+husband in her house? The parson and his wife were altogether of one
+mind in this matter, and thought that Mary Lowther ought to be made
+to give herself to Harry Gilmore.
+
+"What do you think has happened?" said Mrs. Fenwick, coming to the
+window, which opened down to the ground. "Mary Lowther has fallen
+into the river."
+
+"Fallen where?" shouted Gilmore, putting up both his hands, and
+seeming to prepare himself to rush away among the river gods in
+search of his love.
+
+"Don't be alarmed, Mr. Gilmore, she's upstairs, quite safe,--only she
+has had a ducking." Then the circumstances were explained, and the
+papa declared magisterially that Flo must not play any more with her
+ball near the river,--an order to which it was not probable that much
+close attention would ever be paid.
+
+"I suppose Miss Lowther will have gone to bed?" said Gilmore.
+
+"On the contrary, I expect her every moment. I suggested bed, and
+warm drinks, and cossetting; but she would have none of it. She
+scrambled out all by herself, and seemed to think it very good fun."
+
+"Come in at any rate and have some tea," said the Vicar. "If you
+start before eleven, I'll walk half the way back with you."
+
+In the mean time, in spite of her accident, Mary had gained the
+opportunity that she had required. The point for self-meditation was
+not so much whether she would or would not accept Mr. Gilmore now,
+as that other point;--was she or was she not wrong to keep him in
+suspense. She knew very well that she would not accept him now. It
+seemed to her that a girl should know a man very thoroughly before
+she would be justified in trusting herself altogether to his hands,
+and she thought that her knowledge of Mr. Gilmore was insufficient.
+It might however be the case that in such circumstances duty required
+her to give him at once an unhesitating answer. She did not find
+herself to be a bit nearer to knowing him and to loving him than she
+was a month since. Her friend Janet had complained again and again of
+the suspense to which she was subjecting the man;--but she knew on
+the other hand that her friend Janet did this in her intense anxiety
+to promote the match. Was it wrong to say to the man--"I will wait
+and try?" Her friend told her that to say that she would wait and
+try, was in truth to say that she would take him at some future
+time;--that any girl who said so had almost committed herself to
+such a decision;--that the very fact that she was waiting and trying
+to love a man ought to bind her to the man at last. Such certainly
+had not been her own idea. As far as she could at present look into
+her own future feelings, she did not think that she could ever
+bring herself to say that she would be this man's wife. There was a
+solemnity about the position which had never come fully home to her
+before she had been thus placed. Everybody around her told her that
+the man's happiness was really bound up in her reply. If this were
+so,--and she in truth believed that it was so,--was she not bound
+to give him every chance in her power? And yet because she still
+doubted, she was told by her friend that she was behaving badly! She
+would believe her friend, would confess her fault, and would tell her
+lover in what most respectful words of denial she could mould, that
+she would not be his wife. For herself personally, there would be no
+sorrow in this, and no regret.
+
+Her ducking had given her time for all this thought; and then, having
+so decided, she went downstairs. She was met, of course, with various
+inquiries about her bath. Mr. Gilmore was all pity, as though the
+accident were the most serious thing in the world. Mr. Fenwick
+was all mirth, as though there had never been a better joke. Mrs.
+Fenwick, who was perhaps unwise in her impatience, was specially
+anxious that her two guests might be left together. She did not
+believe that Mary Lowther would ever say the final No; and yet she
+thought also that, if it were so, the time had quite come in which
+Mary Lowther ought to say the final Yes.
+
+"Let us go down and look at the spot," she said, after tea.
+
+So they went down. It was a beautiful August night. There was no
+moon, and the twilight was over; but still it was not absolutely
+dark; and the air was as soft as a mother's kiss to her sleeping
+child. They walked down together, four abreast, across the lawn, and
+thence they reached a certain green orchard path that led down to the
+river. Mrs. Fenwick purposely went on with the lover, leaving Mary
+with her husband, in order that there might be no appearance of a
+scheme. She would return with her husband, and then there might be a
+ramble among the paths, and the question would be pressed, and the
+thing might be settled.
+
+They saw through the gloom the spot where Mary had scrambled, and
+the water which had then been bright and smiling, was now black and
+awful.
+
+"To think that you should have been in there!" said Harry Gilmore,
+shuddering.
+
+"To think that she should ever have got out again!" said the parson.
+
+"It looks frightful in the dark," said Mrs. Fenwick. "Come away,
+Frank. It makes me sick." And the charming schemer took her husband's
+arm, and continued the round of the garden. "I have been talking to
+her, and I think she would take him if he would ask her now."
+
+The other pair of course followed them. Mary's mind was so fully made
+up, at this moment, that she almost wished that her companion might
+ask the question. She had been told that she was misusing him; and
+she would misuse him no longer. She had a firm No, as it were, within
+her grasp, and a resolution that she would not be driven from it. But
+he walked on beside her talking of the water, and of the danger, and
+of the chance of a cold, and got no nearer to the subject than to
+bid her think what suffering she would have caused had she failed
+to extricate herself from the pool. He also had made up his mind.
+Something had been said by himself of a certain day when last he had
+pleaded his cause; and that day would not come round till the morrow.
+He considered himself pledged to restrain himself till then; but on
+the morrow he would come to her.
+
+There was a little gate which led from the parsonage garden through
+the churchyard to a field path, by which was the nearest way to
+Hampton Privets.
+
+"I'll leave you here," he said, "because I don't want to make Fenwick
+come out again to-night. You won't mind going up through the garden
+alone?"
+
+"Oh dear, no."
+
+"And, Miss Lowther,--pray, pray take care of yourself. I hardly think
+you ought to have been out again to-night."
+
+"It was nothing, Mr. Gilmore. You make infinitely too much of it."
+
+"How can I make too much of anything that regards you? You will be at
+home to-morrow?"
+
+"Yes, I fancy so."
+
+"Do remain at home. I intend to come down after lunch. Do remain at
+home." He held her by the hand as he spoke to her, and she promised
+him that she would obey him. He clearly was entitled to her obedience
+on such a point. Then she slowly made her way round the garden, and
+entered the house at the front door, some quarter of an hour after
+the others.
+
+Why should she refuse him? What was it that she wanted in the world?
+She liked him, his manners, his character, his ways, his mode of
+life, and after a fashion she liked his person. If there was more of
+love in the world than this, she did not think that it would ever
+come in her way. Up to this time of her life she had never felt any
+such feeling. If not for her own sake, why should she not do it for
+him? Why should he not be made happy? She had risked a plunge in the
+water to get Flo her ball, and she liked him better than she liked
+Flo. It seemed that her mind had been altogether changed by that
+stroll through the dark alleys.
+
+"Well," said Janet, "how is it to be?"
+
+"He is to come to-morrow, and I do not know how it will be," she
+said, turning away to her own room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+SAM BRATTLE.
+
+
+It was about eleven o'clock when Gilmore passed through the wicket
+leading from the vicarage garden to the churchyard. The path he was
+about to take crossed simply a corner of the church precincts, as it
+came at once upon a public footway leading from the fields through
+the churchyard to the town. There was, of course, no stopping the
+public path, but Fenwick had been often advised to keep a lock on his
+own gate, as otherwise it almost seemed that the vicarage gardens
+were open to all Bullhampton. But the lock had never been put on. The
+gate was the way by which he and his family went to the church, and
+the parson was accustomed to say that however many keys there might
+be provided, he knew that there would never be one in his pocket
+when he wanted it. And he was wont to add, when his wife would tease
+him on the subject, that they who desired to come in decently were
+welcome, and that they who were minded to make an entrance indecently
+would not be debarred by such rails and fences as hemmed in the
+vicarage grounds. Gilmore, as he passed through the corner of the
+churchyard, clearly saw a man standing near to the stile leading from
+the fields. Indeed, this man was quite close to him, although, from
+the want of light and the posture of the man, the face was invisible
+to him. But he knew the fellow to be a stranger to Bullhampton. The
+dress was strange, the manner was strange, and the mode of standing
+was strange. Gilmore had lived at Bullhampton all his life, and,
+without much thought on the subject, knew Bullhampton ways. The
+jacket which the man wore was a town-made jacket, a jacket that had
+come farther a-field even than Salisbury; and the man's gaiters had a
+savour which was decidedly not of Wiltshire. Dark as it was, he could
+see so much as this. "Good night, my friend," said Gilmore, in a
+sharp cheery voice. The man muttered something, and passed on as
+though to the village. There had, however, been something in his
+position which made Gilmore think that the stranger had intended
+to trespass on his friend's garden. He crossed the stile into the
+fields, however, without waiting,--without having waited for half a
+moment, and immediately saw the figure of a second man standing down,
+hidden as it were in the ditch; and though he could discover no more
+than the cap and shoulders of the man through the gloom, he was sure
+he knew who it was that owned the cap and shoulders. He did not speak
+again, but passed on quickly, thinking what he might best do. The
+man whom he had seen and recognised had latterly been talked of as a
+discredit to his family, and anything but an honour to the usually
+respectable inhabitants of Bullhampton.
+
+On the further side of the church from the town was a farmyard, in
+the occupation of one of Lord Trowbridge's tenants,--a man who had
+ever been very keen at preventing the inroads of trespassers, to
+which he had, perhaps, been driven by the fact that his land was
+traversed by various public pathways. Now a public pathway through
+pasture is a nuisance, as it is impossible to induce those who use
+it to keep themselves to one beaten track; but a pathway through
+cornfields is worse, for, let what pains may be taken, wheat,
+beans, and barley will be torn down and trampled under foot. And
+yet in apportioning his rents, no landlord takes all this into
+consideration. Farmer Trumbull considered it a good deal, and was
+often a wrathful man. There was at any rate no right of way across
+his farmyard, and here he might keep as big a dog as he chose,
+chained or unchained. Harry Gilmore knew the dog well, and stood for
+a moment leaning on the gate.
+
+"Who be there?" said the voice of the farmer.
+
+"Is that you, Mr. Trumbull? It is I,--Mr. Gilmore. I want to get
+round to the front of the parson's house."
+
+"Zurely, zurely," said the farmer, coming forward and opening the
+gate. "Be there anything wrong about, Squire?"
+
+"I don't know. I think there is. Speak softly. I fancy there are men
+lying in the churchyard."
+
+"I be a-thinking so, too, Squire. Bone'm was a growling just now like
+the old 'un." Bone'm was the name of the bull-dog as to which Gilmore
+had been solicitous as he looked over the gate. "What is't t'ey're up
+to? Not bugglary?"
+
+"Our friend's apricots, perhaps. But I'll just move round to the
+front. Do you and Bone'm keep a look-out here."
+
+"Never fear, Squire; never fear. Me and Bone'm together is a'most too
+much for 'em, bugglars and all." Then he led Mr. Gilmore through the
+farmyard, and out on to the road, Bone'm growling a low growl as he
+passed away.
+
+The Squire hurried along the high road, past the church, and in at
+the Vicarage front gate. Knowing the place well, he could have made
+his way round into the garden; but he thought it better to go to
+the front door. There was no light to be seen from the windows; but
+almost all the rooms of the house looked out into the garden at the
+back. He knocked sharply, and in a minute or two the door was opened
+by the parson in person.
+
+"Frank," said the Squire.
+
+"Halloo! is that you? What's up now?"
+
+"Men who ought to be in bed. I came across two men hanging about your
+gate in the churchyard, and I'm not sure there wasn't a third."
+
+"They're up to nothing. They often sit and smoke there."
+
+"These fellows were up to something. The man I saw plainest was a
+stranger, and just the sort of man who won't do your parishioners any
+good to be among them. The other was Sam Brattle."
+
+"Whew--w--w," said the parson.
+
+"He has gone utterly to the dogs," said the Squire.
+
+"He's on the road, Harry; but nobody has gone while he's still going.
+I had some words with him in his father's presence last week, and
+he followed me afterwards, and told me he'd see it out with me. I
+wouldn't tell you, because I didn't want to set you more against
+them."
+
+"I wish they were out of the place,--the whole lot of them."
+
+"I don't know that they'd do better elsewhere than here. I suppose
+Mr. Sam is going to keep his word with me."
+
+"Only for the look of that other fellow, I shouldn't think they meant
+anything serious," said Gilmore.
+
+"I don't suppose they do, but I'll be on the look-out."
+
+"Shall I stay with you, Frank?"
+
+"Oh, no; I've a life-preserver, and I'll take a round of the gardens.
+You come with me, and you can pass home that way. The chances
+are they'll mizzle away to bed, as they've seen you, and heard
+Bone'm,--and probably heard too every word you said to Trumbull."
+
+He then got his hat and the short, thick stick of which he had
+spoken, and turning the key of the door, put it in his pocket. Then
+the two friends went round by the kitchen garden, and so through to
+the orchard, and down to the churchyard gate. Hitherto they had seen
+nothing, and heard nothing, and Fenwick was sure that the men had
+made their way through the churchyard to the village.
+
+"But they may come back," said Gilmore.
+
+"I'll be about if they do," said the parson.
+
+"What is one against three? You had better let me stay."
+
+Fenwick laughed at this, saying that it would be quite as rational to
+propose that they should keep watch every night.
+
+"But, hark!" said the Squire, with a mind evidently perturbed.
+
+"Don't you be alarmed about us," said the parson.
+
+"If anything should happen to Mary Lowther!"
+
+"That, no doubt, is matter of anxiety, to which may, perhaps, be
+added some trifle of additional feeling on the score of Janet and the
+children. But I'll do my best. If the women knew that you and I were
+patrolling the place, they'd be frightened out of their wits."
+
+Then Gilmore, who never liked that there should be a laugh against
+himself, took his leave and walked home across the fields. Fenwick
+passed up through the garden, and, when he was near the terrace which
+ran along the garden front of the house, he thought that he heard
+a voice. He stood under the shade of a wall dark with ivy, and
+distinctly heard whispering on the other side of it. As far as he
+could tell there were the voices of more than two men. He wished now
+that he had kept Gilmore with him,--not that he was personally afraid
+of the trespassers, for his courage was of that steady settled kind
+which enables the possessor to remember that men who are doing deeds
+of darkness are ever afraid of those whom they are injuring; but had
+there been an ally with him his prospect of catching one or more of
+the ruffians would have been greatly increased. Standing where he was
+he would probably be able to interrupt them, should they attempt to
+enter the house; but in the mean time they might be stripping his
+fruit from the wall. They were certainly, at present, in the kitchen
+garden, and he was not minded to leave them there at such work as
+they might have in hand. Having paused to think of this, he crept
+along under the wall, close to the house, towards the passage by
+which he could reach them. But they had not heard him, nor had they
+waited among the fruit. When he was near the corner of the wall, one
+leading man came round within a foot or two of the spot on which he
+stood; and, before he could decide on what he would do, the second
+had appeared. He rushed forward with the loaded stick in his hand,
+but, knowing its weight, and remembering the possibility of the
+comparative innocence of the intruders, he hesitated to strike. A
+blow on the head would have brained a man, and a knock on the arm
+with such an instrument would break the bone. In a moment he found
+his left hand on the leading man's throat, and the man's foot behind
+his heel. He fell, but as he fell he did strike heavily, cutting
+upwards with his weapon, and bringing the heavy weight of lead at the
+end of it on to the man's shoulder. He stumbled rather than fell, but
+when he regained his footing, the man was gone. That man was gone,
+and two others were following him down towards the gate at the bottom
+of the orchard. Of these two, in a few strides, he was able to catch
+the hindermost, and then he found himself wrestling with Sam Brattle.
+
+"Sam," said he, speaking as well as he could with his short breath,
+"if you don't stand, I'll strike you with the life-preserver."
+
+Sam made another struggle, trying to seize the weapon, and the parson
+hit him with it on the right arm.
+
+"You've smashed that anyway, Mr. Fenwick," said the man.
+
+"I hope not; but do you come along with me quietly, or I'll smash
+something else. I'll hit you on the head if you attempt to move away.
+What were you doing here?"
+
+Brattle made no answer, but walked along towards the house at the
+parson's left hand, the parson holding him the while by the neck of
+his jacket, and swinging the life-preserver in his right hand. In
+this way he took him round to the front of the house, and then began
+to think what he would do with him.
+
+"That, after all, you should be at this work, Sam!"
+
+"What work is it, then?"
+
+"Prowling about my place, after midnight, with a couple of strange
+blackguards."
+
+"There ain't so much harm in that, as I knows of."
+
+"Who were the men, Sam?"
+
+"Who was the men?"
+
+"Yes;--who were they?"
+
+"Just friends of mine, Mr. Fenwick. I shan't say no more about 'em.
+You've got me, and you've smashed my arm, and now what is it you're
+a-going to do with me? I ain't done no harm,--only just walked about,
+like."
+
+To tell the truth, our friend the parson did not quite know what he
+meant to do with the Tartar he had caught. There were reasons which
+made him very unwilling to hand over Sam Brattle to the village
+constable. Sam had a mother and sister who were among the Vicar's
+first favourites in the parish; and though old Jacob Brattle, the
+father, was not so great a favourite, and was a man whom the Squire,
+his landlord, held in great disfavour, Mr. Fenwick would desire, if
+possible, to spare the family. And of Sam, himself, he had had high
+hopes, though those hopes, for the last eighteen months had been
+becoming fainter and fainter. Upon the whole, he was much averse to
+knocking up the groom, the only man who lived on the parsonage except
+himself, and dragging Sam into the village. "I wish I knew," he said,
+"what you and your friends were going to do. I hardly think it has
+come to that with you, that you'd try to break into the house and cut
+our throats."
+
+"We warn't after no breaking in, nor no cutting of throats, Mr.
+Fenwick. We warn't indeed!"
+
+"What shall you do with yourself, to-night, if I let you off?"
+
+"Just go home to father's, sir; not a foot else, s'help me."
+
+"One of your friends, as you call them, will have to go to the
+doctor, if I am not very much mistaken; for the rap I gave you was
+nothing to what he got. You're all right?"
+
+"It hurt, sir, I can tell ye;--but that won't matter."
+
+"Well, Sam,--there; you may go. I shall be after you to-morrow, and
+the last word I say to you, to-night, is this;--as far as I can see,
+you're on the road to the gallows. It isn't pleasant to be hung, and
+I would advise you to change your road." So saying, he let go his
+hold, and stood waiting till Sam should have taken his departure.
+
+"Don't be a-coming after me, to-morrow, parson, please," said the
+man.
+
+"I shall see your mother, certainly."
+
+"Dont'ee tell her of my being here, Mr. Fenwick, and nobody shan't
+ever come anigh this place again,--not in the way of prigging
+anything."
+
+"You fool, you!" said the parson. "Do you think that it is to save
+anything that I might lose, that I let you go now? Don't you know
+that the thing I want to save is you,--you,--you; you helpless, idle,
+good-for-nothing reprobate? Go home, and be sure that I shall do the
+best I can according to my lights. I fear that my lights are bad
+lights, in that they have allowed me to let you go."
+
+When he had seen Sam take his departure through the front gate, he
+returned to the house, and found that his wife, who had gone to bed,
+had come down-stairs in search of him.
+
+"Frank, you have frightened me so terribly! Where have you been?"
+
+"Thief-catching. And I'm afraid I've about split one fellow's back. I
+caught another, but I let him go."
+
+"What on earth do you mean, Frank?"
+
+Then he told her the whole story,--how Gilmore had seen the men, and
+had come up to him; how he had gone out and had a tussle with one
+man, whom he had, as he thought, hurt; and how he had then caught
+another, while the third escaped.
+
+"We ain't safe in our beds, then," said the wife.
+
+"You ain't safe in yours, my dear, because you chose to leave it; but
+I hope you're safe out of it. I doubt whether the melons and peaches
+are safe. The truth is, there ought to be a gardener's cottage on
+the place, and I must build one. I wonder whether I hurt that fellow
+much. I seemed to hear the bone crunch."
+
+"Oh, Frank!"
+
+"But what could I do? I got that thing because I thought it safer
+than a pistol, but I really think it's worse. I might have murdered
+them all, if I'd lost my temper,--and just for half-a-dozen
+apricots!"
+
+"And what became of the man you took?"
+
+"I let him go."
+
+"Without doing anything to him?"
+
+"Well; he got a tap too."
+
+"Did you know him?"
+
+"Yes, I knew him,--well."
+
+"Who was he, Frank?"
+
+The parson was silent for a moment, and then he answered her. "It was
+Sam Brattle."
+
+"Sam Brattle, coming to rob?"
+
+"He's been at it, I fear, for months, in some shape."
+
+"And what shall you do?"
+
+"I hardly know as yet. It would about kill her and Fanny, if they
+were told all that I suspect. They are stiff-necked, obstinate,
+ill-conditioned people--that is, the men. But I think Gilmore has
+been a little hard on them. The father and brother are honest men.
+Come;--we'll go to bed."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+THERE IS NO ONE ELSE.
+
+
+On the following morning there was of course a considerable amount
+of conversation at the Vicarage as to the affairs of the previous
+evening. There was first of all an examination of the fruit; but as
+this was made without taking Jem the gardener into confidence, no
+certain conclusion could be reached. It was clear, however, that no
+robbery for the purpose of sale had been made. An apricot or two
+might have been taken, and perhaps an assault made on an unripe
+peach. Mr. Fenwick was himself nearly sure that garden spoliation was
+not the purpose of the assailants, though it suited him to let his
+wife entertain that idea. The men would hardly have come from the
+kitchen garden up to the house and round the corner at which he had
+met them, if they were seeking fruit. Presuming it to have been their
+intention to attempt the drawing-room windows, he would have expected
+to meet them as he did meet them. From the garden the Vicar and the
+two ladies went down to the gate, and from thence over the stile to
+Farmer Trumbull's farmyard. The farmer had not again seen the men,
+after the Squire had left him, nor had he heard them. To him the
+parson said nothing of his encounter, and nothing of that blow on
+the man's back. From thence Mr. Fenwick went on to the town, and the
+ladies returned to the Vicarage.
+
+The only person whom the parson at once consulted was the
+surgeon,--Dr. Cuttenden, as he was called. No man with an injured
+shoulder-blade had come to him last night or that morning. A man, he
+said, might receive a very violent blow on his back, in the manner
+in which the fellow had been struck, and might be disabled for days
+from any great personal exertion, without having a bone broken.
+If the blade of his shoulder were broken, the man--so thought the
+doctor--could not travel far on foot, would hardly be able to get
+away to any of the neighbouring towns unless he were carried. Of
+Sam Brattle the parson said nothing to the doctor; but when he had
+finished his morning's work about the town, he walked on to the mill.
+
+In the mean time the two ladies remained at home at the Parsonage.
+The excitement occasioned by the events of the previous night was
+probably a little damaged by the knowledge that Mr. Gilmore was
+coming. The coming of Mr. Gilmore on this occasion was so important
+that even the terrible idea of burglars, and the sensation arising
+from the use of that deadly weapon which had been produced at the
+breakfast table during the morning, were robbed of some of their
+interest. They did not keep possession of the minds of the two ladies
+as they would have done had there been no violent interrupting cause.
+But here was the violent interrupting cause, and by the time that
+lunch was on the table, Sam Brattle and his comrades were forgotten.
+
+Very little was said between the two women on that morning respecting
+Mr. Gilmore. Mrs. Fenwick, who had allowed herself to be convinced
+that Mary would act with great impropriety if she did not accept
+the man, thought that further speech might only render her friend
+obstinate. Mary, who knew the inside of her friend's mind very
+clearly, and who loved and respected her friend, could hardly fix her
+own mind. During the past night it had been fixed, or nearly fixed,
+two different ways. She had first determined that she would refuse
+her lover,--as to which resolve, for some hours or so, she had been
+very firm; then that she would accept him,--as to which she had
+ever, when most that way inclined, entertained some doubt as to the
+possibility of her uttering that word "Yes."
+
+"If it be that other women don't love better than I love him, I
+wonder that they ever get married at all," she said to herself.
+
+She was told that she was wrong to keep the man in suspense, and she
+believed it. Had she not been so told, she would have thought that
+some further waiting would have been of the three alternatives the
+best.
+
+"I shall be upstairs with the bairns," said Mrs. Fenwick, as she left
+the dining-room after lunch, "so that if you prefer the garden to the
+drawing-room, it will be free."
+
+"Oh dear, how solemn and ceremonious you make it."
+
+"It is solemn, Mary; I don't know how anything can be more solemn,
+short of going to heaven or the other place. But I really don't see
+why there should be any doubt or difficulty."
+
+There was something in the tone in which these words were said which
+almost made Mary Lowther again decide against the man. The man had a
+home and an income, and was Squire of the parish; and therefore there
+need be no difficulty! When she compared Mr. Fenwick and Mr. Gilmore
+together, she found that she liked Mr. Fenwick the best. She thought
+him to be the more clever, the higher spirited, the most of a man of
+the two. She certainly was not the least in love with her friend's
+husband; but then she was just as little in love with Mr. Gilmore.
+
+At about half-past two Mr. Gilmore made his appearance, standing at
+the open window.
+
+"May I come in?" he said.
+
+"Of course you may come in."
+
+"Mrs. Fenwick is not here?"
+
+"She is in the house, I think, if you want her."
+
+"Oh no. I hope you were not frightened last night. I have not seen
+Frank this morning; but I hear from Mr. Trumbull that there was
+something of a row."
+
+"There was a row, certainly. Mr. Fenwick struck some of the men, and
+he is afraid that he hurt one of them."
+
+"I wish he had broken their heads. I take it there was a son of one
+of my tenants there, who is about as bad as he can be. Frank will
+believe me now. I hope you were not frightened here."
+
+"I heard nothing of it till this morning."
+
+After that there was a pause. He had told himself as he came along
+that the task before him could not be easy and pleasant. To declare a
+passion to the girl he loves may be very pleasant work to the man who
+feels almost sure that his answer will not be against him. It may be
+an easy task enough even when there is a doubt. The very possession
+of the passion,--or even its pretence,--gives the man a liberty which
+he has a pleasure and a pride in using. But this is the case when the
+man dashes boldly at his purpose without preconcerted arrangements.
+Such pleasure, if it ever was a pleasure to him,--such excitement at
+least, was come and gone with Harry Gilmore. He had told his tale,
+and had been desired to wait. Now he had come again at a fixed hour
+to be informed--like a servant waiting for a place--whether it was
+thought that he would suit. The servant out of place, however, would
+have had this advantage, that he would receive his answer without the
+necessity of further eloquence on his own part. With the lover it was
+different. It was evident that Mary Lowther would not say to him, "I
+have considered the matter, and I think that, upon the whole, you
+will do." It was necessary that he should ask the question again, and
+ask it as a suppliant.
+
+"Mary," he said, beginning with words that he had fixed for himself
+as he came up the garden, "it is six weeks, I think, since I asked
+you to be my wife; and now I have come to ask you again."
+
+She made him no immediate answer, but sat as though waiting for some
+further effort of his eloquence.
+
+"I do not think you doubt my truth, or the warmth of my affection. If
+you trust in them--"
+
+"I do; I do."
+
+"Then I don't know that I can say anything further. Nothing that
+I can say now will make you love me. I have not that sort of power
+which would compel a girl to come into my arms."
+
+"I don't understand that kind of power,--how any man can have it with
+any girl."
+
+"They say that it is so; but I do not flatter myself that it is so
+with me; and I do not think that it would be so with any man over
+you. Perhaps I may assure you that, as far as I know myself at
+present, all my future happiness must depend on your answer. It will
+not kill me--to be refused; at least, I suppose not. But it will make
+me wish that it would." Having so spoken he waited for her reply.
+
+She believed every word that he said. And she liked him so well that,
+for his own sake, she desired that he might be gratified. As far as
+she knew herself, she had no desire to be Harry Gilmore's wife. The
+position was not even one in which she could allow herself to look
+for consolation on one side, for disappointments on the other. She
+had read about love, and talked about love; and she desired to be
+in love. Certainly she was not in love with this man. She had begun
+to doubt whether it would ever be given to her to love,--to love as
+her friend Janet loved Frank Fenwick. Janet loved her husband's very
+footsteps, and seemed to eat with his palate, hear with his ears, and
+see with his eyes. She was, as it were, absolutely a bone from her
+husband's rib. Mary thought that she was sure that she could never
+have that same feeling towards Henry Gilmore. And yet it might come;
+or something might come which would do almost as well. It was likely
+that Janet's nature was softer and sweeter than her own,--more prone
+to adapt itself, like ivy to a strong tree. For herself, it might be,
+that she could never become as the ivy; but that, nevertheless, she
+might be the true wife of a true husband. But if ever she was to be
+the true wife of Harry Gilmore, she could not to-day say that it
+should be so.
+
+"I suppose I must answer you," she said, very gently.
+
+"If you tell me that you are not ready to do so I will wait, and come
+again. I shall never change my mind. You may be sure of that."
+
+"But that is just what I may not do, Mr. Gilmore."
+
+"Who says so?"
+
+"My own feelings tell me so. I have no right to keep you in suspense,
+and I will not do it. I respect and esteem you most honestly. I have
+so much liking for you that I do not mind owning that I wish that it
+were more. Mr. Gilmore, I like you so much that I would make a great
+sacrifice for you; but I cannot sacrifice my own honesty or your
+happiness by making believe that I love you."
+
+For a few moments he sat silent, and then there came over his face a
+look of inexpressible anguish,--a look as though the pain were almost
+more than he could bear. She could not keep her eyes from his face;
+and, in her woman's pity, she almost wished that her words had been
+different.
+
+"And must that be all?" he asked.
+
+"What else can I say, Mr. Gilmore?"
+
+"If that must be all, it will be to me a doom that I shall not know
+how to bear. I cannot live here without you. I have thought about you
+till you have become mixed with every tree and every cottage about
+the place. I did not know of myself that I could become such a slave
+to a passion. Mary, say that you will wait again. Try it once more.
+I would not ask for this, but that you have told me that there was no
+one else."
+
+"Certainly, there is no one else."
+
+"Then let me wait again. It can do you no harm. If there should come
+any man more fortunate than I am, you can tell me, and I shall know
+that it is over. I ask no sacrifice from you, and no pledge; but I
+give you mine. I shall not change."
+
+"There must be no such promise, Mr. Gilmore."
+
+"But there is the promise. I certainly shall not change. When three
+months are over I will come to you again."
+
+She tried to think whether she was bound to tell him that her answer
+must be taken as final, or whether she might allow the matter to
+stand as he proposed, with some chance of a result that might be good
+for him. On one point she was quite sure,--that if she left him now,
+with an understanding that he should again renew his offer after a
+period of three months, she must go away from Bullhampton. If there
+was any possibility that she should learn to love him, such feeling
+would arise within her more quickly in his absence than in his
+presence. She would go home to Loring, and try to bring herself to
+accept him.
+
+"I think," she said, "that what we now say had better be the last of
+it."
+
+"It shall not be the last of it. I will try again. What is there that
+I can do, so that I may make myself worthy of you?"
+
+"It is no question of worthiness, Mr. Gilmore. Who can say how his
+heart is moved,--and why? I shall go home to Loring; and you may be
+sure of this, that if there be anything that you should hear of me, I
+will let you know."
+
+Then he took her hand in his own, held it for a while, pressed it to
+his lips, and left her. She was by no means contented with herself,
+and, to tell the truth, was ashamed to let her friend know what she
+had done. And yet how could she have answered him in other words? It
+might be that she could teach herself to be contented with the amount
+of regard which she entertained for him. It might be that she could
+persuade herself to be his wife; and if so, why should he not have
+the chance,--the chance which he professed that he was so anxious to
+retain? He had paid her the greatest compliment which a man can pay a
+woman, and she owed him everything,--except herself. She was hardly
+sure even now that if the proposition had come to her by letter the
+answer might not have been of a different nature.
+
+As soon as he was gone she went upstairs to the nursery, and thence
+to Mrs. Fenwick's bedroom. Flo was there, but Flo was soon dismissed.
+Mary began her story instantly, before a question could be asked.
+
+"Janet," she said, "I am going home--at once."
+
+"Why so?"
+
+"Because it is best. Nothing more is settled than was settled before.
+When he asks me whether he may come again, how can I say that he may
+not? What can I say, except that as far I can see now, I cannot be
+his wife?"
+
+"You have not accepted him, then?"
+
+"No."
+
+"I believe that you would, if he had asked you last night."
+
+"Most certainly I should not. I may doubt when I am talking behind
+his back; but when I meet him face to face I cannot do it."
+
+"I think you have been wrong,--very wrong and very foolish."
+
+"In not taking a man I do not love?" said Mary.
+
+"You do love him; but you are longing for you do not know what; some
+romance,--some grand passion,--something that will never come."
+
+"Shall I tell you what I want?"
+
+"If you please."
+
+"A feeling such as you have for Frank. You are my model; I want
+nothing beyond that."
+
+"That comes after marriage. Frank was very little to me till we were
+man and wife. He'll tell you the same. I don't know whether I didn't
+almost dislike him when I married him."
+
+"Oh, Janet!"
+
+"Certainly the sort of love you are thinking of comes
+afterwards;--when the interests of two people are the same. Frank was
+very well as a lover."
+
+"Don't I remember it?"
+
+"You were a child."
+
+"I was fifteen; and don't I remember how all the world used to change
+for you when he was coming? There wasn't a ribbon you wore but you
+wore it for him; you dressed yourself in his eyes; you lived by his
+thoughts."
+
+"That was all after I was engaged. If you would accept Harry Gilmore,
+you would do just the same."
+
+"I must be sure that it would be so. I am now almost sure that it
+would not."
+
+"And why do you want to go home?"
+
+"That he may not be pestered by having me near him. I think it will
+be better for him that I should go."
+
+"And he is to ask you again?"
+
+"He says that he will--in three months. But you should tell him
+that it will be better that he should not. I would advise him to
+travel,--if I were his friend, like you."
+
+"And leave all his duties, and his pleasures, and his house, and his
+property, because of your face and figure, my dear! I don't think any
+woman is worth so much to a man."
+
+Mary bit her lips in sorrow for what she had said. "I was thinking
+of his own speech about himself, Janet, not of my worth. It does not
+astonish you more than it does me that such a man as Mr. Gilmore
+should be perplexed in spirit for such a cause. But he says that he
+is perplexed."
+
+"Of course he is perplexed, and of course I was in joke. Only it does
+seem so hard upon him! I should like to shake you till you fell into
+his arms. I know it would be best for you. You will go on examining
+your own feelings and doubting about your heart, and waiting for
+something that will never come till you will have lost your time.
+That is the way old maids are made. If you married Harry, by the time
+your first child was born you would think that he was Jupiter,--just
+as I think that Frank is."
+
+Mrs. Fenwick owned, however, that as matters stood at present, it
+would be best that Mary should return home; and letters were written
+that afternoon to say that she would be at Loring by the middle of
+next week.
+
+The Vicar was not seen till dinner-time, and then he came home in
+considerable perplexity of spirit. It was agreed between the two
+women that the fate of Harry Gilmore, as far as it had been decided,
+should be told to Mr. Fenwick by his wife; and she, though she was
+vexed, and almost angry with Mary, promised to make the best of it.
+
+"She'll lose him at last; that'll be the end of it," said the parson,
+as he scoured his face with a towel after washing it.
+
+"I never saw a man so much in love in my life," said Mrs. Fenwick.
+
+"But iron won't remain long at red heat," said he. "What she says
+herself would be the best for him. He'll break up and go away for a
+time, and then, when he comes back, there'll be somebody else. She'll
+live to repent it."
+
+"When she's away from him there may be a change."
+
+"Fiddlestick!" said the parson.
+
+Mary, when she met him before dinner, could see that he was angry
+with her, but she bore it with the utmost meekness. She believed of
+herself that she was much to blame in that she could not fall in love
+with Harry Gilmore. Mrs. Fenwick had also asked a question or two
+about Sam Brattle during the dressing of her husband; but he had
+declined to say anything on that subject till they two should be
+secluded together for the night.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+THE MILLER.
+
+
+Mr. Fenwick reached Brattle's mill about two o'clock in the day.
+During the whole morning, while saying comfortable words to old
+women, and gently rebuking young maidens, he had been thinking of Sam
+Brattle and his offences. He had not been in the parish very long,
+not over five or six years, but he had been there long enough to see
+Sam grow out of boyhood into manhood; and at his first coming to
+the parish, for the first two or three years, the lad had been a
+favourite with him. Young Brattle could run well, leap well, fish
+well, and do a good turn of work about his father's mill. And he
+could also read and write, and cast accounts, and was a clever
+fellow. The parson, though he had tried his hand with energy at
+making the man, had, perhaps, done something towards marring him; and
+it may be that some feeling of this was on Mr. Fenwick's conscience.
+A gentleman's favourite in a country village, when of Sam Brattle's
+age, is very apt to be spoiled by the kindness that is shown to him.
+Sam had spent many a long afternoon fishing with the parson, but
+those fishing days were now more than two years gone by. It had been
+understood that Sam was to assist his father at the mill; and much
+good advice as to his trade the lad had received from Mr. Fenwick.
+There ought to be no more fishing for the young miller, except
+on special holiday occasions,--no more fishing, at least, during
+the hours required for milling purposes. So Mr. Fenwick had said
+frequently. Nevertheless the old miller attributed his son's idleness
+in great part to the parson's conduct, and he had so told the
+parson more than once. Of late Sam Brattle had certainly not been
+a good son, had neglected his work, disobeyed his father, and
+brought trouble on a household which had much suffering to endure
+independently of that which he might bring upon it.
+
+Jacob Brattle was a man at this time over sixty-five years of age,
+and every year of the time had been spent in that mill. He had never
+known another occupation or another home, and had very rarely slept
+under another roof. He had married the daughter of a neighbouring
+farmer, and had had some twelve or fourteen children. There were at
+this time six still living. He himself had ever been a hardworking,
+sober, honest man. But he was cross-grained, litigious, moody, and
+tyrannical. He held his mill and about a hundred acres of adjoining
+meadow land at a rent in which no account was taken either of the
+building or of the mill privileges attached to it. He paid simply for
+the land at a rate per acre, which, as both he and his landlord well
+knew, would make it acceptable on the same terms to any farmer in the
+parish; and neither for his mill, nor for his land, had he any lease,
+nor had his father or his grandfather had leases before him. Though
+he was a clever man in his way, he hardly knew what a lease was.
+He doubted whether his landlord could dispossess him as long as he
+paid his rent, but he was not sure. But of this he thought he was
+sure,--that were Mr. Gilmore to attempt to do such a thing, all
+Wiltshire would cry out against the deed, and probably the heavens
+would fall and crush the doer. He was a man with an unlimited love
+of justice; but the justice which he loved best was justice to
+himself. He brooded over injuries done to him,--injuries real or
+fancied,--till he taught himself to wish that all who hurt him might
+be crucified for the hurt they did to him. He never forgot, and never
+wished to forgive. If any prayer came from him, it was a prayer that
+his own heart might be so hardened that when vengeance came in his
+way he might take it without stint against the trespasser of the
+moment. And yet he was not a cruel man. He would almost despise
+himself, because when the moment for vengeance did come, he would
+abstain from vengeance. He would dismiss a disobedient servant with
+curses which would make one's hair stand on end, and would hope
+within his heart of hearts that before the end of the next week the
+man with his wife and children might be in the poorhouse. When the
+end of the next week came, he would send the wife meat, and would
+give the children bread, and would despise himself for doing so.
+In matters of religion he was an old Pagan, going to no place of
+worship, saying no prayer, believing in no creed,--with some vague
+idea that a supreme power would bring him right at last, if he worked
+hard, robbed no one, fed his wife and children, and paid his way. To
+pay his way was the pride of his heart; to be paid on his way was its
+joy.
+
+In that matter of his quarrel with his landlord he was very bitter.
+The Squire's father some fifteen years since had given to the miller
+a verbal promise that the house and mill should be repaired. The old
+Squire had not been a good man of business, and had gone on with his
+tenants very much as he had found them, without looking much into the
+position of each. But he had, no doubt, said something that amounted
+to a promise on his own account as to these repairs. He had died soon
+after, and the repairs had not been effected. A year after his death
+an application,--almost a demand,--was made upon our Squire by the
+miller, and the miller had been wrathful even when the Squire said
+that he would look into it. The Squire did look into it, and came to
+the conclusion that as he received no rent at all for the house and
+mill, and as his own property would be improved if the house and
+mill were made to vanish, and as he had no evidence whatever of any
+undertaking on his father's part, as any such promise on his father's
+part must simply have been a promise of a gift of money out of his
+own pocket, and further as the miller was impudent, he would not
+repair the mill. Ultimately he offered L20 towards the repairs, which
+the miller indignantly refused. Readers will be able to imagine how
+pretty a quarrel there would thus be between the landlord and his
+tenant. When all this was commencing,--at the time, that is, of the
+old Squire's death,--Brattle had the name of being a substantial
+person; but misfortune had come upon him; doctors' bills had been
+very heavy, his children had drained his resources from him, and it
+was now known that it set him very hard to pay his way. In regard to
+the house and the mill, some absolutely essential repairs had been
+done at his own costs; but the L20 had never been taken.
+
+In some respects the man's fortune in life had been good. His wife
+was one of those loving, patient, self-denying, almost heavenly human
+beings, one or two of whom may come across one's path, and who, when
+found, are generally found in that sphere of life to which this woman
+belonged. Among the rich there is that difficulty of the needle's
+eye; among the poor there is the difficulty of the hardness of their
+lives. And the miller loved this woman with a perfect love. He hardly
+knew that he loved her as he did. He could be harsh to her and
+tyrannical. He could say cutting words to her. But at any time in his
+life he would have struck over the head, with his staff, another man
+who should have said a word to hurt her. They had lost many children;
+but of the six who remained, there were four of whom they might be
+proud. The eldest was a farmer, married and away, doing well in a far
+part of the county, beyond Salisbury, on the borders of Hampshire.
+The father in his emergencies had almost been tempted to ask his son
+for money; but hitherto he had refrained. A daughter was married to
+a tradesman at Warminster, and was also doing well. A second son who
+had once been sickly and weak, was a scholar in his way, and was now
+a schoolmaster, also at Warminster, and in great repute with the
+parson of the parish there. There was a second daughter, Fanny, at
+home, a girl as good as gold, the glory and joy and mainstay of her
+mother, whom even the miller could not scold,--whom all Bullhampton
+loved. But she was a plain girl, brown, and somewhat hard-visaged;--a
+morsel of fruit as sweet as any in the garden, but one that the eye
+would not select for its outside grace, colour, and roundness. Then
+there were the two younger. Of Sam, the youngest of all, who was now
+twenty-one, something has already been said. Between him and Fanny
+there was,--perhaps it will be better to say there had been,--another
+daughter. Of all the flock Carry had been her father's darling. She
+had not been brown or hard-visaged. She was such a morsel of fruit
+as men do choose, when allowed to range and pick through the whole
+length of the garden wall. Fair she had been, with laughing eyes,
+and floating curls; strong in health, generous in temper, though now
+and again with something of her father's humour. To her mother's eye
+she had never been as sweet as Fanny; but to her father she had been
+as bright and beautiful as the harvest moon. Now she was a thing,
+somewhere, never to be mentioned! Any man who would have named her
+to her father's ears, would have encountered instantly the force of
+his wrath. This was so well known in Bullhampton that there was not
+one who would dare to suggest to him even that she might be saved.
+But her mother prayed for her daily, and her father thought of her
+always. It was a great lump upon him, which he must bear to his
+grave; and for which there could be no release. He did not know
+whether it was his mind, his heart, or his body that suffered. He
+only knew that it was there,--a load that could never be lightened.
+What comfort was it to him now, that he had beaten a miscreant to
+death's door--that he, with his old hands, had nearly torn the wretch
+limb from limb--that he had left him all but lifeless, and had walked
+off scatheless, nobody daring to put a finger on him? The man had
+been pieced up by some doctor, and was away in Asia, in Africa, in
+America--soldiering somewhere. He had been a lieutenant in those
+days, and was probably a lieutenant still. It was nothing to old
+Brattle where he was. Had he been able to drink the fellow's blood to
+the last drop, it would not have lightened his load an ounce. He knew
+that it was so now. Nothing could lighten it;--not though an angel
+could come and tell him that his girl was a second Magdalen. The
+Brattles had ever held up their heads. The women, at least, had
+always been decent.
+
+Jacob Brattle, himself, was a low, thickset man, with an appearance
+of great strength, which was now submitting itself, very slowly, to
+the hand of time. He had sharp green eyes, and shaggy eyebrows, with
+thin lips, and a square chin, a nose which, though its shape was
+aquiline, protruded but little from his face. His forehead was low
+and broad, and he was seldom seen without a flat hat upon his head.
+His hair and very scanty whiskers were gray; but, then too, he was
+gray from head to foot. The colour of his trade had so clung to him,
+that no one could say whether that grayish whiteness of his face came
+chiefly from meal or from sorrow. He was a silent, sad, meditative
+man, thinking always of the evil things that had been done to him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+BRATTLE'S MILL.
+
+
+When Mr. Fenwick reached the mill, he found old Brattle sitting alone
+on a fixed bench in front of the house door with a pipe in his mouth.
+Mary Lowther was quite right in saying that the mill, in spite of its
+dilapidations,--perhaps by reason of them,--was as pretty as anything
+in Bullhampton. In the first place it was permeated and surrounded by
+cool, bright, limpid little streams. One of them ran right through
+it, as it were, passing between the dwelling-house and the mill, and
+turning the wheel, which was there placed. This course was, no doubt,
+artificial, and the water ran more rapidly in it than it did in the
+neighbouring streamlets. There were sluice-gates, too, by which it
+could be altogether expelled, or kept up to this or that height; and
+it was a river absolutely under man's control, in which no water-god
+could take delight. But there were other natural streams on each
+side of the building, the one being the main course of the Avon,
+and the other some offspring of a brooklet, which joined its parent
+two hundred yards below, and fifty yards from the spot at which
+the ill-used working water was received back into its mother's
+idle bosom. Mill and house were thatched, and were very low. There
+were garrets in the roof, but they were so shaped that they could
+hardly be said to have walls to them at all, so nearly were they
+contained by the sloping roof. In front of the building there ran a
+road,--which after all was no more than a private lane. It crossed
+the smaller stream and the mill-run by two wooden bridges; but the
+river itself had been too large for the bridge-maker's efforts, and
+here there was a ford, with stepping-stones for foot passengers. The
+banks on every side were lined with leaning willows, which had been
+pollarded over and over again, and which with their light-green wavy
+heads gave the place, from a distance, the appearance of a grove.
+There was a little porch in front of the house, and outside of that a
+fixed seat, with a high back, on which old Brattle was sitting when
+the parson accosted him. He did not rise when Mr. Fenwick addressed
+him; but he intended no want of courtesy by not doing so. He was on
+his legs at business during nearly the whole of the day, and why
+should he not rest his old limbs during the few mid-day minutes which
+he allowed himself for recreation?
+
+"I thought I should catch you idle just at this moment," said the
+clergyman.
+
+
+[Illustration: "I thought I should catch you idle just at
+this moment," said the clergyman.]
+
+
+"Like enough, Muster Fenwick," said the miller; "I be idle at times,
+no doubt."
+
+"It would be a bad life if you did not,--and a very short one too.
+It's hot walking, I can tell you, Mr. Brattle. If it goes on like
+this, I shall want a little idle time myself, I fear. Is Sam here?"
+
+"No, Muster Fenwick, Sam is not here."
+
+"Nor has been this morning, I suppose?"
+
+"He's not here now, if you're wanting him."
+
+This the old man said in a tone that seemed to signify some offence,
+or at least a readiness to take offence if more were said to him
+about his son. The clergyman did not sit down, but stood close over
+the father, looking down upon him; and the miller went on with his
+pipe gazing into the clear blue sky.
+
+"I do want him, Mr. Brattle." Then he stopped, and there was a pause.
+The miller puffed his pipe, but said not a word. "I do want him. I
+fear, Mr. Brattle, he's not coming to much good."
+
+"Who said as he was? I never said so. The lad'd have been well enough
+if other folks would have let him be."
+
+"I know what you mean, Mr. Brattle."
+
+"I usually intend folks to know what I mean, Muster Fenwick. What's
+the good o' speaking else? If nobody hadn't a meddled with the lad,
+he'd been a good lad. But they did, and he ain't. That's all about
+it."
+
+"You do me a great injustice, but I'm not going to argue that with
+you now. There would be no use in it. I've come to tell you I fear
+that Sam was at no good last night."
+
+"That's like enough."
+
+"I had better tell you the truth at once. He was about my place with
+two ruffians."
+
+"And you wants to take him afore the magistrate?"
+
+"I want nothing of the kind. I would make almost any sacrifice
+rather. I had him yesterday night by the collar of the coat, and I
+let him go free."
+
+"If he couldn't shake himself free o' you, Muster Fenwick, without
+any letting in the matter, he ain't no son of mine."
+
+"I was armed, and he couldn't. But what does that matter? What does
+matter is this;--that they who were with him were thoroughly bad
+fellows. Was he at home last night?"
+
+"You'd better ax his mother, Muster Fenwick. The truth is, I don't
+care much to be talking of him at all. It's time I was in the mill, I
+believe. There's no one much to help me now, barring the hired man."
+So saying, he got up and passed into the mill without making the
+slightest form of salutation.
+
+Mr. Fenwick paused for a minute, looking after the old man, and then
+went into the house. He knew very well that his treatment from the
+women would be very different to that which the miller had vouchsafed
+to him; but on that very account it would be difficult for him to
+make his communication. He had, however, known all this before he
+came. Old Brattle would, quite of course, be silent, suspicious, and
+uncivil. It had become the nature of the man to be so, and there was
+no help for it. But the two women would be glad to see him,--would
+accept his visit as a pleasure and a privilege; and on this account
+he found it to be very hard to say unpleasant words to them. But the
+unpleasant words must be spoken. Neither in duty nor in kindness
+could he know what he had learned last night, and be silent on this
+matter to the young man's family. He entered the house, and turned
+into the large kitchen or keeping-room on the left, in which the
+two women were almost always to be found. This was a spacious,
+square, low apartment, in which there was a long grate with
+various appurtenances for boiling, roasting, and baking. It was an
+old-fashioned apparatus, but Mrs. Brattle thought it to be infinitely
+more commodious than any of the newer-fangled ranges which from time
+to time she had been taken to see. Opposite to the fire-place there
+was a small piece of carpet, without which the stone floor would
+hardly have looked warm and comfortable. On the outer corner of this,
+half facing the fire, and half on one side of it, was an old oak
+arm-chair, made of oak throughout, but with a well-worn cushion on
+the seat of it, in which it was the miller's custom to sit when the
+work of the day was done. In this chair no one else would ever sit,
+unless Sam would do so occasionally, in bravado, and as a protest
+against his father's authority. When he did so his mother would be
+wretched, and his sister lately had begged him to desist from the
+sacrilege. Close to this was a little round deal table, on which
+would be set the miller's single glass of gin and water, which would
+be made to last out the process of his evening smoking, and the
+candle, by the light of which, and with the aid of a huge pair of
+tortoise-shell spectacles, his wife would sit and darn her husband's
+stockings. She also had her own peculiar chair in this corner, but
+she had never accustomed herself to the luxury of arms to lean on,
+and had no cushion for her own comfort. There were various dressers,
+tables, and sideboards round the room, and a multiplicity of dishes,
+plates, and bowls, all standing in their proper places. But though
+the apartment was called a kitchen,--and, in truth, the cookery for
+the family was done here,--there was behind it, opening out to the
+rear, another kitchen in which there was a great boiler, and a huge
+oven never now used. The necessary but unsightly doings of kitchen
+life were here carried on, out of view. He, indeed, would have been
+fastidious who would have hesitated, on any score of cleanliness or
+niceness, to sit and eat at the long board on which the miller's
+dinner was daily served, or would have found it amiss to sit at that
+fire and listen to the ticking of the great mahogany-cased clock,
+which stood in the corner of the room. On the other side of the broad
+opening passage Mrs. Brattle had her parlour. Doubtless this parlour
+added something to the few joys of her life; though how it did so,
+or why she should have rejoiced in it, it would be very difficult
+to say. She never entered it except for the purpose of cleaning and
+dusting. But it may be presumed that it was a glory to her to have a
+room carpeted, with six horsehair chairs, and a round table, and a
+horsehair sofa, and an old mirror over the fireplace, and a piece of
+worsted-work done by her daughter and framed like a picture, hanging
+up on one of the walls. But there must have come from it, we should
+say, more of regret than of pleasure; for when that room was first
+furnished, under her own auspices, and when those horsehair chairs
+were bought with a portion of her own modest dowry, doubtless she had
+intended that these luxuries should be used by her and hers. But they
+never had been so used. The day for using them had never come. Her
+husband never, by any chance, entered the apartment. To him probably,
+even in his youth, it had been a woman's gewgaw, useless, but
+allowable as tending to her happiness. Now the door was never even
+opened before his eye. His last interview with Carry had been in
+that room,--when he had laid his curse upon her, and bade her begone
+before his return, so that his decent threshold should be no longer
+polluted by her vileness.
+
+On this side of the house there was a cross passage, dividing the
+front rooms from the back. At the end of this, looking to the front
+so as to have the parlour between it and the house-door, was the
+chamber in which slept Brattle and his wife. Here all those children
+had been born who had brought upon the household so many joys and so
+much sorrow. And behind, looking to the back on to the little plot of
+vegetables which was called the garden,--a plot in which it seemed
+that cabbages and gooseberry bushes were made to alternate,--there
+was a large store-room, and the chamber in which Fanny slept,--now
+alone, but which she had once shared with four sisters. Carry was the
+last one that had left her; and now Fanny hardly dared to name the
+word sister above her breath. She could speak, indeed, of Sister Jay,
+the wife of the prosperous ironmonger at Warminster; but of sisters
+by their Christian names no mention was ever made.
+
+Upstairs there were garrets, one of which was inhabited by Sam, when
+he chose to reside at home; and another by the red-armed country
+lass, who was maid-of-all-work at Brattle Mill. When it has also been
+told that below the cabbage-plot there was an orchard, stretching
+down to the junction of the waters, the description of Brattle Mill
+will have been made.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+THE MILLER'S WIFE.
+
+
+When Mr. Fenwick entered the kitchen, Mrs. Brattle was sitting there
+alone. Her daughter was away, disposing of the remnants and utensils
+of the dinner-table. The old lady, with her spectacles on her nose,
+was sitting as usual with a stocking over her left arm. On the round
+table was a great open Bible, and, lying on the Bible, were sundry
+large worsted hose, which always seemed to Mr. Fenwick as though
+they must have undarned themselves as quickly as they were darned.
+Her Bible and her stockings furnished the whole of Mrs. Brattle's
+occupation from her dinner to her bed. In the morning, she would
+still occupy herself in matters of cookery, would peel potatoes, and
+prepare apples for puddings, and would look into the pot in which
+the cabbage was being boiled. But her stockings and her Bible shared
+together the afternoons of her week-days. On the Sundays there would
+only be the Bible, and then she would pass many hours of the day
+asleep. On every other Sunday morning she still walked to church and
+back,--going there always alone. There was no one now to accompany
+her. Her husband never went,--never had gone,--to church, and her son
+now had broken away from his good practices. On alternate mornings
+Fanny went, and also on every Sunday afternoon. Wet or dry, storm
+or sunshine, she always went; and her father, who was an old Pagan,
+loved her for her zeal. Mrs. Brattle was a slight-made old woman,
+with hair almost white peering out modestly from under her clean cap,
+dressed always in a brown stuff gown that never came down below her
+ankle. Her features were still pretty, small, and debonnaire, and
+there was a sweetness in her eyes that no observer could overlook.
+She was a modest, pure, high-minded woman,--whom we will not call
+a lady, because of her position in life, and because she darned
+stockings in a kitchen. In all other respects she deserved the name.
+
+"I heard your voice outside with the master," she said, rising from
+her chair to answer the parson's salutation, and putting down her
+stockings first, and then her spectacles upon the book, so that the
+Bible was completely hidden; "and I knew you would not go without
+saying a word to the old woman."
+
+"I believe I came mostly to see you to-day, Mrs. Brattle."
+
+"Did you then? It's kind of you, I'm sure, Mr. Fenwick, this hot
+weather,--and you with so many folk to mind too. Will you take an
+apple, Mr. Fenwick? I don't know that we've anything else to offer,
+but the quarantines are rare this year, they say;--though, no doubt,
+you have them better at the Vicarage?"
+
+Fenwick took a large, red apple from the dresser, and began to munch,
+it, declaring that they had none such in their orchard. And then,
+when the apple was finished, he had to begin his story.
+
+"Mrs. Brattle, I'm sorry that I have something to say that will vex
+you."
+
+"Eh, Mr. Fenwick! Bad news? 'Deed and I think there's but little good
+news left to us now,--little that comes from the tongues of men. It's
+bad news that is always coming here. Mr. Fenwick,--what is it, sir?"
+
+Then he repeated the question he had before put to the miller about
+Sam. Where was Sam last night?--She only shook her head. Did he sleep
+at home?--She shook her head again. Had he breakfasted at home?
+
+"'Deed no, sir. I haven't set eyes on him since before yesterday."
+
+"But how does he live? His father does not give him money, I
+suppose?"
+
+"There's little enough to give him, Mr. Fenwick. When he is at the
+mill his father do pay him a some'at over and above his keep. It
+isn't much, sir. Young men must have a some'at in their pockets at
+times."
+
+"He has too much in his pockets, I fear. I wish he had nothing, so
+that he needs must come home for his meals. He works at the mill,
+doesn't he?"
+
+"At times, sir; and there isn't a lad in all Bullumpton,"--for so the
+name was ordinarily pronounced,--"who can do a turn of work to beat
+him."
+
+"Do he and his father agree pretty well?"
+
+"At times, sir. Times again his father don't say much to him. The
+master ain't given to much talking in the mill, and Sam, when he's
+there, works with a will. There's times when his father softens down
+to him, and then to see 'em, you'd think they was all in all to each
+other. There's a stroke of the master about Sam hisself, at times,
+Mr. Fenwick, and the old man's eyes gladden to see it. There's none
+so near his heart now as poor Sam."
+
+"If he were as honest a man as his father, I could forgive all the
+rest," said Mr. Fenwick slowly, meaning to imply that he was not
+there now to complain of church observances neglected, or of small
+irregularities of life. The paganism of the old miller had often been
+the subject of converse between the parson and Mrs. Brattle, it being
+a matter on which she had many an unhappy thought. He, groping darkly
+among subjects which he hardly dared to touch in her presence lest
+he should seem to unteach that in private which he taught in public,
+had subtlely striven to make her believe that though she, through her
+faith, would be saved, he, the husband, might yet escape that doom
+of everlasting fire, which to her was so stern a reality that she
+thought of its fury with a shudder whenever she heard of the world's
+wickedness. When Parson Fenwick had first made himself intimate
+at the mill Mrs. Brattle had thought that her husband's habits of
+life would have been to him as wormwood and gall,--that he would be
+unable not to chide, and well she knew that her husband would bear no
+chiding. By degrees she had come to understand that this new parson
+was one who talked more of life with its sorrows, and vices, and
+chances of happiness, and possibilities of goodness, than he did
+of the requirements of his religion. For herself inwardly she had
+grieved at this, and, possibly, also for him; but, doubtless, there
+had come to her some comfort, which she did not care to analyse, from
+the manner in which "the master," as she called him, Pagan as he was,
+had been treated by her clergyman. She wondered that it should be so,
+but yet it was a relief to her to know that God's messenger should
+come to her, and yet say never a word of his message to that hard
+lord, whom she so feared and so loved, and who was, as she well knew,
+too stubborn to receive it. And Fenwick had spoken,--still spoke
+to her, so tenderly of her erring, fallen child, never calling her
+a castaway, talking of her as Carry, who might yet be worthy of
+happiness here and of all joy hereafter; that when she thought
+of him as a minister of God, whose duty it was to pronounce God's
+threats to erring human beings, she was almost alarmed. She could
+hardly understand his leniency,--his abstinence from reproof; but
+entertained a vague, wandering, unformed wish that, as he never
+opened the vials of his wrath on them, he would pour it out upon
+her,--on her who would bear it for their sake so meekly. If there was
+such a wish it was certainly doomed to disappointment. At this moment
+Fanny came in and curtseyed as she gave her hand to the parson.
+
+"Was Sam at home last night, Fan?" asked the mother, in a sad, low
+voice.
+
+"Yes, mother. He slept in his bed."
+
+"You are sure?" said the parson.
+
+"Quite sure. I heard him this morning as he went out. It was about
+five. He spoke to me, and I answered him."
+
+"What did he say?"
+
+"That he must go over to Lavington, and wouldn't be home till
+nightfall. I told him where he would find bread and cheese, and he
+took it."
+
+"But you didn't see him last night?"
+
+"No, sir. He comes in at all hours, when he pleases. He was at dinner
+before yesterday, but I haven't seen him since. He didn't go nigh the
+mill after dinner that day."
+
+Then Mr. Fenwick considered how much he would tell to the mother and
+sister, and how much he would keep back. He did not in his heart
+believe that Sam Brattle had intended to enter his house and rob
+it; but he did believe that the men with whom Sam was associated
+were thieves and housebreakers. If these men were prowling about
+Bullhampton it was certainly his duty to have them arrested if
+possible, and to prevent probable depredations, for his neighbours'
+sake as well as for his own. Nor would he be justified in neglecting
+this duty with the object of saving Sam Brattle. If only he could
+entice Sam away from them, into his own hands, under the power of his
+tongue,--there might probably be a chance.
+
+"You think he'll be home to-night?" he asked.
+
+"He said he would," replied Fanny, who knew that she could not answer
+for her brother's word.
+
+"If he does, bid him come to me. Make him come to me! Tell him that
+I will do him no harm. God knows how truly it is my object to do him
+good."
+
+"We are sure of that, sir," said the mother.
+
+"He need not be afraid that I will preach to him. I will only talk to
+him, as I would to a younger brother."
+
+"But what is it that he has done, sir?"
+
+"He has done nothing that I know. There;--I will tell you the whole.
+I found him prowling about my garden at near midnight, yesterday. Had
+he been alone I should have thought nothing of it. He thinks he owes
+me a grudge for speaking to his father; and had I found him paying it
+by filling his pockets with fruit, I should only have told him that
+it would be better that he should come and take it in the morning."
+
+"But he wasn't--stealing?" asked the mother.
+
+"He was doing nothing; neither were the men. But they were
+blackguards, and he was in bad hands. He could not have been in
+worse. I had a tussle with one of them, and I am sure the man was
+hurt. That, however, has nothing to do with it. What I desire is to
+get a hold of Sam, so that he may be rescued from the hands of such
+companions. If you can make him come to me, do so."
+
+Fanny promised, and so did the mother; but the promise was given in
+that tone which seemed to imply that nothing should be expected from
+its performance. Sam had long been deaf to the voices of the women
+of his family, and, when his father's anger would be hot against him,
+he would simply go, and live where and how none of them knew. Among
+such men and women as the Brattles, parental authority must needs lie
+much lighter than it does with those who are wont to give much and to
+receive much. What obedience does the lad owe who at eighteen goes
+forth and earns his own bread? What is it to him that he has not yet
+reached man's estate? He has to do a man's work, and the price of it
+is his own, in his hands, when he has earned it. There is no curse
+upon the poor heavier than that which comes from the early breach
+of all ties of duty between fathers and their sons, and mothers and
+their daughters.
+
+Mr. Fenwick, as he passed out of the miller's house, saw Jacob
+Brattle at the door of the mill. He was tugging along some load,
+pulling it in at the door, and prevailing against the weakness of his
+age by the force of his energy. The parson knew that the miller saw
+him, but the miller took no notice,--looked rather as though he did
+not wish to be observed,--and so the parson went on. When at home he
+postponed his account of what had taken place till he should be alone
+with his wife; but at night he told her the whole story.
+
+"The long and the short of it is, Master Sam will turn to
+housebreaking, if somebody doesn't get hold of him."
+
+"To housebreaking, Frank?"
+
+"I believe that he is about it."
+
+"And were they going to break in here?"
+
+"I don't think he was. I don't believe he was so minded then. But he
+had shown them the way in, and they were looking about on their own
+scores. Don't you frighten yourself. What with the constable and
+the life-preserver, we'll be safe. I've a big dog coming, a second
+Bone'm. Sam Brattle is in more danger, I fear, than the silver
+forks."
+
+But, in spite of the cheeriness of his speech, the Vicar was anxious,
+and almost unhappy. After all that occurred in reference to himself
+and to Sam Brattle,--their former intimacies, the fish they had
+caught together, the rats they had killed together, the favour which
+he, the parson of the parish, had shown to this lad, and especially
+after the evil things which had been said of himself because of this
+friendship on his part for one so much younger than himself, and
+so much his inferior in rank,--it would be to him a most grievous
+misfortune should he be called upon to acknowledge publicly Sam
+Brattle's iniquity, and more grievous still, if the necessity should
+be forced upon him of bringing Sam to open punishment. Fenwick knew
+well that diverse accusations had been made against him in the
+parish regarding Sam. The Marquis of Trowbridge had said a word. Mr.
+Puddleham had said many words. The old miller himself had growled.
+Even Gilmore had expressed disapprobation. The Vicar, in his pride,
+had turned a deaf ear to them all. He began to fear now that possibly
+he had been wrong in the favours shown to Sam Brattle.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+THE LAST DAY.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+The parson's visit to the mill was on a Saturday. The next Sunday
+passed by very quietly, and nothing was seen of Mr. Gilmore at the
+Vicarage. He was at church, and walked with the two ladies from the
+porch to their garden gate, but he declined Mrs. Fenwick's invitation
+to lunch, and was not seen again on that day. The parson had sent
+word to Fanny Brattle during the service to stop a few minutes for
+him, and had learned from her that Sam had not been at home last
+night. He had also learned, before the service that morning, that
+very early on the Saturday, probably about four o'clock, two men
+had passed through Paul's Hinton with a huxter's cart and a pony.
+Now Paul's Hinton, or Hinton Saint Paul's as it should be properly
+called, was a long straggling village, six miles from Bullhampton,
+and half-way on the road to Market Lavington, to which latter place
+Sam had told his sister that he was going. Putting these things
+together, Mr. Fenwick did not in the least doubt but the two men in
+the cart were they who had been introduced to his garden by young
+Brattle.
+
+"I only hope," said the parson, "that there's a good surgeon at
+Market Lavington. One of the gentlemen in that cart must have wanted
+him, I take it." Then he thought that it might, perhaps, be worth his
+while to trot over to Lavington in the course of the week, and make
+inquiries.
+
+On the Wednesday Mary Lowther was to go back to Loring. This seemed
+like a partial break-up of their establishment, both to the parson
+and his wife. Fenwick had made up his mind that Mary was to be his
+nearest neighbour for life, and had fallen into the way of treating
+her accordingly, telling her of things in the parish as he might have
+done to the Squire's wife, presuming the Squire's wife to have been
+on the best possible terms with him. He now regarded Mary as being
+almost an impostor. She had taken him in and obtained his confidence
+under false pretences. It was true that she might still come and
+fill the place that he had appointed for her. He rather thought
+that at last she would do so. But he was angry with her because she
+hesitated. She was creating an unnecessary disturbance among them.
+She had, he thought, been now wooed long enough, and, as he told his
+wife more than once, was making an ass of herself. Mrs. Fenwick was
+not quite so hard in her judgment, but she also was tempted to be a
+little angry. She loved her friend Mary a great deal better than she
+loved Mr. Gilmore, but she was thoroughly convinced that Mary could
+not do better than accept a man whom she owned that she liked,--whom
+she, at any rate, liked so well that she had not as yet rejected him.
+Therefore, although Mary was going, they were, both of them, rather
+savage with her.
+
+The Monday passed by, also very quietly, and Mr. Gilmore did not come
+to them, but he had sent a note to tell them that he would walk down
+on the Tuesday evening to say good-bye to Miss Lowther. Early on
+the Wednesday Mr. Fenwick was to drive her to Westbury, whence the
+railway would take her round by Chippenham and Swindon to Loring. On
+the Tuesday morning she was very melancholy. Though she knew that it
+was right to go away, she greatly regretted that it was necessary.
+She was angry with herself for not having better known her own mind,
+and though she was quite sure that were Mr. Gilmore to repeat his
+offer to her that moment, she would not accept it, nevertheless she
+thought ill of herself because she would not do so. "I do believe,"
+she said to herself, "that I shall never like any man better." She
+knew well enough that if she was never brought to love any man, she
+never ought to marry any man; but she was not quite sure whether
+Janet was not right in telling her that she had formed erroneous
+notions of the sort of love she ought to feel for the man whom she
+should resolve to accept. Perhaps it was true that that kind of
+adoration which Janet entertained for her husband was a feeling which
+came after marriage--a feeling which would spring up in her own heart
+as soon as she was the man's own wife, the mistress of his house, the
+mother of his children, the one human being for whose welfare he was
+solicitous beyond that of all others. And this man did love her. She
+had no doubt about that. And she was unhappy, too, because she felt
+that she had offended his friends, and that they thought that she was
+not treating their friend well.
+
+"Janet," she said, as they were again sitting out on the lawn, on
+that Tuesday afternoon, "I am almost sorry that I came here at all."
+
+"Don't say that, dear."
+
+"I have spent some of the happiest days of my life here, but the
+visit, on the whole, has been unfortunate. I am going away in
+disgrace. I feel that so acutely."
+
+"What nonsense! How are you in disgrace?"
+
+"Mr. Fenwick and you think that I have behaved badly. I know you do,
+and I feel it so strongly! I think so much of him, and believe him to
+be so good, and so wise, and so understanding,--he knows what people
+should do, and should be, so well,--that I cannot doubt that I have
+been wrong if he thinks so."
+
+"He only wishes that you could have made up your mind to marry a most
+worthy man, who is his friend, and who, by marrying you, would have
+fixed you close to us. He wishes it still, and so do I."
+
+"But he thinks that I have been--have been mopish, and
+lack-a-daisical, and--and--almost untrue. I can hear it in the tone
+of his voice, and see it in his eye. I can tell it from the way he
+shakes hands with me in the morning. He is such a true man that I
+know in a moment what he means at all times. I am going away under
+his displeasure, and I wish I had never come."
+
+"Return as Mrs. Gilmore, and all his displeasure will disappear."
+
+"Yes, because he would forgive me. He would say to himself that, as
+I had repented, I might be taken back to his grace; but as things are
+at present he condemns me. And so do you."
+
+"If you ask me, Mary, I must tell the truth. I don't think you know
+your own mind."
+
+"Suppose I don't, is that disgraceful?"
+
+"But there comes a time when a girl should know her own mind. You are
+giving this poor fellow an enormous deal of unnecessary trouble."
+
+"I have known my own mind so far as to tell him that I could not
+marry him."
+
+"As far as I understand, Mary, you have always told him to wait a
+little longer."
+
+"I have never asked him to wait, Janet;--never. It is he who says
+that he will wait; and what can I answer when he says so? All the
+same I don't mean to defend myself. I do believe that I have been
+wrong, and I wish that I had never come here. It sounds ungrateful,
+but I do. It is so dreadful to feel that I have incurred the
+displeasure of people that I love so dearly."
+
+"There is no displeasure, Mary; the word is a good deal too strong.
+I wonder what you'll think of all this when the parson and his wife
+come up on future Sundays to dine with the Squire and his lady. I
+have long since made up my mind that when afternoon service is over,
+we ought to go up and be made much of at the Privets; and you're
+putting all this off till I'm an old woman--for a chimera. It's about
+our Sunday dinners that I'm angry. Flo, my darling, what a face you
+have got. Do come and sit still for a few minutes, or you'll be in a
+fever." While Mrs. Fenwick was wiping her girl's brow, and smoothing
+her ringlets, Mary walked off to the orchard by herself. There was a
+broad green path which made the circuit of it, and she took the round
+twice, pausing at the bottom to look at the spot from which she had
+tumbled into the river. What a trouble she had been to them all! She
+was thoroughly dissatisfied with herself; especially so because she
+had fallen into those very difficulties which from early years she
+had resolved that she would avoid. She had made up her mind that she
+would not flirt, that she would never give a right to any man--or to
+any woman--to call her a coquette; that if love and a husband came
+in her way she would take them thankfully, and that if they did not,
+she would go on her path quietly, if possible, feeling no uneasiness,
+and certainly showing none, because the joys of a married life did
+not belong to her. But now she had gotten herself into a mess, and
+she could not tell herself that it was not her own fault. Then she
+resolved again that in future she would go right. It could not but
+be that a woman could keep herself from floundering in these messes
+of half-courtship,--of courtship on one side, and doubt on the
+other,--if she would persistently adhere to some safe rule. Her
+rejection of Mr. Gilmore ought to have been unhesitating and certain
+from the first. She was sure of that now. She had been guilty of
+an absurdity in supposing that because the man had been in earnest,
+therefore she had been justified in keeping him in suspense, for his
+own sake. She had been guilty of an absurdity, and also of great
+self-conceit. She could do nothing now but wait till she should hear
+from him,--and then answer him steadily. After what had passed she
+could not go to him and declare that it was all over. He was coming
+to-night, and she was nearly sure that he would not say a word to her
+on the subject. If he did,--if he renewed his offer,--then she would
+speak out. It was hardly possible that he should do so, and therefore
+the trouble which she had created must remain.
+
+As she thus resolved, she was leaning over the gate looking into the
+churchyard, not much observing the graves or the monuments or the
+beautiful old ivy-covered tower, or thinking of the dead that were
+lying there, or of the living who prayed there; but swearing to
+herself that for the rest of her life she would keep clear of, what
+she called, girlish messes. Like other young ladies she had read much
+poetry and many novels; but her sympathies had never been with young
+ladies who could not go straight through with their love affairs,
+from the beginning to the end, without flirtation of either an inward
+or an outward nature. Of all her heroines, Rosalind was the one she
+liked the best, because from the first moment of her passion she knew
+herself and what she was about, and loved her lover right heartily.
+Of all girls in prose or poetry she declared that Rosalind was
+the least of a flirt. She meant to have the man, and never had a
+doubt about it. But with such a one as Flora MacIvor she had no
+patience;--a girl who did and who didn't, who would and who wouldn't,
+who could and who couldn't, and who of all flirts was to her the most
+nauseous! As she was taking herself to task, accusing herself of
+being a Flora without the poetry and romance to excuse her, Mr.
+Fenwick came round from Farmer Trumbull's side of the church, and got
+over the stile into the churchyard.
+
+
+[Illustration: Mr. Fenwick came round from Farmer Trumbull's
+side of the church, and got over the stile into the churchyard.]
+
+
+"What, Mary, is that you gazing in so intently among your brethren
+that were?"
+
+"I was not thinking of them," she said, with a smile. "My mind was
+intent on some of my brethren that are." Then there came a thought
+across her, and she made a sudden decision. "Mr. Fenwick," she said,
+"would you mind walking up and down the churchyard with me once or
+twice? I have something to say to you, and I can say it now so well."
+He opened the gate for her, and she joined him. "I want to beg your
+pardon, and to get you to forgive me. I know you have been angry with
+me."
+
+"Hardly angry,--but vexed. As you ask me so frankly and prettily, I
+will forgive you. There is my hand upon it. All evil thoughts against
+you shall go out of my head. I shall still have my wishes, but I will
+not be cross with you."
+
+"You are so good, and so clearly honest. I declare I think Janet the
+happiest woman that I ever heard of."
+
+"Come, come; I didn't bargain for this kind of thing when I allowed
+myself to be brought in here."
+
+"But it is so. I did not stop you for that, however, but to
+acknowledge that I have been wrong, and to ask you to pardon me."
+
+"I will. I do. If there has been anything amiss, it shall not be
+looked on again as amiss. But there has been only one thing amiss."
+
+"And, Mr. Fenwick, will you do this for me? Will you tell him that I
+was foolish to say that he might wait? Why should he wait? Of course
+he should not wait. When I am gone, tell him so, and beg him to make
+an end of it. I had not thought of it properly, or I would not have
+allowed him to be tormented."
+
+There was a pause after this, during which they walked half the
+length of the path in silence. "No, Mary," he said, after a while; "I
+will not tell him that."
+
+"Why not, Mr. Fenwick?"
+
+"Because it will not be for his good, or for mine, or for Janet's,
+or, as I believe, for yours."
+
+"Indeed, it will, for the good of us all."
+
+"I think, Mary, you do not quite understand. There is not one among
+us who does not wish that you should come here and be one of us;
+a real, right down Bullompton 'ooman, as they say in the village.
+I want you to be my wife's dearest friend, and my own nearest
+neighbour. There is no man in the world whom I love as I do Harry
+Gilmore, and I want you to be his wife. I have said to myself and
+to Janet a score of times that you certainly would be so sooner or
+later. My wrath has not come from your bidding him to wait, but from
+your coldness in not taking him without waiting. You should remember
+that we grow gray very quickly, Mary."
+
+Here was the old story again,--the old story as she had heard it from
+Harry Gilmore, but told as she had never expected to hear it from
+the lips of Frank Fenwick. It amounted to this; that even he, Frank
+Fenwick, bade her wait and try. But she had formed her resolution,
+and she was not going to be turned aside, even by Frank Fenwick; "I
+had thought that you would help me," she said, very slowly.
+
+"So I will, with all my heart, towards the keys of the store closets
+of the Privets, but not a step the other way. It has to be, Mary. He
+is too much in earnest, and too good, and too fit for the place to
+which he aspires, to miss his object. Come, we'll go in. Mind, you
+and I are one again, let it go how it may. I will own that I have
+been vexed for the last two days,--have been in a humour unbecoming
+your departure to-morrow. I throw all that behind me. You and I are
+dear friends,--are we not?"
+
+"I do hope so, Mr. Fenwick?"
+
+"There shall be no feather moulted between us. But as to operating
+between you and Harry, with the view of keeping you apart, I decline
+the commission. It is my assured belief that sooner or later he will
+be your husband. Now we will go up to Janet, who will begin to think
+herself a Penelope, if we desert her much longer."
+
+Immediately after this Mary went up to dress for dinner. Should she
+make up her mind to give way, and put on the blue ribbons which he
+loved so well? She thought that she could tell him at once, if she
+made up her mind in that direction. It would not, perhaps, be very
+maidenly, but anything would be better than suspense,--than torment
+to him. Then she took out her blue ribbons, and tried to go through
+that ceremony of telling him. It was quite impossible. Were she to do
+so, she would know no happiness again in this world, or probably in
+the other. To do the thing, it would be necessary that she should lie
+to him.
+
+She came down in a simple white dress, without any ribbons, in
+just the dress which she would have worn had Mr. Gilmore not been
+coming. At dinner they were very merry. The word of command had gone
+forth from Frank that Mary was to be forgiven, and Janet of course
+obeyed. The usual courtesies of society demand that there shall be
+civility--almost flattering civility--from host to guest, and from
+guest to host; and yet how often does it occur that in the midst
+of these courtesies there is something that tells of hatred, of
+ridicule, or of scorn! How often does it happen that the guest knows
+that he is disliked, or the host knows that he is a bore! In the last
+two days Mary had felt that she was not cordially a welcome guest.
+She had felt also that the reason was one against which she could not
+contend. Now all that, at least, was over. Frank Fenwick's manner had
+never been pleasanter to her than it was on this occasion, and Janet
+followed the suit which her lord led.
+
+They were again on the lawn between eight and nine o'clock when Harry
+Gilmore came up to them. He was gracious enough in his salutation to
+Mary Lowther, but no indifferent person would have thought that he
+was her lover. He talked chiefly to Fenwick, and when they went in to
+tea did not take a place on the sofa beside Mary. But after a while
+he said something which told them all of his love.
+
+"What do you think I've been doing to-day, Frank?"
+
+"Getting your wheat down, I should hope."
+
+"We begin that to-morrow. I never like to be quite the earliest at
+that work, or yet the latest."
+
+"Better be a day too early than a day too late, Harry."
+
+"Never mind about that. I've been down with old Brattle."
+
+"And what have you been doing with him?"
+
+"I'm half ashamed, and yet I fancy I'm right."
+
+As he said this he looked across to Mary Lowther, who no doubt was
+watching every turn of his face from the corner of her eye. "I've
+just been and knocked under, and told him that the old place shall be
+put to rights."
+
+"That's your doing, Mary," said Mrs. Fenwick, injudiciously.
+
+"Oh, no; I'm sure it is not. Mr. Gilmore would only do such a thing
+as that because it is proper."
+
+"I don't know about it's being proper," said he. "I'm not quite sure
+whether it is or not. I shall never get any interest for my money."
+
+"Interest for one's money is not everything," said Mrs. Fenwick.
+
+"Nevertheless, when one builds houses for other people to live in,
+one has to look to it," said the parson.
+
+"People say it's the prettiest spot in the parish," continued Mr.
+Gilmore, "and as such it shouldn't be let go to ruin." Janet remarked
+afterwards to her husband that Mary Lowther had certainly declared
+that it was the prettiest spot in the parish, but that, as far as
+her knowledge went, nobody else had ever said so. "And then, you see,
+when I refused to spend money upon it, old Brattle had money of his
+own, and it was his business to do it."
+
+"He hasn't much now, I fear," said Mr. Fenwick.
+
+"I fear not. His family has been very heavy on him. He paid money
+to put two of his boys into trade who died afterwards, and then for
+years he had either doctors or undertakers about the place. So I just
+went down to him and told him I would do it."
+
+"And how did he take it?"
+
+"Like a bear, as he is. He would hardly speak to me, but went away
+into the mill, telling me that I might settle it all with his wife.
+It's going to be done, however. I shall have the estimate next week,
+and I suppose it will cost me two or three hundred pounds. The mill
+is worse than the house, I take it."
+
+"I am so glad it is to be done," said Mary. After that Mr. Gilmore
+did not in the least begrudge his two or three hundred pounds. But he
+said not a word to Mary, just pressed her hand at parting, and left
+her subject to a possibility of a reversal of her sentence at the end
+of the stated period.
+
+On the next morning Mr. Fenwick drove her in his little open phaeton
+to the station at Westbury. "You are to come back to us, you know,"
+said Mrs. Fenwick, "and remember how anxiously I am waiting for my
+Sunday dinners." Mary said not a word, but as she was driven round
+in front of the church she looked up at the dear old tower, telling
+herself that, in all probability, she would never see it again.
+
+"I have just one thing to say, Mary," said the parson, as he walked
+up and down the platform with her at Westbury; "you are to remember
+that, whatever happens, there is always a home for you at Bullhampton
+when you choose to come to it. I am not speaking of the Privets now,
+but of the Vicarage."
+
+"How very good you are to me!"
+
+"And so are you to us. Dear friends should be good to each other.
+God bless you, dear." From thence she made her way home to Loring by
+herself.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+MISS MARRABLE.
+
+
+Whatever may be the fact as to the rank and proper calling of
+Bullhampton, there can be no doubt that Loring is a town. There is a
+market-place, and a High Street, and a Board of Health, and a Paragon
+Crescent, and a Town Hall, and two different parish churches, one
+called St. Peter Lowtown, and the other St. Botolph's Uphill, and
+there are Uphill Street, and Lowtown Street, and various other
+streets. I never heard of a mayor of Loring, but, nevertheless, there
+is no doubt as to its being a town. Nor did it ever return members
+to Parliament; but there was once, in one of the numerous bills that
+have been proposed, an idea of grouping it with Cirencester and
+Lechlade. All the world of course knows that this was never done; but
+the transient rumour of it gave the Loringites an improved position,
+and justified that little joke about a live dog being better than a
+dead lion, with which the parson at Bullhampton regaled Miss Lowther
+at the time.
+
+All the fashion of Loring dwelt, as a matter of course, at Uphill.
+Lowtown was vulgar, dirty, devoted to commercial and manufacturing
+purposes, and hardly owned a single genteel private house. There was
+the parsonage, indeed, which stood apart from its neighbours, inside
+great tall slate-coloured gates, and which had a garden of its own.
+But except the clergyman, who had no choice in the matter, nobody
+who was anybody lived at Lowtown. There were three or four factories
+there,--in and out of which troops of girls would be seen passing
+twice a day, in their ragged, soiled, dirty mill dresses, all of
+whom would come out on Sunday dressed with a magnificence that
+would lead one to suppose that trade at Loring was doing very well.
+Whether trade did well or ill, whether wages were high or low,
+whether provisions were cheap in price, whether there were peace
+or war between capital and labour, still there was the Sunday
+magnificence. What a blessed thing it is for women,--and for men too
+certainly,--that there should be a positive happiness to the female
+sex in the possession, and in exhibiting the possession, of bright
+clothing! It is almost as good for the softening of manners, and the
+not permitting of them to be ferocious, as is the faithful study of
+the polite arts. At Loring the manners of the mill hands, as they
+were called, were upon the whole good,--which I believe was in a
+great degree to be attributed to their Sunday magnificence.
+
+The real West-end of Loring was understood by all men to lie in
+Paragon Crescent, at the back of St. Botolph's Church. The whole of
+this Crescent was built, now some twenty years ago, by Mrs. Fenwick's
+father, who had been clever enough to see that as mills were made to
+grow in the low town, houses for wealthy people to live in ought to
+be made to grow in the high town. He therefore built the Paragon,
+and a certain small row of very pretty houses near the end of the
+Paragon, called Balfour Place,--and had done very well, and had made
+money; and now lay asleep in the vaults below St. Botolph's Church.
+No inconsiderable proportion of the comfort of Bullhampton parsonage
+is due to Mr. Balfour's success in that achievement of Paragon
+Crescent. There were none of the family left at Loring. The widow had
+gone away to live at Torquay with a sister, and the only other child,
+another daughter, was married to that distinguished barrister on the
+Oxford circuit, Mr. Quickenham. Mr. Quickenham and our friend the
+parson were very good friends; but they did not see a great deal of
+each other, Mr. Fenwick not going up very often to London, and Mr.
+Quickenham being unable to use the Vicarage of Bullhampton when on
+his own circuit. As for the two sisters, they had very strong ideas
+about their husbands' professions; Sophia Quickenham never hesitating
+to declare that one was life, and the other stagnation; and Janet
+Fenwick protesting that the difference to her seemed to be almost
+that between good and evil. They wrote to each other perhaps once a
+quarter. But the Balfour family was in truth broken up.
+
+Miss Marrable, Mary Lowther's aunt, lived, of course, at Uphill; but
+not in the Crescent, nor yet in Balfour Place. She was an old lady
+with very modest means, whose brother had been rector down at St.
+Peter's, and she had passed the greatest part of her life within
+those slate-coloured gates. When he died, and when she, almost
+exactly at the same time, found that it would be expedient that she
+should take charge of her niece, Mary, she removed herself up to a
+small house in Botolph Lane, in which she could live decently on her
+L300 a year. It must not be surmised that Botolph Lane was a squalid
+place, vile, or dirty, or even unfashionable. It was narrow and old,
+having been inhabited by decent people long before the Crescent, or
+even Mr. Balfour himself, had been in existence; but it was narrow
+and old, and the rents were cheap, and here Miss Marrable was able
+to live, and occasionally to give tea-parties, and to provide a
+comfortable home for her niece, within the limits of her income. Miss
+Marrable was herself a lady of very good family, the late Sir Gregory
+Marrable having been her uncle; but her only sister had married a
+Captain Lowther, whose mother had been first cousin to the Earl of
+Periwinkle; and therefore on her own account, as well as on that of
+her niece, Miss Marrable thought a good deal about blood. She was
+one of those ladies,--now few in number,--who within their heart
+of hearts conceive that money gives no title to social distinction,
+let the amount of money be ever so great, and its source ever so
+stainless. Rank to her was a thing quite assured and ascertained,
+and she had no more doubt as to her own right to pass out of a
+room before the wife of a millionaire than she had of the right of
+a millionaire to spend his own guineas. She always addressed an
+attorney by letter as Mister, raising up her eyebrows when appealed
+to on the matter, and explaining that an attorney is not an esquire.
+She had an idea that the son of a gentleman, if he intended to
+maintain his rank as a gentleman, should earn his income as a
+clergyman, or as a barrister, or as a soldier, or as a sailor. Those
+were the professions intended for gentlemen. She would not absolutely
+say that a physician was not a gentleman, or even a surgeon; but she
+would never allow to physic the same absolute privileges which, in
+her eyes, belonged to law and the church. There might also possibly
+be a doubt about the Civil Service and Civil Engineering; but she had
+no doubt whatever that when a man touched trade or commerce in any
+way he was doing that which was not the work of a gentleman. He might
+be very respectable, and it might be very necessary that he should do
+it; but brewers, bankers, and merchants, were not gentlemen, and the
+world, according to Miss Marrable's theory, was going astray, because
+people were forgetting their landmarks.
+
+As to Miss Marrable herself nobody could doubt that she was a lady;
+she looked it in every inch. There were not, indeed, many inches of
+her, for she was one of the smallest, daintiest, little old women
+that ever were seen. But now, at seventy, she was very pretty, quite
+a woman to look at with pleasure. Her feet and hands were exquisitely
+made, and she was very proud of them. She wore her own grey hair of
+which she showed very little, but that little was always exquisitely
+nice. Her caps were the perfection of caps. Her green eyes were
+bright and sharp, and seemed to say that she knew very well how
+to take care of herself. Her mouth, and nose, and chin, were all
+well-formed, small, shapely, and concise, not straggling about her
+face as do the mouths, noses, and chins of some old ladies--ay, and
+of some young ladies also. Had it not been that she had lost her
+teeth, she would hardly have looked to be an old woman. Her health
+was perfect. She herself would say that she had never yet known a
+day's illness. She dressed with the greatest care, always wearing
+silk at and after luncheon. She dressed three times a day, and in the
+morning would come down in what she called a merino gown. But then,
+with her, clothes never seemed to wear out. Her motions were so
+slight and delicate, that the gloss of her dresses would remain on
+them when the gowns of other women would almost have been worn to
+rags. She was never seen of an afternoon or evening without gloves,
+and her gloves were always clean and apparently new. She went to
+church once on Sundays in winter, and twice in summer, and she had a
+certain very short period of each day devoted to Bible reading; but
+at Loring she was not reckoned to be among the religious people.
+Indeed, there were those who said that she was very worldly-minded,
+and that at her time of life she ought to devote herself to other
+books than those which were daily in her hands. Pope, Dryden, Swift,
+Cowley, Fielding, Richardson, and Goldsmith, were her authors. She
+read the new novels as they came out, but always with critical
+comparisons that were hostile to them. Fielding, she said, described
+life as it was; whereas Dickens had manufactured a kind of life that
+never had existed, and never could exist. The pathos of Esmond was
+very well, but Lady Castlemaine was nothing to Clarissa Harlowe. As
+for poetry, Tennyson, she said, was all sugar-candy; he had neither
+the common sense, nor the wit, nor, as she declared, to her ear the
+melody of Pope. All the poets of the present century, she declared,
+if put together, could not have written the Rape of the Lock. Pretty
+as she was, and small, and nice, and lady-like, I think she liked
+her literature rather strong. It is certain that she had Smollett's
+novels in a cupboard up-stairs, and it was said that she had been
+found reading one of Wycherley's plays.
+
+The strongest point in her character was her contempt of money. Not
+that she had any objection to it, or would at all have turned up
+her nose at another hundred a year had anybody left to her such
+an accession of income; but that in real truth she never measured
+herself by what she possessed, or others by what they possessed. She
+was as grand a lady to herself, eating her little bit of cold mutton,
+or dining off a tiny sole, as though she sat at the finest banquet
+that could be spread. She had no fear of economies, either before her
+two handmaids or anybody else in the world. She was fond of her tea,
+and in summer could have cream for twopence; but when cream became
+dear, she saved money and had a pen'north of milk. She drank two
+glasses of Marsala every day, and let it be clearly understood that
+she couldn't afford sherry. But when she gave a tea-party, as she
+did, perhaps, six or seven times a year, sherry was always handed
+round with cake before the people went away. There were matters in
+which she was extravagant. When she went out herself she never took
+one of the common street flies, but paid eighteen pence extra to get
+a brougham from the Dragon. And when Mary Lowther,--who had only
+fifty pounds a year of her own, with which she clothed herself and
+provided herself with pocket-money,--was going to Bullhampton, Miss
+Marrable actually proposed to her to take one of the maids with her.
+Mary, of course, would not hear of it, and said that she should just
+as soon think of taking the house; but Miss Marrable had thought
+that it would, perhaps, not be well for a girl so well-born as Miss
+Lowther to go out visiting without a maid. She herself very rarely
+left Loring, because she could not afford it; but when, two summers
+back, she did go to Weston-super-Mare for a fortnight, she took one
+of the girls with her.
+
+Miss Marrable had heard a great deal about Mr. Gilmore. Mary, indeed,
+was not inclined to keep secrets from her aunt, and her very long
+absence,--so much longer than had at first been intended,--could
+hardly have been sanctioned unless some reason had been given. There
+had been many letters on the subject, not only between Mary and her
+aunt, but between Mrs. Fenwick and her very old friend Miss Marrable.
+Of course these latter letters had spoken loudly the praises of
+Mr. Gilmore, and Miss Marrable had become quite one of the Gilmore
+faction. She desired that her niece should marry; but that she should
+marry a gentleman. She would have infinitely preferred to see Mary
+an old maid, than to hear that she was going to give herself to any
+suitor contaminated by trade. Now Mr. Gilmore's position was exactly
+that which Miss Marrable regarded as being the best in England.
+He was a country gentleman, living on his own acres, a justice of
+the peace, whose father and grandfather and great-grandfather had
+occupied exactly the same position. Such a marriage for Mary would be
+quite safe; and in those days one did hear so often of girls making,
+she would not say improper marriages, but marriages which in her
+eyes were not fitting! Mr. Gilmore, she thought, exactly filled that
+position which entitled a gentleman to propose marriage to such a
+lady as Mary Lowther.
+
+"Yes, my dear, I am glad to have you back again. Of course I have
+been a little lonely, but I bear that kind of thing better than most
+people. Thank God, my eyes are good."
+
+"You are looking so well, Aunt Sarah!"
+
+"I am well. I don't know how other women get so much amiss; but God
+has been very good to me."
+
+"And so pretty," said Mary, kissing her.
+
+"My dear, it's a pity you're not a young gentleman."
+
+"You are so fresh and nice, aunt. I wish I could always look as you
+do."
+
+"What would Mr. Gilmore say?"
+
+"Oh, Mr. Gilmore, Mr. Gilmore, Mr. Gilmore! I am so weary of Mr.
+Gilmore."
+
+"Weary of him, Mary?"
+
+"Weary of myself because of him--that is what I mean. He has behaved
+always well, and I am not at all sure that I have. And he is a
+perfect gentleman. But I shall never be Mrs. Gilmore, Aunt Sarah."
+
+"Janet says that she thinks you will."
+
+"Janet is mistaken. But, dear aunt, don't let us talk about it at
+once. Of course you shall hear everything in time, but I have had so
+much of it. Let us see what new books there are. Cast Iron! You don't
+mean to say you have come to that?"
+
+"I shan't read it."
+
+"But I will, aunt. So it must not go back for a day or two. I do love
+the Fenwicks, dearly, dearly, both of them. They are almost, if not
+quite, perfect. And yet I am glad to be at home."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+CRUNCH'EM CAN'T BE HAD.
+
+
+Mr. Fenwick had intended to have come home round by Market Lavington,
+after having deposited Miss Lowther at the Westbury Station, with
+the view of making some inquiry respecting the gentleman with the
+hurt shoulder; but he had found the distance to be too great, and
+had abandoned the idea. After that there was not a day to spare till
+the middle of the next week; so that it was nearly a fortnight after
+the little scene at the corner of the Vicarage garden wall before he
+called upon the Lavington constable and the Lavington doctor. From
+the latter he could learn nothing. No such patient had been to him.
+But the constable, though he had not seen the two men, had heard
+of them. One was a man who in former days had frequented Lavington,
+Burrows by name, generally known as Jack the Grinder, who had been
+in every prison in Wiltshire and Somersetshire, but who had not,--so
+said the constable,--honoured Lavington for the last two years, till
+this his last appearance. He had, however, been seen there in company
+with another man, and had evidently been in a condition very unfit
+for work. He had slept one night at a low public-house, and had then
+moved on. The man had complained of a fall from the cart, and had
+declared that he was black and blue all over; but it seemed to be
+clear that he had no broken bones. Mr. Fenwick therefore was all but
+convinced that Jack the Grinder was the gentleman with whom he had
+had the encounter, and that the grinder's back had withstood that
+swinging blow from the life-preserver. Of the Grinder's companions
+nothing could be learned. The two men had taken the Devizes road
+out of Lavington, and beyond that nothing was known of them. When
+the parson mentioned Sam Brattle's name in a whisper, the Lavington
+constable shook his head. He knew all about old Jacob Brattle. A very
+respectable party was old Mr. Brattle in the constable's opinion.
+Nevertheless the constable shook his head when Sam Brattle's name was
+mentioned. Having learned so much, the parson rode home.
+
+Two days after this, on a Friday, Fenwick was sitting after breakfast
+in his study, at work on his sermon for next Sunday, when he was told
+that old Mrs. Brattle was waiting to see him. He immediately got up,
+and found his own wife and the miller's seated in the hall. It was
+not often that Mrs. Brattle made her way to the Vicarage, but when
+she did so she was treated with great consideration. It was still
+August, and the weather was very hot, and she had walked up across
+the water mead, and was tired. A glass of wine and a biscuit were
+pressed upon her, and she was encouraged to sit and say a few
+indifferent words, before she was taken into the study and told to
+commence the story which had brought her so far. And there was a
+most inviting topic for conversation. The mill and the mill premises
+were to be put in order by the landlord. Mrs. Brattle affected to
+be rather dismayed than otherwise by the coming operations. The
+mill would have lasted their time, she thought, "and as for them as
+were to come after them,--well! she didn't know. As things was now,
+perhaps, it might be that after all Sam would have the mill." But the
+trouble occasioned by the workmen would be infinite. How were they to
+live in the mean time, and where were they to go? It soon appeared,
+however, that all this had been already arranged. Milling must of
+course be stopped for a month or six weeks. "Indeed, sir, feyther
+says that there won't be no more grinding much before winter."
+But the mill was to be repaired first, and then, when it became
+absolutely necessary to dismantle the house, they were to endeavour
+to make shift, and live in the big room of the mill itself, till
+their furniture should be put back again. Mrs. Fenwick, with ready
+good nature, offered to accommodate Mrs. Brattle and Fanny at the
+Vicarage; but the old woman declined with many protestations of
+gratitude. She had never left her old man yet, and would not do so
+now. The weather would be mild for awhile, and she thought that they
+could get through. By this time the glass of wine had been sipped
+to the bottom, and the parson, mindful of his sermon, had led the
+visitor into his study. She had come to tell that Sam at last had
+returned home.
+
+"Why didn't you bring him up with you, Mrs. Brattle?" Here was a
+question to ask of an old lady, whose dominion over her son was
+absolutely none! Sam had become so frightfully independent that he
+hardly regarded the word of his father, who was a man pre-eminently
+capable of maintaining authority, and would no more do a thing
+because his mother told him than because the wind whistled.
+
+"I axed him to come up, not just with me, but of hisself, Mr.
+Fenwick; but he said as how you would know where to find him if you
+wanted him."
+
+"That's just what I don't know. However, if he's there now I'll go to
+him. It would have been better far that he should have come to me."
+
+"I told 'un so, Mr. Fenwick, I did, indeed."
+
+"It does not signify. I will go to him; only it cannot be to-day, as
+I have promised to take my wife over to Charlicoats. But I'll come
+down immediately after breakfast to-morrow. You think he'll be still
+there?"
+
+"I be sure he will, Mr. Fenwick. He and feyther have taken on again,
+till it's beautiful to see. There was none of 'em feyther ever loved
+like he,--only one." Thereupon the poor woman burst out into tears,
+and covered her face with her handkerchief. "He never makes half so
+much account of my Fan, that never had a fault belonging to her."
+
+"If Sam will stick to that it will be well for him."
+
+"He's taken up extraordinary with the repairs, Mr. Fenwick. He's in
+and about and over the place, looking to everything; and feyther says
+he knows so much about it, he b'lieves the boy could do it all out o'
+his own head. There's nothing feyther ever liked so much as folks to
+be strong and clever."
+
+"Perhaps the Squire's tradesmen won't like all that. Is Mitchell
+going to do it?"
+
+"It ain't a doing in that way, Mr. Fenwick. The Squire is allowing
+L200, and feyther is to get it done. Mister Mitchell is to see that
+it's done proper, no doubt."
+
+"And now tell me, Mrs. Brattle, what has Sam been about all the time
+that he was away?"
+
+"That's just what I cannot tell you, Mr. Fenwick."
+
+"Your husband has asked him, I suppose?"
+
+"If he has, he ain't told me, Mr. Fenwick. I don't care to come
+between them with hints and jealousies, suspecting like. Our Fan says
+he's been out working somewhere Lavington way; but I don't know as
+she knows."
+
+"Was he decent looking when he came home?"
+
+"He wasn't much amiss, Mr. Fenwick. He has that way with him that he
+most always looks decent;--don't he, sir?"
+
+"Had he any money?"
+
+"He had a some'at, because when he was working, moving the big lumber
+as though for bare life, he sent one of the boys for beer, and I
+see'd him give the boy the money."
+
+"I'm sorry for it. I wish he'd come back without a penny, and with
+hunger like a wolf in his stomach, and with his clothes all rags,
+so that he might have had a taste of the suffering of a vagabond's
+life."
+
+"Just like the Prodigal Son, Mr. Fenwick?"
+
+"Just like the Prodigal Son. He would not have come back to his
+father had he not been driven by his own vices to live with the
+swine." Then, seeing the tears coming down the poor mother's cheeks,
+he added in a kinder voice, "Perhaps it may be all well as it is. We
+will hope so at least, and to-morrow I will come down and see him.
+You need not tell him that I am coming, unless he should ask where
+you have been." Then Mrs. Brattle took her leave, and the parson
+finished his sermon.
+
+That afternoon he drove his wife across the county to visit certain
+friends at Charlicoats, and, both going and coming, could not keep
+himself from talking about the Brattles. In the first place, he
+thought that Gilmore was wrong not to complete the work himself.
+
+"Of course he'll see that the money is spent and all that, and no
+doubt in this way he may get the job done twenty or thirty pounds
+cheaper; but the Brattles have not interest enough in the place to
+justify it."
+
+"I suppose the old man liked it best so."
+
+"The old man shouldn't have been allowed to have his way. I am in an
+awful state of alarm about Sam. Much as I like him,--or at any rate
+did like him,--I fear he is going, or perhaps has gone, to the dogs.
+That those two men were housebreakers is as certain as that you sit
+there; and I cannot doubt but that he has been with them over at
+Lavington or Devizes, or somewhere in that country."
+
+"But he may, perhaps, never have joined them in anything of that
+kind."
+
+"A man is known by his companions. I would not have believed it if
+I had not found him with the men, and traced him and them about the
+county together. You see that this fellow whom they call the Grinder
+was certainly the man I struck. I tracked him to Lavington, and there
+he was complaining of being sore all over his body. I don't wonder
+that he was sore. He must be made like a horse to be no worse than
+sore. Well, then, that man and Sam were certainly in our garden
+together."
+
+"Give him a chance, Frank."
+
+"Of course, I will give him a chance. I will give him the very best
+chance I can. I would do anything to save him,--but I can't help
+knowing what I know."
+
+He had made very little to his wife of the danger of the Vicarage
+being robbed, but he could not but feel that there was danger.
+His wife had brought with her, among other plenishing for their
+household, a considerable amount of handsome plate, more than is,
+perhaps, generally to be found in country parsonages, and no doubt
+this fact was known, at any rate, to Sam Brattle. Had the men simply
+intended to rob the garden, they would not have run the risk of
+coming so near to the house windows. But then it certainly was true
+that Sam was not showing them the way. The parson did not quite know
+what to think about it, but it was clearly his duty to be on his
+guard.
+
+That same evening he sauntered across the corner of the churchyard
+to his neighbour the farmer. Looking out warily for Bone'm, he stood
+leaning upon the farm gate. Bone'm was not to be seen or heard, and
+therefore he entered, and walked up to the back door, which indeed
+was the only door for entrance or egress that was ever used. There
+was a front door opening into a little ragged garden, but this was as
+much a fixture as the wall. As he was knocking at the back door, it
+was opened by the farmer himself. Mr. Fenwick had called to inquire
+whether his friend had secured for him,--as half promised,--the
+possession of a certain brother of Bone'm's, who was supposed to be
+of a very pugnacious disposition in the silent watches of the night.
+
+"It's no go, parson."
+
+"Why not, Mr. Trumbull?"
+
+"The truth is, there be such a deal of talk o' thieves about the
+country, that no one likes to part with such a friend as that. Muster
+Crickly, over at Imber, he have another big dog it's true, a reg'lar
+mastiff, but he do say that Crunch'em be better than the mastiff, and
+he won't let 'un go, parson,--not for love nor money. I wouldn't let
+Bone'm go, I know; not for nothing." Then Mr. Fenwick walked back to
+the Vicarage, and was half induced to think that as Crunch'em was not
+to be had, it would be his duty to sit up at night, and look after
+the plate box himself.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+DON'T YOU BE AFEARD ABOUT ME.
+
+
+On the following morning Mr. Fenwick walked down to the mill. There
+was a path all along the river, and this was the way he took. He
+passed different points as he went, and he thought of the trout he
+had caught there, or had wished to catch, and he thought also how
+often Sam Brattle had been with him as he had stood there delicately
+throwing his fly. In those days Sam had been very fond of him, had
+thought it to be a great thing to be allowed to fish with the parson,
+and had been reasonably obedient. Now Sam would not even come up to
+the Vicarage when he was asked to do so. For more than a year after
+the close of those amicable relations the parson had behaved with
+kindness and almost with affection to the lad. He had interceded with
+the Squire when Sam was accused of poaching,--had interceded with
+the old miller when Sam had given offence at home,--and had even
+interceded with the constable when there was a rumour in the wind
+of offences something worse than these. Then had come the occasion
+on which Mr. Fenwick had told the father that unless the son would
+change his course evil would come of it; and both father and son had
+taken this amiss. The father had told the parson to his face that he,
+the parson, had led his son astray; and the son in his revenge had
+brought housebreakers down upon his old friend's premises.
+
+"One hasn't to do it for thanks," said Mr. Fenwick, as he became a
+little bitter while thinking of all this. "I'll stick to him as long
+as I can, if it's only for the old woman's sake,--and for the poor
+girl whom we used to love." Then he thought of a clear, sweet, young
+voice that used to be so well known in his village choir, and of the
+heavy curls, which it was a delight to him to see. It had been a
+pleasure to him to have such a girl as Carry Brattle in his church,
+and now Carry Brattle was gone utterly, and would probably never be
+seen in a church again. These Brattles had suffered much, and he
+would bear with them, let the task of doing so be ever so hard.
+
+The sound of workmen was to be already heard as he drew near to
+the mill. There were men there pulling the thatch off the building,
+and there were carts and horses bringing laths, lime, bricks, and
+timber, and taking the old rubbish away. As he crossed quickly by
+the slippery stones he saw old Jacob Brattle standing before the
+mill looking on, with his hands in his breeches pockets. He was
+too old to do much at such work as this,--work to which he was not
+accustomed--and was looking up in a sad melancholy way, as though it
+were a work of destruction, and not one of reparation.
+
+"We shall have you here as smart as possible before long, Mr.
+Brattle," said the parson.
+
+"I don't know much about smart, Muster Fenwick. The old place was
+a'most tumbling down,--but still it would have lasted out my time,
+I'm thinking. If t' Squire would 'a done it fifteen years ago, I'd
+'a thanked un; but I don't know what to say about it now, and this
+time of year and all, just when the new grist would be coming in.
+If t' Squire would 'a thought of it in June, now. But things is
+contrary--a'most allays so." After this speech, which was made in a
+low, droning voice, bit by bit, the miller took himself off and went
+into the house.
+
+At the back of the mill, perched on an old projecting beam, in the
+midst of dust and dirt, assisting with all the energy of youth in the
+demolition of the roof, Mr. Fenwick saw Sam Brattle. He perceived at
+once that Sam had seen him; but the young man immediately averted his
+eyes and went on with his work. The parson did not speak at once, but
+stepped over the ruins around him till he came immediately under the
+beam in question. Then he called to the lad, and Sam was constrained
+to answer "Yes, Mr. Fenwick, I am here;--hard at work, as you see."
+
+"I do see it, and wish you luck with your job. Spare me ten minutes,
+and come down and speak to me."
+
+"I am in such a muck now, Mr. Fenwick, that I do wish to go on with
+it, if you'll let me."
+
+But Mr. Fenwick, having taken so much trouble to get at the young
+man, was not going to be put off in this way. "Never mind your muck
+for a quarter of an hour," he said. "I have come here on purpose to
+find you, and I must speak to you."
+
+"Must!" said Sam, looking down with a very angry lower on his face.
+
+"Yes,--must. Don't be a fool now. You know that I do not wish to
+injure you. You are not such a coward as to be afraid to speak to me.
+Come down."
+
+"Afeard! Who talks of being afeard? Stop a moment, Mr. Fenwick, and
+I'll be with you;--not that I think it will do any good." Then slowly
+he crept back along the beam and came down through the interior of
+the building. "What is it, Mr. Fenwick? Here I am. I ain't a bit
+afeard of you at any rate."
+
+"Where have you been the last fortnight, Sam?"
+
+"What right have you to ask me, Mr. Fenwick?"
+
+"I have the right of old friendship, and perhaps also some right from
+my remembrance of the last place in which I saw you. What has become
+of that man, Burrows?"
+
+"What Burrows?"
+
+"Jack the Grinder, whom I hit on the back the night I made you
+prisoner. Do you think that you were doing well in being in my garden
+about midnight in company with such a fellow as that,--one of the
+most notorious jailbirds in the county? Do you know that I could have
+had you arrested and sent to prison at once?"
+
+"I know you couldn't--do nothing of the kind."
+
+"You know this, Sam,--that I've no wish to do it; that nothing would
+give me more pain than doing it. But you must feel that if we should
+hear now of any depredation about the county, we couldn't,--I at
+least could not,--help thinking of you. And I am told that there will
+be depredations, Sam. Are you concerned in these matters?"
+
+"No, I am not," said Sam, doggedly.
+
+"Are you disposed to tell me why you were in my garden, and why those
+men were with you?"
+
+"We were down in the churchyard, and the gate was open, and so we
+walked up;--that was all. If we'd meant to do anything out of the way
+we shouldn't 'a come like that, nor yet at that hour. Why, it worn't
+midnight, Mr. Fenwick."
+
+"But why was there such a man as Burrows with you? Do you think he
+was fit company for you, Sam?"
+
+"I suppose a chap may choose his own company, Mr. Fenwick?"
+
+"Yes, he may, and go to the gallows because he chooses it, as you are
+doing."
+
+"Very well; if that's all you've got to say to me, I'll go back to my
+work."
+
+"Stop one moment, Sam. That is not quite all. I caught you the other
+night where you had no business to be, and for the sake of your
+father and mother, and for old recollections, I let you go. Perhaps I
+was wrong, but I don't mean to hark back upon that again."
+
+"You are a-harking back on it, ever so often."
+
+"I shall take no further steps about it."
+
+"There ain't no steps to be taken, Mr. Fenwick."
+
+"But I see that you intend to defy me, and therefore I am bound to
+tell you that I shall keep my eye upon you."
+
+"Don't you be afeard about me, Mr. Fenwick."
+
+"And if I hear of those fellows, Burrows and the other, being about
+the place any more, I shall give the police notice that they are
+associates of yours. I don't think so badly of you yet, Sam, as to
+believe you would bring your father's grey hairs with sorrow to the
+grave by turning thief and housebreaker; but when I hear of your
+being away from home, and nobody knowing where you are, and find
+that you are living without decent employment, and prowling about at
+nights with robbers and cut-throats, I cannot but be afraid. Do you
+know that the Squire recognised you that night as well as I?"
+
+"The Squire ain't nothing to me, and if you've done with me now,
+Mr. Fenwick, I'll go back to my work." So saying, Sam Brattle again
+mounted up to the roof, and the parson returned discomfited to the
+front of the building. He had not intended to see any of the family,
+but, as he was crossing the little bridge, meaning to go home round
+by the Privets, he was stopped by Fanny Brattle.
+
+"I hope it will be all right now, Mr. Fenwick," the girl said.
+
+
+[Illustration: "I hope it will be all right now, Mr. Fenwick,"
+the girl said.]
+
+
+"I hope so too, Fanny. But you and your mother should keep an eye
+on him, so that he may know that his goings and comings are noticed.
+I dare say it will be all right as long as the excitement of these
+changes is going on; but there is nothing so bad as that he should be
+in and out of the house at nights and not feel that his absence is
+noticed. It will be better always to ask him, though he be ever so
+cross. Tell your mother I say so."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+BONE'M AND HIS MASTER.
+
+
+After leaving the mill Mr. Fenwick went up to the Squire, and, in
+contradiction, as it were, of all the hard things that he had said
+to Sam Brattle, spoke to the miller's landlord in the lad's favour.
+He was hard at work now, at any rate; and seemed inclined to stick
+to his work. And there had been an independence about him which the
+parson had half liked, even while he had been offended at it. Gilmore
+differed altogether from his friend. "What was he doing in your
+garden? What was he doing hidden in Trumbull's hedge? When I see
+fellows hiding in ditches at night, I don't suppose that they're
+after much good." Mr. Fenwick made some lame apology, even for these
+offences. Sam had, perhaps, not really known the extent of the
+iniquity of the men with whom he had associated, and had come up the
+garden probably with a view to the fruit. The matter was discussed at
+great length, and the Squire at last promised that he would give Sam
+another chance in regard to his own estimation of the young man's
+character.
+
+On that same evening,--or, rather, after the evening was over, for it
+was nearly twelve o'clock at night,--Fenwick walked round the garden
+and the orchard with his wife. There was no moon now, and the night
+was very dark. They stopped for a minute at the wicket leading into
+the churchyard, and it was evident to them that Bone'm, from the
+farmyard at the other side of the church, had heard them, for he
+commenced a low growl, with which the parson was by this time well
+acquainted.
+
+"Good dog, good dog," said the parson, in a low voice. "I wish we had
+his brother, I know."
+
+"He would only be tearing the maids and biting the children," said
+Mrs. Fenwick. "I hate having a savage beast about."
+
+"But it would be so nice to catch a burglar and crunch him. I feel
+almost bloodthirsty since I hit that fellow with the life-preserver,
+and find that I didn't kill him."
+
+"I know, Frank, you're thinking about these thieves more than you
+like to tell me."
+
+"I was thinking just then, that if they were to come and take all the
+silver it wouldn't do much harm. We should have to buy German plate,
+and nobody would know the difference."
+
+"Suppose they murdered us all?"
+
+"They never do that now. The profession is different from what it
+used to be. They only go where they know they can find a certain
+amount of spoil, and where they can get it without much danger. I
+don't think housebreakers ever cut throats in these days. They're too
+fond of their own." Then they both agreed that if these rumours of
+housebreakings were continued, they would send away the plate some
+day to be locked up in safe keeping at Salisbury. After that they
+went to bed.
+
+On the next morning, the Sunday morning, at a few minutes before
+seven, the parson was awakened by his groom at his bedroom door.
+
+"What is it, Roger?" he asked.
+
+"For the love of God, sir, get up! They've been and murdered Mr.
+Trumbull."
+
+Mrs. Fenwick, who heard the tidings, screamed; and Mr. Fenwick was
+out of bed and into his trousers in half a minute. In another half
+minute Mrs. Fenwick, clothed in her dressing-gown, was up-stairs
+among her children. No doubt she thought that as soon as the poor
+farmer had been despatched, the murderers would naturally pass on
+into her nursery. Mr. Fenwick did not believe the tidings. If a man
+be hurt in the hunting-field, it is always said that he's killed.
+If the kitchen flue be on fire, it is always said that the house is
+burned down. Something, however, had probably happened at Farmer
+Trumbull's; and down went the parson across the garden and orchard,
+and through the churchyard, as quick as his legs would carry him.
+In the farmyard he found quite a crowd of men, including the two
+constables and three or four of the leading tradesmen in the village.
+The first thing that he saw was the dead body of Bone'm, the dog. He
+was stiff and stark, and had been poisoned.
+
+"How's Mr. Trumbull?" he asked, of the nearest by-stander.
+
+"Laws, parson, ain't ye heard?" said the man. "They've knocked his
+skull open with a hammer, and he's as dead--as dead."
+
+Hearing this, the parson turned round, and made his way into the
+house. There was not a doubt about it. The farmer had been murdered
+during the night, and his money carried off. Upstairs Mr. Fenwick
+made his way to the farmer's bedroom, and there lay the body. Mr.
+Crittenden, the village doctor, was there; and a crowd of men, and
+an old woman or two. Among the women was Trumbull's sister, the wife
+of a neighbouring farmer, who, with her husband, a tenant of Mr.
+Gilmore's, had come over just before the arrival of Mr. Fenwick.
+The body had been found on the stairs, and it was quite clear that
+the farmer had fought desperately with the man or men before he had
+received the blow which despatched him.
+
+"I told 'um how it be,--I did, I did, when he would 'a all that money
+by 'um." This was the explanation given by Mr. Trumbull's sister,
+Mrs. Boddle.
+
+It seemed that Trumbull had had in his possession over a hundred
+and fifty pounds, of which the greater part was in gold, and that
+he kept this in a money-box in his bedroom. One of the two women
+who lived in his service,--he himself had been a widower without
+children,--declared that she had always known that at night he took
+the box out of his cupboard into bed with him. She had seen it there
+more than once when she had taken him up drinks when he was unwell.
+When first interrogated, she declared that she did not remember, at
+that moment, that she had ever told anybody; she thought she had
+never told anybody; at last, she would swear that she had never
+spoken a word about it to a single soul. She was supposed to be a
+good girl, had come of decent people, and was well known by Mr.
+Fenwick, of whose congregation she was one. Her name was Agnes Pope.
+The other servant was an elderly woman, who had been in the house all
+her life, but was unfortunately deaf. She had known very well about
+the money, and had always been afraid about it; had very often spoken
+to her master about it, but never a word to Agnes. She had been woken
+in the night,--that was, as it turned out, about 2 A.M.,--by the
+girl who slept with her, and who declared that she had heard a great
+noise, as of somebody tumbling,--a very great noise indeed, as though
+there were ever so many people tumbling. For a long time, for perhaps
+an hour, they had lain still, being afraid to move. Then the elder
+woman had lighted a candle, and gone down from the garret in which
+they slept. The first thing she saw was the body of her master, in
+his shirt, upon the stairs. She had then called up the only other
+human being who slept on the premises, a shepherd, who had lived for
+thirty years with Trumbull. This man had thrown open the house, and
+had gone for assistance, and had found the body of the dead dog in
+the yard.
+
+Before nine o'clock the facts, as they have been told, were known
+everywhere, and the Squire was down on the spot. The man,--or, as it
+was presumed, men,--had entered by the unaccustomed front door, which
+was so contrived as to afford the easiest possible mode of getting
+into the house; whereas, the back door, which was used by everybody,
+had been bolted and barred with all care. The men must probably have
+entered by the churchyard and the back gate of the farmyard, as that
+had been found to be unlatched, whereas the gate leading out on to
+the road had been found closed. The farmer himself had always been
+very careful to close both these gates when he let out Bone'm before
+going to bed. Poor Bone'm had been enticed to his death by a piece of
+poisoned meat, thrown to him probably some considerable time before
+the attack was made.
+
+Who were the murderers? That of course was the first question. It
+need hardly be said with how sad a heart Mr. Fenwick discussed this
+matter with the Squire. Of course inquiry must be made of the manner
+in which Sam Brattle had passed the night. Heavens! how would it be
+with that poor family if he had been concerned in such an affair as
+this! And then there came across the parson's mind a remembrance that
+Agnes Pope and Sam Brattle had been seen by him together, on more
+Sundays than one. In his anxiety, and with much imprudence, he went
+to the girl and questioned her again.
+
+"For your own sake, Agnes, tell me, are you sure you never mentioned
+about the money-box to--Sam Brattle?"
+
+The girl blushed and hesitated, and then said that she was quite sure
+she never had. She didn't think she had ever said ten words to Sam
+since she knew about the box.
+
+"But five words would be sufficient, Agnes."
+
+"Then them five words was never spoke, sir," said the girl. But still
+she blushed, and the parson thought that her manner was not in her
+favour.
+
+It was necessary that the parson should attend to his church; but the
+Squire, who was a magistrate, went down with the two constables to
+the mill. There they found Sam and his father, with Mrs. Brattle and
+Fanny. No one went to the church from the mill on that day. The news
+had reached them of the murder, and they all felt,--though no one
+of them had so said to any other,--that something might in some way
+connect them with the deed that had been done. Sam had hardly spoken
+since he had heard of Mr. Trumbull's death; though when he saw that
+his father was perfectly silent, as one struck with some sudden
+dread, he bade the old man hold up his head and fear nothing. Old
+Brattle, when so addressed, seated himself in his arm-chair, and
+there remained without a word till the magistrate with the constables
+were among them.
+
+There were not many at church, and Mr. Fenwick made the service very
+short. He could not preach the sermon which he had prepared, but said
+a few words on the terrible catastrophe which had occurred so near
+to them. This man who was now lying within only a few yards of them,
+with his brains knocked out, had been alive among them, strong and
+in good health, yesterday evening! And there had come into their
+peaceful village miscreants who had been led on from self-indulgence
+to idleness, and from idleness to theft, and from theft to murder! We
+all know the kind of words which the parson spoke, and the thrill of
+attention with which they would be heard. Here was a man who had been
+close to them, and therefore the murder came home to them all, and
+filled them with an excitement which, alas! was not probably without
+some feeling of pleasure. But the sermon, if sermon it could be
+called, was very short; and when it was over, the parson also hurried
+down to the mill.
+
+It had already been discovered that Sam Brattle had certainly been
+out during the night. He had himself denied this at first, saying,
+that though he had been the last to go to bed, he had gone to bed
+about eleven, and had not left the mill-house till late in the
+morning;--but his sister had heard him rise, and had seen his body
+through the gloom as he passed beneath the window of the room in
+which she slept. She had not heard him return, but, when she arose at
+six, had found out that he was then in the house. He manifested no
+anger against her when she gave this testimony, but acknowledged that
+he had been out, that he had wandered up to the road, and explained
+his former denial frankly,--or with well-assumed frankness,--by
+saying that he would, if possible, for his father's and mother's
+sake, have concealed the fact that he had been away,--knowing that
+his absence would give rise to suspicions which would well-nigh break
+their hearts. He had not, however,--so he said,--been any nearer
+to Bullhampton than the point of the road opposite to the lodge of
+Hampton Privets, from whence the lane turned down to the mill. What
+had he been doing down there? He had done nothing, but sat and smoked
+on a stile by the road side. Had he seen any strangers? Here he
+paused, but at last declared that he had seen none, but had heard
+the sound of wheels and of a pony's feet upon the road. The vehicle,
+whatever it was, must have passed on towards Bullhampton just before
+he reached the road. Had he followed the vehicle? No;--he had thought
+of doing so, but had not. Could he guess who was in the vehicle? By
+this time many surmises had been made aloud as to Jack the Grinder
+and his companion, and it had become generally known that the
+parson had encountered two such men in his own garden some nights
+previously. Sam, when he was pressed, said that the idea had come
+into his mind that the vehicle was the Grinder's cart. He had no
+knowledge, he said, that the man was coming to Bullhampton on that
+night;--but the man had said in his hearing, that he would like to
+strip the parson's peaches. He was asked also about Farmer Trumbull's
+money. He declared that he had never heard that the farmer kept money
+in the house. He did know that the farmer was accounted to be a very
+saving man,--but that was all that he knew. He was as much surprised,
+he said, as any of them at what had occurred. Had the men turned the
+other way and robbed the parson he would have been less surprised. He
+acknowledged that he had called the parson a turn-coat and a meddling
+tell-tale, in the presence of these men.
+
+All this ended of course in Sam's arrest. He had himself seen from
+the first that it would be so, and had bade his mother take comfort
+and hold up her head. "It won't be for long, mother. I ain't got any
+of the money, and they can't bring it nigh me." He was taken away
+to be locked up at Heytesbury that night, in order that he might be
+brought before the bench of magistrates which would sit at that place
+on Tuesday. Squire Gilmore for the present committed him.
+
+The parson remained for some time with the old man and his wife after
+Sam was gone, but he soon found that he could be of no service by
+doing so. The miller himself would not speak, and Mrs. Brattle was
+utterly prostrated by her husband's misery.
+
+"I do not know what to say about it," said Mr. Fenwick to his wife
+that night. "The suspicion is very strong; but I cannot say that
+I have an opinion one way or the other." There was no sermon in
+Bullhampton Church on that Sunday afternoon.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+CAPTAIN MARRABLE AND HIS FATHER.
+
+
+Only that it is generally conceived that in such a history as is this
+the writer of the tale should be able to make his points so clear
+by words that no further assistance should be needed, I should be
+tempted here to insert a properly illustrated pedigree tree of the
+Marrable family. The Marrable family is of very old standing in
+England, the first baronet having been created by James I., and there
+having been Marrables,--as is well known by all attentive readers of
+English history,--engaged in the Wars of the Roses, and again others
+very conspicuous in the religious persecutions of the children of
+Henry VIII. I do not know that they always behaved with consistency;
+but they held their heads up after a fashion, and got themselves
+talked of, and were people of note in the country. They were
+cavaliers in the time of Charles I. and of Cromwell,--as became men
+of blood and gentlemen,--but it is not recorded of them that they
+sacrificed much in the cause; and when William III. became king they
+submitted with a good grace to the new order of things. A certain Sir
+Thomas Marrable was member for his county in the reigns of George I.
+and George II., and enjoyed a lucrative confidence with Walpole. Then
+there came a blustering, roystering Sir Thomas, who, together with a
+fine man and gambler as a heir, brought the property to rather a low
+ebb; so that when Sir Gregory, the grandfather of our Miss Marrable,
+came to the title in the early days of George III. he was not a rich
+man. His two sons, another Sir Gregory and a General Marrable, died
+long before the days of which we are writing,--Sir Gregory in 1815,
+and the General in 1820. That Sir Gregory was the second of the
+name,--the second at least as mentioned in these pages. He had been
+our Miss Marrable's uncle, and the General had been her father, and
+the father of Mrs. Lowther,--Mary's mother. A third Sir Gregory
+was reigning at the time of our story, a very old gentleman with
+one single son,--a fourth Gregory. Now the residence of Sir
+Gregory was at Dunripple Park, just on the borders of Warwickshire
+and Worcestershire, but in the latter county. The property was
+small,--for a country gentleman with a title,--not much exceeding
+L3000 a year; and there was no longer any sitting in Parliament, or
+keeping of race-horses, or indeed any season in town for the present
+race of Marrables. The existing Sir Gregory was a very quiet man, and
+his son and only child, a man now about forty years of age, lived
+mostly at home, and occupied himself with things of antiquity. He
+was remarkably well read in the history of his own country, and it
+had been understood for the last twenty years by the Antiquarian,
+Archaeological, and other societies that he was the projector of a new
+theory about Stonehenge, and that his book on the subject was almost
+ready. Such were the two surviving members of the present senior
+branch of the family. But Sir Gregory had two brothers,--the younger
+of the two being Parson John Marrable, the present rector of St.
+Peter's Lowtown and the occupier of the house within the heavy
+slate-coloured gates, where he lived a bachelor life, as had done
+before him his cousin the late rector;--the elder being a certain
+Colonel Marrable. The Colonel Marrable again had a son, who was a
+Captain Walter Marrable,--and after him the confused reader shall be
+introduced to no more of the Marrable family. The enlightened reader
+will have by this time perceived that Miss Mary Lowther and Captain
+Walter Marrable were second cousins; and he will also have perceived,
+if he has given his mind fully to the study, that the present Parson
+John Marrable had come into the living after the death of a cousin of
+the same generation as himself,--but of lower standing in the family.
+It was so; and by this may be seen how little the Sir Gregory of the
+present day had been able to do for his brother, and perhaps it may
+also be imagined from this that the present clergyman at Loring
+Lowtown had been able to do very little for himself. Nevertheless,
+he was a kindly-hearted, good, sincere old man,--not very bright,
+indeed, nor peculiarly fitted for preaching the gospel, but he was
+much liked, and he kept a curate, though his income out of the
+living was small. Now it so happened that Captain Marrable,--Walter
+Marrable,--came to stay with his uncle the parson about the same time
+that Mary Lowther returned to Loring.
+
+"You remember Walter, do you not?" said Miss Marrable to her niece.
+
+"Not the least in the world. I remember there was a Walter when I was
+at Dunripple. But that was ten years ago, and boy cousins and girl
+cousins never fraternise."
+
+"I suppose he was nearly a young man then, and you were a child?"
+
+"He was still at school, though just leaving it. He is seven years
+older than I am."
+
+"He is coming to stay with Parson John."
+
+"You don't say so, aunt Sarah? What will such a man as Captain
+Marrable do at Loring?"
+
+Then aunt Sarah explained all that she knew, and perhaps suggested
+more than she knew. Walter Marrable had quarrelled with his father,
+the Colonel,--with whom, indeed, everybody of the name of Marrable
+had always been quarrelling, and who was believed by Miss Marrable to
+be the very--mischief himself. He was a man always in debt, who had
+broken his wife's heart, who lived with low company and disgraced the
+family, who had been more than once arrested, on whose behalf all
+the family interest had been expended, so that nobody else could get
+anything, and who gambled and drank and did whatever wicked things
+a wicked old colonel living at Portsmouth could do. And indeed,
+hitherto, Miss Marrable had entertained opinions hardly more
+charitable respecting the son than she had done in regard to
+the father. She had disbelieved in this branch of the Marrables
+altogether. Captain Marrable had lived with his father a good
+deal,--at least, so she had understood,--and therefore could not but
+be bad. And, moreover, our Miss Sarah Marrable had, throughout her
+whole life, been somewhat estranged from the elder branches of the
+family. Her father, Walter, had been,--so she thought,--injured by
+his brother Sir Gregory, and there had been some law proceedings, not
+quite amicable, between her brother the parson, and the present Sir
+Gregory. She respected Sir Gregory as the head of the family, but she
+never went now to Dunripple, and knew nothing of Sir Gregory's heir.
+Of the present Parson John she had thought very little before he had
+come to Loring. Since he had been living there she had found that
+blood was thicker than water,--as she would say,--and they two were
+intimate. When she heard that Captain Marrable was coming, because
+he had quarrelled with his father, she began to think that perhaps
+it might be as well that she should allow herself to meet this new
+cousin.
+
+"What do you think of your cousin, Walter?" the old clergyman said to
+his nephew, one evening, after the two ladies, who had been dining at
+the Rectory, had left them. It was the first occasion on which Walter
+Marrable had met Mary since his coming to Loring.
+
+"I remember her as well as if it were yesterday, at Dunripple. She
+was a little girl then, and I thought her the most beautiful little
+girl in the world."
+
+"We all think her very beautiful still."
+
+"So she is; as lovely as ever she can stand. But she does not seem to
+have much to say for herself. I remember when she was a little girl
+she never would speak."
+
+"I fancy she can talk when she pleases, Walter. But you mustn't fall
+in love with her."
+
+"I won't, if I can help it."
+
+"In the first place I think she is as good as engaged to a fellow
+with a very pretty property in Wiltshire, and in the next place she
+hasn't got--one shilling."
+
+"There is not much danger. I am not inclined to trouble myself about
+any girl in my present mood, even if she had the pretty property
+herself, and wasn't engaged to anybody. I suppose I shall get over it
+some day, but I feel just at present as though I couldn't say a kind
+word to a human being."
+
+"Psha! psha! that's nonsense, Walter. Take things coolly. They're
+more likely to come right, and they won't be so troublesome, even if
+they don't." Such was the philosophy of Parson John,--for the sake
+of digesting which the captain lit a cigar, and went out to smoke it,
+standing at one of the open slate-coloured gates.
+
+It was said in the first chapter of this story that Mr. Gilmore was
+one of the heroes whose deeds the story undertakes to narrate, and
+a hint was perhaps expressed that of all the heroes he was the
+favourite. Captain Marrable is, however, another hero, and, as such,
+some word or two must be said of him. He was a better-looking man,
+certainly, than Mr. Gilmore, though perhaps his personal appearance
+did not at first sight give to the observer so favourable an idea of
+his character as did that of the other gentleman. Mr. Gilmore was
+to be read at a glance as an honest, straightforward, well-behaved
+country squire, whose word might be taken for anything, who might,
+perhaps, like to have his own way, but who could hardly do a cruel
+or an unfair thing. He was just such a man to look at as a prudent
+mother would select as one to whom she might entrust her daughter
+with safety. Now Walter Marrable's countenance was of a very
+different die. He had served in India, and the naturally dark colour
+of his face had thus become very swarthy. His black hair curled round
+his head, but the curls on his brow were becoming very thin, as
+though age were already telling on them, and yet he was four or five
+years younger than Mr. Gilmore. His eyebrows were thick and heavy,
+and his eyes seemed to be black. They were eyes which were used
+without much motion; and when they were dead set, as they were not
+unfrequently, it would seem as though he were defying those on whom
+he looked. Thus he made many afraid of him, and many who were not
+afraid of him, disliked him because of a certain ferocity which
+seemed to characterise his face. He wore no beard beyond a heavy
+black moustache, which quite covered his upper lip. His nose was long
+and straight, his mouth large, and his chin square. No doubt he was
+a handsome man. And he looked to be a tall man, though in truth he
+lacked two full inches of the normal six feet. He was broad across
+the chest, strong on his legs, and was altogether such a man to look
+at that few would care to quarrel with him, and many would think that
+he was disposed to quarrel. Of his nature he was not quarrelsome; but
+he was a man who certainly had received much injury. It need not be
+explained at length how his money affairs had gone wrong with him. He
+should have inherited, and, indeed, did inherit, a fortune from his
+mother's family, of which his father had contrived absolutely to rob
+him. It was only within the last month that he had discovered that
+his father had succeeded in laying his hands on certainly the bulk of
+his money, and it might be upon all. Words between them had been very
+bitter. The father, with a cigar between his teeth, had told his son
+that this was the fortune of war, that if justice had been done him
+at his marriage, the money would have been his own, and that by G----
+he was very sorry, and couldn't say anything more. The son had called
+the father a liar and a swindler,--as, indeed, was the truth, though
+the son was doubtless wrong to say so to the author of his being. The
+father had threatened the son with his horsewhip; and so they had
+parted, within ten days of Walter Marrable's return from India.
+
+Walter had written to his two uncles, asking their advice as to
+saving the wreck, if anything might be saved. Sir Gregory had written
+back to say that he was an old man, that he was greatly grieved at
+the misunderstanding, and that Messrs. Block and Curling were the
+family lawyers. Parson John invited his nephew to come down to Loring
+Lowtown. Captain Marrable went to Block and Curling, who were by no
+means consolatory, and accepted his uncle's invitation.
+
+It was but three days after the first meeting between the two
+cousins, that they were to be seen one evening walking together along
+the banks of the Lurwell, a little river which at Loring sometimes
+takes the appearance of a canal, and sometimes of a natural stream.
+But it is commercial, having connection with the Kennet and Avon
+navigation; and long, slow, ponderous barges, with heavy, dirty,
+sleepy bargemen, and rickety, ill-used barge-horses, are common in
+the neighbourhood. In parts it is very pretty, as it runs under the
+chalky downs, and there are a multiplicity of locks, and the turf
+of the sheep-walks comes up to the towing path; but in the close
+neighbourhood of the town the canal is straight and uninteresting;
+the ground is level, and there is a scattered community of small,
+straight-built light-brick houses, which are in themselves so ugly
+that they are incompatible with anything that is pretty in landscape.
+
+Parson John, always so called to distinguish him from the late
+parson, his cousin, who had been the Rev. James Marrable, had taken
+occasion, on behalf of his nephew, to tell the story of his wrong to
+Miss Marrable, and by Miss Marrable it had been told to Mary. To both
+these ladies the thing seemed to be so horrible,--the idea that a
+father should have robbed his son,--that the stern ferocity of the
+slow-moving eyes was forgiven, and they took him to their hearts, if
+not for love, at least for pity. Twenty thousand pounds ought to have
+become the property of Walter Marrable, when some maternal relative
+had died. It had seemed hard that the father should have none of it,
+and, on the receipt in India of representations from the Colonel,
+Walter had signed certain fatal papers, the effect of which was that
+the father had laid his hands on pretty nearly the whole, if not on
+the whole, of the money, and had caused it to vanish. There was now a
+question whether some five thousand pounds might not be saved. If so,
+Walter would stay in England; if not, he would exchange and go back
+to India; "or," as he said himself, "to the Devil."
+
+"Don't speak of it in that way," said Mary.
+
+"The worst of it is," said he "that I am ashamed of myself for being
+so absolutely cut up about money. A man should be able to bear that
+kind of thing; but this hits one all round."
+
+"I think you bear it very well."
+
+"No, I don't. I didn't bear it well when I called my father a
+swindler. I didn't bear it well when I swore that I would put him in
+prison for robbing me. I don't bear it well now, when I think of it
+every moment. But I do so hate India, and I had so absolutely made
+up my mind never to return. If it hadn't been that I knew that this
+fortune was to be mine, I could have saved money, hand over hand."
+
+"Can't you live on your pay here?"
+
+"No!" He answered her almost as though he were angry with her. "If I
+had been used all my life to the strictest economies, perhaps I might
+do so. Some men do, no doubt; but I am too old to begin it. There is
+the choice of two things,--to blow my brains out, or go back."
+
+"You are not such a coward as that."
+
+"I don't know. I ain't sure that it would be cowardice. If there were
+anybody I could injure by doing it, it would be cowardly."
+
+"The family," suggested Mary.
+
+"What does Sir Gregory care for me? I'll show you his letter to me
+some day. I don't think it would be cowardly at all to get away from
+such a lot."
+
+"I am sure you won't do that, Captain Marrable."
+
+"Think what it is to know that your father is a swindler. Perhaps
+that is the worst of it all. Fancy talking or thinking of one's
+family after that. I like my uncle John. He is very kind, and has
+offered to lend me L150, which I'm sure he can't afford to lose, and
+which I am too honest to take. But even he hardly sees it. He calls
+it a misfortune, and I've no doubt would shake hands with his brother
+to-morrow."
+
+"So would you, if he were really sorry."
+
+"No, Mary; nothing on earth shall ever induce me to set my eyes on
+him again willingly. He has destroyed all the world for me. He should
+have had half of it without a word. When he used to whine to me in
+his letters, and say how cruelly he had been treated, I always made
+up my mind that he should have half the income for life. It was
+because he should not want till I came home that I enabled him to do
+what he has done. And now he has robbed me of every cursed shilling!
+I wonder whether I shall ever get my mind free from it."
+
+"Of course you will."
+
+"It seems now that my heart is wrapped in lead." As they were coming
+home she put her hand upon his arm, and asked him to promise her to
+withdraw that threat.
+
+"Why should I withdraw it? Who cares for me?"
+
+"We all care. My aunt cares. I care."
+
+"The threat means nothing, Mary. People who make such threats don't
+carry them out. Of course I shall go on and endure it. The worst of
+all is, that the whole thing makes me so unmanly,--makes such a beast
+of me. But I'll try to get over it."
+
+Mary Lowther thought that, upon the whole, he bore his misfortune
+very well.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+COUSINHOOD.
+
+
+Mary Lowther and her cousin had taken their walk together on Monday
+evening, and on the next morning she received the following letter
+from Mrs. Fenwick. When it reached her she had as yet heard nothing
+of the Bullhampton tragedy.
+
+
+   Vicarage, Monday, Sept. 1, 186--.
+
+   DEAREST MARY,
+
+   I suppose you will have heard before you get this of the
+   dreadful murder that has taken place here, and which has
+   so startled and horrified us, that we hardly know what we
+   are doing even yet. It is hard to say why a thing should
+   be worse because it is close, but it certainly is so. Had
+   it been in the next parish, or even further off in this
+   parish, I do not think that I should feel it so much, and
+   then we knew the old man so well; and then, again,--which
+   makes it worst of all,--we all of us are unable to get rid
+   of a suspicion that one whom we knew, and was liked, has
+   been a participator in the crime.
+
+   It seems that it must have been about two o'clock on
+   Sunday morning that Mr. Trumbull was killed. It was, at
+   any rate, between one and three. As far as they can judge,
+   they think that there must have been three men concerned.
+   You remember how we used to joke about poor Mr. Trumbull's
+   dog. Well, he was poisoned first,--probably an hour before
+   the men got into the house. It has been discovered that
+   the foolish old man kept a large sum of money by him in a
+   box, and that he always took this box into bed with him.
+   The woman, who lived in the house with him, used to see it
+   there. No doubt the thieves had heard of this, and both
+   Frank and Mr. Gilmore think that the girl, Agnes Pope,
+   whom you will remember in the choir, told about it. She
+   lived with Mr. Trumbull, and we all thought her a very
+   good girl,--though she was too fond of that young man, Sam
+   Brattle.
+
+   They think that the men did not mean to do the murder, but
+   that the old man fought so hard for his money that they
+   were driven to it. His body was not in the room, but on
+   the top of the stairs, and his temple had been split open
+   with a blow of a hammer. The hammer lay beside him, and
+   was one belonging to the house. Mr. Gilmore says that
+   there was great craft in their using a weapon which they
+   did not bring with them. Of course they cannot be traced
+   by the hammer.
+
+   They got off with L150 in the box, and did not touch
+   anything else. Everybody feels quite sure that they knew
+   all about the money, and that when Mr. Gilmore saw them
+   that night down at the churchyard corner, they were
+   prowling about with a view of seeing how they could get
+   into the farmer's house, and not into the Vicarage. Frank
+   thinks that when he afterwards found them in our place,
+   Sam Brattle had brought them in with a kind of wild idea
+   of taking the fruit, but that the men, of their own
+   account, had come round to reconnoitre the house. They
+   both say that there can be no doubt about the men having
+   been the same. Then comes the terrible question whether
+   Sam Brattle, the son of that dear woman at the mill, has
+   been one of the murderers. He had been at home all the
+   previous day working very hard at the works,--which are
+   being done in obedience to your orders, my dear; but he
+   certainly was out on the Saturday night.
+
+   It is very hard to get at any man's belief in such
+   matters, but, as far as I can understand them, I don't
+   think that either Frank or Mr. Gilmore do really believe
+   that he was there. Frank says that it will go very
+   hard with him, and Mr. Gilmore has committed him. The
+   magistrates are to sit to-morrow at Heytesbury, and Mr.
+   Gilmore will be there. He has, as you may be sure, behaved
+   as well as possible, and has quite altered in his manner
+   to the old people. I was at the mill this morning. Brattle
+   himself would not speak to me, but I sat for an hour
+   with Mrs. Brattle and Fanny. It makes it almost the more
+   melancholy having all the rubbish and building things
+   about, and yet the work stopped.
+
+   Fanny Brattle has behaved so well! It was she who told
+   that her brother had been out at night. Mr. Gilmore says
+   that when the question was asked in his presence, she
+   answered it in her own quiet, simple way, without a
+   moment's doubt; but since that she has never ceased to
+   assert her conviction that her brother has had nothing to
+   do either with the murder or with the robbery. If it had
+   not been for this, Mrs. Brattle would, I think, have sunk
+   under the load. Fanny says the same thing constantly to
+   her father. He scolds her, and bids her hold her tongue;
+   but she goes on, and I think it has some effect even on
+   him. The whole place does look such a picture of ruin! It
+   would break your heart to see it. And then, when one looks
+   at the father and mother, one remembers about that other
+   child, and is almost tempted to ask why such misery should
+   have fallen upon parents who have been honest, sober,
+   and industrious. Can it really be that the man is being
+   punished here on earth because he will not believe? When
+   I hinted this to Frank, he turned upon me, and scolded
+   me, and told me I was measuring the Almighty God with a
+   foot-rule. But men were punished in the Bible because they
+   did not believe. Remember the Baptist's father. But I
+   never dare to go on with Frank on these matters.
+
+   I am so full of this affair of poor Mr. Trumbull, and so
+   anxious about Sam Brattle, that I cannot now write about
+   anything else. I can only say that no man ever behaved
+   with greater kindness and propriety than Harry Gilmore,
+   who has had to act as magistrate. Poor Fanny Brattle has
+   to go to Heytesbury to-morrow to give her evidence. At
+   first they said that they must take the father also, but
+   he is to be spared for the present.
+
+   I should tell you that Sam himself declares that he
+   got to know these men at a place where he was at work,
+   brickmaking, near Devizes. He had quarrelled with his
+   father, and had got a job there, with high wages. He used
+   to be out at night with them, and acknowledges that he
+   joined one of them, a man named Burrows, in stealing a
+   brood of pea-fowl which some poulterers wanted to buy. He
+   says he looked on it as a joke. Then it seems he had some
+   spite against Trumbull's dog, and that this man, Burrows,
+   came over here on purpose to take the dog away. This,
+   according to his story, is all that he knows of the man;
+   and he says that on that special Saturday night he had not
+   the least idea that Burrows was at Bullhampton, till he
+   heard the sound of a certain cart on the road. I tell
+   you all this, as I am sure you will share our anxiety
+   respecting this unfortunate young man,--because of his
+   mother and sister.
+
+   Good-bye, dearest; Frank sends ever so many loves;--and
+   somebody else would send them too, if he thought that I
+   would be the bearer. Try to think so well of Bullhampton
+   as to make you wish to live here.--Give my kindest love to
+   your aunt Sarah.
+
+   Your most affectionate friend,
+
+   JANET FENWICK.
+
+
+Mary was obliged to read the letter twice before she completely
+understood it. Old Mr. Trumbull murdered! Why she had known the old
+man well, had always been in the habit of speaking to him when she
+met him either at the one gate or the other of the farmyard,--had
+joked with him about Bone'm, and had heard him assert his own perfect
+security against robbers not a week before the night on which he was
+murdered! As Mrs. Fenwick had said, the truth is so much more real
+when it comes from things that are near. And then she had so often
+heard the character of Sam Brattle described,--the man who was now in
+prison as a murderer! And she herself had given lessons in singing to
+Agnes Pope, who was now in some sort accused of aiding the thieves.
+And she herself had asked Agnes whether it was not foolish for her to
+be hanging about the farmyard, outside her master's premises, with
+Sam Brattle. It was all brought very near to her!
+
+Before that day was over she was telling the story to Captain
+Marrable. She had of course told it to her aunt, and they had
+been discussing it the whole morning. Mr. Gilmore's name had been
+mentioned to Captain Marrable, but very little more than the name.
+Aunt Sarah, however, had already begun to think whether it might
+not be prudent to tell cousin Walter the story of the half-formed
+engagement. Mary had expressed so much sympathy with her cousin's
+wrongs, that aunt Sarah had begun to fear that that sympathy might
+lead to a tenderer feeling, and aunt Sarah was by no means anxious
+that her niece should fall in love with a gentleman whose chief
+attraction was the fact that he had been ruined by his own father,
+even though that gentleman was a Marrable himself. This danger might
+possibly be lessened if Captain Marrable were made acquainted with
+the Gilmore affair, and taught to understand how desirable such a
+match would be for Mary. But aunt Sarah had qualms of conscience
+on the subject. She doubted whether she had a right to tell the
+story without leave from Mary; and then there was in truth no real
+engagement. She knew indeed that Mr. Gilmore had made the offer more
+than once; but then she knew also that the offer had at any rate not
+as yet been accepted, and she felt that on Mr. Gilmore's account as
+well as on Mary's she ought to hold her tongue. It might indeed be
+admissible to tell to a cousin that which she would not tell to an
+indifferent young man; but, nevertheless, she could not bring herself
+to do, even with so good an object, that which she believed to be
+wrong.
+
+That evening Mary was again walking on the towing-path beside the
+river with her cousin Walter. She had met him now about five times,
+and there was already an intimacy between them. The idea of cousinly
+intimacy to girls is undoubtedly very pleasant; and I do not know
+whether it is not the fact that the better and the purer is the girl,
+the sweeter and the pleasanter is the idea. In America a girl may
+form a friendly intimacy with any young man she fancies, and though
+she may not be free from little jests and good-humoured joking, there
+is no injury to her from such intimacy. It is her acknowledged right
+to enjoy herself after that fashion, and to have what she calls a
+good time with young men. A dozen such intimacies do not stand in her
+way when there comes some real adorer who means to marry her and is
+able to do so. She rides with these friends, walks with them, and
+corresponds with them. She goes out to balls and picnics with them,
+and afterwards lets herself in with a latchkey, while her papa and
+mamma are a-bed and asleep, with perfect security. If there be much
+to be said against the practice, there is also something to be said
+for it. Girls on the other hand, on the continent of Europe, do not
+dream of making friendship with any man. A cousin with them is as
+much out of the question as the most perfect stranger. In strict
+families, a girl is hardly allowed to go out with her brother; and I
+have heard of mothers who thought it indiscreet that a father should
+be seen alone with his daughter at a theatre. All friendships between
+the sexes must, under such a social code, be looked forward to as
+post-nuptial joys. Here in England there is a something betwixt the
+two. The intercourse between young men and girls is free enough to
+enable the latter to feel how pleasant it is to be able to forget for
+awhile conventional restraints, and to acknowledge how joyous a thing
+it is to indulge in social intercourse in which the simple delight of
+equal mind meeting equal mind in equal talk is just enhanced by the
+unconscious remembrance that boys and girls when they meet together
+may learn to love. There is nothing more sweet in youth than
+this, nothing more natural, nothing more fitting, nothing, indeed,
+more essentially necessary for God's purposes with his creatures.
+Nevertheless, here with us, there is the restriction, and it is
+seldom that a girl can allow herself the full flow of friendship with
+a man who is not old enough to be her father, unless he is her lover
+as well as her friend. But cousinhood does allow some escape from
+the hardship of this rule. Cousins are Tom, and Jack, and George,
+and Dick. Cousins probably know all or most of your little family
+secrets. Cousins, perhaps, have romped with you, and scolded you,
+and teased you, when you were young. Cousins are almost the same as
+brothers, and yet they may be lovers. There is certainly a great
+relief in cousinhood.
+
+Mary Lowther had no brother. She had neither brother nor sister;--had
+since her earliest infancy hardly known any other relative save
+her aunt and old Parson John. When first she had heard that Walter
+Marrable was at Loring, the tidings gave her no pleasure whatever. It
+never occurred to her to say to herself: "Now I shall have one who
+may become my friend, and be to me perhaps almost a brother?" What
+she had hitherto heard of Walter Marrable had not been in his favour.
+Of his father she had heard all that was bad, and she had joined
+the father and the son together in what few ideas she had formed
+respecting them. But now, after five interviews, Walter Marrable was
+her dear cousin, with whom she sympathised, of whom she was proud,
+whose misfortunes were in some degree her misfortunes, to whom she
+thought she could very soon tell this great trouble of her life
+about Mr. Gilmore, as though he were indeed her brother. And she
+had learned to like his dark staring eyes, which now always seemed
+to be fixed on her with something of real regard. She liked them
+the better, perhaps, because there was in them so much of real
+admiration; though if it were so, Mary knew nothing of such liking
+herself. And now at his bidding she called him Walter. He had
+addressed her by her Christian name at first, as a matter of course,
+and she had felt grateful to him for doing so. But she had not dared
+to be so bold with him, till he had bade her do so, and now she felt
+that he was a cousin indeed. Captain Marrable was at present waiting,
+not with much patience, for tidings from Block and Curling. Would
+that L5000 be saved for him, or must he again go out to India and
+be heard of no more at home in his own England? Mary was not so
+impatient as the Captain, but she also was intensely interested
+in the expected letters. On this day, however, their conversation
+chiefly ran on the news which Mary had that morning heard from
+Bullhampton.
+
+"I suppose you feel sure," said the Captain, "that young Sam Brattle
+was one of the murderers?"
+
+"Oh no, Walter."
+
+"Or at least one of the thieves?"
+
+"But both Mr. Fenwick and Mr. Gilmore think that he is innocent."
+
+"I do not gather that from what your friend says. She says that she
+thinks that they think so. And then it is clear that he was hanging
+about the place before with the very men who have committed the
+crime; and that there was a way in which he might have heard and
+probably had heard of the money; and then he was out and about that
+very night."
+
+"Still I can't believe it. If you knew the sort of people his father
+and mother are." Captain Marrable could not but reflect that, if an
+honest gentleman might have a swindler for his father, an honest
+miller might have a thief for his son. "And then if you saw the place
+at which they live! I have a particular interest about it."
+
+"Then the young man, of course, must be innocent."
+
+"Don't laugh at me, Walter."
+
+"Why is the place so interesting to you?"
+
+"I can hardly tell you why. The father and the mother are interesting
+people, and so is the sister. And in their way they are so good! And
+they have had great troubles,--very great troubles. And the place
+is so cool and pretty, all surrounded by streams and old pollard
+willows, with a thatched roof that comes in places nearly to the
+ground; and then the sound of the mill wheel is the pleasantest sound
+I know anywhere."
+
+"I will hope he is innocent, Mary."
+
+"I do so hope he is innocent! And then my friends are so much
+interested about the family. The Fenwicks are very fond of them, and
+Mr. Gilmore is their landlord."
+
+"He is the magistrate?"
+
+"Yes, he is the magistrate."
+
+"What sort of fellow is he?"
+
+"A very good sort of fellow; such a sort that he can hardly be
+better; a perfect gentleman."
+
+"Indeed! And has he a perfect lady for his wife?"
+
+"Mr. Gilmore is not married."
+
+"What age is he?"
+
+"I think he is thirty-three."
+
+"With a nice estate and not married! What a chance you have left
+behind you, Mary!"
+
+"Do you think, Walter, that a girl ought to wish to marry a man
+merely because he is a perfect gentleman, and has a nice estate and
+is not yet married?"
+
+"They say that they generally do;--don't they?"
+
+"I hope you don't think so. Any girl would be very fortunate to marry
+Mr. Gilmore--if she loved him."
+
+"But you don't?"
+
+"You know I am not talking about myself, and you oughtn't to make
+personal allusions."
+
+These cousinly walks along the banks of the Lurwell were not probably
+favourable to Mr. Gilmore's hopes.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+THE POLICE AT FAULT.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+The magistrates sat at Heytesbury on the Tuesday, and Sam Brattle was
+remanded. An attorney thus was employed on his behalf by Mr. Fenwick.
+The parson on the Monday evening had been down at the mill, and
+had pressed strongly on the old miller the necessity of getting
+some legal assistance for his son. At first Mr. Brattle was stern,
+immovable, and almost dumb. He sat on the bench outside his door,
+with his eyes fixed on the dismantled mill, and shook his head
+wearily, as though sick and sore with the words that were being
+addressed to him. Mrs. Brattle the while stood in the doorway, and
+listened without uttering a sound. If the parson could not prevail,
+it would be quite out of the question that any word of hers should
+do good. There she stood, wiping the tears from her eyes, looking on
+wishfully, while her husband did not even know that she was there. At
+last he rose from his seat, and hallooed to her. "Maggie," said he,
+"Maggie." She stepped forward, and put her hand upon his shoulder.
+"Bring me down the purse, mother," he said.
+
+"There will be nothing of that kind wanted," said the parson.
+
+"Them gentlemen don't work for such as our boy for nothin'," said the
+miller. "Bring me the purse, mother, I say. There ar'n't much in it,
+but there's a few guineas as 'll do for that, perhaps. As well pitch
+'em away that way as any other."
+
+Mr. Fenwick, of course, declined to take the money. He would make the
+lawyer understand that he would be properly paid for his trouble,
+and that for the present would suffice. Only, as he explained, it
+was expedient that he should have the father's authority. Should
+any question on the matter arise, it would be bettor for the young
+man that he should be defended by his father's aid than by that
+of a stranger. "I understand, Mr. Fenwick," said the old man,--"I
+understand; and it's neighbourly of you. But it'd be better that
+you'd just leave us alone to go out like the snuff of a candle."
+
+"Father," said Fanny, "I won't have you speak in that way, making out
+our Sam to be guilty before ere a one else has said so."
+
+The miller shook his head again, but said nothing further, and the
+parson, having received the desired authority, returned to the
+Vicarage.
+
+The attorney had been employed, and Sam had been remanded. There was
+no direct evidence against him, and nothing could be done until the
+other men should be taken, for whom they were seeking. The police had
+tracked the two men back to a cottage, about fifteen miles distant
+from Bullhampton, in which lived an old woman, who was the mother
+of the Grinder. With Mrs. Burrows they found a young woman who had
+lately come to live there, and who was said in the neighbourhood to
+be the Grinder's wife.
+
+But nothing more could be learned of the Grinder than that he
+had been at the cottage on the Sunday morning, and had gone away,
+according to his wont. The old woman swore that he slept there the
+whole of Saturday night, but of course the policemen had not believed
+her statement. When does any policeman ever believe anything? Of the
+pony and cart the old woman declared she knew nothing. Her son had no
+pony, and no cart, to her knowing. Then she went on to declare that
+she knew very little about her son, who never lived with her; and
+that she had only taken in the young woman out of charity, about
+two weeks since. The mother did not for a moment pretend that her
+son was an honest man, getting his bread after an honest fashion.
+The Grinder's mode of life was too well known for even a mother
+to attempt to deny it. But she pretended that she was very honest
+herself, and appealed to sundry brandy-balls and stale biscuits in
+her window, to prove that she lived after a decent, honest,
+commercial fashion.
+
+Sam was of course remanded. The head constable of the district asked
+for a week more to make fresh inquiry, and expressed a very strong
+opinion that he would have the Grinder and his friend by the heels
+before the week should be over. The Heytesbury attorney made a
+feeble request that Sam might be released on bail, as there was not,
+according to his statement, "the remotest shadow of a tittle of
+evidence against him." But poor Sam was sent back to gaol, and there
+remained for that week. On the next Tuesday the same scene was
+re-enacted. The Grinder had not been taken, and a further remand was
+necessary. The face of the head constable was longer on this occasion
+than it had been before, and his voice less confident. The Grinder,
+he thought, must have caught one of the early Sunday trains, and
+made his way to Birmingham. It had been ascertained that he had
+friends at Birmingham. Another remand was asked for a week, with an
+understanding that at the end of the week it should be renewed if
+necessary. The policeman seemed to think that by that time, unless
+the Grinder were below the sod, his presence above it would certainly
+be proved. On this occasion the Heytesbury attorney made a very
+loud demand for Sam's liberation, talking of habeas corpus, and
+the injustice of carceration without evidence of guilt. But the
+magistrates would not let him go. "When I'm told that the young man
+was seen hiding in a ditch close to the murdered man's house, only
+a few days before the murder, is that no evidence against him, Mr.
+Jones?" said Sir Thomas Charleys, of Charlicoats.
+
+"No evidence at all, Sir Thomas. If I had been found asleep in the
+ditch, that would have been no evidence against me."
+
+"Yes, it would, very strong evidence; and I would have committed you
+on it, without hesitation, Mr. Jones."
+
+Mr. Jones made a spirited rejoinder to this; but it was of no use,
+and poor Sam was sent back to gaol for the third time.
+
+For the first ten days after the murder nothing was done as to the
+works at the mill. The men who had been employed by Brattle ceased to
+come, apparently of their own account, and everything was lying there
+just in the state in which the men had left the place on the Saturday
+night. There was something inexpressibly sad in this, as the old man
+could not even make a pretence of going into the mill for employment,
+and there was absolutely nothing to which he could put his hands, to
+do it. When ten days were over, Gilmore came down to the mill, and
+suggested that the works should be carried on and finished by him. If
+the mill were not kept at work, the old man could not live, and no
+rent would be paid. At any rate, it would be better that this great
+sorrow should not be allowed so to cloud everything as to turn
+industry into idleness, and straitened circumstances into absolute
+beggary. But the Squire found it very difficult to deal with the
+miller. At first old Brattle would neither give nor withhold his
+consent. When told by the Squire that the property could not be left
+in that way, he expressed himself willing to go out into the road,
+and lay himself down and die there;--but not until the term of his
+holding was legally brought to a close. "I don't know that I owe
+any rent over and beyond this Michaelmas as is coming, and there's
+the hay on the ground yet." Gilmore, who was very patient, assured
+him that he had no wish to allude to rent; that there should be no
+question of rent even when the day came, if at that time money was
+scarce. But would it not be better that the mill, at least, should be
+put in order?
+
+"Indeed it will, Squire," said Mrs. Brattle. "It is the idleness that
+is killing him."
+
+"Hold your jabbering tongue," said the miller, turning round upon her
+fiercely. "Who asked you? I will see to it myself, Squire, to-morrow
+or next day."
+
+After two or three further days of inaction at the mill the Squire
+came again, bringing the parson with him; and they did manage to
+arrange between them that the repairs should be at once continued.
+The mill should be completed; but the house should be left till next
+summer. As to Brattle himself, when he had been once persuaded to
+yield the point, he did not care how much they pulled down, or how
+much they built up. "Do it as you will," he said; "I ain't nobody
+now. The women drives me about my own house as if I hadn't a'most no
+business there." And so the hammers and trowels were heard again; and
+old Brattle would sit perfectly silent, gazing at the men as they
+worked. Once, as he saw two men and a boy shifting a ladder, he
+turned round, with a little chuckle to his wife, and said, "Sam'd 'a
+see'd hisself d----d, afore he'd 'a asked another chap to help him
+with such a job as that."
+
+As Mrs. Brattle told Mrs. Fenwick afterwards, he had one of the two
+erring children in his thoughts morning, noon, and night. "When I
+tell 'un of George,"--who was the farmer near Fordingbridge,--"and of
+Mrs. Jay,"--who was the ironmonger's wife at Warminster,--"he won't
+take any comfort in them," said Mrs. Brattle. "I don't think he cares
+for them, just because they can hold their own heads up."
+
+At the end of three weeks the Grinder was still missing; and others
+besides Mr. Jones, the attorney, were beginning to say that Sam
+Brattle should be let out of prison. Mr. Fenwick was clearly of
+opinion that he should not be detained, if bail could be forthcoming.
+The Squire was more cautious, and said that it might well be that his
+escape would render it impossible for the police even to get on the
+track of the real murderers. "No doubt, he knows more than he has
+told," said Gilmore, "and will probably tell it at last. If he be let
+out, he will tell nothing." The police were all of opinion that Sam
+had been present at the murder, and that he should be kept in custody
+till he was tried. They were very sharp in their manoeuvres to get
+evidence against him. His boot, they had said, fitted a footstep
+which had been found in the mud in the farm-yard. The measure had
+been taken on the Sunday. That was evidence. Then they examined
+Agnes Pope over and over again, and extracted from the poor girl an
+admission that she loved Sam better than anything in the whole wide
+world. If he were to be in prison, she would not object to go to
+prison with him. If he were to be hung, she would wish to be hung
+with him. She had no secret she would not tell him. But, as a matter
+of fact,--so she swore over and over again,--she had never told him
+a word about old Trumbull's box. She did not think she had ever told
+any one; but she would swear on her death-bed that she had never told
+Sam Brattle. The head constable declared that he had never met a
+more stubborn or a more artful young woman. Sir Thomas Charleys was
+clearly of opinion that no bail should be accepted. Another week
+of remand was granted with the understanding that, if nothing of
+importance was elicited by that time, and if neither of the other two
+suspected men were then in custody, Sam should be allowed to go at
+large upon bail--a good, substantial bail, himself in L400, and his
+bailsmen in L200 each.
+
+"Who'll be his bailsmen?" said the Squire, coming away with his
+friend the parson from Heytesbury.
+
+"There will be no difficulty about that, I should say."
+
+"But who will they be,--his father for one?"
+
+"His brother George, and Jay, at Warminster, who married his sister,"
+said the parson.
+
+"I doubt them both," said the Squire.
+
+"He sha'n't want for bail. I'll be one myself, sooner. He shall have
+bail. If there's any difficulty, Jones shall bail him; and I'll see
+Jones safe through it. He sha'n't be persecuted in that way."
+
+"I don't think anybody has attempted to persecute him, Frank."
+
+"He will be persecuted if his own brothers won't come forward to help
+him. It isn't that they have looked into the matter, and that they
+think him guilty; but that they go just the way they're told to go,
+like sheep. The more I think of it, the more I feel that he had
+nothing to do with the murder."
+
+"I never knew a man change his opinion so often as you do," said
+Gilmore.
+
+During three weeks the visits made by Head Constable Toffy to the
+cottage in which Mrs. Burrows lived were much more frequent than
+were agreeable to that lady. This cottage was about four miles from
+Devizes, and on the edge of a common, about half a mile from the
+high road which leads from that town to Marlborough. There is, or
+was a year or two back, a considerable extent of unenclosed land
+thereabouts, and on a spot called Pycroft Common there was a small
+collection of cottages, sufficient to constitute a hamlet of the
+smallest class. There was no house there of greater pretensions than
+the very small beershop which provided for the conviviality of the
+Pycroftians; and of other shops there was none, save a baker's, the
+owner of which seldom had much bread to sell, and the establishment
+for brandy-balls, which was kept by Mrs. Burrows. The inhabitants
+were chiefly labouring men, some of whom were in summer employed in
+brick making; and there was an idea abroad that Pycroft generally was
+not sustained by regular labour and sober industry. Rents, however,
+were paid for the cottages, or the cottagers would have been turned
+adrift; and Mrs. Burrows had lived in hers for five or six years, and
+was noted in the neighbourhood for her outward neatness and attention
+to decency. In the summer there were always half-a-dozen large
+sunflowers in the patch of ground called a garden, and there was a
+rose-tree, and a bush of honeysuckle over the door, and an alder
+stump in a corner, which would still put out leaves and bear berries.
+When Head Constable Toffy visited her there would be generally a few
+high words, for Mrs. Burrows was by no means unwilling to let it be
+known that she objected to morning calls from Mr. Toffy.
+
+It has been already said that at this time Mrs. Burrows did not live
+alone. Residing with her was a young woman, who was believed by Mr.
+Toffy to be the wife of Richard Burrows, alias the Grinder. On his
+first visit to Pycroft no doubt, Mr. Toffy was mainly anxious to
+ascertain whether anything was known by the old woman as to her son's
+whereabouts, but the second, third, and fourth visits were made
+rather to the younger than to the older woman. Toffy had probably
+learned in his wide experience that a man of the Grinder's nature
+will generally place more reliance on a young woman than on an old;
+and that the young woman will, nevertheless, be more likely to betray
+confidence than the older,--partly from indiscretion, and partly,
+alas! from treachery. But, if the presumed Mrs. Burrows, junior, knew
+aught of the Grinder's present doings, she was neither indiscreet nor
+treacherous. Mr. Toffy could get nothing from her. She was sickly,
+weak, sullen, and silent. "She didn't think it was her business to
+say where she had been living before she came to Pycroft. She hadn't
+been living with any husband, and had got no husband that she knew
+of. If she had she wasn't going to say so. She hadn't any children,
+and she didn't know what business he had to ask her. She came from
+Lunnun. At any rate, she came from there last, and she didn't know
+what business he had to ask her where she came from. What business
+was it of his to be asking what her name was? Her name was Anne
+Burrows, if he liked to call her so. She wouldn't answer him any more
+questions. No; she wouldn't say what her name was before she was
+married."
+
+Mr. Toffy had his reasons for interrogating this poor woman, but he
+did not for a while let any one know what those reasons were. He
+could not, however, obtain more information than what is contained in
+the answers above given, which were, for the most part, true. Neither
+the mother nor the younger woman knew where was to be found, at the
+present moment, that hero of adventure who was called the Grinder,
+and all the police of Wiltshire began to fear that they were about to
+be outwitted.
+
+"You never were at Bullhampton with your husband, I suppose?" asked
+Mr. Toffy.
+
+"Never," said the supposed Grinder's wife; "but what does it matter
+to you where I was?"
+
+"Don't answer him never another word," said old Mrs. Burrows.
+
+"I won't," said the other.
+
+"Were you ever at Bullhampton at all?" asked Mr. Toffy.
+
+"Oh dear, oh dear," said the younger woman.
+
+"I think you must have been there once," said Mr. Toffy.
+
+"What business is it of yourn?" demanded Mrs. Burrows, senior. "Drat
+you; get out of this. You ain't no right here, and you shan't stay
+here. If you ain't out of this, I'll brain yer. I don't care for
+perlice nor anything. We ain't done nothing. If he did smash the
+gen'leman's head, we didn't do it; neither she nor me."
+
+"All the same, I think that Mrs. Burrows has been at Bullhampton,"
+said the policeman.
+
+Not another word after this was said by Mrs. Burrows, junior,
+so called, and constable Toffy soon took his departure. He was
+convinced, at any rate, of this;--that wherever the murderers might
+be, the man or men who had joined Sam Brattle in the murder,--for
+of Sam's guilt he was quite convinced,--neither the mother, nor
+the so-called wife knew of their whereabouts. He, in his heart,
+condemned the constabulary of Warwickshire, of Gloucestershire, of
+Worcestershire, and of Somersetshire, because the Grinder was not
+taken. Especially he condemned the constabulary of Warwickshire,
+feeling almost sure that the Grinder was in Birmingham. If the
+constabulary in those counties would only do their duty as they in
+Wiltshire did theirs, the Grinder and his associates would soon be
+taken. But by him nothing further could be learned, and Mr. Toffy
+left Pycroft Common with a heavy heart.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+MISS LOWTHER ASKS FOR ADVICE.
+
+
+All these searchings for the murderers of Mr. Trumbull, and these
+remandings of Sam Brattle, took place in the month of September,
+and during that same month the energy of other men of law was very
+keenly at work on a widely different subject. Could Messrs. Block and
+Curling assure Captain Marrable that a portion of his inheritance
+would be saved for him, or had that graceless father of his in very
+truth seized upon it all? There was no shadow of doubt but that if
+aught was spared, it had not been spared through any delicacy on the
+part of the Colonel. The Colonel had gone to work, paying creditors
+who were clamorous against him, the moment he had got his hand
+upon the money, and had gone to work also gambling, and had made
+assignments of money, and done his very best to spend the whole. But
+there was a question whether a certain sum of L5000, which seemed
+to have got into the hands of a certain lady who protested that she
+wanted it very badly, might not be saved. Messrs. Block and Curling
+thought that it might, but were by no means certain. It probably
+might be done, if the Captain would consent to bring the matter
+before a jury; in which case the whole story of the father's iniquity
+must, of course, be proved. Or it might be that by threatening to
+do this, the lady's friends would relax their grasp on receiving a
+certain present out of the money.
+
+"We would offer them L50, and perhaps they would take L500," said
+Messrs. Block and Curling.
+
+All this irritated the Captain. He was intensely averse to any law
+proceedings by which the story should be made public.
+
+"I won't pretend that it is on my father's account," said he to
+his uncle. Parson John shrugged his shoulders, and shook his head,
+meaning to imply that it certainly was a bad case, but that as
+Colonel Marrable was a Marrable, he ought to be spared, if possible.
+"It is on my own account," continued the Captain, "and partly,
+perhaps, on that of the family. I would endure anything rather than
+have the filth of the transaction flooded through the newspapers. I
+should never be able to join my mess again if I did that."
+
+"Then you'd better let Block and Curling compromise and get what they
+can," said Parson John, with an indifferent and provoking tone, which
+clearly indicated that he would regard the matter when so settled as
+one arranged amicably and pleasantly between all the parties. His
+uncle's calmness and absence of horror at the thing that had been
+done was very grievous to Captain Marrable.
+
+"Poor Wat!" the parson had once said, speaking of his wicked brother;
+"he never could keep two shillings together. It's ever so long since
+I had to determine that nothing on earth should induce me to let him
+have half-a-crown. I must say that he did not take it amiss when I
+told him."
+
+"Why should he have wanted half-a-crown from you?"
+
+"He was always one of those thirsty sandbags that swallow small drops
+and large alike. He got L10,000 out of poor Gregory about the time
+that you were born, and Gregory is fretting about it yet."
+
+"What kills me is the disgrace of it," said the young man.
+
+"It would be disagreeable to have it in the newspapers," said Parson
+John. "And then he was such a pleasant fellow, and so handsome. I
+always enjoyed his society when once I had buttoned up my breeches'
+pocket."
+
+Yet this man was a clergyman, preaching honesty and moral conduct,
+and living fairly well up to his preaching, too, as far as he himself
+was concerned! The Captain almost thought that the earth and skies
+should be brought together, and the clouds clap with thunder, and
+the mountains be riven in twain at the very mention of his father's
+wickedness. But then sins committed against oneself are so much more
+sinful than any other sins.
+
+The Captain had much more sympathetic listeners in Uphill Lane; not
+that either of the ladies there spoke severely against his father,
+but that they entered more cordially into his own distresses. If he
+could save even L4500 out of the wreck, the interest on the money
+would enable him to live at home in his regiment. If he could get
+L4000 he would do it.
+
+"With L150 per annum," he said, "I could just hold my head up and get
+along. I should have to give up all manner of things; but I would
+never cry about that."
+
+Then, again, he would declare that the one thing necessary for his
+happiness was, that he should get the whole business of the money off
+his mind. "If I could have it settled, and have done with it," said
+he, "I should be at ease."
+
+"Quite right, my dear," said the old lady. "My idea about money is
+this, that whether you have much or little, you should make your
+arrangements so that it be no matter of thought to you. Your money
+should be just like counters at a round game with children, and
+should mean nothing. It comes to that when you once get things on a
+proper footing."
+
+They thus became very intimate, the two ladies in Uphill Lane and the
+Captain from his uncle's parsonage in the Lowtown; and the intimacy
+on his part was quite as strong with the younger as with the elder
+relative,--quite as strong, and no doubt more pleasant. They walked
+together constantly, as cousins may walk, and they discussed every
+turn that took place in the correspondence with Messrs. Block and
+Curling. Captain Marrable had come to his uncle's house for a week or
+ten days, but had been pressed to remain on till this business should
+be concluded. His leave of absence lasted till the end of November,
+and might be prolonged if he intended to return to India. "Stay here
+till the end of November," said Parson John. "What's the use of
+spending your money at a London hotel? Only don't fall in love with
+cousin Mary." So the Captain did stay, obeying one half of his
+uncle's advice, and promising obedience to the other half.
+
+Aunt Sarah also had her fears about the falling in love, and spoke a
+prudent word to Mary. "Mary, dear," she said, "you and Walter are as
+loving as turtle doves."
+
+"I do like him so much," said Mary, boldly.
+
+"So do I, my dear. He is a gentleman, and clever, and, upon the
+whole, he bears a great injury well. I like him. But I don't think
+people ought to fall in love when there is a strong reason against
+it."
+
+"Certainly not, if they can help it."
+
+"Pshaw! That's missish nonsense, Mary, and you know it. If a girl
+were to tell me she fell in love because she couldn't help it, I
+should tell her that she wasn't worth any man's love."
+
+"But what's your reason, Aunt Sarah?"
+
+"Because it wouldn't suit Mr. Gilmore."
+
+"I am not bound to suit Mr. Gilmore."
+
+"I don't know about that. And then, too, it would not suit Walter
+himself. How could he marry a wife when he has just been robbed of
+all his fortune?"
+
+"But I have not the slightest idea of falling in love with him. In
+spite of what I said, I do hope that I can help it. And then I feel
+to him just as though he were my brother. I've got almost to know
+what it would be to have a brother."
+
+In this Miss Lowther was probably wrong. She had now known her
+cousin for just a month. A month is quite long enough to realise the
+pleasure of a new lover, but it may be doubted whether the intimacy
+of a brother does not take a very much longer period for its
+creation.
+
+"I think if I were you," said Miss Marrable, after a pause, "that I
+would tell him about Mr. Gilmore."
+
+"Would you, Aunt Sarah?"
+
+"I think I would. If he were really your brother you would tell him."
+
+It was probably the case, that when Miss Marrable gave this
+advice, her opinion of Mr. Gilmore's success was greater than the
+circumstances warranted. Though there had been much said between the
+aunt and her niece about Mr. Gilmore and his offers, Mary had never
+been able quite to explain her own thoughts and feelings. She herself
+did not believe that she could be brought to accept him, and was
+now stronger in that opinion than ever. But were she to say so in
+language that would convince her aunt, her aunt would no doubt ask
+her, why then had she left the man in doubt? Though she knew that
+at every moment in which she had been called upon to act, she had
+struggled to do right, yet there hung over her a half-conviction that
+she had been weak, and almost selfish. Her dearest friends wrote to
+her and spoke to her as though she would certainly take Mr. Gilmore
+at last. Janet Fenwick wrote of it in her letters as of a thing
+almost fixed; and Aunt Sarah certainly lived as though she expected
+it. And yet Mary was very nearly sure that it could not be so. Would
+it not be better that she should write to Mr. Gilmore at once,
+and not wait till the expiration of the weary six months which he
+had specified as the time at the end of which he might renew his
+proposals? Had Aunt Sarah known all this,--had she been aware how
+very near Mary was to the writing of such a letter,--she would
+not probably have suggested that her niece should tell her cousin
+anything about Mr. Gilmore. She did think that the telling of the
+tale would make Cousin Walter understand that he should not allow
+himself to become an interloper; but the tale, if told as Mary would
+tell it, might have a very different effect.
+
+Nevertheless Mary thought that she would tell it. It would be so nice
+to consult a brother! It would be so pleasant to discuss the matter
+with some one that would sympathise with her,--with some one who
+would not wish to drive her into Mr. Gilmore's arms simply because
+Mr. Gilmore was an excellent gentleman, with a snug property! Even
+from Janet Fenwick, whom she loved dearly, she had never succeeded
+in getting the sort of sympathy that she wanted. Janet was the best
+friend in the world,--was actuated in this matter simply by a desire
+to do a good turn to two people whom she loved. But there was no
+sympathy between her and Mary in the matter.
+
+"Marry him," said Janet, "and you will adore him afterwards."
+
+"I want to adore him first," said Mary.
+
+So she resolved that she would tell Walter Marrable what was her
+position. They were again down on the banks of the Lurwell, sitting
+together on a slope which had been made to support some hundred yards
+of a canal, where the river itself rippled down a slightly rapid
+fall. They were seated between the canal and the river, with their
+feet towards the latter, and Walter Marrable was just lighting a
+cigar. It was very easy to bring the conversation round to the
+affairs of Bullhampton, as Sam was still in prison, and Janet's
+letters were full of the mystery which shrouded the murder of Mr.
+Trumbull.
+
+"By the bye," said she, "I have something to tell you about Mr.
+Gilmore."
+
+"Tell away," said he, as he turned the cigar round in his mouth, to
+complete the lighting of the edges in the wind.
+
+"Ah, but I shan't, unless you will interest yourself. What I am going
+to tell you ought to interest you."
+
+"He has made you a proposal of marriage?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I knew it."
+
+"How could you know it? Nobody has told you."
+
+"I felt sure of it from the way in which you speak of him. But I
+thought also that you had refused him. Perhaps I was wrong there?"
+
+"No."
+
+"You have refused him?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I don't see that there is very much of a story to be told, Mary."
+
+"Don't be so unkind, Walter. There is a story, and one that troubles
+me. If it were not so I should not have proposed to tell you. I
+thought that you would give me advice, and tell me what I ought to
+do."
+
+"But if you have refused him, you have done so,--no doubt
+rightly,--without my advice; and I am too late in the field to be of
+any service."
+
+"You must let me tell my own story, and you must be good to me while
+I do so. I think I shouldn't tell you if I hadn't almost made up my
+mind; but I shan't tell you which way, and you must advise me. In the
+first place, though I did refuse him, the matter is still open, and
+he is to ask me again, if he pleases."
+
+"He has your permission for that?"
+
+"Well,--yes. I hope it wasn't wrong. I did so try to be right."
+
+"I do not say you were wrong."
+
+"I like him so much, and think him so good, and do really feel that
+his affection is so great an honour to me, that I could not answer
+him as though I were quite indifferent to him."
+
+"At any rate, he is to come again?"
+
+"If he pleases."
+
+"Does he really love you?"
+
+"How am I to say? But that is missish and untrue. I am sure he loves
+me."
+
+"So that he will grieve to lose you?"
+
+"I know he will grieve. I ought not to say so. But I know he will."
+
+"You ought to tell the truth, as you believe it. And you
+yourself,--do you love him?"
+
+"I don't know. I do love him; but if I heard he was going to marry
+another girl to-morrow it would make me very happy."
+
+"Then you can't love him?"
+
+"I feel as though I should think the same of any man who wanted to
+marry me. But let me go on with my story. Everybody I care for wishes
+me to take him. I know that Aunt Sarah feels quite sure that I shall
+at last, and that she thinks I ought to do so at once. My friend,
+Janet Fenwick, cannot understand why I should hesitate, and only
+forgives me because she is sure that it will come right, in her way,
+some day. Mr. Fenwick is just the same, and will always talk to me as
+though it were my fate to live at Bullhampton all my life."
+
+"Is not Bullhampton a nice place?"
+
+"Very nice; I love the place."
+
+"And Mr. Gilmore is rich?"
+
+"He is quite rich enough. Fancy my inquiring about that, with just
+L1200 for my fortune."
+
+"Then why, in God's name, don't you accept him?"
+
+"You think I ought?"
+
+"Answer my question;--why do you not?"
+
+"Because--I do not love him--as I should hope to love my husband."
+
+After this Captain Marrable, who had been looking her full in the
+face while he had been asking these questions, turned somewhat
+away from her, as though the conversation were over. She remained
+motionless, and was minded so to remain till he should tell her that
+it was time to move, that they might return home. He had given her
+no advice; but she presumed she was to take what had passed as the
+expression of his opinion that it was her duty to accept an offer so
+favourable and so satisfactory to the family. At any rate, she would
+say nothing more on the subject till he should address her. Though
+she loved him dearly as her cousin, yet she was, in some slight
+degree, afraid of him. And now she was not sure but that he was
+expressing towards her, by his anger, some amount of displeasure
+at her weakness and inconsistency. After a while he turned round
+suddenly, and took her by the hand.
+
+"Well, Mary!" he said.
+
+"Well, Walter!"
+
+"What do you mean to do, after all?"
+
+"What ought I to do?"
+
+"What ought you to do? You know what you ought to do. Would you marry
+a man for whom you have no more regard than you have for this stick,
+simply because he is persistent in asking you? No more than you have
+for this stick, Mary. What sort of a feeling must it be, when you say
+that you would willingly see him married to any other girl to-morrow?
+Can that be love?"
+
+"I have never loved any one better."
+
+"And never will?"
+
+"How can I say? It seems to me that I haven't got the feeling that
+other girls have. I want some one to love me;--I do. I own that. I
+want to be first with some one; but I have never found the one yet
+that I cared for."
+
+"You had better wait till you find him," said he, raising himself up
+on his arm. "Come, let us get up and go home. You have asked me for
+my advice, and I have given it you. Do not throw yourself away upon
+a man because other people ask you, and because you think you might
+as well oblige them and oblige him. If you do, you will soon live to
+repent it. What would you do, if after marrying this man you found
+there was some one you could love?"
+
+"I do not think it would come to that, Walter."
+
+"How can you tell? How can you prevent its coming to that, except
+by loving the man you do marry? You don't care two straws for Mr.
+Gilmore; and I cannot understand how you can have the courage to
+think of becoming his wife. Let us go home. You have asked my advice,
+and you've got it. If you do not take it, I will endeavour to forget
+that I gave it you."
+
+Of course she would take it. She did not tell him so then; but, of
+course, he should guide her. With how much more accuracy, with how
+much more delicacy of feeling had he understood her position, than
+had her other friends! He had sympathised with her at a word. He
+spoke to her sternly, severely, almost cruelly. But it was thus that
+she had longed to be spoken to by some one who would care enough for
+her, would take sufficient interest in her, to be at the trouble so
+to advise her. She would trust him as a brother, and his words should
+be sweet to her, were they ever so severe.
+
+They walked together home in silence, and his very manner was stern
+to her; but it might be just thus that a loving brother would carry
+himself who had counselled his sister wisely, and had not as yet been
+assured that his counsel would be taken.
+
+"Walter," she said, as they neared the town, "I hope you have no
+doubt about it."
+
+"Doubt about what, Mary?"
+
+"It is quite a matter of course that I shall do as you tell me."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+THE MARQUIS OF TROWBRIDGE.
+
+
+By the end of September it had come to be pretty well understood that
+Sam Brattle must be allowed to go out of prison, unless something
+in the shape of fresh evidence should be brought up on the next
+Tuesday. There had arisen a very strong feeling in the county on
+the subject;--a Brattle feeling, and an anti-Brattle feeling. It
+might have been called a Bullhampton feeling and an anti-Bullhampton
+feeling, were it not that the biggest man concerned in Bullhampton,
+with certain of his hangers-on and dependents, were very clearly of
+opinion that Sam Brattle had committed the murder, and that he should
+be kept in prison till the period for hanging him might come round.
+This very big person was the Marquis of Trowbridge, under whom poor
+Farmer Trumbull had held his land, and who now seemed to think that
+a murder committed on one of his tenants was almost as bad as insult
+to himself. He felt personally angry with Bullhampton, had ideas
+of stopping his charities to the parish, and did resolve, then and
+there, that he would have nothing to do with a subscription for the
+repair of the church, at any rate for the next three years. In making
+up his mind on which subject he was, perhaps, a little influenced by
+the opinions and narratives of Mr. Puddleham, the Methodist minister
+in the village.
+
+It was not only that Mr. Trumbull had been murdered. So great and
+wise a man as Lord Trowbridge would, no doubt, know very well, that
+in a free country, such as England, a man could not be specially
+protected from the hands of murderers, or others, by the fact of
+his being the tenant, or dependent,--by his being in some sort
+the possession of a great nobleman. The Marquis's people were all
+expected to vote for his candidates, and would soon have ceased to be
+the Marquis's people had they failed to do so. They were constrained,
+also in many respects, by the terms of their very short leases. They
+could not kill a head of game on their farms. They could not sell
+their own hay off the land, nor, indeed, any produce other than their
+corn or cattle. They were compelled to crop their land in certain
+rotation; and could take no other lands than those held under the
+Marquis without his leave. In return for all this, they became the
+Marquis's people. Each tenant shook hands with the Marquis perhaps
+once in three years; and twice a year was allowed to get drunk at the
+Marquis's expense--if such was his taste--provided that he had paid
+his rent. If the duties were heavy, the privileges were great. So
+the Marquis himself felt; and he knew that a mantle of security, of
+a certain thickness, was spread upon the shoulders of each of his
+people by reason of the tenure which bound them together. But he did
+not conceive that this mantle would be proof against the bullet of
+the ordinary assassin, or the hammer of the outside ruffian. But here
+the case was very different. The hammer had been the hammer of no
+outside ruffian. To the best of his lordship's belief,--and in that
+belief he was supported by the constabulary of the whole county,--the
+hammer had been wielded by a man of Bullhampton,--had been wielded
+against his tenant by the son of "a person who holds land under a
+gentleman who has some property in the parish." It was thus the
+Marquis was accustomed to speak of his neighbour, Mr. Gilmore, who,
+in the Marquis's eyes, was a man not big enough to have his tenants
+called his people. That such a man as Sam Brattle should have
+murdered such a one as Mr. Trumbull, was to the Marquis an insult
+rather than an injury; and now it was to be enhanced by the release
+of the man from prison, and that by order of a bench of magistrates
+on which Mr. Gilmore sat!
+
+And there was more in it even than all this. It was very well known
+at Turnover Park,--the seat of Lord Trowbridge, near Westbury,--that
+Mr. Gilmore, the gentleman who held property in his lordship's parish
+of Bullhampton, and Mr. Fenwick, who was vicar of the same, were
+another Damon and Pythias. Now the ladies at Turnover, who were much
+devoted to the Low Church, had heard and doubtless believed, that our
+friend, Mr. Fenwick, was little better than an infidel. When first
+he had come into the county, they had been very anxious to make him
+out to be a High Churchman, and a story or two about a cross and
+a candlestick were fabricated for their gratification. There was
+at that time the remnant of a great fight going on between the
+Trowbridge people and another great family in the neighbourhood on
+this subject; and it would have suited the Ladies Stowte,--John
+Augustus Stowte was the Marquis of Trowbridge,--to have enlisted our
+parson among their enemies of this class; but the accusation fell so
+plump to the ground, was so impossible of support, that they were
+obliged to content themselves with knowing that Mr. Fenwick was--an
+infidel! To do the Marquis justice, we must declare that he would
+not have troubled himself on this score, if Mr. Fenwick would have
+submitted himself to become one of his people. The Marquis was master
+at home, and the Ladies Sophie and Carolina would have been proud to
+entertain Mr. Fenwick by the week together at Turnover, had he been
+willing, infidel or believer, to join that faction. But he never
+joined that faction, and he was not only the bosom friend of the
+"gentleman who owned some land in the parish;" but he was twice more
+rebellious than that gentleman himself. He had contradicted the
+Marquis flat to his face,--so the Marquis said himself,--when they
+met once about some business in the parish; and again, when, in the
+Vicar's early days in Bullhampton, some gathering for school-festival
+purposes was made in the great home field behind Farmer Trumbull's
+house, Mrs. Fenwick misbehaved herself egregiously.
+
+"Upon my word, she patronised us," said Lady Sophie, laughing. "She
+did, indeed! And you know what she was. Her father was just a common
+builder at Loring, who made some money by a speculation in bricks and
+mortar."
+
+When Lady Sophie said this she was, no doubt, ignorant of the fact
+that Mr. Balfour had been the younger son of a family much more
+ancient than her own, that he had taken a double-first at Oxford,
+had been a member of half the learned societies in Europe, and had
+belonged to two or three of the best clubs in London.
+
+From all this it will be seen that the Marquis of Trowbridge would
+be disposed to think ill of whatever might be done in regard to the
+murder by the Gilmore-Fenwick party in the parish. And then there
+were tales about for which there was perhaps some foundation, that
+the Vicar and the murderer had been very dear friends. It was
+certainly believed at Turnover that the Vicar and Sam Brattle had
+for years past spent the best part of their Sundays fishing together.
+There were tales of rat-killing matches in which they had been
+engaged,--originating in the undeniable fact of a certain campaign
+against rats at the mill, in which the Vicar had taken an ardent
+part. Undoubtedly the destruction of vermin, and, in regard to one
+species, its preservation for the sake of destruction,--and the
+catching of fish,--and the shooting of birds,--were things lovely
+in the Vicar's eyes. He, perhaps, did let his pastoral dignity go
+a little by the board, when he and Sam stooped together, each with
+a ferret in his hand, grovelling in the dust to get at certain
+rat-advantages in the mill. Gilmore, who had seen it, had told him
+of this. "I understand it all, old fellow," Fenwick had said to his
+friend, "and know very well I have got to choose between two things.
+I must be called a hypocrite, or else I must be one. I have no doubt
+that as years go on with me I shall see the advantage of choosing the
+latter." There were at that time frequent discussions between them
+on the same subject, for they were friends who could dare to discuss
+each other's modes of life; but the reader need not be troubled
+further now with this digression. The position which the Vicar held
+in the estimation of the Marquis of Trowbridge will probably be
+sufficiently well understood.
+
+The family at Turnover Park would have thought it a great blessing
+to have had a clergyman at Bullhampton with whom they could have
+cordially co-operated; but, failing this, they had taken Mr.
+Puddleham, the Methodist minister, to their arms. From Mr. Puddleham
+they learned parish facts and parish fables, which would never have
+reached them but for his assistance. Mr. Fenwick was well aware of
+this, and used to declare that he had no objection to it. He would
+protest that he could not see why Mr. Puddleham should not get along
+in the parish just as well as himself, he having, and meaning to
+keep to himself, the slight advantages of the parish church, the
+vicarage-house, and the small tithes. Of this he was quite sure, that
+Mr. Puddleham's religious teaching was better than none at all; and
+he was by no means convinced,--so he said,--that, for some of his
+parishioners, Mr. Puddleham was not a better teacher than he himself.
+He always shook hands with Mr. Puddleham, though Mr. Puddleham
+would never look him in the face, and was quite determined that Mr.
+Puddleham should not be a thorn in his side.
+
+In this matter of Sam Brattle's imprisonment and now intended
+liberation, tidings from the parish were doubtless conveyed by Mr.
+Puddleham to Turnover,--probably not direct, but still in such a
+manner that the great people at Turnover knew to whom they were
+indebted. Now Mr. Gilmore had certainly, from the first, been by no
+means disposed to view favourably the circumstances attaching to
+Sam Brattle on that Saturday night. When the great blow fell on the
+Brattle family, his demeanour to them was changed, and he forgave
+the miller's contumacy; but he had always thought that Sam had been
+guilty. The parson had from the first regarded the question with
+great doubt, but, nevertheless, his opinion too had at first been
+averse to Sam. Even now, when he was so resolute that Sam should be
+released, he founded his demand, not on Sam's innocence, but on the
+absence of any evidence against him.
+
+"He's entitled to fair play, Harry," he would say to Gilmore, "and he
+is not getting it, because there is a prejudice against him. You hear
+what that old ass, Sir Thomas, says."
+
+"Sir Thomas is a very good magistrate."
+
+"If he don't take care, he'll find himself in trouble for keeping the
+lad locked up without authority. Is there a juryman in the country
+would find him guilty because he was lying in the old man's ditch a
+week before?" In this way Gilmore also became a favourer of Sam's
+claim to be released; and at last it came to be understood that on
+the next Tuesday he would be released, unless further evidence should
+be forthcoming.
+
+And then it came to pass that a certain very remarkable meeting took
+place in the parish. Word was brought to Mr. Gilmore on Monday, the
+5th October, that the Marquis of Trowbridge was to be at the Church
+Farm,--poor Trumbull's farm,--on that day at noon, and that his
+lordship thought that it might be expedient that he and Mr. Gilmore
+should meet on the occasion. There was no note, but the message was
+brought by Mr. Packer, a sub-agent, one of the Marquis's people, with
+whom Mr. Gilmore was very well acquainted.
+
+"I'll walk down about that time, Packer," said Mr. Gilmore, "and
+shall be very happy to see his lordship."
+
+Now the Marquis never sat as a magistrate at the Heytesbury bench,
+and had not been present on any of the occasions on which Sam had
+been examined; nor had Mr. Gilmore seen the Marquis since the
+murder,--nor, for the matter of that, for the last twelve months. Mr.
+Gilmore had just finished breakfast when the news was brought to him,
+and he thought he might as well walk down and see Fenwick first. His
+interview with the parson ended in a promise that he, Fenwick, would
+also look in at the farm.
+
+At twelve o'clock the Marquis was seated in the old farmer's
+arm-chair, in the old farmer's parlour. The house was dark and
+gloomy, never having been altogether opened since the murder. With
+the Marquis was Packer, who was standing, and the Marquis was
+pretending to cast his eye over one or two books which had been
+brought to him. He had been taken all over the house; had stood
+looking at the bed where the old man lay when he was attacked,
+as though he might possibly discover, if he looked long enough,
+something that would reveal the truth; had gazed awe-struck at the
+spot on which the body had been found, and had taken occasion to
+remark to himself that the house was a good deal out of order. The
+Marquis was a man nearer seventy than sixty, but very hale, and with
+few signs of age. He was short and plump, with hardly any beard on
+his face, and short grey hair, of which nothing could be seen when he
+wore his hat. His countenance would not have been bad, had not the
+weight of his marquisate always been there; nor would his heart have
+been bad, had it not been similarly burdened. But he was a silly,
+weak, ignorant man, whose own capacity would hardly have procured
+bread for him in any trade or profession, had bread not been so
+adequately provided for him by his fathers before him.
+
+"Mr. Gilmore said he would be here at twelve, Packer?"
+
+"Yes, my lord."
+
+"And it's past twelve now?"
+
+"One minute, my lord."
+
+Then the peer looked again at poor old Trumbull's books.
+
+"I shall not wait, Packer."
+
+"No, my lord."
+
+"You had better tell them to put the horses to."
+
+"Yes, my lord."
+
+But just as Packer went out into the passage for the sake of giving
+the order he met Mr. Gilmore, and ushered him into the room.
+
+"Ha! Mr. Gilmore; yes, I am very glad to see you, Mr. Gilmore;" and
+the Marquis came forward to shake hands with his visitor. "I thought
+it better that you and I should meet about this sad affair in the
+parish;--a very sad affair, indeed."
+
+"It certainly is, Lord Trowbridge; and the mystery makes it more so."
+
+"I suppose there is no real mystery, Mr. Gilmore? I suppose there can
+be no doubt that that unfortunate young man did,--did,--did bear a
+hand in it at least?"
+
+"I think that there is very much doubt, my lord."
+
+"Do you, indeed? I think there is none,--not the least. And all the
+police force are of the same opinion. I have considerable experiences
+of my own in these matters; but I should not venture, perhaps, to
+express my opinion so confidently, if I were not backed by the
+police. You are aware, Mr. Gilmore, that the police are--very--seldom
+wrong?"
+
+"I should be tempted to say that they are very seldom right--except
+when the circumstances are all under their noses."
+
+"I must say I differ from you entirely, Mr. Gilmore. Now, in this
+case--" The Marquis was here interrupted by a knock at the door, and,
+before the summons could be answered, the parson entered the room.
+And with the parson came Mr. Puddleham. The Marquis had thought that
+the parson might, perhaps, intrude; and Mr. Puddleham was in waiting
+as a make-weight, should he be wanting. When Mr. Fenwick had met
+the minister hanging about the farmyard, he had displayed not the
+slightest anger. If Mr. Puddleham chose to come in also, and make
+good his doing so before the Marquis, it was nothing to Mr. Fenwick.
+The great man looked up, as though he were very much startled and
+somewhat offended; but he did at last condescend to shake hands,
+first with one clergyman and then with the other, and to ask them to
+sit down. He explained that he had come over to make some personal
+inquiry into the melancholy matter, and then proceeded with his
+opinion respecting Sam Brattle. "From all that I can hear and see,"
+said his lordship, "I fear there can be no doubt that this murder has
+been due to the malignity of a near neighbour."
+
+"Do you mean the poor boy that is in prison, my lord?" asked the
+parson.
+
+"Of course I do, Mr. Fenwick. The constabulary are of opinion--"
+
+"We know that, Lord Trowbridge."
+
+"Perhaps, Mr. Fenwick, you will allow me to express my own ideas. The
+constabulary, I say, are of opinion that there is no manner of doubt
+that he was one of those who broke into my tenant's house on that
+fatal night; and, as I was explaining to Mr. Gilmore when you did us
+the honour to join us, in the course of a long provincial experience
+I have seldom known the police to be in error."
+
+"Why, Lord Trowbridge--!"
+
+"If you please, Mr. Fenwick, I will go on. My time here cannot be
+long, and I have a proposition which I am desirous of making to
+Mr. Gilmore, as a magistrate acting in this part of the county. Of
+course, it is not for me to animadvert upon what the magistrates may
+do at the bench to-morrow."
+
+"I am sure your lordship would make no such animadversion," said Mr.
+Gilmore.
+
+"I do not intend it, for many reasons. But I may go so far as to say
+that a demand for the young man's release will be made."
+
+"He is to be released, I presume, as a matter of course," said the
+parson.
+
+The Marquis made no allusion to this, but went on. "If that be
+done,--and I must say that I think no such step would be taken by the
+bench at Westbury,--whither will the young man betake himself?"
+
+"Home to his father, of course," said the parson.
+
+"Back into this parish, with his paramour, to murder more of my
+tenants."
+
+"My lord, I cannot allow such an unjust statement to be made," said
+the parson.
+
+"I wish to speak for one moment; and I wish it to be remembered that
+I am addressing myself especially to your neighbour, Mr. Gilmore, who
+has done me the honour of waiting upon me here at my request. I do
+not object to your presence, Mr. Fenwick, or to that of any other
+gentleman," and the Marquis bowed to Mr. Puddleham, who had stood by
+hitherto without speaking a word; "but, if you please, I must carry
+out the purpose that has brought me here. I shall think it very sad
+indeed, if this young man be allowed to take up his residence in the
+parish after what has taken place."
+
+"His father has a house here," said Mr. Gilmore.
+
+"I am aware of the fact," said the Marquis. "I believe that the young
+man's father holds a mill from you, and some few acres of land?"
+
+"He has a very nice farm."
+
+"So be it. We will not quarrel about terms. I believe there is no
+lease?--though, of course, that is no business of mine."
+
+"I must say that it is not, my lord," said Mr. Gilmore, who was
+waxing wrothy and becoming very black about the brows.
+
+"I have just said so; but I suppose you will admit that I have some
+interest in this parish? I presume that these two gentlemen, who are
+God's ministers here, will acknowledge that it is my duty, as the
+owner of the greater part of the parish, to interfere?"
+
+"Certainly, my lord," said Mr. Puddleham.
+
+Mr. Fenwick said nothing. He sat, or rather leant, against the edge
+of a table, and smiled. His brow was not black, like that of his
+friend; but Gilmore, who knew him, and who looked into his face,
+began to fear that the Marquis would be addressed before long in
+terms stronger than he himself, Mr. Gilmore, would approve.
+
+"And when I remember," continued his lordship, "that the unfortunate
+man who has fallen a victim had been for nearly half a century a
+tenant of myself and of my family, and that he was foully murdered
+on my own property,--dragged from his bed in the middle of the night,
+and ruthlessly slaughtered in this very house in which I am sitting,
+and that this has been done in a parish of which I own, I think,
+something over two-thirds--"
+
+"Two thousand and two acres out of two thousand nine hundred and
+ten," said Mr. Puddleham.
+
+"I suppose so. Well, Mr. Puddleham, you need not have interrupted
+me."
+
+"I beg pardon, my lord."
+
+"What I mean to say is this, Mr. Gilmore,--that you should take steps
+to prevent that young man's return among our people. You should
+explain to the father that it cannot be allowed. From what I hear, it
+would be no loss if the whole family left the parish. I am told that
+one of the daughters is a--prostitute."
+
+"It is too true, my lord," said Mr. Puddleham.
+
+The parson turned round and looked at his colleague, but said
+nothing. It was one of the principles of his life that he wouldn't
+quarrel with Mr. Puddleham; and at the present moment he certainly
+did not wish to waste his anger on so weak an enemy.
+
+"I think that you should look to this, Mr. Gilmore," said the
+Marquis, completing his harangue.
+
+"I cannot conceive, my lord, what right you have to dictate to me in
+such a matter," said Mr. Gilmore.
+
+"I have not dictated at all; I have simply expressed my opinion,"
+said the Marquis.
+
+"Now, my lord, will you allow me for a moment?" said Mr. Fenwick.
+"In the first place, if Sam Brattle could not find a home at the
+mill,--which I hope he will do for many a long year to come,--he
+should have one at the Vicarage."
+
+"I dare say," said the Marquis.
+
+Mr. Puddleham held up both hands.
+
+"You might as well hold your tongue, Frank," said Gilmore.
+
+"It is a matter on which I wish to say a word or two, Harry. I have
+been appealed to as one of God's ministers here, and I acknowledge my
+responsibility. I never in my life heard any proposition more cruel
+or inhuman than that made by Lord Trowbridge. This young man is to be
+turned out because a tenant of his lordship has been murdered! He is
+to be adjudged to be guilty by us, without any trial, in the absence
+of all evidence, in opposition to the decision of the magistrates--"
+
+"It is not in opposition to the magistrates, sir," said the Marquis.
+
+"And to be forbidden to return to his own home, simply because Lord
+Trowbridge thinks him guilty! My lord, his father's house is his own,
+to entertain whom he may please, as much as is yours. And were I to
+suggest to you to turn out your daughters, it would be no worse an
+offence than your suggesting to Mr. Brattle that he should turn out
+his son."
+
+"My daughters!"
+
+"Yes, your daughters, my lord."
+
+"How dare you mention my daughters?"
+
+
+[Illustration: "How dare you mention my daughters?"]
+
+
+"The ladies, I am well aware, are all that is respectable. I have
+not the slightest wish that you should ill-use them. But if you
+desire that your family concerns should be treated with reserve and
+reticence, you had better learn to treat the family affairs of others
+in the same way."
+
+The Marquis by this time was on his feet, and was calling for
+Packer,--was calling for his carriage and horses,--was calling on
+the very gods to send down their thunder to punish such insolence
+as this. He had never heard of the like in all his experience. His
+daughters! And then there came across his dismayed mind an idea that
+his daughters had been put upon a par with that young murderer, Sam
+Brattle,--perhaps even on a par with something worse than this. And
+his daughters were such august persons,--old and ugly, it is true,
+and almost dowerless in consequence of the nature of the family
+settlements and family expenditure. It was an injury and an insult
+that Mr. Fenwick should make the slightest allusion to his daughters;
+but to talk of them in such a way as this, as though they were
+mere ordinary human beings, was not to be endured! The Marquis had
+hitherto had his doubts, but now he was quite sure that Mr. Fenwick
+was an infidel. "And a very bad sort of infidel, too," as he said to
+Lady Carolina on his return home. "I never heard of such conduct in
+all my life," said Lord Trowbridge, walking down to his carriage.
+"Who can be surprised that there should be murderers and prostitutes
+in the parish?"
+
+"My lord, they don't sit under me," said Mr. Puddleham.
+
+"I don't care who they sit under," said his lordship.
+
+As they walked away together, Mr. Fenwick had just a word to say to
+Mr. Puddleham. "My friend," he said, "you were quite right about his
+lordship's acres."
+
+"Those are the numbers," said Mr. Puddleham.
+
+"I mean that you were quite right to make the observation. Facts are
+always valuable, and I am sure Lord Trowbridge was obliged to you.
+But I think you were a little wrong as to another statement."
+
+"What statement, Mr. Fenwick?"
+
+"What you said about poor Carry Brattle. You don't know it as a
+fact."
+
+"Everybody says so."
+
+"How do you know she has not married, and become an honest woman?"
+
+"It is possible, of course. Though as for that,--when a young woman
+has once gone astray--"
+
+"As did Mary Magdalene, for instance!"
+
+"Mr. Fenwick, it was a very bad case."
+
+"And isn't my case very bad,--and yours? Are we not in a bad
+way,--unless we believe and repent? Have we not all so sinned as to
+deserve eternal punishment?"
+
+"Certainly, Mr. Fenwick."
+
+"Then there can't be much difference between her and us. She can't
+deserve more than eternal punishment. If she believes and repents,
+all her sins will be white as snow."
+
+"Certainly, Mr. Fenwick."
+
+"Then speak of her as you would of any other sister or brother,--not
+as a thing that must be always vile because she has fallen once.
+Women will so speak,--and other men. One sees something of a reason
+for it. But you and I, as Christian ministers, should never allow
+ourselves to speak so thoughtlessly of sinners. Good morning, Mr.
+Puddleham."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+BLANK PAPER.
+
+
+Early in October Captain Marrable was called up to town by letters
+from Messrs. Block and Curling, and according to promise wrote
+various letters to Mary Lowther, telling her of the manner in which
+his business progressed. All of these letters were shown to Aunt
+Sarah,--and would have been shown to Parson John were it not that
+Parson John declined to read them. But though the letters were purely
+cousinly,--just such letters as a brother might write,--yet Miss
+Marrable thought that they were dangerous. She did not say so; but
+she thought that they were dangerous. Of late Mary had spoken no word
+of Mr. Gilmore; and Aunt Sarah, through all this silence, was able
+to discover that Mr. Gilmore's prospects were not becoming brighter.
+Mary herself, having quite made up her mind that Mr. Gilmore's
+prospects, so far as she was concerned, were all over, could not
+decide how and when she should communicate the resolve to her lover.
+According to her present agreement with him, she was to write to him
+at once should she accept any other offer; and was to wait for six
+months if this should not be the case. Certainly, there was no rival
+in the field, and therefore she did not quite know whether she ought
+or ought not to write at once in her present circumstances of assured
+determination. She soon told herself that in this respect also she
+would go to her new-found brother for advice. She would ask him, and
+do just as he might bid her. Had he not already proved how fit a
+person he was to give advice on such a subject?
+
+After an absence of ten days he came home, and nothing could exceed
+Mary's anxiety as to the tidings which he should bring with him. She
+endeavoured not to be selfish about the matter; but she could not but
+acknowledge that, even as regarded herself, the difference between
+his going to India or staying at home was so great as to affect
+the whole colour of her life. There was, perhaps, something of the
+feeling of being subject to desertion about her, as she remembered
+that in giving up Mr. Gilmore she must also give up the Fenwicks. She
+could not hope to go to Bullhampton again, at least for many a long
+day. She would be very much alone if her new brother were to leave
+her now. On the morning after his arrival he came up to them at
+Uphill, and told them that the matter was almost settled. Messrs.
+Block and Curling had declared that it was as good as settled; the
+money would be saved, and there would be, out of the L20,000 which
+he had inherited, something over L4000 for him; so that he need not
+return to India. He was in very high spirits, and did not speak a
+word of his father's iniquities.
+
+"Oh, Walter, what a joy!" said Mary, with the tears streaming from
+her eyes.
+
+He took her by both her hands, and kissed her forehead. At that
+moment Aunt Sarah was not in the room.
+
+"I am so very, very happy," she said, pressing her little hands
+against his.
+
+Why should he not kiss her? Was he not her brother? And then,
+before he went, she remembered she had something special to tell
+him;--something to ask him. Would he not walk with her that evening?
+Of course he would walk with her.
+
+"Mary, dear," said her aunt, putting her little arm round her niece's
+waist, and embracing her, "don't fall in love with Walter."
+
+"How can you say anything so foolish, Aunt Sarah?"
+
+"It would be very foolish to do so."
+
+"You don't understand how completely different it is. Do you think
+I could be so intimate with him as I am if anything of the kind were
+possible?"
+
+"I do not know how that may be."
+
+"Do not begrudge it me because I have found a cousin that I can love
+almost as I would a brother. There has never been anybody yet for
+whom I could have that sort of feeling."
+
+Aunt Sarah, whatever she might think, had not the heart to repeat her
+caution; and Mary, quite happy and contented with herself, put on her
+hat to run down the hill and meet her cousin at the great gates of
+the Lowtown Rectory. Why should he be dragged up the hill, to escort
+a cousin down again? This arrangement had, therefore, been made
+between them.
+
+For the first mile or two the talk was all about Messrs. Block and
+Curling and the money. Captain Marrable was so full of his own
+purposes, and so well contented that so much should be saved to him
+out of the fortune he had lost, that he had, perhaps, forgotten that
+Mary required more advice. But when they had come to the spot on
+which they had before sat, she bade him stop and seat himself.
+
+"And now what is it?" he said, as he rolled himself comfortably close
+to her side. She told her story, and explained her doubts, and asked
+for the revelations of his wisdom. "Are you quite sure about the
+propriety of this, Mary?" he said.
+
+"The propriety of what, Walter?"
+
+"Giving up a man who loves you so well, and who has so much to
+offer?"
+
+"What was it you said yourself? Sure! Of course I am sure. I am quite
+sure. I do not love him. Did I not tell you that there could be no
+doubt after what you said?"
+
+"I did not mean that my words should be so powerful."
+
+"They were powerful; but, independently of that, I am quite sure now.
+If I could do it myself, I should be false to him. I know that I do
+not love him." He was not looking at her where he was lying, but was
+playing with a cigar-case which he had taken out, as though he were
+about to resume his smoking. But he did not open the case, or look
+towards her, or say a word to her. Two minutes had perhaps passed
+before she spoke again. "I suppose it would be best that I should
+write to him at once?"
+
+"There is no one else, then, you care for, Mary?" he asked.
+
+"No one," she said, as though the question were nothing.
+
+"It is all blank paper with you?"
+
+
+[Illustration: "It is all blank paper with you?"]
+
+
+"Quite blank," she said, and laughed. "Do you know, I almost think it
+always will be blank."
+
+"By G----! it is not blank with me," he said, springing up
+and jumping to his feet. She stared at him, not in the least
+understanding what he meant, not dreaming even that he was about to
+tell her his love secrets in reference to another. "I wonder what you
+think I'm made of, Mary;--whether you imagine I have any affection to
+bestow?"
+
+"I do not in the least understand."
+
+"Look here, dear," and he knelt down beside her as he spoke, "it
+is simply this, that you have become to me more than all the
+world;--that I love you better than my own soul;--that your beauty
+and sweetness, and soft, darling touch, are everything to me. And
+then you come to me for advice! I can only give you one bit of advice
+now, Mary."
+
+"And what is that?"
+
+"Love me."
+
+"I do love you."
+
+"Ay, but love me and be my wife."
+
+She had to think of it; but she knew from the first moment that the
+thinking of it was a delight to her. She did not quite understand
+at first that her chosen brother might become her lover, with no
+other feeling than that of joy and triumph; and yet there was a
+consciousness that no other answer but one was possible. In the first
+place, to refuse him anything, asked in love, would be impossible.
+She could not say No to him. She had struggled often in reference
+to Mr. Gilmore, and had found it impossible to say Yes. There was
+now the same sort of impossibility in regard to the No. She couldn't
+blacken herself with such a lie. And yet, though she was sure of
+this, she was so astounded by his declaration, so carried off her
+legs by the alteration in her position, so hard at work within
+herself with her new endeavour to change the aspect in which she must
+look at the man, that she could not even bring herself to think of
+answering him. If he would only sit down near her for awhile,--very
+near,--and not speak to her, she thought that she would be happy.
+Everything else was forgotten. Aunt Sarah's caution, Janet Fenwick's
+anger, poor Gilmore's sorrow,--of all these she thought not at all,
+or only allowed her mind to dwell on them as surrounding trifles, of
+which it would be necessary that she, that they--they two who were
+now all in all to each other--must dispose; as they must, also, of
+questions of income, and such like little things. She was without a
+doubt. The man was her master, and had her in his keeping, and of
+course she would obey him. But she must settle her voice, and let her
+pulses become calm, and remember herself before she could tell him
+so. "Sit down again, Walter," she said at last.
+
+"Why should I sit?"
+
+"Because I ask you. Sit down, Walter."
+
+"No. I understand how wise you will be, and how cold; and I
+understand, too, what a fool I have been."
+
+"Walter, will you not come when I ask you?"
+
+"Why should I sit?"
+
+"That I may try to tell you how dearly I love you."
+
+He did not sit, but he threw himself at her feet, and buried his face
+upon her lap. There were but few more words spoken then. When it
+comes to this, that a pair of lovers are content to sit and rub their
+feathers together like two birds, there is not much more need of
+talking. Before they had arisen, her fingers had been playing through
+his curly hair, and he had kissed her lips and cheeks as well as her
+forehead. She had begun to feel what it was to have a lover and to
+love him. She could already talk to him almost as though he were a
+part of herself, could whisper to him little words of nonsense, could
+feel that everything of hers was his, and everything of his was hers.
+She knew more clearly now even than she had done before that she had
+never loved Mr. Gilmore, and never could have loved him. And that
+other doubt had been solved for her. "Do you know," she had said,
+not yet an hour ago, "that I think it always will be blank." And now
+every spot of the canvas was covered.
+
+"We must go home now," she said at last.
+
+"And tell Aunt Sarah," he replied, laughing.
+
+"Yes, and tell Aunt Sarah;--but not to-night. I can do nothing
+to-night but think about it. Oh, Walter, I am so happy!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+SAM BRATTLE RETURNS HOME.
+
+
+The Tuesday's magistrates' meeting had come off at Heytesbury, and
+Sam Brattle had been discharged. Mr. Jones had on this occasion
+indignantly demanded that his client should be set free without bail;
+but to this the magistrates would not assent. The attorney attempted
+to demonstrate to them that they could not require bail for the
+reappearance of an accused person, when that accused person was
+discharged simply because there was no evidence against him. But to
+this exposition of the law Sir Thomas and his brother magistrates
+would not listen. "If the other persons should at last be taken, and
+Brattle should not then be forthcoming, justice would suffer," said
+Sir Thomas. County magistrates, as a rule, are more conspicuous for
+common sense and good instincts than for sound law; and Mr. Jones
+may, perhaps, have been right in his view of the case. Nevertheless
+bail was demanded, and was not forthcoming without considerable
+trouble. Mr. Jay, the ironmonger at Warminster, declined. When spoken
+to on the subject by Mr. Fenwick, he declared that the feeling among
+the gentry was so strong against his brother-in-law, that he could
+not bring himself to put himself forward. He couldn't do it for the
+sake of his family. When Fenwick promised to make good the money
+risk, Jay declared that the difficulty did not lie there. "There's
+the Marquis, and Sir Thomas, and Squire Greenthorne, and our parson,
+all say, sir, as how he shouldn't be bailed at all. And then, sir,
+if one has a misfortune belonging to one, one doesn't want to flaunt
+it in everybody's face, sir." And there was trouble, too, with
+George Brattle from Fordingbridge. George Brattle was a prudent,
+hard-headed, hard-working man, not troubled with much sentiment, and
+caring very little what any one could say of him as long as his rent
+was paid; but he had taken it into his head that Sam was guilty,
+that he was at any rate a thoroughly bad fellow who should be turned
+out of the Brattle nest, and that no kindness was due to him. With
+the farmer, however, Mr. Fenwick did prevail, and then the parson
+became the other bondsman himself. He had been strongly advised,--by
+Gilmore, by Gilmore's uncle, the prebendary at Salisbury, and by
+others,--not to put himself forward in this position. The favour
+which he had shown to the young man had not borne good results
+either for the young man or for himself; and it would be unwise,--so
+said his friends,--to subject his own name to more remark than
+was necessary. He had so far assented as to promise not to come
+forward himself, if other bailsmen could be procured. But, when the
+difficulty came, he offered himself, and was, of necessity, accepted.
+
+When Sam was released, he was like a caged animal who, when liberty
+is first offered to him, does not know how to use it. He looked
+about him in the hall of the Court House, and did not at first seem
+disposed to leave it. The constable had asked him whether he had
+means of getting home, to which he replied, that "it wasn't no more
+than a walk." Dinner was offered to him by the constable, but this he
+refused, and then he stood glaring about him. After a while Gilmore
+and Fenwick came up to him, and the Squire was the first to speak.
+"Brattle," he said, "I hope you will now go home, and remain there
+working with your father for the present."
+
+"I don't know nothing about that," said the lad, not deigning to look
+at the Squire.
+
+"Sam, pray go home at once," said the parson. "We have done what we
+could for you, and you should not oppose us."
+
+"Mr. Fenwick, if you tells me to go to--to--to,"--he was going to
+mention some very bad place, but was restrained by the parson's
+presence,--"if you tells me to go anywheres, I'll go."
+
+"That's right. Then I tell you to go to the mill."
+
+"I don't know as father'll let me in," said he, almost breaking into
+sobs as he spoke.
+
+"That he will, heartily. Do you tell him that you had a word or two
+with me here, and that I'll come up and call on him to-morrow." Then
+he put his hand into his pocket, and whispering something, offered
+the lad money. But Sam turned away, and shook his head, and walked
+off. "I don't believe that that fellow had any more to do with it
+than you or I," said Fenwick.
+
+"I don't know what to believe," said Gilmore. "Have you heard that
+the Marquis is in the town? Greenthorne just told me so."
+
+"Then I had better get out of it, for Heytesbury isn't big enough
+for the two of us. Come, you've done here, and we might as well jog
+home."
+
+Gilmore dined at the Vicarage that evening, and of course the day's
+work was discussed. The quarrel, too, which had taken place at the
+farmhouse had only yet been in part described to Mrs. Fenwick. "Do
+you know I feel half triumphant and half frightened," Mrs. Fenwick
+said to the Squire. "I know that the Marquis is an old fool,
+imperious, conceited, and altogether unendurable when he attempts
+to interfere. And yet I have a kind of feeling that because he is a
+Marquis, and because he owns two thousand and so many acres in the
+parish, and because he lives at Turnover Park, one ought to hold him
+in awe."
+
+"Frank didn't hold him in awe yesterday," said the Squire.
+
+"He holds nothing in awe," said the wife.
+
+"You wrong me there, Janet. I hold you in great awe, and every lady
+in Wiltshire more or less;--and I think I may say every woman. And
+I would hold him in a sort of awe, too, if he didn't drive me beyond
+myself by his mixture of folly and pride."
+
+"He can do us a great deal of mischief, you know," said Mrs. Fenwick.
+
+"What he can do, he will do," said the parson. "He even gave me a bad
+name, no doubt; but I fancy he was generous enough to me in that way
+before yesterday. He will now declare that I am the Evil One himself,
+and people won't believe that. A continued persistent enmity,
+always at work, but kept within moderate bounds, is more dangerous
+now-a-days, than a hot fever of revengeful wrath. The Marquis can't
+send out his men-at-arms and have me knocked on the head, or cast
+into a dungeon. He can only throw mud at me, and the more he throws
+at once, the less will reach me."
+
+As to Sam, they were agreed that, whether he were innocent or guilty,
+the old miller should be induced to regard him as innocent, as far as
+their joint exertion in that direction might avail.
+
+"He is innocent before the law till he has been proved to be guilty,"
+said the Squire.
+
+"Then of course there can be nothing wrong in telling his father that
+he is innocent," said the lady.
+
+The Squire did not quite admit this, and the parson smiled as he
+heard the argument; but they both acknowledged that it would be right
+to let it be considered throughout the parish that Sam was to be
+regarded as blameless for that night's transaction. Nevertheless, Mr.
+Gilmore's mind on the subject was not changed.
+
+"Have you heard from Loring?" the Squire asked Mrs. Fenwick as he got
+up to leave the Vicarage.
+
+"Oh, yes,--constantly. She is quite well, Mr. Gilmore."
+
+"I sometimes think that I'll go off and have a look at her."
+
+"I'm sure both she and her aunt would be glad to see you."
+
+"But would it be wise?"
+
+"If you ask me, I am bound to say that I think it would not be wise.
+If I were you, I would leave her for awhile. Mary is as good as gold,
+but she is a woman; and, like other women, the more she is sought,
+the more difficult she will be."
+
+"It always seems to me," said Mr. Gilmore, "that to be successful in
+love, a man should not be in love at all; or, at any rate, he should
+hide it." Then he went off home alone, feeling on his heart that
+pernicious load of a burden which comes from the unrestrained longing
+for some good thing which cannot be attained. It seemed to him now
+that nothing in life would be worth a thought if Mary Lowther should
+continue to say him nay; and it seemed to him, too, that unless the
+yea were said very quickly, all his aptitudes for enjoyment would be
+worn out of him.
+
+On the next morning, immediately after breakfast, Mr. and Mrs.
+Fenwick walked down to the mill together. They went through the
+village, and thence by a pathway down to a little foot-bridge, and so
+along the river side. It was a beautiful October morning, the 7th of
+October, and Fenwick talked of the pheasants. Gilmore, though he was
+a sportsman, and shot rabbits and partridges about his own property,
+and went occasionally to shooting-parties at a distance, preserved
+no game. There had been some old unpleasantness about the Marquis's
+pheasants, and he had given it up. There could be no doubt that his
+property in the parish being chiefly low lying lands and water meads
+unfit for coverts, was not well disposed for preserving pheasants,
+and that in shooting he would more likely shoot Lord Trowbridge's
+birds than his own. But it was equally certain that Lord Trowbridge's
+pheasants made no scruple of feeding on his land. Nevertheless, he
+had thought it right to give up all idea of keeping up a head of game
+for his own use in Bullhampton.
+
+"Upon my word, if I were you, Gilmore," said the parson, as a bird
+rose from the ground close at their feet, "I should cease to be nice
+about the shooting after what happened yesterday."
+
+"You don't mean that you would retaliate, Frank?"
+
+"I think I should."
+
+"Is that good parson's law?"
+
+"It's very good squire's law. And as for that doctrine of
+non-retaliation, a man should be very sure of his own motives before
+he submits to it. If a man be quite certain that he is really
+actuated by a Christian's desire to forgive, it may be all very well;
+but if there be any admixture of base alloy in his gold, if he allows
+himself to think that he may avoid the evils of pugnacity, and have
+things go smooth for him here, and become a good Christian by the
+same process, why then I think he is likely to fall to the ground
+between two stools." Had Lord Trowbridge heard him, his lordship
+would now have been quite sure that Mr. Fenwick was an infidel.
+
+They had both doubted whether Sam would be found at the mill; but
+there he was, hard at work among the skeleton timbers, when his
+friends reached the place.
+
+"I am glad to see you at home again, Sam," said Mrs. Fenwick, with
+something, however, of an inner feeling that perhaps she might be
+saluting a murderer.
+
+Sam touched his cap, but did not utter a word, or look away from his
+work. They passed on amidst the heaps in front of the mill, and came
+to the porch before the cottage. Here, as had been his wont in all
+these idle days, the miller was sitting with a pipe in his mouth.
+When he saw the lady he got up and ducked his head, and then sat down
+again. "If your wife is here, I'll just step in, Mr. Brattle," said
+Mrs. Fenwick.
+
+"She be there, ma'am," said the miller, pointing towards the kitchen
+window with his head. So Mrs. Fenwick lifted the latch and entered.
+The parson sat himself down by the miller's side.
+
+"I am heartily glad, Mr. Brattle, that Sam is back with you here once
+again."
+
+"He be there, at work among the rest o' 'em," said the miller.
+
+"I saw him as I came along. I hope he will remain here now."
+
+"I can't say, Muster Fenwick."
+
+"But he intends to do so?"
+
+"I can't say, Muster Fenwick."
+
+"Would it not be well that you should ask him?"
+
+"Not as I knows on, Muster Fenwick."
+
+It was manifest enough that the old man had not spoken to his son
+on the subject of the murder, and that there was no confidence,--at
+least, no confidence that had been expressed,--between the father and
+the son. No one had as yet heard the miller utter any opinion as to
+Sam's innocence or his guilt. This of itself seemed to the clergyman
+to be a very terrible condition for two persons who were so closely
+united, and who were to live together, work together, eat together,
+and have mutual interests.
+
+"I hope, Mr. Brattle," he said, "that you give Sam the full benefit
+of his discharge."
+
+"He'll get his vittles and his bed, and a trifle of wages if he works
+for 'em."
+
+"I didn't mean that. I'm quite sure you wouldn't see him want a
+comfortable home, as long as you have one to give him."
+
+"There ain't much comfort about it now."
+
+"I was speaking of your own opinion of the deed that was done. My own
+opinion is that Sam had nothing to do with it."
+
+"I'm sure I can't say, Muster Fenwick."
+
+"But it would be a comfort to you to think that he is innocent."
+
+"I ain't no comfort in talking about it,--not at all,--and I'd
+rayther not, if it's all one to you, Muster Fenwick."
+
+"I will not ask another question, but I'll repeat my own opinion, Mr.
+Brattle. I don't believe that he had anything more to do with the
+robbery or the murder, than I had."
+
+"I hope not, Muster Fenwick. Murder is a terrible crime. And now, if
+you'll tell me how much it was you paid the lawyer at Heytesbury--"
+
+"I cannot say as yet. It will be some trifle. You need not trouble
+yourself about that."
+
+"But I mean to pay 'un, Muster Fenwick. I can pay my way as yet,
+though it's hard enough at times." The parson was obliged to promise
+that Mr. Jones's bill of charges should be sent to him, and then he
+called his wife, and they left the mill. Sam was still up among the
+timbers, and had not once come down while the visitors were in the
+cottage. Mrs. Fenwick had been more successful with the women than
+the parson had been with the father. She had taken upon herself to
+say that she thoroughly believed Sam to be innocent, and they had
+thanked her with many protestations of gratitude.
+
+They did not go back by the way they had come, but went up to the
+road, which they crossed, and thence to some outlying cottages which
+were not very far from Hampton Privets House. From these cottages
+there was a path across the fields back to Bullhampton, which led by
+the side of a small wood belonging to the Marquis. There was a good
+deal of woodland just here, and this special copse, called Hampton
+bushes, was known to be one of the best pheasant coverts in that part
+of the country. Whom should they meet, standing on the path, armed
+with his gun, and with his keeper behind him armed with another, than
+the Marquis of Trowbridge himself. They had heard a shot or two, but
+they had thought nothing of it, or they would have gone back to the
+road. "Don't speak," said the parson, as he walked on quickly with
+his wife on his arm. The Marquis stood and scowled; but he had the
+breeding of a gentleman, and when Mrs. Fenwick was close to him, he
+raised his hat. The parson also raised his, the lady bowed, and then
+they passed on without a word. "I had no excuse for doing so, or I
+would certainly have told him that Sam Brattle was comfortably at
+home with his father," said the parson.
+
+"How you do like a fight, Frank!"
+
+"If it's stand up, and all fair, I don't dislike it."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+I HAVE A JUPITER OF MY OWN NOW.
+
+
+When Mary Lowther returned home from the last walk with her cousin
+that has been mentioned, she was quite determined that she would
+not disturb her happiness on that night by the task of telling her
+engagement to her aunt. It must, of course, be told, and that at
+once; and it must be told also to Parson John; and a letter must be
+written to Janet; and another, which would be very difficult in the
+writing, to Mr. Gilmore; and she must be prepared to bear a certain
+amount of opposition from all her friends; but for the present
+moment, she would free herself from these troubles. To-morrow, after
+breakfast, she would tell her aunt. To-morrow, at lunch-time, Walter
+would come up to the lane as her accepted lover. And then, after
+lunch, after due consultation with him and with Aunt Sarah, the
+letter should be written.
+
+She had solved, at any rate, one doubt, and had investigated one
+mystery. While conscious of her own coldness towards Mr. Gilmore, she
+had doubted whether she was capable of loving a man, of loving him as
+Janet Fenwick loved her husband. Now she would not admit to herself
+that any woman that ever lived adored a man more thoroughly than she
+adored Walter Marrable. It was sweet to her to see and to remember
+the motions of his body. When walking by his side she could hardly
+forbear to touch him with her shoulder. When parting from him it was
+a regret to her to take her hand from his. And she told herself that
+all this had come to her in the course of one morning's walk, and
+wondered at it,--that her heart should be a thing capable of being
+given away so quickly. It had, in truth, been given away quickly
+enough, though the work had not been done in that one morning's walk.
+She had been truly honest, to herself and to others, when she said
+that her cousin Walter was and should be a brother to her; but had
+her new brother, in his brotherly confidence, told her that his
+heart was devoted to some other woman, she would have suffered a
+blow, though she would never have confessed even to herself that
+she suffered. On that evening, when she reached home, she said very
+little.
+
+She was so tired. Might she go to bed? "What, at nine o'clock?" asked
+Aunt Sarah.
+
+"I'll stay up, if you wish it," said Mary.
+
+But before ten she was alone in her own chamber, sitting in her own
+chair, with her arms folded, feeling, rather than thinking, how
+divine a thing it was to be in love. What could she not do for him?
+What would she not endure to have the privilege of living with him?
+What other good fortune in life could be equal to this good fortune?
+Then she thought of her relations with Mr. Gilmore, and shuddered
+as she remembered how near she had been to accepting him. "It would
+have been so wrong. And yet I did not see it! With him I am sure that
+it is right, for I feel that in going to him I can be every bit his
+own."
+
+So she thought, and so she dreamed; and then the morning came, and
+she had to go down to her aunt. She ate her breakfast almost in
+silence, having resolved that she would tell her story the moment
+breakfast was over. She had, over night, and while she was in bed,
+studiously endeavoured not to con any mode of telling it. Up to
+the moment at which she rose her happiness was, if possible, to be
+untroubled. But while she dressed herself, she endeavoured to arrange
+her plans. She at last came to the conclusion that she could do it
+best without any plan.
+
+As soon as Aunt Sarah had finished her breakfast, and just as she
+was about to proceed, according to her morning custom, down-stairs
+to the kitchen, Mary spoke. "Aunt Sarah, I have something to tell
+you. I may as well bring it out at once. I am engaged to marry Walter
+Marrable." Aunt Sarah immediately let fall the sugar-tongs, and stood
+speechless. "Dear aunt, do not look as if you were displeased. Say a
+kind word to me. I am sure you do not think that I have intended to
+deceive you."
+
+"No; I do not think that," said Aunt Sarah.
+
+"And is that all?"
+
+"I am very much surprised. It was yesterday that you told me, when
+I hinted at this, that he was no more to you than a cousin,--or a
+brother."
+
+"And so I thought; indeed I did. But when he told me how it was with
+him, I knew at once that I had only one answer to give. No other
+answer was possible. I love him better than anyone else in all the
+world. I feel that I can promise to be his wife without the least
+reserve or fear. I don't know why it should be so; but it is. I
+know I am right in this." Aunt Sarah still stood silent, meditating.
+"Don't you think I was right, feeling as I do, to tell him so? I had
+before become certain, quite, quite certain that it was impossible to
+give any other answer but one to Mr. Gilmore. Dearest aunt, do speak
+to me."
+
+"I do not know what you will have to live upon."
+
+"It is settled, you know, that he will save four or five thousand
+pounds out of his money, and I have got twelve hundred. It is not
+much, but it will be just something. Of course he will remain in the
+army, and I shall be a soldier's wife. I shall think nothing of going
+out to India, if he wishes it; but I don't think he means that. Dear
+Aunt Sarah, do say one word of congratulation."
+
+Aunt Sarah did not know how to congratulate her niece. It seemed to
+her that any congratulation must be false and hypocritical. To her
+thinking, it would be a most unfitting match. It seemed to her that
+such an engagement had been most foolish. She was astonished at
+Mary's weakness, and was indignant with Walter Marrable. As regarded
+Mary, though she had twice uttered a word or two, intended as a
+caution, yet she had never thought it possible that a girl so steady
+in her ordinary demeanour, so utterly averse to all flirtation, so
+little given to the weakness of feminine susceptibility, would fall
+at once into such a quagmire of indiscreet love-troubles. The caution
+had been intended, rather in regard to outward appearances, and
+perhaps with the view of preventing the possibility of some slight
+heart-scratches, than with the idea that danger of this nature was to
+be dreaded. As Mr. Gilmore was there as an acknowledged suitor,--a
+suitor, as to whose ultimate success Aunt Sarah had her strong
+opinions,--it would be well those cousinly-brotherly associations
+and confidences should not become so close as to create possible
+embarrassment. Such had been the nature of Aunt Sarah's caution; and
+now,--in the course of a week or two,--when the young people were
+in truth still strangers to each other,--when Mr. Gilmore was still
+waiting for his answer,--Mary came to her, and told her that the
+engagement was a thing completed! How could she utter a word of
+congratulation?
+
+"You mean, then, to say that you disapprove of it?" said Mary, almost
+sternly.
+
+"I cannot say that I think it wise."
+
+"I am not speaking of wisdom. Of course, Mr. Gilmore is very much
+richer, and all that."
+
+"You know, Mary, that I would not counsel you to marry a man because
+he was rich."
+
+"That is what you mean when you tell me I am not wise. I tried
+it,--with all the power of thought and calculation that I could give
+to it, and I found that I could not marry Mr. Gilmore."
+
+"I am not speaking about that now."
+
+"You mean that Walter is so poor, that he never should be allowed to
+marry."
+
+"I don't care twopence about Walter."
+
+"But I do, Aunt Sarah. I care more about him than all the world
+beside. I had to think for him."
+
+"You did not take much time to think."
+
+"Hardly a minute--and yet it was sufficient." Then she paused,
+waiting for her aunt; but it seemed that her aunt had nothing further
+to say. "Well," continued Mary, "if it must be so, it must. If you
+cannot wish me joy--"
+
+"Dearest, you know well enough that I wish you all happiness."
+
+"This is my happiness." It seemed to the bewildered old lady that the
+whole nature of the girl was altered. Mary was speaking now as might
+have spoken some enthusiastic young female who had at last succeeded
+in obtaining for herself the possession,--more or less permanent,--of
+a young man, after having fed her imagination on novels for the last
+five years; whereas Mary Lowther had hitherto, in all moods of her
+life, been completely opposite to such feminine ways and doings.
+"Very well," continued Mary; "we will say nothing more about it at
+present. I am greatly grieved that I have incurred your displeasure;
+but I cannot wish it otherwise."
+
+"I have said nothing of displeasure."
+
+"Walter is to be up after lunch, and I will only ask that he may not
+be received with black looks. If it must be visited as a sin, let it
+be visited on me."
+
+"Mary, that is unkind and ungenerous."
+
+"If you knew, Aunt Sarah, how I have longed during the night for your
+kind voice,--for your sympathy and approval!"
+
+Aunt Sarah paused again for a moment, and then went down to her
+domestic duties without another word.
+
+In the afternoon Walter came, but Aunt Sarah did not see him. When
+Mary went to her the old lady declared that, for the present, it
+would be better so. "I do not know what to say to him at present. I
+must think of it, and speak to his uncle, and try to find out what
+had best be done."
+
+She was sitting as she said this up in her own room, without even a
+book in her hand; in very truth, passing an hour in an endeavour to
+decide what, in the present emergency, she ought to say or do. Mary
+stooped over her and kissed her, and the aunt returned her niece's
+caresses.
+
+"Do not let you and me quarrel, at any rate," said Miss Marrable.
+"Who else is there that I care for? Whose happiness is anything to me
+except yours?"
+
+"Then come to him, and tell him that he also shall be dear to you."
+
+"No; at any rate, not now. Of course you can marry, Mary, without any
+sanction from me. I do not pretend that you owe to me that obedience
+which would be due to a mother. But I cannot say,--at least, not
+yet,--that such sanction as I have to give can be given to this
+engagement. I have a dread that it will come to no good. It grieves
+me. I do not forbid you to receive him; but for the present it would
+be better that I should not see him."
+
+"What is her objection?" demanded Walter, with grave indignation.
+
+"She thinks we shall be poor."
+
+"Shall we ask her for anything? Of course we shall be poor. For the
+present there will be but L300 a year, or thereabouts, beyond my
+professional income. A few years back, if so much had been secured,
+friends would have thought that everything necessary had been done.
+If you are afraid, Mary--"
+
+"You know I am not afraid."
+
+"What is it to her, then? Of course we shall be poor,--very poor. But
+we can live."
+
+There did come upon Mary Lowther a feeling that Walter spoke of the
+necessity of a comfortable income in a manner very different from
+that in which he had of late been discussing the same subject ever
+since she had known him. He had declared that it was impossible that
+he should exist in England as a bachelor on his professional income,
+and yet surely he would be poorer as a married man with that L300
+a year added to it, than he would have been without it, and also
+without a wife. But what girl that loves a man can be angry with him
+for such imprudence and such inconsistency? She had already told him
+that she would be ready, if it were necessary, to go with him to
+India. She had said so before she went up to her aunt's room. He had
+replied that he hoped no such sacrifice would be demanded from her.
+"There can be no sacrifice on my part," she had replied, "unless I
+am required to give up you." Of course he had taken her in his arms
+and kissed her. There are moments in one's life in which not to be
+imprudent, not to be utterly, childishly forgetful of all worldly
+wisdom, would be to be brutal, inhuman, and devilish. "Had he told
+Parson John?" she asked.
+
+"Oh, yes!"
+
+"And what does he say?"
+
+"Just nothing. He raised his eyebrows, and suggested 'that I had
+changed my ideas of life.' 'So I have,' I said. 'All right!' he
+replied. 'I hope that Block and Curling won't have made any mistake
+about the L5000.' That was all he said. No doubt he thinks we're two
+fools; but then one's folly won't embarrass him."
+
+"Nor will it embarrass Aunt Sarah," said Mary.
+
+"But there is this difference. If we come to grief, Parson John will
+eat his dinner without the slightest interference with his appetite
+from our misfortunes; but Aunt Sarah would suffer on your account."
+
+"She would, certainly," said Mary.
+
+"But we will not come to grief. At any rate, darling, we cannot
+consent to be made wise by the prospect of her possible sorrows on
+our behalf."
+
+It was agreed that on that afternoon Mary should write both to Mr.
+Gilmore and to Janet Fenwick. She offered to keep her letters, and
+show them, when written, to her lover; but he declared that he would
+prefer not to see them. "It is enough for me that I triumph," he
+said, as he left her. When he had gone, she at once told her aunt
+that she would write the letters, and bring that to Mr. Gilmore to be
+read by her when they were finished.
+
+"I would postpone it for awhile, if I were you," said Aunt Sarah.
+
+But Mary declared that any such delay would be unfair to Mr. Gilmore.
+She did write the letters before dinner, and they were as follows:--
+
+
+   MY DEAR MR. GILMORE,
+
+   When last you came down to the Vicarage to see me I
+   promised you, as you may perhaps remember, that if it
+   should come to pass that I should engage myself to any
+   other man, I would at once let you know that it was so. I
+   little thought then that I should so soon be called upon
+   to keep my promise. I will not pretend that the writing of
+   this letter is not very painful to me; but I know that it
+   is my duty to write it, and to put an end to a suspense
+   which you have been good enough to feel on my account. You
+   have, I think, heard the name of my cousin, Captain Walter
+   Marrable, who returned from India two or three months ago.
+   I found him staying here with his uncle, the clergyman,
+   and now I am engaged to be his wife.
+
+   Perhaps it would be better that I should say nothing more
+   than this, and that I should leave myself and my character
+   and name to your future kindness,--or unkindness,--without
+   any attempt to win the former or to decry the latter; but
+   you have been to me ever so good and noble that I cannot
+   bring myself to be so cold and short. I have always felt
+   that your preference for me has been a great honour to
+   me. I have appreciated your esteem most highly, and have
+   valued your approbation more than I have been able to say.
+   If it could be possible that I should in future have your
+   friendship, I should value it more than that of any other
+   person. God bless you, Mr. Gilmore. I shall always hope
+   that you may be happy, and I shall hear with delight any
+   tidings which may seem to show that you are so.
+
+   Pray believe that I am
+   Your most sincere friend,
+
+   MARY LOWTHER.
+
+   I have thought it best to tell Janet Fenwick what I have
+   done.
+
+
+   Loring, Thursday.
+
+   DEAREST JANET,
+
+   I wonder what you will say to my news? But you must not
+   scold me. Pray do not scold me. It could never, never have
+   been as you wanted. I have engaged myself to marry my
+   cousin, Captain Walter Marrable, who is a nephew of Sir
+   Gregory Marrable, and a son of Colonel Marrable. We shall
+   be very poor, having not more than L300 a-year above his
+   pay as a captain; but if he had nothing, I think I should
+   do the same. Do you remember how I used to doubt whether I
+   should ever have that sort of love for a man for which I
+   used to envy you? I don't envy you any longer, and I don't
+   regard Mr. Fenwick as being nearly so divine as I used to
+   do. I have a Jupiter of my own now, and need envy no woman
+   the reality of her love.
+
+   I have written to Mr. Gilmore by the same post as will
+   take this, and have just told him the bare truth. What
+   else could I tell him? I have said something horribly
+   stilted about esteem and friendship, which I would have
+   left out, only that my letter seemed to be heartless
+   without it. He has been to me as good as a man could be;
+   but was it my fault that I could not love him? If you knew
+   how I tried,--how I tried to make believe to myself that I
+   loved him; how I tried to teach myself that that sort of
+   very chill approbation was the nearest approach to love
+   that I could ever reach; and how I did this because you
+   bade me;--if you could understand all this, then you would
+   not scold me. And I did almost believe that it was so. But
+   now--! Oh, dear! how would it have been if I had engaged
+   myself to Mr. Gilmore, and that then Walter Marrable had
+   come to me! I get sick when I think how near I was to
+   saying that I would love a man whom I never could have
+   loved.
+
+   Of course I used to ask myself what I should do with
+   myself. I suppose every woman living has to ask and to
+   answer that question. I used to try to think that it would
+   be well not to think of the outer crust of myself. What
+   did it matter whether things were soft to me or not?
+   I could do my duty. And as this man was good, and a
+   gentleman, and endowed with high qualities and appropriate
+   tastes, why should he not have the wife he wanted? I
+   thought that I could pretend to love him, till, after some
+   fashion, I should love him; but as I think of it now, all
+   this seems to be so horrid! I know now what to do with
+   myself. To be his from head to foot! To feel that nothing
+   done for him would be mean or distasteful! To stand at
+   a washtub and wash his clothes, if it were wanted. Oh,
+   Janet, I used to dread the time in which he would have to
+   put his arm round me and kiss me! I cannot tell you what I
+   feel now about that other he.
+
+   I know well how provoked you will be,--and it will all
+   come of love for me; but you cannot but own that I am
+   right. If you have any justice in you, write to me and
+   tell me that I am right.
+
+   Only that Mr. Gilmore is your great friend, and that,
+   therefore, just at first, Walter will not be your friend,
+   I would tell you more about him,--how handsome he is, how
+   manly, and how clever. And then his voice is like the
+   music of the spheres. You won't feel like being his friend
+   at first, but you must look forward to his being your
+   friend; you must love him--as I do Mr. Fenwick; and you
+   must tell Mr. Fenwick that he must open his heart for the
+   man who is to be my husband. Alas, alas! I fear it will be
+   long before I can go to Bullhampton. How I do wish that he
+   would find some nice wife to suit him!
+
+   Good bye, dearest Janet. If you are really good, you will
+   write me a sweet, kind, loving letter, wishing me joy.
+   You must know all. Aunt Sarah has refused to congratulate
+   me, because the income is so small. Nevertheless, we have
+   not quarrelled. But the income will be nothing to you,
+   and I do look forward to a kind word. When everything is
+   settled, of course I will tell you.
+
+   Your most affectionate friend,
+
+   MARY LOWTHER.
+
+
+The former letter of the two was shown to Miss Marrable. That lady
+was of opinion that it should not be sent; but would not say that, if
+to be sent, it could be altered for the better.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+WHAT PARSON JOHN THINKS ABOUT IT.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+On that same Thursday, the Thursday on which Mary Lowther wrote her
+two despatches to Bullhampton, Miss Marrable sent a note down to
+Parson John, requesting that she might have an interview with him.
+If he were at home and disengaged, she would go down to him that
+evening, or he might, if he pleased, come to her. The former she
+thought would be preferable. Parson John assented, and very soon
+after dinner the private brougham came round from the Dragon, and
+conveyed Miss Marrable down to the rectory at Lowtown.
+
+"I am going down to Parson John," said she to Mary. "I think it best
+to speak to him about the engagement."
+
+Mary received the information with a nod of her head that was
+intended to be gracious, and Aunt Sarah proceeded on her way. She
+found her cousin alone in his study, and immediately opened the
+subject which had brought her down the hill. "Walter, I believe, has
+told you about this engagement, Mr. Marrable."
+
+"Never was so astonished in my life! He told me last night. I had
+begun to think that he was getting very fond of her, but I didn't
+suppose it would come to this."
+
+"Don't you think it very imprudent?"
+
+"Of course it's imprudent, Sarah. It don't require any thinking to
+be aware of that. It's downright stupid;--two cousins with nothing
+a year between them, when no doubt each of them might do very well.
+They're well-born, and well-looking, and clever, and all that. It's
+absurd, and I don't suppose it will ever come to anything."
+
+"Did you tell Walter what you thought?"
+
+"Why should I tell him? He knows what I think without my telling him;
+and he wouldn't care a pinch of snuff for my opinion. I tell you
+because you ask me."
+
+"But ought not something to be done to prevent it?"
+
+"What can we do? I might tell him that I wouldn't have him here
+any more, but I shouldn't like to do that. Perhaps she'll do your
+bidding."
+
+"I fear not, Mr. Marrable."
+
+"Then you may be quite sure he won't do mine. He'll go away and
+forget her. That'll be the end of it. It'll be as good as a year gone
+out of her life, and she'll lose this other lover of hers at--what's
+the name of the place? It's a pity, but that's what she'll have to go
+through."
+
+"Is he so light as that?" asked Aunt Sarah, shocked.
+
+"He's about the same as other men, I take it; and she'll be the same
+as other girls. They like to have their bit of fun now, and there'd
+be no great harm,--only such fun costs the lady so plaguy dear. As
+for their being married, I don't think Walter will ever be such a
+fool as that."
+
+There was something in this that was quite terrible to Aunt Sarah.
+Her Mary Lowther was to be treated in this way;--to be played with
+as a plaything, and then to be turned off when the time for playing
+came to an end! And this little game was to be played for Walter
+Marrable's delectation, though the result of it would be the ruin of
+Mary's prospects in life!
+
+"I think," said she, "that if I believed him to be so base as that, I
+would send him out of the house."
+
+"He does not mean to be base at all. He's just like the rest of 'em,"
+said Parson John.
+
+Aunt Sarah used every argument in her power to show that something
+should be done; but all to no purpose. She thought that if Sir
+Gregory were brought to interfere, that perhaps might have an effect;
+but the old clergyman laughed at this. What did Captain Walter
+Marrable, who had been in the army all his life, and who had no
+special favour to expect from his uncle, care about Sir Gregory? Head
+of the family, indeed! What was the head of the family to him? If
+a girl would be a fool, the girl must take the result of her folly.
+That was Parson John's doctrine,--that and a confirmed assurance
+that this engagement, such as it was, would lead to nothing. He was
+really very sorry for Mary, in whose praise he said ever so many
+good-natured things; but she had not been the first fool, and she
+would not be the last. It was not his business, and he could do no
+good by interfering. At last, however, he did promise that he would
+himself speak to Walter. Nothing would come of it, but, as his cousin
+asked him, he would speak to his nephew.
+
+He waited for four-and-twenty hours before he spoke, and during that
+time was subject to none of those terrors which were now making Miss
+Marrable's life a burden to her. In his opinion it was almost a
+pity that a young fellow like Walter should be interrupted in his
+amusement. According to his view of life, very much wisdom was not
+expected from ladies, young or old. They, for the most part, had
+their bread found for them; and were not required to do anything,
+whether they were rich or poor. Let them be ever so poor, the
+disgrace of poverty did not fall upon them as it did upon men. But
+then, if they would run their heads into trouble, trouble came harder
+upon them than on men; and for that they had nobody to blame but
+themselves. Of course it was a very nice thing to be in love. Verses
+and pretty speeches and easy-spoken romance were pleasant enough in
+their way. Parson John had no doubt tried them himself in early life,
+and had found how far they were efficacious for his own happiness.
+But young women were so apt to want too much of the excitement! A
+young man at Bullhampton was not enough without another young man at
+Loring. That, we fear, was the mode in which Parson John looked at
+the subject,--which mode of looking at it, had he ever ventured to
+explain it to Mary Lowther, would have brought down upon his head
+from that young woman an amount of indignant scorn which would have
+been very disagreeable to Parson John. But then he was a great deal
+too wise to open his mind on such a subject to Mary Lowther.
+
+"I think, sir, I'd better go up and see Curling again next week,"
+said the Captain.
+
+"I dare say. Is anything not going right?"
+
+"I suppose I shall get the money, but I shall like to know when. I am
+very anxious, of course, to fix a day for my marriage."
+
+"I should not be over quick about that, if I were you," said Parson
+John.
+
+"Why not? Situated as I am, I must be quick. I must make up my mind
+at any rate where we're to live."
+
+"You'll go back to your regiment, I suppose, next month?"
+
+"Yes, sir. I shall go back to my regiment next month, unless we may
+make up our minds to go out to India."
+
+"What, you and Mary?"
+
+"Yes, I and Mary."
+
+"As man and wife?" said Parson John, with a smile.
+
+"How else should we go?"
+
+"Well, no. If she goes with you, she must go as Mrs. Captain
+Marrable, of course. But if I were you, I would not think of anything
+so horrible."
+
+"It would be horrible," said Walter Marrable.
+
+"I should think it would. India may be very well when a man is quite
+young, and if he can keep himself from beer and wine; but to go back
+there at your time of life with a wife, and to look forward to a
+dozen children there, must be an unpleasant prospect, I should say."
+
+Walter Marrable sat silent and black.
+
+"I should give up all idea of India," continued his uncle.
+
+"What the deuce is a man to do?" asked the Captain.
+
+The parson shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"I'll tell you what I've been thinking of," said the Captain. "If I
+could get a farm of four or five hundred acres--"
+
+"A farm!" exclaimed the parson.
+
+"Why not a farm? I know that a man can do nothing with a farm unless
+he has capital. He should have L10 or L12 an acre for his land, I
+suppose. I should have that and some trifle of an income besides if
+I sold out. I suppose my uncle would let me have a farm under him?"
+
+"He'd see you--further first."
+
+"Why shouldn't I do as well with a farm as another?"
+
+"Why not turn shoemaker? Because you have not learned the business.
+Farmer, indeed! You'd never get the farm, and if you did, you would
+not keep it for three years. You've been in the army too long to be
+fit for anything else, Walter."
+
+Captain Marrable looked black and angry at being so counselled; but
+he believed what was said to him, and had no answer to make to it.
+
+"You must stick to the army," continued the old man; "and if you'll
+take my advice, you'll do so without the impediment of a wife."
+
+"That's quite out of the question."
+
+"Why is it out of the question?"
+
+"How can you ask me, Uncle John? Would you have me go back from an
+engagement after I have made it?"
+
+"I would have you go back from anything that was silly."
+
+"And tell a girl, after I have asked her to be my wife, that I don't
+want to have anything more to do with her?"
+
+"I should not tell her that; but I should make her understand, both
+for her own sake and for mine, that we had been too fast, and that
+the sooner we gave up our folly the better for both of us. You can't
+marry her, that's the truth of it."
+
+"You'll see if I can't."
+
+"If you choose to wait ten years, you may."
+
+"I won't wait ten months, nor, if I can have my own way, ten weeks."
+What a pity that Mary could not have heard him. "Half the fellows in
+the army are married without anything beyond their pay; and I'm to
+be told that we can't get along with L300 a year? At any rate, we'll
+try."
+
+"Marry in haste, and repent at leisure," said Uncle John.
+
+"According to the doctrines that are going now-a-days," said the
+Captain, "it will be held soon that a gentleman can't marry unless
+he has got L3000 a year. It is the most heartless, damnable teaching
+that ever came up. It spoils the men, and makes women, when they do
+marry, expect ever so many things that they ought never to want."
+
+"And you mean to teach them better, Walter?"
+
+"I mean to act for myself, and not be frightened out of doing what I
+think right, because the world says this and that."
+
+As he so spoke, the angry Captain got up to leave the room.
+
+"All the same," rejoined the parson, firing the last shot; "I'd think
+twice about it, if I were you, before I married Mary Lowther."
+
+"He's more of an ass, and twice as headstrong as I thought him," said
+Parson John to Miss Marrable the next day; "but still I don't think
+it will come to anything. As far as I can observe, three of these
+engagements are broken off for one that goes on. And when he comes to
+look at things he'll get tired of it. He's going up to London next
+week, and I shan't press him to come back. If he does come I can't
+help it. If I were you, I wouldn't ask him up the hill, and I should
+tell Miss Mary a bit of my mind pretty plainly."
+
+Hitherto, as far as words went, Aunt Sarah had told very little of
+her mind to Mary Lowther on the subject of her engagement, but she
+had spoken as yet no word of congratulation; and Mary knew that the
+manner in which she proposed to bestow herself was not received with
+favour by any of her relatives at Loring.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+WHAT THE FENWICKS THOUGHT ABOUT IT.
+
+
+Bullhampton unfortunately was at the end of the postman's walk, and
+as the man came all the way from Lavington, letters were seldom
+received much before eleven o'clock. Now this was a most pernicious
+arrangement, in respect to which Mr. Fenwick carried on a perpetual
+feud with the Post-office authorities, having put forward a great
+postal doctrine that letters ought to be rained from heaven on to
+everybody's breakfast-table exactly as the hot water is brought in
+for tea. He, being an energetic man, carried on a long and angry
+correspondence with the authorities aforesaid; but the old man
+from Lavington continued to toddle into the village just at eleven
+o'clock. It was acknowledged that ten was his time; but, as he argued
+with himself, ten and eleven were pretty much of a muchness. The
+consequence of this was, that Mary Lowther's letters to Mrs. Fenwick
+had been read by her two or three hours before she had an opportunity
+of speaking on the subject to her husband. At last, however, he
+returned, and she flew at him with the letter in her hand. "Frank,"
+she said, "Frank, what do you think has happened?"
+
+"The Bank of England must have stopped, from the look of your face."
+
+"I wish it had, with all my heart, sooner than this. Mary has gone
+and engaged herself to her cousin, Walter Marrable."
+
+"Mary Lowther!"
+
+"Yes; Mary Lowther! Our Mary! And from what I remember hearing about
+him, he is anything but nice."
+
+"He had a lot of money left to him the other day."
+
+"It can't have been much, because Mary owns that they will be very
+poor. Here is her letter. I am so unhappy about it. Don't you
+remember hearing about that Colonel Marrable who was in a horrible
+scrape about somebody's wife?"
+
+"You shouldn't judge the son from the father."
+
+"They've been in the army together, and they're both alike. I hate
+the army. They are almost always no better than they should be."
+
+"That's true, my dear, certainly of all services, unless it be the
+army of martyrs; and there may be a doubt on the subject even as to
+them. May I read it?"
+
+"Oh, yes; she has been half ashamed of herself every word she has
+written. I know her so well. To think that Mary Lowther should have
+engaged herself to any man after two days' acquaintance!"
+
+Mr. Fenwick read the letter through attentively, and then handed it
+back.
+
+"It's a good letter," he said.
+
+"You mean that it's well written?"
+
+"I mean that it's true. There are no touches put in to make effect.
+She does love the one man, and she doesn't love the other. All I can
+say is, that I'm very sorry for it. It will drive Gilmore out of the
+place."
+
+"Do you mean it?"
+
+"I do, indeed. I never knew a man to be at the same time so strong
+and so weak in such a matter. One would say that the intensity of his
+affection would be the best pledge of his future happiness if he were
+to marry the girl; but seeing that he is not to marry her, one cannot
+but feel that a man shouldn't stake his happiness on a thing beyond
+his reach."
+
+"You think it is all up, then;--that she really will marry this man?"
+
+"What else can I think?"
+
+"These things do go off sometimes. There can't be much money,
+because, you see, old Miss Marrable opposes the whole thing on
+account of there not being income enough. She is anything but rich
+herself, and is the last person of all the world to make a fuss about
+money. If it could be broken off--."
+
+"If I understand Mary Lowther," said Mr. Fenwick, "she is not the
+woman to have her match broken off for her by any person. Of course I
+know nothing about the man; but if he is firm, she'll be as firm."
+
+"And then she has written to Mr. Gilmore," said Mrs. Fenwick.
+
+"It's all up with Harry as far as this goes," said Mr. Fenwick.
+
+The Vicar had another matter of moment to discuss with his wife. Sam
+Brattle, after having remained hard at work at the mill for nearly a
+fortnight,--so hard at work as to induce his father to declare that
+he'd bet a guinea there wasn't a man in the three parishes who could
+come nigh his Sam for a right down day's work;--after all this,
+Sam had disappeared, had been gone for two days, and was said by
+the constable to have been seen at night on the Devizes side, from
+whence was supposed to come the Grinder, and all manner of Grinder's
+iniquities. Up to this time no further arrest had been made on
+account of Mr. Trumbull's murder, nor had any trace been found of the
+Grinder, or of that other man who had been his companion. The leading
+policeman, who still had charge of the case, expressed himself as
+sure that the old woman at Pycroft Common knew nothing of her son's
+whereabouts; but he had always declared, and still continued to
+declare, that Sam Brattle could tell them the whole story of the
+murder if he pleased, and there had been a certain amount of watching
+kept on the young man, much to his own disgust, and to that of his
+father. Sam had sworn aloud in the village--so much aloud that he had
+shown his determination to be heard by all men--that he would go to
+America, and see whether anyone would dare to stop him. He had been
+told of his bail, and had replied that he would demand to be relieved
+of his bail;--that his bail was illegal, and that he would have it
+all tried in a court of law. Mr. Fenwick had heard of this, and had
+replied that as far as he was concerned he was not in the least
+afraid. He believed that the bail was illegal, and he believed also
+that Sam would stay where he was. But now Sam was gone, and the
+Bullhampton constable was clearly of opinion that he had gone to join
+the Grinder. "At any rate, he's off somewhere," said Mr. Fenwick,
+"and his mother doesn't know where he's gone. Old Brattle, of course,
+won't say a word."
+
+"And will it hurt you?"
+
+"Not unless they get hold of those other fellows and require Sam's
+appearance. I don't doubt but that he'd turn up in that case."
+
+"Then it does not signify?"
+
+"It signifies for him. I've an idea that I know where he's gone, and
+I think I shall go after him."
+
+"Is it far, Frank?"
+
+"Something short of Australia, luckily."
+
+"Oh, Frank!"
+
+"I'll tell you the truth. It's my belief that Carry Brattle is living
+about twenty miles off, and that he's gone to see his sister."
+
+"Carry Brattle!--down here!"
+
+"I don't know it, and I don't want to hear it mentioned; but I fancy
+it is so. At any rate, I shall go and see."
+
+"Poor, dear, bright little Carry! But how is she living, Frank?"
+
+"She's not one of the army of martyrs, you may be sure. I daresay
+she's no better than she should be."
+
+"You'll tell me if you see her?"
+
+"Oh, yes."
+
+"Shall I send her anything?"
+
+"The only thing to send her is money. If she is in want, I'll relieve
+her,--with a very sparing hand."
+
+"Will you bring her back,--here?"
+
+"Ah, who can say? I should tell her mother, and I suppose we should
+have to ask her father to receive her. I know what his answer will
+be."
+
+"He'll refuse to see her."
+
+"No doubt. Then we should have to put our heads together, and the
+chances are that the poor girl will be off in the meantime,--back to
+London and the Devil. It is not easy to set crooked things straight."
+
+In spite, however, of this interruption, Mary Lowther and her
+engagement to Captain Marrable was the subject of greatest interest
+at the Vicarage that day and through the night. Mrs. Fenwick half
+expected that Gilmore would come down in the evening; but the Vicar
+declared that his friend would be unwilling to show himself after the
+blow which he would have received. They knew that he would know that
+they had received the news, and that therefore he could not come
+either to tell it, or with the intention of asking questions without
+telling it. If he came at all, he must come like a beaten cur with
+his tail between his legs. And then there arose the question whether
+it would not be better that Mary's letter should be answered before
+Mr. Gilmore was seen. Mrs. Fenwick, whose fingers were itching for
+pen and paper, declared at last that she would write at once; and did
+write, as follows, before she went to bed:--
+
+
+   The Vicarage, Friday.
+
+   DEAREST MARY,
+
+   I do not know how to answer your letter. You tell me to
+   write pleasantly, and to congratulate you; but how is one
+   to do that so utterly in opposition to one's own interests
+   and wishes? Oh dear, oh dear! how I do so wish you had
+   stayed at Bullhampton! I know you will be angry with me
+   for saying so, but how can I say anything else? I cannot
+   picture you to myself going about from town to town and
+   living in country-quarters. And as I never saw Captain
+   Marrable, to the best of my belief, I cannot interest
+   myself about him as I do about one whom I know and love
+   and esteem. I feel that this is not a nice way of writing
+   to you, and indeed I would be nice if I could. Of course
+   I wish you to be full of joy;--of course I wish with all
+   my heart that you may be happy if you marry your cousin;
+   but the thing has come so suddenly that we cannot bring
+   ourselves to look upon it as a reality.
+
+
+"You should speak for yourself, Janet," said Mr. Fenwick, when he
+came to this part of the letter. He did not, however, require that
+the sentence should be altered.
+
+
+   You talk so much of doing what is right! Nobody has ever
+   doubted that you were right both in morals and sentiment.
+   The only regret has been that such a course should be
+   right, and that the other thing should be wrong. Poor man!
+   we have not seen him yet, nor heard from him. Frank says
+   that he will take it very badly. I suppose that men do
+   always get over that kind of thing much quicker than women
+   do. Many women never can get over it at all; and Harry
+   Gilmore, though there is so little about him that seems to
+   be soft, is in this respect more like a woman than a man.
+   Had he been otherwise, and had only half cared for you,
+   and asked you to be his wife as though your taking him
+   were a thing he didn't much care about, and were quite
+   a matter of course, I believe you would have been up at
+   Hampton Privets this moment, instead of going soldiering
+   with a captain.
+
+   Frank bids me send you his kindest love and his best
+   wishes for your happiness. Those are his very words, and
+   they seem to be kinder than mine. Of course you have my
+   love and my best wishes; but I do not know how to write as
+   though I could rejoice with you. Your husband will always
+   be dear to us, whoever he may be, if he be good to you.
+   At present I feel very, very angry with Captain Marrable;
+   as though I wish he had had his head blown off in battle.
+   However, if he is to be the happy man, I will open my
+   heart to him;--that is, if he be good.
+
+   I know this is not nice, but I cannot make it nicer now.
+   God bless you, dearest Mary.
+
+   Ever your most affectionate friend,
+
+   JANET FENWICK.
+
+
+The letter was not posted till the hour for despatch on the following
+day; but, up to that hour, nothing had been seen at the Vicarage of
+Mr. Gilmore.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+WHAT MR. GILMORE THOUGHT ABOUT IT.
+
+
+Mr. Gilmore was standing on the doorsteps of his own house when
+Mary's letter was brought to him. It was a modest-sized country
+gentleman's residence, built of variegated uneven stones, black and
+grey and white, which seemed to be chiefly flint; but the corners
+and settings of the windows and of the door-ways, and the chimneys,
+were of brick. There was something sombre about it, and many perhaps
+might call it dull of aspect; but it was substantial, comfortable,
+and unassuming. It was entered by broad stone steps, with iron
+balustrades curving outwards as they descended, and there was an open
+area round the house, showing that the offices were in the basement.
+In these days it was a quiet house enough, as Mr. Gilmore was a man
+not much given to the loudness of bachelor parties. He entertained
+his neighbours at dinner perhaps once a month, and occasionally
+had a few guests staying with him. His uncle, the prebendary from
+Salisbury, was often with him, and occasionally a brother who was in
+the army. For the present, however, he was much more inclined, when
+in want of society, to walk off to the Vicarage than to provide it
+for himself at home. When Mary's letter was handed to him with his
+"Times" and other correspondence, he looked, as everybody does, at
+the address, and at once knew that it came from Mary Lowther. He
+had never hitherto received a letter from her, but yet he knew her
+handwriting well. Without waiting a moment, he turned upon his heel,
+and went back into his house, and through the hall to the library.
+When there, he first opened three other letters, two from tradesmen
+in London, and one from his uncle, offering to come to him on the
+next Monday. Then he opened the "Times," and cut it, and put it down
+on the table. Mary's letter meanwhile was in his hand, and anyone
+standing by might have thought that he had forgotten it. But he
+had not forgotten it, nor was it out of his mind for a moment.
+While looking at the other letters, while cutting the paper, while
+attempting, as he did, to read the news, he was suffering under the
+dread of the blow that was coming. He was there for twenty minutes
+before he dared to break the envelope; and though during the whole of
+that time he pretended to deceive himself by some employment, he knew
+that he was simply postponing an evil thing that was coming to him.
+At last he cut the letter open, and stood for some moments looking
+for courage to read it. He did read it, and then sat himself down in
+his chair, telling himself that the thing was over, and that he would
+bear it as a man. He took up his newspaper, and began to study it. It
+was the time of the year when newspapers are not very interesting,
+but he made a rush at the leading articles, and went through two of
+them. Then he turned over to the police reports. He sat there for an
+hour, and read hard during the whole time. Then he got up and shook
+himself, and knew that he was a crippled man, with every function out
+of order, disabled in every limb. He walked from the library into the
+hall, and thence to the dining-room, and so, backwards and forwards,
+for a quarter of an hour. At last he could walk no longer, and,
+closing the door of the library behind him, he threw himself on a
+sofa and cried like a woman.
+
+What was it that he wanted, and why did he want it? Were there not
+other women whom the world would say were as good? Was it ever known
+that a man had died, or become irretrievably broken and destroyed by
+disappointed love? Was it not one of those things that a man should
+shake off from him, and have done with it? He asked himself these,
+and many such-like questions, and tried to philosophise with himself
+on the matter. Had he no will of his own, by which he might conquer
+this enemy? No; he had no will of his own, and the enemy would not be
+conquered. He had to tell himself that he was so poor a thing that he
+could not stand up against the evil that had fallen on him.
+
+He walked out round his shrubberies and paddocks, and tried to take
+an interest in the bullocks and the horses. He knew that if every
+bullock and horse about the place had been struck dead it would not
+enhance his misery. He had not had much hope before, but now he would
+have seen the house of Hampton Privets in flames, just for the chance
+that had been his yesterday. It was not only that he wanted her, or
+that he regretted the absence of some recognised joys which she would
+have brought to him; but that the final decision on her part seemed
+to take from him all vitality, all power of enjoyment, all that
+inward elasticity which is necessary for an interest in worldly
+affairs.
+
+He had as yet hardly thought of anything but himself;--had hardly
+observed the name of his successful rival, or paid any attention to
+aught but the fact that she had told him that it was all over. He
+had not attempted to make up his mind whether anything could still
+be done, whether he might yet have a chance, whether it would be
+well for him to quarrel with the man; whether he should be indignant
+with her, or remonstrate once again in regard to her cruelty. He had
+thought only of the blow, and of his inability to support it. Would
+it not be best that he should go forth, and blow out his brains, and
+have done with it?
+
+He did not look at the letter again till he had returned to the
+library. Then he took it from his pocket, and read it very carefully.
+Yes, she had been quick about it. Why; how long had it been since she
+had left their parish? It was still October, and she had been there
+just before the murder--only the other day! Captain Walter Marrable!
+No; he didn't think he had ever heard of him. Some fellow with a
+moustache and a military strut--just the man that he had always
+hated; one of a class which, with nothing real to recommend it, is
+always interfering with the happiness of everybody. It was in some
+such light as this that Mr. Gilmore at present regarded Captain
+Marrable. How could such a man make a woman happy,--a fellow who
+probably had no house nor home in which to make her comfortable?
+Staying with his uncle the clergyman! Poor Gilmore expressed a
+wish that the uncle the clergyman had been choked before he had
+entertained such a guest. Then he read the concluding sentence of
+poor Mary's letter, in which she expressed a hope that they might be
+friends. Was there ever such cold-blooded trash? Friends indeed! What
+sort of friendship could there be between two persons, one of whom
+had made the other so wretched,--so dead as was he at present!
+
+For some half-hour he tried to comfort himself with an idea that he
+could get hold of Captain Marrable and maul him; that it would be a
+thing permissible for him, a magistrate, to go forth with a whip and
+flog the man, and then perhaps shoot him, because the man had been
+fortunate in love where he had been unfortunate. But he knew the
+world in which he lived too well to allow himself long to think that
+this could really be done. It might be that it would be a better
+world were such revenge practicable in it; but, as he well knew, it
+was not practicable now, and if Mary Lowther chose to give herself to
+this accursed Captain, he could not help it. There was nothing that
+he could do but to go away and chafe at his suffering in some part of
+the world in which nobody would know that he was chafing.
+
+When the evening came, and he found that his solitude was terribly
+oppressive to him, he thought that he would go down to the Vicarage.
+He had been told by that false one that her tidings had been sent to
+her friend. He took his hat and sauntered out across the fields, and
+did walk as far as the churchyard gate close to poor Mr. Trumbull's
+farm, the very spot on which he had last seen Mary Lowther; but when
+he was there he could not endure to go through to the Vicarage. There
+is something mean to a man in the want of success in love. If a
+man lose a venture of money he can tell his friend; or if he be
+unsuccessful in trying for a seat in parliament; or be thrown out of
+a run in the hunting-field; or even if he be blackballed for a club;
+but a man can hardly bring himself to tell his dearest comrade that
+his Mary has preferred another man to himself. This wretched fact
+the Fenwicks already knew as to poor Gilmore's Mary; and yet, though
+he had come down there, hoping for some comfort, he did not dare to
+face them. He went back all alone, and tumbled and tossed and fretted
+through the miserable night.
+
+And the next morning was as bad. He hung about the place till about
+four, utterly crushed by his burden. It was a Saturday, and when the
+postman called no letter had yet been even written in answer to his
+uncle's proposition. He was moping about the grounds, with his hands
+in his pockets, thinking of this, when suddenly Mrs. Fenwick appeared
+in the path before him. There had been another consultation that
+morning between herself and her husband, and this visit was the
+result of it. He dashed at the matter immediately.
+
+"You have come," he said, "to talk to me about Mary Lowther."
+
+"I have come to say a word, if I can, to comfort you. Frank bade me
+to come."
+
+
+[Illustration: "I have come to say a word, if I can, to
+comfort you."]
+
+
+"There isn't any comfort," he replied.
+
+"We knew that it would be hard to bear, my friend," she said, putting
+her hand within his arm; "but there is comfort."
+
+"There can be none for me. I had set my heart upon it so that I
+cannot forget it."
+
+"I know you had, and so had we. Of course there will be sorrow, but
+it will wear off." He shook his head without speaking. "God is too
+good," she continued, "to let such troubles remain with us long."
+
+"You think, then," he said, "that there is no chance?"
+
+What could she say to him? How, under the circumstances of Mary's
+engagement, could she encourage his love for her friend?
+
+"I know that there is none," he continued. "I feel, Mrs. Fenwick,
+that I do not know what to do with myself or how to hold myself. Of
+course it is nonsense to talk about dying, but I do feel as though if
+I didn't die I should go crazy. I can't settle my mind to a single
+thing."
+
+"It is fresh with you yet, Harry," she said. She had never called him
+Harry before, though her husband did so always, and now she used the
+name in sheer tenderness.
+
+"I don't know why such a thing should be different with me than with
+other people," he said; "only perhaps I am weaker. But I've known
+from the very first that I have staked everything upon her. I have
+never questioned to myself that I was going for all or nothing.
+I have seen it before me all along, and now it has come. Oh, Mrs.
+Fenwick, if God would strike me dead this moment, it would be a
+mercy!" And then he threw himself on the ground at her feet. He was
+not there a moment before he was up again. "If you knew how I despise
+myself for all this, how I hate myself!"
+
+She would not leave him, but stayed there till he consented to come
+down with her to the Vicarage. He should dine there, and Frank
+should walk back with him at night. As to that question of Mr.
+Chamberlaine's visit, respecting which Mrs. Fenwick did not feel
+herself competent to give advice herself, it should become matter of
+debate between them and Frank, and then a man and horse could be sent
+to Salisbury on Sunday morning. As he walked down to the Vicarage
+with that pretty woman at his elbow, things perhaps were a little
+better with him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+THE REV. HENRY FITZACKERLEY CHAMBERLAINE.
+
+
+It was decided that evening at the Vicarage that it would be better
+for all parties that the reverend uncle from Salisbury should be told
+to make his visit, and spend the next week at Hampton Privets; that
+is, that he should come on the Monday and stay till the Saturday.
+The letter was written down at the Vicarage, as Fenwick feared that
+it would never be written if the writing of it were left to the
+unassisted energy of the Squire. The letter was written, and the
+Vicar, who walked back to Hampton Privets with his friend, took care
+that it was given to a servant on that night.
+
+On the Sunday nothing was seen of Mr. Gilmore. He did not come to
+church, nor would he dine at the Vicarage. He remained the whole day
+in his own house, pretending to write, trying to read, with accounts
+before him, with a magazine in his hand, even with a volume of
+sermons open on the table before him. But neither the accounts, nor
+the magazines, nor the sermons, could arrest his attention for a
+moment. He had staked everything on obtaining a certain object, and
+that object was now beyond his reach. Men fail often in other things,
+in the pursuit of honour, fortune, or power, and when they fail they
+can begin again. There was no beginning again for him. When Mary
+Lowther should have married this captain, she would be a thing lost
+to him for ever;--and was she not as bad as married to this man
+already? He could do nothing to stop her marriage.
+
+Early in the afternoon of Monday the Rev. Henry Fitzackerley
+Chamberlaine reached Hampton Privets. He came with his own carriage
+and a pair of post-horses, as befitted a prebendary of the good
+old times. Not that Mr. Chamberlaine was a very old man, but that
+it suited his tastes and tone of mind to adhere to the well-bred
+ceremonies of life, so many of which went out of fashion when
+railroads came in. Mr. Chamberlaine was a gentleman of about
+fifty-five years of age, unmarried, possessed of a comfortable
+private independence, the incumbent of a living in the fens of
+Cambridgeshire, which he never visited,--his health forbidding him
+to do so,--on which subject there had been a considerable amount of
+correspondence between him and a certain right rev. prelate, in which
+the prebendary had so far got the better in the argument as not to be
+disturbed in his manner of life; and he was, as has been before said,
+the owner of a stall in Salisbury Cathedral. His lines had certainly
+fallen to him in very pleasant places. As to that living in the
+fens, there was not much to prick his conscience, as he gave up the
+parsonage house and two-thirds of the income to his curate, expending
+the other third on local charities. Perhaps the argument which
+had most weight in silencing the bishop was contained in a short
+postscript to one of his letters. "By-the-by," said the postscript,
+"perhaps I ought to inform your lordship that I have never drawn
+a penny of income out of Hardbedloe since I ceased to live there."
+"It's a bishop's living," said the happy holder of it, "to one or two
+clerical friends, and Dr. ---- thinks the patronage would be better
+in his hands than in mine. I disagree with him, and he'll have to
+write a great many letters before he succeeds." But his stall was
+worth L800 a year and a house, and Mr. Chamberlaine, in regard to his
+money matters, was quite in clover.
+
+He was a very handsome man, about six feet high, with large light
+grey eyes, a straight nose, and a well cut chin. His lips were thin,
+but his teeth were perfect,--only that they had been supplied by a
+dentist. His grey hair encircled his head, coming round upon his
+forehead in little wavy curls, in a manner that had conquered the
+hearts of spinsters by the dozen in the cathedral. It was whispered,
+indeed, that married ladies would sometimes succumb, and rave about
+the beauty, and the dignity, and the white hands, and the deep
+rolling voice of the Rev. Henry Fitzackerley Chamberlaine. Indeed,
+his voice was very fine when it would be heard from the far-off end
+of the choir during the communion service, altogether trumping the
+exertion of the other second-rate clergyman who would be associated
+with him at the altar. And he had, too, great gifts of preaching,
+which he would exercise once a week during thirteen weeks of the
+year. He never exceeded twenty-five minutes; every word was audible
+throughout the whole choir, and there was a grace about it that was
+better than any doctrine. When he was to be heard the cathedral was
+always full, and he was perhaps justified in regarding himself as one
+of the ecclesiastical stars of the day. Many applications were made
+to him to preach here and there, but he always refused. Stories
+were told of how he had declined to preach before the Queen at
+St. James's, averring that if Her Majesty would please to visit
+Salisbury, every accommodation should be provided for her. As to
+preaching at Whitehall, Westminster, and St. Paul's, it was not
+doubted that he had over and over again declared that his appointed
+place was in his own stall, and that he did not consider that he was
+called to holding forth in the market-place. He was usually abroad
+during the early autumn months, and would make sundry prolonged
+visits to friends; but his only home was his prebendal residence in
+the Close. It was not much of a house to look at from the outside,
+being built with the plainest possible construction of brick; but
+within it was very pleasant. All that curtains, and carpets, and
+armchairs, and books, and ornaments could do, had been done lavishly,
+and the cellar was known to be the best in the city. He always used
+post-horses, but he had his own carriage. He never talked very much,
+but when he did speak people listened to him. His appetite was
+excellent, but he was a feeder not very easy to please; it was
+understood well by the ladies of Salisbury that if Mr. Chamberlaine
+was expected to dinner, something special must be done in the way of
+entertainment. He was always exceedingly well dressed. What he did
+with his hours nobody knew, but he was supposed to be a man well
+educated at all points. That he was such a judge of all works of
+art, that not another like him was to be found in Wiltshire, nobody
+doubted. It was considered that he was almost as big as the bishop,
+and not a soul in Salisbury would have thought of comparing the dean
+to him. But the dean had seven children, and Mr. Chamberlaine was
+quite unencumbered.
+
+Henry Gilmore was a little afraid of his uncle, but would always
+declare that he was not so. "If he chooses to come over here he is
+welcome," the nephew would say; "but he must live just as I do."
+Nevertheless, though there was but little left of the '47 Lafitte in
+the cellar of Hampton Privets, a bottle was always brought up when
+Mr. Chamberlaine was there, and Mrs. Bunker, the cook, did not
+pretend but that she was in a state of dismay from the hour of his
+coming to that of his going. And yet, Mrs. Bunker and the other
+servants liked him to be there. His presence honoured the Privets.
+Even the boy who blacked his boots felt that he was blacking the
+boots of a great man. It was acknowledged throughout the household
+that the Squire having such an uncle, was more of a Squire than he
+would have been without him. The clergyman, being such as he was, was
+greater than the country gentleman. And yet Mr. Chamberlaine was only
+a prebendary, was the son of a country clergyman who had happened
+to marry a wife with money, and had absolutely never done anything
+useful in the whole course of his life. It is often very curious to
+trace the sources of greatness. With Mr. Chamberlaine, I think it
+came from the whiteness of his hands, and from a certain knack he
+had of looking as though he could say a great deal, though it suited
+him better to be silent, and say nothing. Of outside deportment, no
+doubt, he was a master.
+
+Mr. Fenwick always declared that he was very fond of Mr.
+Chamberlaine, and greatly admired him. "He is the most perfect
+philosopher I ever met," Fenwick would say, "and has gone to the very
+centre depth of contemplation. In another ten years he will be the
+great Akinetos. He will eat and drink, and listen, and be at ease,
+and desire nothing. As it is, no man that I know disturbs other
+people so little." On the other hand, Mr. Chamberlaine did not
+profess any great admiration for Mr. Fenwick, who he designated
+as one of the smart "windbag tribe, clever, no doubt, and perhaps
+conscientious, but shallow and perhaps a little conceited." The
+Squire, who was not clever and not conceited, understood them both,
+and much preferred his friend the Vicar to his uncle the prebendary.
+
+Gilmore had once consulted his uncle,--once in an evil moment, as
+he now felt,--whether it would not be well for him to marry Miss
+Lowther. The uncle had expressed himself as very adverse to the
+marriage, and would now, on this occasion, be sure to ask some
+question about it. When the great man arrived the Squire was out,
+still wandering round among the bullocks and sheep; but the evening
+after dinner would be very long. On the following day Mr. and Mrs.
+Fenwick, with Mr. and Mrs. Greenthorne, were to dine at the Privets.
+If this first evening were only through, Gilmore thought that
+he could get some comfort, even from his uncle. As he came near
+the house, he went into the yard, and saw the Prebendary's grand
+carriage, which was being washed. No; as far as the groom knew, Mr.
+Chamberlaine had not gone out; but was in the house then. So Gilmore
+entered, and found his uncle in the library.
+
+His first questions were about the murder. "You did catch one man,
+and let him go?" said the Prebendary.
+
+"Yes; a tenant of mine; but there was no evidence against him. He was
+not the man."
+
+"I would not have let him go," said Mr. Chamberlaine.
+
+"You would not have kept a man that was innocent?" said Gilmore.
+
+"I would not have let the young man go."
+
+"But the law would not support us in detaining him."
+
+"Nevertheless, I would not have let him go," said Mr. Chamberlaine.
+"I heard all about it."
+
+"From whom did you hear?"
+
+"From Lord Trowbridge. I certainly would not have let him go." It
+appeared, however, that Lord Trowbridge's opinion had been given to
+the Prebendary prior to that fatal meeting which had taken place in
+the house of the murdered man.
+
+The uncle drank his claret in silence on this evening. He said
+nothing, at least, about Mary Lowther.
+
+"I don't know where you got it, Harry, but that is not a bad glass of
+wine."
+
+"We think there's none better in the country, sir," said Harry.
+
+"I should be very sorry to commit myself so far; but it is a good
+glass of wine. By the bye, I hope your chef has learned to make a
+cup of coffee since I was here in the spring. I think we will try it
+now." The coffee was brought, and the Prebendary shook his head,--the
+least shake in the world,--and smiled blandly.
+
+"Coffee is the very devil in the country," said Harry Gilmore, who
+did not dare to say that the mixture was good in opposition to his
+uncle's opinion.
+
+After the coffee, which was served in the library, the two men sat
+silent together for half an hour, and Gilmore was endeavouring to
+think what it was that made his uncle come to Bullhampton. At last,
+before he had arrived at any decision on this subject, there came
+first a little nod, then a start and a sweet smile, then another nod
+and a start without the smile, and, after that, a soft murmuring of a
+musical snore, which gradually increased in deepness till it became
+evident that the Prebendary was extremely happy. Then it occurred to
+Gilmore that perhaps Mr. Chamberlaine might become tired of going to
+sleep in his own house, and that he had come to the Privets, as he
+could not do so with comfortable self-satisfaction in the houses
+of indifferent friends. For the benefit of such a change it might
+perhaps be worth the great man's while to undergo the penalty of a
+bad cup of coffee.
+
+And could not he, too, go to sleep,--he, Gilmore? Could he not fall
+asleep,--not only for a few moments on such an occasion as this,--but
+altogether, after the Akinetos fashion, as explained by his friend
+Fenwick? Could he not become an immoveable one, as was this divine
+uncle of his? No Mary Lowther had ever disturbed that man's
+happiness. A good dinner, a pretty ring, an easy chair, a china
+tea-cup, might all be procured with certainty, as long as money
+lasted. Here was a man before him superbly comfortable, absolutely
+happy, with no greater suffering than what might come to him from a
+chance cup of bad coffee, while he, Harry Gilmore himself, was as
+miserable a devil as might be found between the four seas, because a
+certain young woman wouldn't come to him and take half of all that he
+owned! If there were any curative philosophy to be found, why could
+not he find it? The world might say that the philosophy was a low
+philosophy; but what did that matter, if it would take away out
+of his breast that horrid load which was more than he could bear?
+He declared to himself that he would sell his heart with all its
+privileges for half-a-farthing, if he could find anybody to take it
+with all its burden. Here, then, was a man who had no burden. He was
+snoring with almost harmonious cadence,--slowly, discreetly,--one
+might say, artistically, quite like a gentleman; and the man who so
+snored could not but be happy. "Oh, d----n it!" said Gilmore, in a
+private whisper, getting up and leaving the room; but there was more
+of envy than of anger in the exclamation.
+
+"Ah! you've been out," said Mr. Chamberlaine, when his nephew
+returned.
+
+"Been to look at the horses made up."
+
+"I never can see the use of that; but I believe a great many men
+do it. I suppose it's an excuse for smoking generally." Now, Mr.
+Chamberlaine did not smoke.
+
+"Well; I did light my pipe."
+
+"There's not the slightest necessity for telling me so, Harry. Let us
+see if Mrs. Bunker's tea is better than her coffee." Then the bell
+was rung, and Mr. Chamberlaine desired that he might have a cup of
+black tea, not strong, but made with a good deal of tea, and poured
+out rapidly, without much decoction. "If it be strong and harsh I
+can't sleep a wink," he said. The tea was brought, and sipped very
+leisurely. There was then a word or two said about certain German
+baths from which Mr. Chamberlaine had just returned; and Mr. Gilmore
+began to believe that he should not be asked to say anything about
+Mary Lowther that night.
+
+But the Fates were not so kind. The Prebendary had arisen with the
+intention of retiring for the night, and was already standing before
+the fire, with his bedroom candle in his hand, when something,--the
+happiness probably of his own position in life, which allowed him to
+seek the blessings of an undivided couch,--brought to his memory the
+fact that his nephew had spoken to him about some young woman, some
+young woman who had possessed not even the merit of a dowry.
+
+"By the bye," said he, "what has become of that flame of yours,
+Harry?" Harry Gilmore became black and glum. He did not like to hear
+Mary spoken of as a flame. He was standing at this moment with his
+back to his uncle, and so remained, without answering him. "Do you
+mean to say that you did not ask her, after all?" asked the uncle.
+"If there be any scrape, Harry, you had better let me hear it."
+
+"I don't know what you call a scrape," said Harry. "She's not going
+to marry me."
+
+"Thank God, my boy!" Gilmore turned round, but his uncle did
+not probably see his face. "I can assure you," continued Mr.
+Chamberlaine, "that the idea made me quite uncomfortable. I set some
+inquiries on foot, and she was not the sort of girl that you should
+marry."
+
+"By G----," said Gilmore, "I'd give every acre I have in the world,
+and every shilling, and every friend, and twenty years of my life, if
+I could only be allowed at this moment to think it possible that she
+would ever marry me!"
+
+"Good heavens!" said Mr. Chamberlaine. While he was saying it, Harry
+Gilmore walked off, and did not show himself to his uncle again that
+night.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+CARRY BRATTLE.
+
+
+On the day after the dinner-party at Hampton Privets Mr. Fenwick made
+his little excursion out in the direction towards Devizes, of which
+he had spoken to his wife. The dinner had gone off very quietly, and
+there was considerable improvement in the coffee. There was some
+gentle sparring between the two clergymen, if that can be called
+sparring in which all the active pugnacity was on one side. Mr.
+Fenwick endeavoured to entrap Mr. Chamberlaine into arguments, but
+the Prebendary escaped with a degree of skill,--without the shame of
+sullen refusal,--that excited the admiration of Mr. Fenwick's wife.
+"After all, he is a clever man," she said, as she went home, "or he
+could never slip about as he does, like an eel, and that with so very
+little motion."
+
+On the next morning the Vicar started alone in his gig. He had
+at first said that he would take with him a nondescript boy, who
+was partly groom, partly gardener, and partly shoeblack, and who
+consequently did half the work of the house; but at last he decided
+that he would go alone. "Peter is very silent, and most meritoriously
+uninterested in everything," he said to his wife. "He wouldn't tell
+much, but even he might tell something." So he got himself into
+his gig, and drove off alone. He took the Devizes road, and passed
+through Lavington without asking a question; but when he was half way
+between that place and Devizes, he stopped his horse at a lane that
+led away to the right. He had been on the road before, but he did
+not know that lane. He waited awhile till an old woman whom he saw
+coming to him, reached him, and asked her whether the lane would take
+him across to the Marlborough Road. The old woman knew nothing of
+the Marlborough Road, and looked as though she had never heard of
+Marlborough. Then he asked the way to Pycroft Common. Yes; the lane
+would take him to Pycroft Common. Would it take him to the Bald-faced
+Stag? The old woman said it would take him to Rump End Corner,
+"but she didn't know nowt o' t'other place." He took the lane,
+however, and without much difficulty made his way to the Bald-faced
+Stag,--which, in the days of the glory of that branch of the Western
+Road, used to supply beer to at least a dozen coaches a-day, but
+which now, alas! could slake no drowth but that of the rural
+aborigines. At the Bald-faced Stag, however, he found that he could
+get a feed of corn, and here he put up his horse,--and saw the corn
+eaten.
+
+Pycroft Common was a mile from him, and to Pycroft Common he walked.
+He took the road towards Marlborough for half a mile, and then broke
+off across the open ground to the left. There was no difficulty in
+finding this place, and now it was his object to discover the cottage
+of Mrs. Burrows without asking the neighbours for her by name. He had
+obtained a certain amount of information, and thought that he could
+act on it. He walked on to the middle of the common, and looked for
+his points of bearing. There was the beer-house, and there was the
+lane that led away to Pewsey, and there were the two brick cottages
+standing together. Mrs. Burrows lived in the little white cottage
+just behind. He walked straight up to the door, between the
+sunflowers and the rose-bush, and, pausing for a few moments to think
+whether or no he would enter the cottage unannounced, knocked at the
+door. A policeman would have entered without doing so,--and so would
+a poacher knock over a hare on its form; but whatever creature a
+gentleman or a sportsman be hunting, he will always give it a chance.
+He rapped, and immediately heard that there were sounds within. He
+rapped again, and in about a minute was told to enter. Then he opened
+the door, and found but one person within. It was a young woman, and
+he stood for a moment looking at her before he spoke.
+
+"Carry Brattle," he said, "I am glad that I have found you."
+
+"Laws, Mr. Fenwick!"
+
+"Carry, I am so glad to see you;"--and then he put out his hand to
+her.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Fenwick, I ain't fit for the likes of you to touch," she
+said. But as his hand was still stretched out she put her own into
+it, and he held it in his grasp for a few seconds. She was a poor,
+sickly-looking thing now, but there were the remains of great beauty
+in the face,--or rather, the presence of beauty, but of beauty
+obscured by flushes of riotous living and periods of want, by
+ill-health, harsh usage, and, worst of all, by the sharp agonies of
+an intermittent conscience. It was a pale, gentle face, on which
+there were still streaks of pink,--a soft, laughing face it had been
+once, and still there was a gleam of light in the eyes that told of
+past merriment, and almost promised mirth to come, if only some great
+evil might be cured. Her long flaxen curls still hung down her face,
+but they were larger, and, as Fenwick thought, more tawdry than of
+yore; and her cheeks were thin, and her eyes were hollow; and then
+there had come across her mouth that look of boldness which the use
+of bad, sharp words, half-wicked and half-witty, will always give.
+She was dressed decently, and was sitting in a low chair, with a
+torn, disreputable-looking old novel in her hand. Fenwick knew that
+the book had been taken up on the spur of the moment, as there had
+certainly been someone there when he had knocked at the door.
+
+And yet, though vice had laid its heavy hand upon her, the glory
+and the brightness, and the sweet outward flavour of innocence, had
+not altogether departed from her. Though her mouth was bold, her
+eyes were soft and womanly, and she looked up into the face of the
+clergyman with a gentle, tamed, beseeching gaze, which softened and
+won his heart at once. Not that his heart had ever been hard against
+her. Perhaps it was a fault with him that he never hardened his heart
+against a sinner, unless the sin implied pretence and falsehood.
+At this moment, remembering the little Carry Brattle of old, who
+had sometimes been so sweetly obedient, and sometimes so wilful,
+under his hands, whom he had petted, and caressed, and scolded, and
+loved,--whom he had loved undoubtedly in part because she had been so
+pretty,--whom he had hoped that he might live to marry to some good
+farmer, in whose kitchen he would ever be welcome, and whose children
+he would christen;--remembering all this, he would now, at this
+moment, have taken her in his arms and embraced her, if he dared,
+showing her that he did not account her to be vile, begging her to
+become more good, and planning some course for her future life.
+
+"I have come across from Bullhampton, Carry, to find you," he said.
+
+"It's a poor place you're come to, Mr. Fenwick. I suppose the police
+told you of my being here?"
+
+"I had heard of it. Tell me, Carry, what do you know of Sam?"
+
+"Of Sam?"
+
+"Yes--of Sam. Don't tell me an untruth. You need tell me nothing, you
+know, unless you like. I don't come to ask as having any authority,
+only as a friend of his, and of yours."
+
+She paused a moment before she replied. "Sam hasn't done any harm to
+nobody," she said.
+
+"I don't say he has. I only want to know where he is. You can
+understand, Carry, that it would be best that he should be at home."
+
+She paused again, and then she blurted out her answer. "He went out
+o' that back door, Mr. Fenwick, when you came in at t'other." The
+Vicar immediately went to the back door, but Sam, of course, was not
+to be seen.
+
+"Why should he be hiding if he has done no harm?" said the Vicar.
+
+"He thought it was one of them police. They do be coming here a'most
+every day, till one's heart faints at seeing 'em. I'd go away if I'd
+e'er a place to go to."
+
+"Have you no place at home, Carry?"
+
+"No, sir; no place."
+
+This was so true that he couldn't tell himself why he had asked the
+question. She certainly had no place at home till her father's heart
+should be changed towards her.
+
+"Carry," said he, speaking very slowly, "they tell me that you are
+married. Is that true?"
+
+She made him no answer.
+
+"I wish you would tell me, if you can. The state of a married woman
+is honest at any rate, let her husband be who he may."
+
+"My state is not honest."
+
+"You are not married, then?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+He hardly knew how to go on with this interrogation, or to ask
+questions about her past and present life, without expressing a
+degree of censure which, at any rate for the present, he wished to
+repress.
+
+"You are living here, I believe, with old Mrs. Burrows?" he said.
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"I was told that you were married to her son."
+
+"They told you untrue, sir. I know nothing of her son, except just to
+have see'd him."
+
+"Is that true, Carry?"
+
+"It is true. It wasn't he at all."
+
+"Who was it, Carry?"
+
+"Not her son;--but what does it signify? He's gone away, and I shall
+see un no more. He wasn't no good, Mr. Fenwick, and if you please we
+won't talk about un."
+
+"He was not your husband?"
+
+"No, Mr. Fenwick; I never had a husband, nor never shall, I suppose.
+What man would take the likes of me? I have just got one thing to do,
+and that's all."
+
+"What thing is that, Carry?"
+
+"To die and have done with it," she said, bursting out into loud
+sobs. "What's the use o' living? Nobody 'll see me, or speak to me.
+Ain't I just so bad that they'd hang me if they knew how to catch
+me?"
+
+"What do you mean, girl?" said Fenwick, thinking for the moment that
+from her words she, too, might have had some part in the murder.
+
+"Ain't the police coming here after me a'most every day? And when
+they hauls about the place, and me too, what can I say to 'em? I have
+got that low that a'most everybody can say what they please to me.
+And where can I go out o' this? I don't want to be living here always
+with that old woman."
+
+"Who is the old woman, Carry?"
+
+"I suppose you knows, Mr. Fenwick?"
+
+"Mrs. Burrows, is it?" She nodded her head. "She is the mother of the
+man they call the Grinder?" Again she nodded her head. "It is he whom
+they accuse of the murder?" Yet again she nodded her head. "There was
+another man?" She nodded it again. "And they say that there was a
+third," he said,--"your brother Sam."
+
+"Then they lie," she shouted, jumping up from her seat. "They lie
+like devils. They are devils; and they'll go, oh, down into the fiery
+furnace for ever and ever." In spite of the tragedy of the moment,
+Mr. Fenwick could not help joining this terribly earnest threat and
+the Marquis of Trowbridge together in his imagination. "Sam hadn't no
+more to do with it than you had, Mr. Fenwick."
+
+"I don't believe he had," said Mr. Fenwick.
+
+"Yes; because you're good, and kind, and don't think ill of poor folk
+when they're a bit down. But as for them, they're devils."
+
+"I did not come here, however, to talk about the murder, Carry. If I
+thought you knew who did it, I shouldn't ask you. That is business
+for the police, not for me. I came here partly to look after Sam. He
+ought to be at home. Why has he left his home and his work while his
+name is thus in people's mouths?"
+
+"It ain't for me to answer for him, Mr. Fenwick. Let 'em say what
+they will, they can't make the white of his eye black. But as for
+me, I ain't no business to speak of nobody. How should I know why he
+comes and why he goes? If I said as how he'd come to see his sister,
+it wouldn't sound true, would it, sir, she being what she is?"
+
+He got up and went to the front door, and opened it, and looked about
+him. But he was looking for nothing. His eyes were full of tears, and
+he didn't care to wipe the drops away in her presence.
+
+"Carry," he said, coming back to her, "it wasn't all for him that I
+came."
+
+
+[Illustration: "Carry," he said, coming back to her, "it
+wasn't all for him that I came."]
+
+
+"For who else, then?"
+
+"Do you remember how we loved you when you were young, Carry? Do you
+remember my wife, and how you used to come and play with the children
+on the lawn? Do you remember, Carry, where you sat in church, and the
+singing, and what trouble we had together with the chaunts? There are
+one or two at Bullhampton who never will forget it?"
+
+"Nobody loves me now," she said, talking at him over her shoulder,
+which was turned to him.
+
+He thought for a moment that he would tell her that the Lord loved
+her; but there was something human at his heart, something perhaps
+too human, which made him feel that were he down low upon the ground,
+some love that was nearer to him, some love that was more easily
+intelligible, which had been more palpably felt, would in his frailty
+and his wickedness be of more immediate avail to him than the love
+even of the Lord God.
+
+"Why should you think that, Carry?"
+
+"Because I am bad."
+
+"If we were to love only the good, we should love very few. I love
+you, Carry, truly. My wife loves you dearly."
+
+"Does she?" said the girl, breaking into low sobs. "No, she don't. I
+know she don't. The likes of her couldn't love the likes of me. She
+wouldn't speak to me. She wouldn't touch me."
+
+"Come and try, Carry."
+
+"Father would kill me," she said.
+
+"Your father is full of wrath, no doubt. You have done that which
+must make a father angry."
+
+"Oh, Mr. Fenwick, I wouldn't dare to stand before his eye for a
+minute. The sound of his voice would kill me straight. How could I go
+back?"
+
+"It isn't easy to make crooked things straight, Carry, but we may
+try; and they do become straighter if one tries in earnest. Will you
+answer me one question more?"
+
+"Anything about myself, Mr. Fenwick?"
+
+"Are you living in sin now, Carry?" She sat silent, not that she
+would not answer him, but that she did not comprehend the extent
+of the meaning of his question. "If it be so, and if you will not
+abandon it, no honest person can love you. You must change yourself,
+and then you will be loved."
+
+"I have got the money which he gave me, if you mean that," she said.
+
+Then he asked no further questions about herself, but reverted to the
+subject of her brother. Could she bring him in to say a few words to
+his old friend? But she declared that he was gone, and that she did
+not know whither; that he might probably return this very day to the
+mill, having told her that it was his purpose to do so soon. When he
+expressed a hope that Sam held no consort with those bad men who had
+murdered and robbed Mr. Trumbull, she answered him with such naive
+assurance that any such consorting was out of the question, that he
+became at once convinced that the murderers were far away, and that
+she knew that such was the case. As far as he could learn from her,
+Sam had really been over to Pycroft with the view of seeing his
+sister, taking probably a holiday of a day or two on the way. Then he
+again reverted to herself, having as he thought obtained a favourable
+answer to that vital question which he had asked her.
+
+"Have you nothing to ask of your mother?" he said.
+
+"Sam has told me of her and of Fan."
+
+"And would you not care to see her?"
+
+"Care, Mr. Fenwick! Wouldn't I give my eyes to see her? But how can
+I see her? And what could she say to me? Father 'd kill her if she
+spoke to me. Sometimes I think I'll walk there all the day, and so
+get there at night, and just look about the old place, only I know
+I'd drown myself in the mill-stream. I wish I had. I wish it was
+done. I've seed an old poem in which they thought much of a poor girl
+after she was drowned, though nobody wouldn't think nothing at all
+about her before."
+
+"Don't drown yourself, Carry, and I'll care for you. Keep your
+hands clean. You know what I mean, and I will not rest till I find
+some spot for your weary feet. Will you promise me?" She made him
+no answer. "I will not ask you for a spoken promise, but make it
+yourself, Carry, and ask God to help you to keep it. Do you say your
+prayers, Carry?"
+
+"Never a prayer, sir."
+
+"But you don't forget them. You can begin again. And now I must ask
+for a promise. If I send for you will you come?"
+
+"What--to Bull'ompton?"
+
+"Wheresoever I may send for you? Do you think that I would have you
+harmed?"
+
+"Perhaps it'd be--for a prison; or to live along with a lot of
+others. Oh, Mr. Fenwick, I could not stand that."
+
+He did not dare to proceed any further lest he should be tempted to
+make promises which he himself could not perform; but she did give
+him an assurance before he went that if she left her present abode
+within a month, she would let him know whither she was going.
+
+He went to the Bald-faced Stag and got his gig; and on his way home,
+just as he was leaving the village of Lavington, he overtook Sam
+Brattle. He stopped and spoke to the lad, asking him whether he was
+returning home, and offering him a seat in the gig. Sam declined the
+seat, but said that he was going straight to the mill.
+
+"It is very hard to make crooked things straight," said Mr. Fenwick
+to himself as he drove up to his own hall-door.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+THE TURNOVER CORRESPONDENCE.
+
+
+It is hoped that the reader will remember that the Marquis of
+Trowbridge was subjected to very great insolence from Mr. Fenwick
+during the discussion which took place in poor old farmer Trumbull's
+parlour respecting the murder. Our friend, the Vicar, did not content
+himself with personal invective, but made allusion to the Marquis's
+daughters. The Marquis, as he was driven home in his carriage, came
+to sundry conclusions about Mr. Fenwick. That the man was an infidel
+he had now no matter of doubt whatever; and if an infidel, then also
+a hypocrite, and a liar, and a traitor, and a thief. Was he not
+robbing the parish of the tithes, and all the while entrapping the
+souls of men and women? Was it not to be expected that with such a
+pastor there should be such as Sam Brattle and Carry Brattle in the
+parish? It was true that as yet this full blown iniquity had spread
+itself only among the comparatively small number of tenants belonging
+to the objectionable "person," who unfortunately owned a small number
+of acres in his lordship's parish;--but his lordship's tenant had
+been murdered! And with such a pastor in the parish, and such an
+objectionable person, owning acres, to back the pastor, might it not
+be expected that all his tenants would be murdered? Many applications
+had already been made to the Marquis for the Church Farm; but as it
+happened that the applicant whom the Marquis intended to favour, had
+declared that he did not wish to live in the house because of the
+murder, the Marquis felt himself justified in concluding that if
+everything about the parish were not changed very shortly, no decent
+person would be found willing to live in any of his houses. And now,
+when they had been talking of murderers, and worse than murderers,
+as the Marquis said to himself, shaking his head with horror in the
+carriage as he thought of such iniquity, this infidel clergyman had
+dared to allude to his lordship's daughters! Such a man had no right
+even to think of women so exalted. The existence of the Ladies Stowte
+must no doubt be known to such men, and among themselves probably
+some allusion in the way of faint guesses might be made as to their
+modes of life, as men guess at kings and queens, and even at gods and
+goddesses. But to have an illustration, and a very base illustration,
+drawn from his own daughters in his own presence, made with the
+object of confuting himself,--this was more than the Marquis could
+endure. He could not horsewhip Mr. Fenwick; nor could he send out
+his retainers to do so; but, thank God, there was a bishop! He did
+not quite see his way, but he thought that Mr. Fenwick might be made
+at least to leave that parish. "Turn my daughters out of my house,
+because--oh, oh!" He almost put his fist through the carriage window
+in the energy of his action as he thought of it.
+
+As it happened, the Marquis of Trowbridge had never sat in the House
+of Commons, but he had a son who sat there now. Lord St. George was
+member for another county in which Lord Trowbridge had an estate,
+and was a man of the world. His father admired him much, and trusted
+him a good deal, but still had an idea that his son hardly estimated
+in the proper light the position in the world which he was called
+to fill. Lord St. George was now at home at the Castle, and in the
+course of that evening the father, as a matter of course, consulted
+the son. He considered that it would be his duty to write to the
+bishop, but he would like to hear St. George's idea on the subject.
+He began, of course, by saying that he did not doubt but that St.
+George would agree with him.
+
+"I shouldn't make any fuss about it," said the son.
+
+"What! pass it over?"
+
+"Yes; I think so."
+
+"Do you understand the kind of allusion that was made to your
+sisters?"
+
+"It won't hurt them, my lord; and people make allusion to everything
+now-a-days. The bishop can't do anything. For aught you know he and
+Fenwick may be bosom friends."
+
+"The bishop, St. George, is a most right-thinking man."
+
+"No doubt. The bishops, I believe, are all right-thinking men, and it
+is well for them that they are so very seldom called on to go beyond
+thinking. No doubt he'll think that this fellow was indiscreet; but
+he can't go beyond thinking. You'll only be raising a blister for
+yourself."
+
+"Raising a what?"
+
+"A blister, my lord. The longer I live the more convinced I become
+that a man shouldn't keep his own sores open."
+
+There was something in the tone of his son's conversation which
+pained the Marquis much; but his son was known to be a wise and
+prudent man, and one who was rising in the political world. The
+Marquis sighed, and shook his head, and murmured something as to the
+duty which lay upon the great to bear the troubles incident to their
+greatness;--by which he meant that sores and blisters should be
+kept open, if the exigencies of rank so required. But he ended the
+discussion at last by declaring that he would rest upon the matter
+for forty-eight hours. Unfortunately before those forty-eight hours
+were over Lord St. George had gone from Turnover Castle, and the
+Marquis was left to his own lights. In the meantime, the father and
+son and one or two friends, had been shooting over at Bullhampton;
+so that no further steps of warfare had been taken when Mr. and Mrs.
+Fenwick met the Marquis on the pathway.
+
+On the following day his lordship sat in his own private room
+thinking of his grievance. He had thought of it and of little else
+for now nearly sixty hours. "Suggest to me to turn out my daughters!
+Heaven and earth! My daughters!" He was well aware that, though he
+and his son often differed, he could never so safely keep himself out
+of trouble as by following his son's advice. But surely this was a
+matter per se, standing altogether on its own bottom, very different
+from those ordinary details of life on which he and his son were wont
+to disagree. His daughters! The Ladies Sophie and Carolina Stowte! It
+had been suggested to him to turn them out of his house because-- Oh!
+oh! The insult was so great that no human marquis could stand it.
+He longed to be writing a letter to the bishop. He was proud of his
+letters. Pen and paper were at hand, and he did write.
+
+
+   RIGHT REV. AND DEAR LORD BISHOP,
+
+   I think it right to represent to your lordship the
+   conduct,--I believe I may be justified in saying the
+   misconduct,--of the Reverend ---- Fenwick, the vicar of
+   Bullhampton.
+
+
+He knew our friend's Christian name very well, but he did not choose
+to have it appear that his august memory had been laden with a thing
+so trifling.
+
+
+   You may have heard that there has been a most horrid
+   murder committed in the parish on one of my tenants; and
+   that suspicion is rife that the murder was committed in
+   part by a young man, the son of a miller who lives under
+   a person who owns some land in the parish. The family is
+   very bad, one of the daughters being, as I understand,
+   a prostitute. The other day I thought it right to visit
+   the parish with the view of preventing, if possible, the
+   sojourn there among my people of these objectionable
+   characters. When there I was encountered by Mr. Fenwick,
+   not only in a most unchristian spirit, but in a bearing so
+   little gentlemanlike, that I cannot describe it to you.
+   He had obtruded himself into my presence, into one of my
+   own houses, the very house of the murdered man, and there,
+   when I was consulting with the person to whom I have
+   alluded as to the expediency of ridding ourselves of these
+   objectionable characters, he met me with ribaldry and
+   personal insolence. When I tell your lordship that he
+   made insinuations about my own daughters, so gross that
+   I cannot repeat them to you, I am sure that I need go no
+   further. There were present at this meeting Mr. Puddleham,
+   the Methodist minister, and Mr. Henry Gilmore, the
+   landlord of the persons in question.
+
+   Your lordship has probably heard the character, in a
+   religious point of view, of this gentleman. It is not for
+   me to express an opinion of the motives which can induce
+   such a one to retain his position as an incumbent of a
+   parish. But I do believe that I have a right to ask from
+   your lordship for some inquiry into the scene which I have
+   attempted to describe, and to expect some protection for
+   the future. I do not for a moment doubt that your lordship
+   will do what is right in the matter.
+
+   I have the honour to be,
+   Right Reverend and dear Lord Bishop,
+   Your most obedient and faithful Servant,
+
+   TROWBRIDGE.
+
+
+He read this over thrice, and became so much in love with the
+composition, that on the third reading he had not the slightest doubt
+as to the expediency of sending it. Nor had he much doubt but that
+the bishop would do something to Mr. Fenwick, which would make the
+parish too hot to hold that disgrace to the Church of England.
+
+When Fenwick came home from Pycroft Common he found a letter from the
+bishop awaiting him. He had driven forty miles on that day, and was
+rather late for dinner. His wife, however, came upstairs with him in
+order that she might hear something of his story, and brought his
+letters with her. He did not open that from the bishop till he was
+half dressed, and then burst out into loud laughter as he read it.
+
+"What is it, Frank?" asked his wife, through the open door of her own
+room.
+
+"Here's such a game," said he. "Never mind; let's have dinner, and
+then you shall see it." The reader, however, may be quite sure that
+Mrs. Fenwick did not wait till dinner was served before she knew the
+nature of the game.
+
+The bishop's letter to the Vicar was very short and very rational,
+and it was not that which made the Vicar laugh; but inside the
+bishop's letter was that from the Marquis. "My dear Mr. Fenwick,"
+said the bishop,
+
+
+   after a good deal of consideration, I have determined to
+   send you the enclosed. I do so because I have made it a
+   rule never to receive an accusation against one of my
+   clergy without sending it to the person accused. You will,
+   of course, perceive that it alludes to some matter which
+   lies outside of my control and right of inquiry; but
+   perhaps you will allow me, as a friend, to suggest to you
+   that it is always well for a parish clergyman to avoid
+   controversy and quarrel with his neighbours; and that it
+   is especially expedient that he should be on good terms
+   with those who have influence in his parish. Perhaps
+   you will forgive me if I add that a spirit of pugnacity,
+   though no doubt it may lead to much that is good, has its
+   bad tendencies if not watched closely.
+
+   Pray remember that Lord Trowbridge is a worthy man, doing
+   his duty on the whole well; and that his position, though
+   it be entitled to no veneration, is entitled to much
+   respect. If you can tell me that you will feel no grudge
+   against him for what has taken place, I shall be very
+   happy.
+
+   You will observe that I have been careful that this letter
+   shall have no official character.
+
+   Yours very faithfully,
+
+   &c., &c., &c.
+
+
+The letter was answered that evening, but before the answer was
+written, the Marquis of Trowbridge was discussed between the husband
+and wife, not in complimentary terms. Mrs. Fenwick on the occasion
+was more pugnacious than her husband. She could not forgive the man
+who had hinted to the bishop that her husband held his living from
+unworthy motives, and that he was a bad clergyman.
+
+"My dear girl," said Fenwick, "what can you expect from an ass but
+his ears?"
+
+"I don't expect downright slander from such a man as the Marquis of
+Trowbridge, and if I were you I should tell the bishop so."
+
+"I shall tell him nothing of the kind. I shall write about the
+Marquis with the kindliest feelings."
+
+"But you don't feel kindly?"
+
+"Yes, I do. The poor old idiot has nobody to keep him right, and does
+the best he can according to his lights. I have no doubt he thinks
+that I am everything that is horrid. I am not a bit angry with him,
+and would be as civil to him to-morrow as my nature would allow me,
+if he would only be civil to me."
+
+Then he wrote his letter which will complete the correspondence, and
+which he dated for the following day:--
+
+
+   Bullhampton Vicarage, Oct. 23, 186--.
+
+   MY DEAR LORD BISHOP,
+
+   I return the Marquis's letter with many thanks. I can
+   assure you that I take in proper spirit your little hints
+   as to my pugnacity of disposition, and will endeavour
+   to profit by them. My wife tells me that I am given to
+   combativeness, and I have no doubt that she is right.
+
+   As to Lord Trowbridge, I can assure your lordship that I
+   will not bear any malice against him, or even think ill of
+   him because of his complaint. He and I probably differ in
+   opinion about almost everything, and he is one of those
+   who pity the condition of all who are so blinded as to
+   differ from him. The next time that I am thrown into his
+   company I shall act exactly as though no such letter had
+   been written, and as if no such meeting had taken place as
+   that which he describes.
+
+   I hope I may be allowed to assure your lordship, without
+   any reference to my motives for keeping it, that I shall
+   be very slow to give up a living in your lordship's
+   diocese. As your letter to me is unofficial,--and I thank
+   you heartily for sending it in such form,--I have ventured
+   to reply in the same strain.
+
+   I am, my dear Lord Bishop,
+   Your very faithful servant,
+
+   FRANCIS FENWICK.
+
+
+"There," said he, as he folded it, and handed it to his wife, "I
+shall never see the remainder of the series. I would give a shilling
+to know how the bishop gets out of it in writing to the Marquis,
+and half-a-crown to see the Marquis's rejoinder." The reader shall
+be troubled with neither, as he would hardly price them so high as
+did the Vicar. The bishop's letter really contained little beyond
+an assurance on his part that Mr. Fenwick had not meant anything
+wrong, and that the matter was one with which he, the bishop, had no
+concern; all which was worded with most complete episcopal courtesy.
+The rejoinder of the Marquis was long, elaborate, and very pompous.
+He did not exactly scold the bishop, but he expressed very plainly
+his opinion that the Church of England was going to the dogs, because
+a bishop had not the power of utterly abolishing any clergyman who
+might be guilty of an offence against so distinguished a person as
+the Marquis of Trowbridge.
+
+But what was to be done about Carry Brattle? Mrs. Fenwick, when
+she had expressed her anger against the Marquis, was quite ready
+to own that the matter of Carry's position was to them of much
+greater moment than the wrath of the peer. How were they to put
+out their hands and save that brand from the burning? Fenwick, in
+his ill-considered zeal, suggested that she might be brought to
+the Vicarage; but his wife at once knew that such a step would be
+dangerous in every way. How could she live, and what would she do?
+And what would the other servants think of it?
+
+"Why would the other servants mind it?" asked Fenwick. But his wife
+on such a matter could have a way of her own, and that project was
+soon knocked on the head. No doubt her father's house was the proper
+place for her, but then her father was so dour a man.
+
+"Upon my word," said the Vicar, "he is the only person in the world
+of whom I believe myself to be afraid. When I get at him I do not
+speak to him as I would to another; and of course he knows it."
+
+Nevertheless, if anything was to be done for Carry Brattle, it seemed
+as though it must be done by her father's permission and assistance.
+"There can be no doubt that it is his duty," said Mrs. Fenwick.
+
+"I will not say that as a certainty," said the husband. "There is a
+point at which, I presume, a father may be justified in disowning a
+child. The possession of such a power, no doubt, keeps others from
+going wrong. What one wants is that a father should be presumed
+to have the power; but that when the time comes, he should never
+use it. It is the comfortable doctrine which we are all of us
+teaching;--wrath, and abomination of the sinner, before the sin;
+pardon and love after it. If you were to run away from me, Janet--"
+
+"Frank, do not dare to speak of anything so horrible."
+
+"I should say now probably that were you to do so, I would never
+blast my eyes by looking at you again; but I know that I should run
+after you, and implore you to come back to me."
+
+"You wouldn't do anything of the kind; and it isn't proper to talk
+about it; and I shall go to bed."
+
+"It is very difficult to make crooked things straight," said the
+Vicar, as he walked about the room after his wife had left him. "I
+suppose she ought to go into a reformatory. But I know she wouldn't;
+and I shouldn't like to ask her after what she said."
+
+It is probably the case that Mr. Fenwick would have been able to do
+his duty better, had some harsher feeling towards the sinner been
+mixed with his charity.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+"I NEVER SHAMED NONE OF THEM."
+
+
+"Something must be done about Carry Brattle at once." The Vicar felt
+that he had pledged himself to take some steps for her welfare, and
+it seemed to him, as he thought of the matter, that there were only
+two steps possible. He might intercede with her father, or he might
+use his influence to have her received into some house of correction,
+some retreat, in which she might be kept from evil and disciplined
+for good. He knew that the latter would be the safer plan, if it
+could be brought to bear; and it would certainly be the easier for
+himself. But he thought that he had almost pledged himself to the
+girl not to attempt it, and he felt sure that she would not accede
+to it. In his doubt he went up to his friend Gilmore, intending to
+obtain the light of his friend's wisdom. He found the Squire and the
+Prebendary together, and at once started his subject.
+
+"You'll do no good, Mr. Fenwick," said Mr. Chamberlaine, after the
+two younger men had been discussing the matter for half an hour.
+
+"Do you mean that I ought not to try to do any good?"
+
+"I mean that such efforts never come to anything."
+
+"All the unfortunate creatures in the world, then, should be left to
+go to destruction in their own way."
+
+"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 assistance 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 Saturday 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 assistant. 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 friendship; 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 asserting 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 Fanny. 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 Fanny 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 God for that!" said the mother, taking him by the hand. Then
+Fanny 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 assumed 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 God, 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 friendship to a man who had offended him so deeply.
+
+After a moment's thought he determined to tell the wife, and informed
+her and Fanny 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 Fanny.
+
+"I believe she would. I feel sure that she would."
+
+"And what did he say, Mr. Fenwick?" asked the mother. The Vicar only
+shook his head. "He's very good; to me he's ever been good as gold.
+But, oh, Mr. Fenwick, he is so hard."
+
+"He will not let you speak of her?"
+
+"Never a word, Mr. Fenwick. He'd look at you, sir, so that the gleam
+of his eyes would fall on you like a blow. I wouldn't dare;--nor yet
+wouldn't Fanny, who dares more with him than any of us."
+
+"If it'd serve her, I'd speak," said Fanny.
+
+"But couldn't I see her, Mr. Fenwick? Couldn't you take me in the
+gig with you, sir? I'd slip out arter breakfast up the road, and he
+wouldn't be no wiser, at least till I war back again. He wouldn't ax
+no questions then, I'm thinking. Would he, Fan?"
+
+"He'd ask at dinner; but if I said you were out for the day along
+with Mr. Fenwick, he wouldn't say any more, maybe. He'd know well
+enough where you was gone to."
+
+Mr. Fenwick said that he would think of it, and let Fanny know on
+the following Sunday. He would not make a promise now, and at any
+rate he could not go before Sunday. He did not like to pledge himself
+suddenly to such an adventure, knowing that it would be best that he
+should first have his wife's ideas on the matter. Then he took his
+leave, and as he went out of the house he saw the miller standing at
+the door of the mill. He raised his hand and said, "Good-bye," but
+the miller quickly turned his back to him and retreated into his
+mill.
+
+As he walked up to his house through the village he met Mr.
+Puddleham. "So Sam Brattle is off again, sir," said the minister.
+
+"Off what, Mr. Puddleham?"
+
+"Gone clean away. Out of the country."
+
+"Who has told you that, Mr. Puddleham?"
+
+"Isn't it true, sir? You ought to know, Mr. Fenwick, as you're one of
+the bailsmen."
+
+"I've just been at the mill, and I didn't see him."
+
+"I don't think you'll ever see him at the mill again, Mr. Fenwick;
+nor yet in Bullhampton, unless the police have to bring him here."
+
+"As I was saying, I didn't see him at the mill, Mr. Puddleham,
+because I didn't go in; but he's working there at this moment, and
+has been all the day. He's all right, Mr. Puddleham. You go and have
+a few words with him, or with his father, and you'll find they're
+quite comfortable at the mill now."
+
+"Constable Hicks told me that he was out of the country," said Mr.
+Puddleham, walking away in considerable disgust.
+
+Mrs. Fenwick's opinion was, upon the whole, rather in favour of the
+second expedition to Pycroft Common, as she declared that the mother
+should at any rate be allowed to see her child. She indeed would not
+submit to the idea of the miller's indomitable powers. If she were
+Mrs. Brattle, she said, she'd pull the old man's ears, and make him
+give way.
+
+"You go and try," said the Vicar.
+
+On the Sunday morning following, Fanny was told that on Wednesday
+Mr. Fenwick would drive her mother over to Pycroft Common. He had no
+doubt, he said, but that Carry would still be found living with Mrs.
+Burrows. He explained that the old woman had luckily been absent
+during his visit, but would probably be there when they went again.
+As to that they must take their chance. And the whole plan was
+arranged. Mr. Fenwick was to be on the road in his gig at Mr.
+Gilmore's gate at ten o'clock, and Mrs. Brattle was to meet him there
+at that hour.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+MRS. BRATTLE'S JOURNEY.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Mrs. Brattle was waiting at the stile opposite to Mr. Gilmore's gate
+as Mr. Fenwick drove up to the spot. No doubt the dear old woman
+had been there for the last half-hour, thinking that the walk would
+take her twice as long as it did, and fearing that she might keep
+the Vicar waiting. She had put on her Sunday clothes and her Sunday
+bonnet, and when she climbed up into the vacant place beside her
+friend she found her position to be so strange that for a while she
+could hardly speak. He said a few words to her, but pressed her with
+no questions, understanding the cause of her embarrassment. He could
+not but think that of all his parishioners no two were so unlike
+each other as were the miller and his wife. The one was so hard and
+invincible;--the other so soft and submissive! Nevertheless it had
+always been said that Brattle had been a tender and affectionate
+husband. By degrees the woman's awe at the horse and gig and
+strangeness of her position wore off, and she began to talk of her
+daughter. She had brought a little bundle with her, thinking that she
+might supply feminine wants, and had apologised humbly for venturing
+to come so laden. Fenwick, who remembered what Carry had said about
+money that she still had, and who was nearly sure that the murderers
+had gone to Pycroft Common after the murder had been committed, had
+found a difficulty in explaining to Mrs. Brattle that her child was
+probably not in want. The son had been accused of the murder of the
+man, and now the Vicar had but little doubt that the daughter was
+living on the proceeds of the robbery. "It's a hard life she must be
+living, Mr. Fenwick, with an old 'ooman the likes of that," said Mrs.
+Brattle. "Perhaps if I'd brought a morsel of some'at to eat--"
+
+"I don't think they're pressed in that way, Mrs. Brattle."
+
+"Ain't they now? But it's a'most worse, Mr. Fenwick, when one thinks
+where it's to come from. The Lord have mercy on her, and bring her
+out of it!"
+
+"Amen," said the Vicar.
+
+"And is she bright at all, and simple still? She was the brightest,
+simplest lass in all Bull'ompton, I used to think. I suppose her old
+ways have a'most left her, Mr. Fenwick?"
+
+"I thought her very like what she used to be."
+
+"'Deed now, did you, Mr. Fenwick? And she wasn't mopish and
+slatternly like?"
+
+"She was tidy enough. You wouldn't wish me to say that she was
+happy?"
+
+"I suppose not, Mr. Fenwick. I shouldn't ought;--ought I, now? But,
+Mr. Fenwick, I'd give my left hand she should be happy and gay once
+more. I suppose none but a mother feels it, but the sound of her
+voice through the house was ever the sweetest music I know'd on.
+It'll never have the same ring again, Mr. Fenwick."
+
+He could not tell her that it would. That sainted sinner of whom he
+had reminded Mr. Puddleham, though she had attained to the joy of the
+Lord,--even she had never regained the mirth of her young innocence.
+There is a bloom on the flower which may rest there till the
+flower has utterly perished, if the handling of it be sufficiently
+delicate;--but no care, nothing that can be done by friends on earth,
+or even by better friendship from above, can replace that when once
+displaced. The sound of which the mother was thinking could never be
+heard again from Carry Brattle's voice. "If we could only get her
+home once more," said the Vicar, "she might be a good daughter to you
+still."
+
+"I'd be a good mother to her, Mr. Fenwick;--but I'm thinking he'll
+never have it so. I never knew him to change on a thing like that,
+Mr. Fenwick. He felt it that keenly, it nigh killed 'im. Only that he
+took it out o' hisself in thrashing that wicked man, I a'most think
+he'd a' died o' it."
+
+Again the Vicar drove to the Bald-faced Stag, and again he walked
+along the road and over the common. He offered his arm to the old
+woman, but she wouldn't accept it; nor would she upon any entreaty
+allow him to carry her bundle. She assured him that his doing so
+would make her utterly wretched, and at last he gave up the point.
+She declared that she suffered nothing from fatigue, and that her two
+miles' walk would not be more than her Sunday journey to church and
+back. But as she drew near to the house she became uneasy, and once
+asked to be allowed to pause for a moment. "May be, then," said she,
+"after all, my girl'd rather that I wouldn't trouble her." He took
+her by the arm and led her along, and comforted her,--assuring her
+that if she would take her child in her arms Carry would for the
+moment be in a heaven of happiness. "Take her into my arms, Mr.
+Fenwick? Why,--isn't she in my very heart of hearts at this moment?
+And I won't say not a word sharp to her;--not now, Mr. Fenwick. And
+why would I say sharp words at all? I suppose she understands it
+all."
+
+"I think she does, Mrs. Brattle."
+
+They had now reached the door, and the Vicar knocked. No answer came
+at once; but such had been the case when he knocked before. He had
+learned to understand that in such a household it might not be wise
+to admit all comers without consideration. So he knocked again,--and
+then again. But still there came no answer. Then he tried the door,
+and found that it was locked. "May be she's seen me coming," said the
+mother, "and now she won't let me in." The Vicar then went round the
+cottage, and found that the back door also was closed. Then he looked
+in at one of the front windows, and became aware that no one was
+sitting, at least in the kitchen. There was an upstairs room, but of
+that the window was closed.
+
+"I begin to fear," he said, "that neither of them is at home."
+
+At this moment he heard the voice of a woman calling to him from the
+door of the nearest cottage,--one of the two brick tenements which
+stood together,--and from her he learned that Mrs. Burrows had gone
+into Devizes, and would not probably be home till the evening. Then
+he asked after Carry, not mentioning her name, but speaking of her as
+the young woman who lived with Mrs. Burrows. "Her young man come and
+took her up to Lon'on o' Saturday," said the woman.
+
+Fenwick heard the words, but Mrs. Brattle did not hear them. It did
+not occur to him not to believe the woman's statement, and all his
+hopes about the poor creature were at once dashed to the ground. His
+first feeling was no doubt one of resentment, that she had broken
+her word to him. She had said that she would not go within a month
+without letting him know that she was going; and there is no fault,
+no vice, that strikes any of us so strongly as falsehood or injustice
+against ourselves. And then the nature of the statement was so
+terrible! She had gone back into utter degradation and iniquity. And
+who was the young man? As far as he could obtain a clue, through the
+information which had reached him from various sources, this young
+man must be the companion of the Grinder in the murder and robbery of
+Mr. Trumbull. "She has gone away, Mrs. Brattle," said he, with as sad
+a voice as ever a man used.
+
+"And where be she gone to, Mr. Fenwick? Cannot I go arter her?" He
+simply shook his head and took her by the arm to lead her away. "Do
+they know nothing of her, Mr. Fenwick?"
+
+"She has gone away; probably to London. We must think no more about
+her, Mrs. Brattle--at any rate for the present. I can only say that I
+am very, very sorry that I brought you here."
+
+The drive back to Bullhampton was very silent and very sad. Mrs.
+Brattle had before her the difficulty of explaining her journey to
+her husband, together with the feeling that the difficulty had been
+incurred altogether for nothing. As for Fenwick, he was angry with
+himself for his own past enthusiasm about the girl. After all, Mr.
+Chamberlaine had shown himself to be the wiser man of the two. He
+had declared it to be no good to take up special cases, and the
+Vicar as he drove himself home notified to himself his assent with
+the Prebendary's doctrine. The girl had gone off the moment she
+had ascertained that her friends were aware of her presence and
+situation. What to her had been the kindness of her clerical friend,
+or the stories brought to her from her early home, or the dirt and
+squalor of the life which she was leading? The moment that there was
+a question of bringing her back to the decencies of the world, she
+escaped from her friends and hurried back to the pollution which, no
+doubt, had charms for her. He had allowed himself to think that in
+spite of her impurity, she might again be almost pure, and this was
+his reward! He deposited the poor woman at the spot at which he had
+taken her up, almost without a word, and then drove himself home with
+a heavy heart. "I believe it will be best to be like her father, and
+never to name her again," said he to his wife.
+
+"But what has she done, Frank?"
+
+"Gone back to the life which I suppose she likes best. Let us say no
+more about it,--at any rate for the present. I'm sick at heart when I
+think of it."
+
+Mrs. Brattle, when she got over the stile close to her own home, saw
+her husband standing at the mill door. Her heart sank within her, if
+that could be said to sink which was already so low. He did not move,
+but stood there with his eyes fixed upon her. She had hoped that she
+might get into the house unobserved by him, and learn from Fanny what
+had taken place; but she felt so like a culprit that she hardly dared
+to enter the door. Would it not be best to go to him at once, and ask
+his pardon for what she had done? When he spoke to her, which he did
+at last, his voice was a relief to her. "Where hast been, Maggie?" he
+asked. She went up to him, put her hand on the lappet of his coat and
+shook her head. "Best go in and sit easy, and hear what God sends,"
+he said. "What's the use of scouring about the country here and
+there?"
+
+"There has been no use in it to-day, feyther," she said.
+
+"There arn't no use in it,--not never," he said; and after that there
+was no more about it. She went into the house and handed the bundle
+to Fanny, and sat down on the bed and cried. On the following morning
+Frank Fenwick received the following letter:--
+
+
+   London, Sunday.
+
+   HONOURED SIR,
+
+   I told you that I would write if it came as I was going
+   away, but I've been forced to go without writing. There
+   was nothing to write with at the cottage. Mrs. Burrows
+   and me had words, and I thought as she would rob me, and
+   perhaps worse. She is a bad woman, and I could stand it no
+   longer, so I just come up here, as there was nowhere else
+   for me to find a place to lie down in. I thought I'd just
+   write and tell you, because of my word; but I know it
+   isn't no use.
+
+   I'd send my respects and love to father and mother, if I
+   dared. I did think of going over; but I know he'd kill me,
+   and so he ought. I'd send my respects to Mrs. Fenwick,
+   only that I isn't fit to name her;--and my love to sister
+   Fanny. I've come away here, and must just wait till I die.
+
+   Yours humbly, and most unfortunate,
+
+   CARRY.
+
+   If it's any good to be sorry, nobody can be more sorry
+   than me, and nobody more unhappy. I did try to pray when
+   you was gone, but it only made me more ashamed. If there
+   was only anywhere to go to, I'd go.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX.
+
+THE BULL AT LORING.
+
+
+Gilmore had told his friend that he would do two things,--that he
+would start off and travel for four or five years, and that he would
+pay a visit to Loring. Fenwick had advised him to do neither, but to
+stay at home and dig and say his prayers. But in such emergencies
+no man takes his friend's advice; and when Mr. Chamberlaine had
+left him, Gilmore had made up his mind that he would at any rate go
+to Loring. He went to church on the Sunday morning, and was half
+resolved to tell Mrs. Fenwick of his purpose; but chance delayed her
+in the church, and he sauntered away home without having mentioned
+it. He let half the next week pass by without stirring beyond his
+own ground. During those three days he changed his mind half a dozen
+times; but at last, on the Thursday, he had his portmanteau packed
+and started on his journey. As he was preparing to leave the house
+he wrote one line to Fenwick in pencil. "I am this moment off to
+Loring.--H. G." This he left in the village as he drove through to
+the Westbury station.
+
+He had formed no idea in his own mind of any definite purpose in
+going. He did not know what he should do or what say when he got to
+Loring. He had told himself a hundred times that any persecution of
+the girl on his part would be mean and unworthy of him. And he was
+also aware that no condition in which a man could place himself was
+more open to contempt than that of a whining, pining, unsuccessful
+lover. A man is bound to take a woman's decision against him, bear
+it as he may, and say as little against it as possible. He is bound
+to do so when he is convinced that a woman's decision is final; and
+there can be no stronger proof of such finality than the fact that
+she has declared a preference for some other man. All this Gilmore
+knew, but he would not divest himself of the idea that there might
+still be some turn in the wheel of fortune. He had heard a vague
+rumour that Captain Marrable, his rival, was a very dangerous man.
+His uncle was quite sure that the Captain's father was thoroughly
+bad, and had thrown out hints against the son, which Gilmore in his
+anxiety magnified till he felt convinced that the girl whom he loved
+with all his heart was going to throw herself into the arms of a
+thorough scamp. Could he not do something, if not for his own sake,
+then for hers? Might it not be possible for him to deliver her from
+her danger? What, if he should discover some great iniquity;--would
+she not then in her gratitude be softened towards him? It was on
+the cards that this reprobate was married already, and was about
+to commit bigamy. It was quite probable that such a man should be
+deeply in debt. As for the fortune that had been left to him, Mr.
+Chamberlaine had already ascertained that that amounted to nothing.
+It had been consumed to the last shilling in paying the joint debts
+of the father and son. Men such as Mr. Chamberlaine have sources of
+information which are marvellous to the minds of those who are more
+secluded, and not the less marvellous because the information is
+invariably false. Gilmore in this way almost came to a conviction
+that Mary Lowther was about to sacrifice herself to a man utterly
+unworthy of her, and he taught himself, not to think,--but to believe
+it to be possible that he might save her. Those who knew him would
+have said that he was the last man in the world to be carried away
+by a romantic notion;--but he had his own idea of romance as plainly
+developed in his mind as was ever the case with a knight of old, who
+went forth for the relief of a distressed damsel. If he could do
+anything towards saving her, he would do it, or try to do it, though
+he should be brought to ruin in the attempt. Might it not be that at
+last he would have the reward which other knights always attained?
+The chance in his favour was doubtless small, but the world was
+nothing to him without this chance.
+
+He had never been at Loring before, but he had learned the way. He
+went to Chippenham and Swindon, and then by the train to Loring. He
+had no very definite plan formed for himself. He rather thought that
+he would call at Miss Marrable's house,--call if possible when Mary
+Lowther was not there,--and learn from the elder lady something of
+the facts of the case. He had been well aware for many weeks past,
+from early days in the summer, that old Miss Marrable had been in
+favour of his claim. He had heard too that there had been family
+quarrels among the Marrables, and a word had been dropped in his
+hearing by Mrs. Fenwick, which had implied that Miss Marrable was
+by no means pleased with the match which her niece Mary Lowther was
+proposing to herself. Everything seemed to show that Captain Marrable
+was a most undesirable person.
+
+When he reached the station at Loring it was incumbent on him to go
+somewhither at once. He must provide for himself for the night. He
+found two omnibuses at the station, and two inn servants competing
+with great ardour for his carpet bag. There were the Dragon and the
+Bull fighting for him. The Bull in the Lowtown was commercial and
+prosperous. The Dragon at Uphill was aristocratic, devoted to county
+purposes, and rather hard set to keep its jaws open and its tail
+flying. Prosperity is always becoming more prosperous, and the
+allurements of the Bull prevailed. "Are you a going to rob the gent
+of his walise?" said the indignant Boots of the Bull as he rescued
+Mr. Gilmore's property from the hands of his natural enemy, as soon
+as he had secured the entrance of Mr. Gilmore into his own vehicle.
+Had Mr. Gilmore known that the Dragon was next door but one to Miss
+Marrable's house, and that the Bull was nearly equally contiguous
+to that in which Captain Marrable was residing, his choice probably
+would not have been altered. In such cases, the knight who is to be
+the deliverer desires above all things that he may be near to his
+enemy.
+
+He was shown up to a bedroom, and then ushered into the commercial
+room of the house. Loring, though it does a very pretty trade as a
+small town, and now has for some years been regarded as a thriving
+place in its degree, is not of such importance in the way of business
+as to support a commercial inn of the first class. At such houses the
+commercial room is as much closed against the uninitiated as is a
+first-class club in London. In such rooms a non-commercial man would
+be almost as much astray as is a non-broker in Capel Court, or an
+attorney in a bar mess-room. At the Bull things were a little mixed.
+The very fact that the words "Commercial Room" were painted on the
+door proved to those who understood such matters that there was a
+doubt in the case. They had no coffee room at the Bull, and strangers
+who came that way were of necessity shown into that in which the
+gentlemen of the road were wont to relax themselves. Certain
+commercial laws are maintained in such apartments. Cigars are not
+allowed before nine o'clock, except upon some distinct arrangement
+with the waiter. There is not, as a rule, a regular daily commercial
+repast; but when three or more gentlemen dine together at five
+o'clock, the dinner becomes a commercial dinner, and the commercial
+laws as to wine, &c., are enforced, with more or less restriction as
+circumstances may seem to demand. At the present time there was but
+one occupant of the chamber to greet Mr. Gilmore when he entered,
+and this greeting was made with all the full honours of commercial
+courtesy. The commercial gentleman is of his nature gregarious, and
+although he be exclusive to a strong degree, more so probably than
+almost any other man in regard to the sacred hour of dinner, when
+in the full glory of his confraternity, he will condescend, when
+the circumstances of his profession have separated him from his
+professional brethren, to be festive with almost any gentleman whom
+chance may throw in his way. Mr. Cockey had been alone for a whole
+day when Gilmore arrived, having reached Loring just twenty-four
+hours in advance of our friend, and was contemplating the sadly
+diminished joys of a second solitary dinner at the Bull, when fortune
+threw this stranger in his way. The waiter, looking at the matter in
+a somewhat similar light, and aware that a combined meal would be for
+the advantage of all parties, very soon assisted Mr. Cockey in making
+his arrangements for the evening. Mr. Gilmore would no doubt want to
+dine. Dinner would be served at five o'clock. Mr. Cockey was going to
+dine, and Mr. Gilmore, the waiter thought, would probably be glad to
+join him. Mr. Cockey expressed himself as delighted, and would only
+be too happy. Now men in love, let their case be ever so bad, must
+dine or die. So much no doubt is not admitted by the chroniclers
+of the old knights who went forth after their ladies; but the
+old chroniclers, if they soared somewhat higher than do those
+of the present day, are admitted to have been on the whole less
+circumstantially truthful. Our knight was very sad at heart, and
+would have done according to his prowess as much as any Orlando of
+them all for the lady whom he loved,--but nevertheless he was an
+hungered; the mention of dinner was pleasant to him, and he accepted
+the joint courtesies of Mr. Cockey and the waiter with gratitude.
+
+The codfish and beefsteak, though somewhat woolly and tough, were
+wholesome; and the pint of sherry which at Mr. Cockey's suggestion
+was supplied to them, if not of itself wholesome, was innocent
+by reason of its dimensions. Mr. Cockey himself was pleasant and
+communicative, and told Mr. Gilmore a good deal about Loring. Our
+friend was afraid to ask any leading questions as to the persons in
+the place who interested himself, feeling conscious that his own
+subject was one which would not bear touch from a rough hand. He did
+at last venture to make inquiry about the clergyman of the parish.
+Mr. Cockey, with some merriment at his own wit, declared that the
+church was a house of business at which he did not often call for
+orders. Though he had been coming to Loring now for four years, he
+had never heard anything of the clergyman; but the waiter no doubt
+would tell them. Gilmore rather hesitated, and protested that he
+cared little for the matter; but the waiter was called in and
+questioned, and was soon full of stories about old Mr. Marrable. He
+was a good sort of man in his way, the waiter thought, but not much
+of a preacher. The people liked him because he never interfered with
+them. "He don't go poking his nose into people's 'ouses like some
+of 'em," said the waiter, who then began to tell of the pertinacity
+in that respect of a younger clergyman at Uphill. Yes; Parson
+Marrable had a relation living at Uphill; an old lady. "No; not
+his grandmother." This was in answer to a joke on the part of Mr.
+Cockey. Nor yet a daughter. The waiter thought she was some kind of
+a cousin, though he did not know what kind. A very grand lady was
+Miss Marrable, according to his showing, and much thought of by the
+quality. There was a young lady living with her, though the waiter
+did not know the young lady's name.
+
+"Does the Rev. Mr. Marrable live alone?" asked Gilmore. "Well, yes;
+for the most part quite alone. But just at present he had a visitor."
+Then the waiter told all that he knew about the Captain. The most
+material part of this was that the Captain had returned from London
+that very evening;--had come in by the Express while the two "gents"
+were at dinner, and had been taken to the Lowtown parsonage by the
+Bull 'bus. "Quite the gentleman," was the Captain, according to the
+waiter, and one of the "handsomest gents as ever he'd set his eyes
+upon." "D---- him," said poor Harry Gilmore to himself. Then he
+ventured upon another question. Did the waiter know anything of
+Captain Marrable's father? The waiter only knew that the Captain's
+father was "a military gent, and was high up in the army." From all
+which the only information which Gilmore received was the fact that
+the match between Marrable and Mary Lowther had not as yet become the
+talk of the town. After dinner Mr. Cockey proposed a glass of toddy
+and a cigar, remarking that he would move a bill for dispensing
+with the smoking rule for that night only, and to this also Gilmore
+assented. Now that he was at Loring he did not know what to do with
+himself better than drinking toddy with Mr. Cockey. Mr. Cockey
+declared the bill to be carried nem. con., and the cigars and toddy
+were produced. Mr. Cockey remarked that he had heard of Sir Gregory
+Marrable, of Dunripple Park. He travelled in Warwickshire, and was in
+the habit, as he said, of fishing up little facts. Sir Gregory wasn't
+much of a man, according to his account. The estate was small and,
+as Mr. Cockey fancied, a little out at elbows. Mr. Cockey thought it
+all very well to be a country gentleman and a "barrow knight," as he
+called it, as long as you had an estate to follow; but he thought
+very little of a title without plenty of stuff. Commerce, according
+to his notions, was the back bone of the nation;--and that the corps
+of travelling commercial gentlemen was the back bone of trade, every
+child knew. Mr. Cockey became warm and friendly as he drank his
+toddy. "Now, I don't know what you are, sir," said he.
+
+"I'm not very much of anything," said Gilmore.
+
+"Perhaps not, sir. Let that be as it may. But a man, sir, that feels
+that he's one of the supports of the commercial supremacy of this
+nation ain't got much reason to be ashamed of himself."
+
+"Not on that account, certainly."
+
+"Nor yet on no other account, as long as he's true to his employers.
+Now you talk of country gentlemen."
+
+"I didn't talk of them," said Gilmore.
+
+"Well,--no,--you didn't; but they do, you know. What does a country
+gentleman know, and what does he do? What's the country the better of
+him? He 'unts, and he shoots, and he goes to bed with his skin full
+of wine, and then he gets up and he 'unts and he shoots again, and
+'as his skin full once more. That's about all."
+
+"Sometimes he's a magistrate."
+
+"Yes, justices' justice! we know all about that. Put an old man in
+prison for a week because he looks into his 'ay-field on a Sunday; or
+send a young one to the treadmill for two months because he knocks
+over a 'are! All them cases ought to be tried in the towns, and there
+should be beaks paid as there is in London. I don't see the good of a
+country gentleman. Buying and selling;--that's what the world has to
+go by."
+
+"They buy and sell land."
+
+"No; they don't. They buy a bit now and then when they're screws, and
+they sell a bit now and then when the eating and drinking has gone
+too fast. But as for capital and investment, they know nothing about
+it. After all, they ain't getting above two-and-a-half per cent. for
+their money. We all know what that must come to."
+
+Mr. Cockey had been so mild before the pint of sherry and the glass
+of toddy, that Mr. Gilmore was somewhat dismayed by the change. Mr.
+Cockey, however, in his altered aspect seemed to be so much the less
+gracious, that Gilmore left him and strolled out into the town. He
+climbed up the hill and walked round the church and looked up at the
+windows of Miss Marrable's house, of which he had learned the site;
+but he had no adventure, saw nothing that interested him, and at
+half-past nine took himself wearily to bed.
+
+That same day Captain Marrable had run down from London to Loring
+laden with terrible news. The money on which he had counted was all
+gone! "What do you mean?" said his uncle; "have the lawyers been
+deceiving you all through?"
+
+"What is it to me?" said the ruined man. "It is all gone. They have
+satisfied me that nothing more can be done." Parson John whistled
+with a long-drawn note of wonder. "The people they were dealing with
+would be willing enough to give up the money, but it's all gone. It's
+spent, and there's no trace of it."
+
+"Poor fellow!"
+
+
+[Illustration: Parson John and Walter Marrable.]
+
+
+"I've seen my father, uncle John."
+
+"And what passed?"
+
+"I told him that he was a scoundrel, and then I left him. I didn't
+strike him."
+
+"I should hope not that, Walter."
+
+"I kept my hands off him; but when a man has ruined you as he has
+me, it doesn't much matter who he is. Your father and any other man
+are much the same to you then. He was worn, and old, and pale, or I
+should have felled him to the ground."
+
+"And what will you do now?"
+
+"Just go to that hell upon earth on the other side of the globe.
+There's nothing else to be done. I've applied for extension of leave,
+and told them why."
+
+Nothing more was said that night between the uncle and nephew, and
+no word had been spoken about Mary Lowther. On the next morning the
+breakfast at the parsonage passed by in silence. Parson John had been
+thinking a good deal of Mary, but had resolved that it was best that
+he should hold his tongue for the present. From the moment in which
+he had first heard of the engagement, he had made up his mind that
+his nephew and Mary Lowther would never be married. Seeing what
+his nephew was--or rather seeing that which he fancied his nephew
+to be,--he was sure that he would not sacrifice himself by such a
+marriage. There was always a way out of things, and Walter Marrable
+would be sure to find it. The way out of it had been found now with
+a vengeance. Immediately after breakfast the Captain took his hat
+without a word, and walked steadily up the hill to Uphill Lane. As
+he passed the door of the Bull he saw, but took no notice of, a
+gentleman who was standing under the covered entrance to the inn, and
+who had watched him coming out from the parsonage gate; but Gilmore,
+the moment that his eyes fell upon the Captain, declared to himself
+that that was his rival. Captain Marrable walked straight up the
+hill and knocked at Miss Marrable's door. Was Miss Lowther at home?
+Of course Miss Lowther was at home at such an hour. The girl said
+that Miss Mary was alone in the breakfast parlour. Miss Marrable had
+already gone down to the kitchen. Without waiting for another word,
+he walked into the little back room, and there he found his love.
+"Walter," she said, jumping up and running to him; "how good of you
+to come so soon! We didn't expect you these two days." She had thrown
+herself into his arms, but, though he embraced her, he did not kiss
+her. "There is something the matter!" she said. "What is it?" As she
+spoke she drew away from him and looked up into his face. He smiled
+and shook his head, still holding her by the waist. "Tell me, Walter;
+I know there is something wrong."
+
+"It is only that dirty money. My father has succeeded in getting it
+all."
+
+"All, Walter?" said she, again drawing herself away.
+
+"Every shilling," said he, dropping his arm.
+
+"That will be very bad."
+
+"Not a doubt of it. I felt it just as you do."
+
+"And all our pretty plans are gone."
+
+"Yes;--all our pretty plans."
+
+"And what shall you do now?"
+
+"There is only one thing. I shall go to India again. Of course it is
+just the same to me as though I were told that sentence of death had
+gone against me;--only it will not be so soon over."
+
+"Don't say that, Walter."
+
+"Why not say it, my dear, when I feel it?"
+
+"But you don't feel it. I know it must be bad for you, but it is not
+quite that. I will not think that you have nothing left worth living
+for."
+
+"I can't ask you to go with me to that happy Paradise."
+
+"But I can ask you to take me," she said;--"though perhaps it will be
+better that I should not."
+
+"My darling!--my own darling!" Then she came back to him and laid her
+head upon his shoulders, and lifted his hand till it came again round
+her waist. And he kissed her forehead, and smoothed her hair. "Swear
+to me," she said, "that whatever happens you will not put me away
+from you."
+
+"Put you away, dearest! A man doesn't put away the only morsel he has
+to keep him from starving. But yet as I came up here this morning I
+resolved that I would put you away."
+
+"Walter!"
+
+"And even now I know that they will tell me that I should do so. How
+can I take you out there to such a life as that without having the
+means of keeping a house over your head?"
+
+"Officers do marry without fortunes."
+
+"Yes;--and what sort of a time do their wives have? Oh, Mary, my own,
+my own, my own!--it is very bad! You cannot understand it all at
+once, but it is very bad."
+
+"If it be better for you, Walter,--" she said, again drawing herself
+away.
+
+"It is not that, and do not say that it is. Let us at any rate trust
+each other."
+
+She gave herself a little shake before she answered him. "I will
+trust you in everything;--as God is my judge, in everything. What you
+tell me to do, I will do. But, Walter, I will say one thing first.
+I can look forward to nothing but absolute misery in any life that
+will separate me from you. I know the difference between comfort and
+discomfort in money matters, but all that is as a feather in the
+balance. You are my god upon earth, and to you I must cling. Whether
+you be away from me or with me, I must cling to you the same. If I
+am to be separated from you for a time, I can do it with hope. If
+I am to be separated from you for ever, I shall still do so,--with
+despair. And now I will trust you, and I will do whatever you tell
+me. If you forbid me to call you mine any longer,--I will obey, and
+will never reproach you."
+
+"I will always be yours," he said, taking her again to his heart.
+
+"Then, dearest, you shall not find me wanting for anything you may
+ask of me. Of course you can't decide at present."
+
+"I have decided that I must go to India. I have asked for the
+exchange."
+
+"Yes;--I understand; but about our marriage. It may be that you
+should go out first. I would not be unmaidenly, Walter; but remember
+this--the sooner the better, if I can be a comfort to you;--but I can
+bear any delay rather than be a clog upon you."
+
+Marrable, as he had walked up the hill,--and during all his thoughts,
+indeed, since he had been convinced that the money was gone from
+him,--had been disposed to think that his duty to Mary required him
+to give her up. He had asked her to be his wife when he believed his
+circumstances to be other than they were; and now he knew that the
+life he had to offer to her was one of extreme discomfort. He had
+endeavoured to shake off any idea that as he must go back to India it
+would be more comfortable for himself to return without than with a
+wife. He wanted to make the sacrifice of himself, and had determined
+that he would do so. Now, at any rate for the moment, all his
+resolves were thrown to the wind. His own love was so strong and was
+so gratified by her love, that half his misery was carried away in an
+enthusiasm of romantic devotion. Let the worst come to the worst, the
+man that was so loved by such a woman could not be of all men the
+most miserable.
+
+He left the house, giving to her the charge of telling the bad news
+to Miss Marrable; and as he went he saw in the street before the
+house the man whom he had seen standing an hour before under the
+gateway of the inn. And Gilmore saw him too, and well knew where he
+had been.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX.
+
+THE AUNT AND THE UNCLE.
+
+
+Miss Marrable heard the story of the Captain's loss in perfect
+silence. Mary told it craftily, with a smile on her face, as though
+she were but slightly affected by it, and did not think very much on
+the change it might effect in her plans and those of her lover. "He
+has been ill-treated; has he not?" she said.
+
+"Very badly treated. I can't understand it, but it seems to me that
+he has been most shamefully treated."
+
+"He tried to explain it all to me; but I don't know that he
+succeeded."
+
+"Why did the lawyers deceive him?"
+
+"I think he was a little rash there. He took what they told him for
+more than it was worth. There was some woman who said that she would
+resign her claim; but when they came to look into it, she too had
+signed some papers and the money was all gone. He could recover it
+from his father by law, only that his father has got nothing."
+
+"And that is to be the end of it."
+
+"That is the end of our five thousand pounds," said Mary, forcing
+a little laugh. Miss Marrable for a few moments made no reply. She
+sat fidgety in her seat, feeling that it was her duty to explain to
+Mary what must, in her opinion, be the inevitable result of this
+misfortune, and yet not knowing how to begin her task. Mary was
+partly aware of what was coming, and had fortified herself to reject
+all advice, to assert her right to do as she pleased with herself,
+and to protest that she cared nothing for the prudent views of
+worldly-minded people. But she was afraid of what was coming. She
+knew that arguments would be used which she would find it very
+difficult to answer; and, although she had settled upon certain
+strong words which she would speak, she felt that she would be
+driven at last to quarrel with her aunt. On one thing she was quite
+resolved. Nothing should induce her to give up her engagement,--short
+of the expression of a wish to that effect from Walter Marrable
+himself.
+
+"How will this affect you, dear?" said Miss Marrable at last.
+
+"I should have been a poor man's wife any how. Now I shall be the
+wife of a very poor man. I suppose that will be the effect."
+
+"What will he do?"
+
+"He has, aunt, made up his mind to go to India."
+
+"Has he made up his mind to anything else?"
+
+"Of course, I know what you mean, aunt?"
+
+"Why should you not know? I mean, that a man going out to India, and
+intending to live there as an officer on his pay, cannot be in want
+of a wife."
+
+"You speak of a wife as if she were the same as a coach-and-four, or
+a box at the opera,--a sort of luxury for rich men. Marriage, aunt,
+is like death, common to all."
+
+"In our position in life, Mary, marriage cannot be made so common as
+to be undertaken without foresight for the morrow. A poor gentleman
+is further removed from marriage than any other man."
+
+"One knows, of course, that there will be difficulties."
+
+"What I mean, Mary, is, that you will have to give it up."
+
+"Never, Aunt Sarah. I shall never give it up."
+
+"Do you mean that you will marry him now, at once, and go out to
+India with him, as a dead weight round his neck?"
+
+"I mean that he shall choose about that."
+
+"It is for you to choose, Mary. Don't be angry. I am bound to tell
+you what I think. You can, of course, act as you please; but I think
+that you ought to listen to me. He cannot go back from his engagement
+without laying himself open to imputation of bad conduct."
+
+"Nor can I."
+
+"Pardon me, dear. That depends, I think, upon what passes between
+you. It is at any rate for you to propose the release to him,--not to
+fix him with the burthen of proposing it." Mary's heart quailed as
+she heard this, but she did not show her feeling by any expression
+on her face. "For a man, placed as he is, about to return to such a
+climate as that of India, with such work before him as I suppose men
+have there,--the burden of a wife, without the means of maintaining
+her according to his views of life and hers--"
+
+"We have no views of life. We know that we shall be poor."
+
+"It is the old story of love and a cottage,--only under the most
+unfavourable circumstances. A woman's view of it is, of course,
+different from that of a man. He has seen more of the world, and
+knows better than she does what poverty and a wife and family mean."
+
+"There is no reason why we should be married at once."
+
+"A long engagement for you would be absolutely disastrous."
+
+"Of course, there is disaster," said Mary. "The loss of Walter's
+money is disastrous. One has to put up with disaster. But the worst
+of all disasters would be to be separated. I can stand anything but
+that."
+
+"It seems to me, Mary, that within the last few weeks your character
+has become altogether altered."
+
+"Of course it has."
+
+"You used to think so much more of other people than yourself."
+
+"Don't I think of him, Aunt Sarah?"
+
+"As of a thing of your own. Two months ago you did not know him, and
+now you are a millstone round his neck."
+
+"I will never be a millstone round anybody's neck," said Mary,
+walking out of the room. She felt that her aunt had been very cruel
+to her,--had attacked her in her misery without mercy; and yet she
+knew that every word that had been uttered had been spoken in pure
+affection. She did not believe that her aunt's chief purpose had been
+to save Walter from the fruits of an imprudent marriage. Had she
+so believed, the words would have had more effect on her. She saw,
+or thought that she saw, that her aunt was trying to save herself
+against her own will, and at this she was indignant. She was
+determined to persevere; and this endeavour to make her feel that
+her perseverance would be disastrous to the man she loved was, she
+thought, very cruel. She stalked upstairs with unruffled demeanour;
+but when there, she threw herself on her bed and sobbed bitterly.
+Could it be that it was her duty, for his sake, to tell him that the
+whole thing should be at an end? It was impossible for her to do so
+now, because she had sworn to him that she would be guided altogether
+by him in his present troubles. She must keep her word to him,
+whatever happened; but of this she was quite sure,--that if he should
+show the slightest sign of a wish to be free from his engagement,
+she would make him free--at once. She would make him free, and would
+never allow herself to think for a moment that he had been wrong.
+She had told him what her own feelings were very plainly,--perhaps,
+in her enthusiasm, too plainly,--and now he must judge for himself
+and for her. In respect to her aunt, she would endeavour to avoid
+any further conversation on the subject till her lover should have
+decided finally what would be best for both of them. If he should
+choose to say that everything between them should be over, she would
+acquiesce,--and all the world should be over for her at the same
+time.
+
+While this was going on in Uphill Lane something of the same kind was
+taking place at the Lowtown Parsonage. Parson John became aware that
+his nephew had been with the ladies at Uphill, and when the young
+man came in for lunch, he asked some question which introduced the
+subject. "You've told them of this fresh trouble, no doubt."
+
+"I didn't see Miss Marrable," said the Captain.
+
+"I don't know that Miss Marrable much signifies. You haven't asked
+Miss Marrable to be your wife."
+
+"I saw Mary, and I told her."
+
+"I hope you made no bones about it."
+
+"I don't know what you mean, sir."
+
+"I hope you told her that you two had had your little game of play,
+like two children, and that there must be an end of it."
+
+"No; I didn't tell her that."
+
+"That's what you have got to tell her in some kind of language, and
+the sooner you do it the better. Of course you can't marry her. You
+couldn't have done it if this money had been all right, and it's out
+of the question now. Bless my soul! how you would hate each other
+before six months were over. I can understand that for a strong
+fellow like you, when he's used to it, India may be a jolly place
+enough."
+
+"It's a great deal more than I can understand."
+
+"But for a poor man with a wife and family;--oh dear! it must be very
+bad indeed. And neither of you have ever been used to that kind of
+thing."
+
+"I have not," said the Captain.
+
+"Nor has she. That old lady up there is not rich, but she is as proud
+as Lucifer, and always lives as though the whole place belonged to
+her. She's a good manager, and she don't run in debt;--but Mary
+Lowther knows no more of roughing it than a duchess."
+
+"I hope I may never have to teach her."
+
+"I trust you never may. It's a very bad lesson for a young man
+to have to teach a young woman. Some women die in the learning.
+Some won't learn it at all. Others do, and become dirty and rough
+themselves. Now, you are very particular about women."
+
+"I like to see them well turned out."
+
+"What would you think of your own wife, nursing perhaps a couple of
+babies, dressed nohow when she gets up in the morning, and going on
+in the same way till night? That's the kind of life with officers who
+marry on their pay. I don't say anything against it. If the man likes
+it,--or rather if he's able to put up with it,--it may be all very
+well; but you couldn't put up with it. Mary's very nice now, but
+you'd come to be so sick of her, that you'd feel half like cutting
+her throat,--or your own."
+
+"It would be the latter for choice, sir."
+
+"I dare say it would. But even that isn't a pleasant thing to look
+forward to. I'll tell you the truth about it, my boy. When you first
+came to me and told me that you were going to marry Mary Lowther, I
+knew it could not be. It was no business of mine; but I knew it could
+not be. Such engagements always get themselves broken off somehow.
+Now and again there are a pair of fools who go through with it;--but
+for the most part it's a matter of kissing and lovers' vows for a
+week or two."
+
+"You seem to know all about it, Uncle John."
+
+"I haven't lived to be seventy without knowing something, I suppose.
+And now here you are without a shilling. I dare say, if the truth
+were known, you've a few debts here and there."
+
+"I may owe three or four hundred pounds or so."
+
+"As much as a year's income;--and you talk of marrying a girl without
+a farthing."
+
+"She has twelve hundred pounds."
+
+"Just enough to pay your own debts, and take you out to India,--so
+that you may start without a penny. Is that the sort of career that
+will suit you, Walter? Can you trust yourself to that kind of thing,
+with a wife under your arm? If you were a man of fortune, no doubt
+Mary would make a very nice wife; but, as it is,--you must give it
+up."
+
+Whereupon Captain Marrable lit a pipe and took himself into the
+parson's garden, thence into the stables and stable-yard, and again
+back to the garden, thinking of all this. There was not a word spoken
+by Parson John which Walter did not know to be true. He had already
+come to the conclusion that he must go out to India before he
+married. As for marrying Mary at once and taking her with him this
+winter, that was impossible. He must go and look about him;--and as
+he thought of this he was forced to acknowledge to himself that he
+regarded the delay as a reprieve. The sooner the better had been
+Mary's view with him. Though he was loath enough to entertain the
+idea of giving her up, he was obliged to confess that, like the
+condemned man, he desired a long day. There was nothing happy before
+him in the whole prospect of his life. Of course he loved Mary. He
+loved her very dearly. He loved her so dearly, that to have her taken
+from him would be to have his heart plucked asunder. So he swore to
+himself;--and yet he was in doubt whether it would not be better that
+his heart should be plucked asunder, than that she should be made to
+live in accordance with those distasteful pictures which his uncle
+had drawn for him. Of himself he would not think at all. Everything
+must be bad for him. What happiness could a man expect who had been
+misused, cheated, and mined by his own father? For himself it did not
+much matter what became of him; but he began to doubt whether for
+Mary's sake it would not be well that they should be separated. And
+then Mary had thrust upon him the whole responsibility of a decision!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI.
+
+MARY LOWTHER FEELS HER WAY.
+
+
+That afternoon there came down to the parsonage a note from Mary to
+the Captain, asking her lover to meet her, and walk with her before
+dinner. He met her, and they took their accustomed stroll along the
+towing-path and into the fields. Mary had thought much of her aunt's
+words before the note was written, and had a fixed purpose of her own
+in view. It was true enough that though she loved this man with all
+her heart and soul, so loved him that she could not look forward to
+life apart from him without seeing that such life would be a great
+blank, yet she was aware that she hardly knew him. We are apt to
+suppose that love should follow personal acquaintance; and yet love
+at third sight is probably as common as any love at all, and it takes
+a great many sights before one human being can know another. Years
+are wanted to make a friendship, but days suffice for men and women
+to get married. Mary was, after a fashion, aware that she had been
+too quick in giving away her heart, and that now, when the gift had
+been made in full, it became her business to learn what sort of man
+was he to whom she had given it. And it was not only his nature as
+it affected her, but his nature as it affected himself that she
+must study. She did not doubt but that he was good, and true, and
+noble-minded; but it might be possible that a man good, true, and
+noble-minded, might have lived with so many indulgences around him
+as to be unable to achieve the constancy of heart which would be
+necessary for such a life as that which would be now before them if
+they married. She had told him that he should decide for himself
+and for her also,--thus throwing upon him the responsibility, and
+throwing upon him also, very probably, the necessity of a sacrifice.
+She had meant to be generous and trusting; but it might be that of
+all courses that which she had adopted was the least generous. In
+order that she might put this wrong right, if there were a wrong,
+she had asked him to come and walk with her. They met at the usual
+spot, and she put her hand through his arm with her accustomed smile,
+leaning upon him somewhat heavily for a minute, as girls do when they
+want to show that they claim the arm that they lean on as their own.
+
+"Have you told Parson John?" said Mary.
+
+"Oh, yes."
+
+"And what does he say?"
+
+"Just what a crabbed, crafty, selfish old bachelor of seventy would
+be sure to say."
+
+"You mean that he has told you to give up all idea of comforting
+yourself with a wife."
+
+"Just that."
+
+"And Aunt Sarah has been saying exactly the same to me. You can't
+think how eloquent Aunt Sarah has been. And her energy has quite
+surprised me."
+
+"I don't think Aunt Sarah was ever much of a friend of mine," said
+the Captain.
+
+"Not in the way of matrimony; in other respects she approves of you
+highly, and is rather proud of you as a Marrable. If you were only
+heir to the title, or something of that kind, she would think you the
+finest fellow going."
+
+"I wish I could gratify her, with all my heart."
+
+"She is such a dear old creature! You don't know her in the least,
+Walter. I am told she was ever so pretty when she was a girl; but she
+had no fortune of her own at that time, and she didn't care to marry
+beneath her position. You mustn't abuse her."
+
+"I've not abused her."
+
+"What she has been saying I am sure is very true; and I dare say
+Parson John has been saying the same thing."
+
+"If she has caused you to change your mind, say so at once, Mary. I
+shan't complain."
+
+Mary pressed his arm involuntarily, and loved him so dearly for the
+little burst of wrath. Was it really true that he, too, had set his
+heart upon it?--that all that the crafty old uncle had said had been
+of no avail?--that he also loved so well that he was willing to
+change the whole course of his life and become another person for the
+sake of her? If it were so, she would not say a word that could by
+possibility make him think that she was afraid. She would feel her
+way carefully, so that he might not be led by a chance phrase to
+imagine that what she was about to say was said on her own behalf.
+She would be very careful, but at the same time she would be so
+explicit that there should be no doubt on his mind but that he had
+her full permission to retire from the engagement if he thought it
+best to do so. She was quite ready to share the burthens of life with
+him, let them be what they might; but she would not be a mill-stone
+round his neck. At any rate, he should not be weighted with the
+mill-stone, if he himself looked upon a loving wife in that light.
+
+"She has not caused me to change my mind at all, Walter. Of course I
+know that all this is very serious. I knew that without Aunt Sarah's
+telling me. After all, Aunt Sarah can't be so wise as you ought to
+be, who have seen India and who know it well."
+
+"India is not a nice place to live in--especially for women."
+
+"I don't know that Loring is very nice;--but one has to take that as
+it comes. Of course it would be nicer if you could live at home and
+have plenty of money. I wish I had a fortune of my own. I never cared
+for it before, but I do now."
+
+"Things don't come by wishing, Mary."
+
+"No; but things do come by resolving and struggling. I have no doubt
+but that you will live yet to do something and to be somebody. I have
+that faith in you. But I can well understand that a wife may be a
+great impediment in your way."
+
+"I don't want to think of myself at all."
+
+"But you must think of yourself. For a woman, after all, it doesn't
+matter much. She isn't expected to do anything particular. A man
+of course must look to his own career, and take care that he does
+nothing to mar it."
+
+"I don't quite understand what you're driving at," said the Captain.
+
+"Well;--I'm driving at this: that I think that you are bound to
+decide upon doing that which you feel to be wisest without reference
+to my feelings. Of course I love you better than anything in the
+world. I can't be so false as to say it isn't so. Indeed, to tell the
+truth, I don't know that I really ever loved anybody else. But if it
+is proper that we should be separated, I shall get over it,--in a
+way."
+
+"You mean you'd marry somebody else in the process of time."
+
+"No, Walter; I don't mean that. Women shouldn't make protestations;
+but I don't think I ever should. But a woman can live and get on very
+well without being married, and I should always have you in my heart,
+and I should try to comfort myself with remembering that you had
+loved me."
+
+"I am quite sure that I shall never marry anyone else," said the
+Captain.
+
+"You know what I'm driving at now;--eh, Walter?"
+
+"Partly."
+
+"I want you to know wholly. I told you this morning that I should
+leave it to you to decide. I still say the same. I consider myself
+for the present as much bound to obey you as though I were your wife
+already. But after saying that, and after hearing Aunt Mary's sermon,
+I felt that I ought to make you understand that I am quite aware
+that it may be impossible for you to keep to your engagement. You
+understand all that better than I do. Our engagement was made when
+you thought you had money, and even then you felt that there was
+little enough."
+
+"It was very little."
+
+"And now there is none. I don't profess to be afraid of poverty
+myself, because I don't quite know what it means."
+
+"It means something very unpleasant."
+
+"No doubt; and it would be unpleasant to be parted;--wouldn't it?"
+
+"It would be horrible."
+
+She pressed his arm again as she went on. "You must judge between the
+two. What I want you to understand is this, that whatever you may
+judge to be right and best, I will agree to it, and will think that
+it is right and best. If you say that we will get ourselves married
+and try it, I shall feel that not to get ourselves married and not to
+try it is a manifest impossibility; and if you say that we should be
+wrong to get married and try it, then I will feel that to have done
+so was quite a manifest impossibility."
+
+"Mary," said he, "you're an angel."
+
+"No; but I'm a woman who loves well enough to be determined not to
+hurt the man she loves if she can help it."
+
+"There is one thing on which I think we must decide."
+
+"What is that?"
+
+"I must at any rate go out before we are married." Mary Lowther felt
+this to be a decision in her favour,--to be a decision which for the
+time made her happy and light-hearted. She had so dreaded a positive
+and permanent separation, that the delay seemed to her to be hardly
+an evil.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII.
+
+MR. GILMORE'S SUCCESS.
+
+
+Harry Gilmore, the prosperous country gentleman, the county
+magistrate, the man of acres, the nephew of Mr. Chamberlaine,
+respected by all who knew him,--with the single exception of the
+Marquis of Trowbridge,--was now so much reduced that he felt himself
+to be an inferior being to Mr. Cockey, with whom he breakfasted. He
+had come to Loring, and now he was there he did not know what to do
+with himself. He had come there, in truth, not because he really
+thought he could do any good, but driven out of his home by sheer
+misery. He was a man altogether upset, and verging on to a species of
+insanity. He was so uneasy in his mind that he could read nothing.
+He was half-ashamed of being looked at by those who knew him; and
+had felt some relief in the society of Mr. Cockey till Mr. Cockey
+had become jovial with wine, simply because Mr. Cockey was so poor a
+creature that he felt no fear of him. But as he had come to Loring,
+it was necessary that he should do something. He could not come to
+Loring and go back again without saying a word to anybody. Fenwick
+would ask him questions, and the truth would come out. There came
+upon him this morning an idea that he would not go back home;--that
+he would leave Loring and go away without giving any reason to any
+one. He was his own master. No one would be injured by anything
+that he might do. He had a right to spend his income as he pleased.
+Everything was distasteful that reminded him of Bullhampton. But
+still he knew that this was no more than a madman's idea;--that it
+would ill become him so to act. He had duties to perform, and he must
+perform them, let them be ever so distasteful. It was only an idea,
+made to be rejected; but, nevertheless, he thought of it.
+
+To do something, however, was incumbent on him. After breakfast he
+sauntered up the hill and saw Captain Marrable enter the house in
+which Mary Lowther lived. He felt thoroughly ashamed of himself
+in thus creeping about, and spying things out,--and, in truth, he
+had not intended thus to watch his rival. He wandered into the
+churchyard, sat there sometime on the tombstones, and then again went
+down to the inn. Mr. Cockey was going to Gloucester by an afternoon
+train, and invited him to join an early dinner at two. He assented,
+though by this time he had come to hate Mr. Cockey. Mr. Cockey
+assumed an air of superiority, and gave his opinions about matters
+political and social as though his companion were considerably below
+him in intelligence and general information. He dictated to poor
+Gilmore, and laid down the law as to eating onions with beefsteaks
+in a manner that was quite offensive. Nevertheless, the unfortunate
+man bore with his tormentor, and felt desolate when he was left
+alone in the commercial room, Cockey having gone out to complete
+his last round of visits to his customers. "Orders first and money
+afterwards," Cockey had said, and Cockey had now gone out to look
+after his money.
+
+Gilmore sat for some half-hour helpless over the fire; and then
+starting up, snatched his hat, and hurried out of the house. He
+walked as quickly as he could up the hill, and rang the bell at Miss
+Marrable's house. Had he been there ten minutes sooner, he would have
+seen Mary Lowther tripping down the side path to meet her lover. He
+rang the bell, and in a few minutes found himself in Miss Marrable's
+drawing-room. He had asked for Miss Marrable, had given his name, and
+had been shown upstairs. There he remained alone for a few minutes
+which seemed to him to be interminable. During these minutes Miss
+Marrable was standing in her little parlour downstairs, trying to
+think what she would say to Mr. Gilmore,--trying also to think why
+Mr. Gilmore should have come to Loring.
+
+After a few words of greeting Miss Marrable said that Miss Lowther
+was out walking. "She will be very glad, I'm sure, to hear good news
+from her friends at Bullhampton."
+
+"They're all very well," said Mr. Gilmore.
+
+"I've heard a great deal of Mr. Fenwick," said Miss Marrable; "so
+much that I seem almost to be acquainted with him."
+
+"No doubt," said Mr. Gilmore.
+
+"Your parish has become painfully known to the public by that
+horrible murder," said Miss Marrable.
+
+"Yes, indeed," said Mr. Gilmore.
+
+"I fear that they will hardly catch the perpetrator of it," said Miss
+Marrable.
+
+"I fear not," said Mr. Gilmore.
+
+At this period of the conversation Miss Marrable found herself in
+great difficulty. If anything was to be said about Mary Lowther, she
+could not begin to say it. She had heard a great deal in favour of
+Mr. Gilmore. Mrs. Fenwick had written to her about the man; and Mary,
+though she would not love him, had always spoken very highly of his
+qualities. She knew well that he had gone through Oxford with credit,
+that he was a reading man,--so reputed, that he was a magistrate, and
+in all respects a gentleman. Indeed, she had formed an idea of him as
+quite a pearl among men. Now that she saw him, she could not repress
+a feeling of disappointment. He was badly dressed, and bore a sad,
+depressed, downtrodden aspect. His whole appearance was what the
+world now calls seedy. And he seemed to be almost unable to speak.
+Miss Marrable knew that Mr. Gilmore was a man disappointed in his
+love, but she did not conceive that love had done him all these
+injuries. Love, however, had done them all. "Are you going to stay
+long in this neighbourhood?" asked Miss Marrable, almost in despair
+for a subject.
+
+Then the man's mouth was opened. "No; I suppose not," he said. "I
+don't know what should keep me here, and I hardly know why I'm come.
+Of course you have heard of my suit to your niece." Miss Marrable
+bowed her courtly little head in token of assent. "When Miss Lowther
+left us, she gave me some hope that I might be successful. At least,
+she consented that I should ask her once more. She has now written to
+tell me that she is engaged to her cousin."
+
+"There is something of the kind," said Miss Marrable.
+
+"Something of the kind! I suppose it is settled; isn't it?"
+
+Miss Marrable was a sensible woman, one not easily led away by
+appearances. Nevertheless, it is probable that had Mr. Gilmore been
+less lugubrious, more sleek, less "seedy," she would have been more
+prone than she now was to have made instant use of Captain Marrable's
+loss of fortune on behalf of this other suitor. She would immediately
+have felt that perhaps something might be done, and she would have
+been tempted to tell him the whole story openly. As it was she could
+not so sympathise with the man before her, as to take him into her
+confidence. No doubt he was Mr. Gilmore, the favoured friend of the
+Fenwicks, the owner of the Privets, and the man of whom Mary had
+often said that there was no fault to be found with him. But there
+was nothing bright about him, and she did not know how to encourage
+him as a lover. "As Mary has told you," she said, "I suppose there
+can be no harm in my repeating that they are engaged," said Miss
+Marrable.
+
+"Of course they are. I am aware of that. I believe the gentleman is
+related to you."
+
+"He is a cousin,--not very near."
+
+"And I suppose he has your good will?"
+
+"As to that, Mr. Gilmore, I don't know that I can do any good by
+speaking. Young ladies in these days don't marry in accordance with
+the wishes of their old aunts."
+
+"But Miss Lowther thinks so much of you! I don't want to ask any
+questions that ought not to be asked. If this match is so settled
+that it must go on, why there's an end of it. I'll just tell you the
+truth openly, Miss Marrable. I have loved,--I do love your niece with
+all my heart. When I received her letter it upset me altogether, and
+every hour since has made the feeling worse. I have come here just
+to learn whether there may still possibly be a chance. You will not
+quarrel with me because I have loved her so well?"
+
+"Indeed no," said Miss Marrable, whose heart was gradually becoming
+soft, and who was learning to forget the mud on Mr. Gilmore's boots
+and trousers.
+
+"I heard that Captain Marrable was,--at any rate, not a very rich
+man; that he could hardly afford to marry his cousin. I did hear,
+also, that the match might in other respects not be suitable."
+
+"There is no other objection, Mr. Gilmore."
+
+"It is the case, Miss Marrable, that these things sometimes come
+on suddenly and go off suddenly. I won't deny that if I could
+have gained Miss Lowther's heart without the interference of any
+interloper, it would have been to me a brighter joy than anything
+that can now be possible. A man cannot be proud of his position who
+seeks to win a woman who owns a preference for another man." Miss
+Marrable's heart had now become very soft, and she began to perceive,
+of her own knowledge, that Mr. Gilmore was at any rate a gentleman.
+"But I would take her in any way that I could get her. Perhaps--that
+is to say, it might be--" And then he stopped.
+
+Should she tell him everything? She had a strong idea that it was her
+first duty to be true to her own sex and to her own niece. But were
+she to tell the man the whole story it would do her niece no harm.
+She still believed that the match with Captain Marrable must be
+broken off. Even were this done it would be very long, she thought,
+before Mary would bring herself to listen with patience to another
+suitor. But of course it would be best for them all that this episode
+in Mary's life should be forgotten and put out of sight as soon as
+possible. Had not this dangerous captain come up, Mary, no doubt,--so
+thought Miss Marrable,--would at last have complied with her friends'
+advice, and have accepted a marriage which was in all respects
+advantageous. If the episode could only get itself forgotten and put
+out of sight, she might do so still. But there must be delay. Miss
+Marrable, after waiting for half a minute to consider, determined
+that she would tell him something. "No doubt," she said, "Captain
+Marrable's income is so small that the match is one that Mary's
+friends cannot approve."
+
+"I don't think much of money," he said.
+
+"Still it is essential to comfort, Mr. Gilmore."
+
+"What I mean to say is, that I am the last man in the world to insist
+upon that kind of thing, or to appear to triumph because my income is
+larger than another man's." Miss Marrable was now quite sure that Mr.
+Gilmore was a gentleman. "But if the match is to be broken off--"
+
+"I cannot say that it will be broken off."
+
+"But it may be?"
+
+"Certainly it is possible. There are difficulties which may
+necessarily separate them."
+
+"If it be so, my feelings will be the same as they have always been
+since I first knew her. That is all that I have got to say."
+
+Then she told him pretty nearly everything. She said nothing of the
+money which Walter Marrable would have inherited had it not been for
+Colonel Marrable's iniquity; but she did tell him that the young
+people would have no income except the Captain's pay, and poor Mary's
+little fifty pounds a-year; and she went on to explain that, as
+far as she was concerned, and as far as her cousin the clergyman
+was concerned, everything would be done to prevent a marriage so
+disastrous as that in question, and the prospect of a life with so
+little of allurement as that of the wife of a poor soldier in India.
+At the same time she bade him remember that Mary Lowther was a girl
+very apt to follow her own judgment, and that she was for the present
+absolutely devoted to her cousin. "I think it will be broken off,"
+she said. "That is my opinion. I don't think it can go on. But it is
+he that will do it; and for a time she will suffer greatly."
+
+"Then I will wait," said Mr. Gilmore. "I will go home, and wait
+again. If there be a chance, I can live and hope."
+
+"God grant that you may not hope in vain!"
+
+"I would do my best to make her happy. I will leave you now, and am
+very thankful for your kindness. There would be no good in my seeing
+Mary?"
+
+"I think not, Mr. Gilmore."
+
+"I suppose not. She would only feel that I was teasing her. You will
+not tell her of my being here, I suppose?"
+
+"It would do no good, I think."
+
+"None in the least. I'll just go home and wait. If there should be
+anything to tell me--"
+
+"If the match be broken off, I will take care that you shall hear it.
+I will write to Janet Fenwick. I know that she is your friend."
+
+Then Mr. Gilmore left the house, descended the hill without seeing
+Mary, packed up his things, and returned by the night train to
+Westbury. At seven o'clock in the morning he reached home in a
+Westbury gig, very cold, but upon the whole, a much more comfortable
+man than when he had left it. He had almost brought himself to think
+that even yet he would succeed at last.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII.
+
+FAREWELL.
+
+
+Christmas came, and a month beyond Christmas, and by the end of
+January Captain Marrable and Miss Lowther had agreed to regard
+all their autumn work as null and void,--to look back upon the
+love-making as a thing that had not been, and to part as friends.
+Both of them suffered much in this arrangement,--the man being the
+louder in the objurgations which he made against his ill-fortune, and
+in his assurances to himself and others that he was ruined for life.
+And, indeed, no man could have been much more unhappy than was Walter
+Marrable in these days. To him was added the trouble, which he did
+not endeavour to hide from himself or Mary, that all this misery
+came to him from his own father. Before the end of November, sundry
+renewed efforts were made to save a portion of the money, and the
+lawyers descended so low as to make an offer to take L2000. They
+might have saved themselves the humiliation, for neither L2000 nor
+L200 could have been made to be forthcoming. Walter Marrable, when
+the time came, was painfully anxious to fight somebody; but he was
+told very clearly by Messrs. Block and Curling, that there was nobody
+whom he could fight but his father, and that even by fighting his
+father, he would never obtain a penny. "My belief," said Mr. Curling,
+"is, that you could put your father in prison, but that probably is
+not your object." Marrable was forced to own that that was not his
+object; but he did so in a tone which seemed to imply that a prison,
+were it even for life, would be the best place for his father. Block
+and Curling had been solicitors to the Marrables for ever so many
+years; and though they did not personally love the Colonel, they
+had a professional feeling that the blackness of a black sheep of a
+family should not be made public, at any rate by the family itself
+or by the family solicitors. Almost every family has a black sheep,
+and it is the especial duty of a family solicitor to keep the family
+black sheep from being dragged into the front and visible ranks
+of the family. The Captain had been fatally wrong in signing the
+paper which he had signed, and must take the consequences. "I don't
+think, Captain Marrable, that you would save yourself in any way by
+proceeding against the Colonel," said Mr. Curling. "I have not the
+slightest intention of proceeding against him," said the Captain, in
+great dudgeon,--and then he left the office and shook the dust off
+his feet, as against Block and Curling as well as against his father.
+
+After this,--immediately after it,--he had one other interview with
+his father. As he told his uncle, the devil prompted him to go down
+to Portsmouth to see the man to whom his interests should have been
+dearer than to all the world beside, and who had robbed him so
+ruthlessly. There was nothing to be gained by such a visit. Neither
+money nor counsel, nor even consolation would be forthcoming from
+Colonel Marrable. Probably Walter Marrable felt in his anger that
+it would be unjust that his father should escape without a word to
+remind him from his son's mouth of all that he had done for his son.
+The Colonel held some staff office at Portsmouth, and his son came
+upon him in his lodgings one evening as he was dressing to go out
+to dinner. "Is that you, Walter?" said the battered old reprobate,
+appearing at the door of his bed-room; "I am very glad to see you."
+
+"I don't believe it," said the son.
+
+"Well;--what would you have me say? If you'll only behave decently, I
+shall be glad to see you."
+
+"You've given me an example in that way, sir; have you not? Decency
+indeed!"
+
+"Now, Walter, if you're going to talk about that horrid money, I tell
+you at once, that I won't listen to you."
+
+"That's kind of you, sir."
+
+"I've been unfortunate. As soon as I can repay it, or a part of it,
+I will. Since you've been back, I've done everything in my power to
+get a portion of it for you,--and should have got it, but for those
+stupid people in Bedford Row. After all, the money ought to have been
+mine, and that's what I suppose you felt when you enabled me to draw
+it."
+
+"By heavens, that's cool!"
+
+"I mean to be cool;--I'm always cool. The cab will be here to take
+me to dinner in a very few minutes. I hope you will not think I am
+running away from you?"
+
+"I don't mean you to go till you've heard what I've got to say," said
+the Captain.
+
+"Then, pray say it quickly." Upon this, the Colonel stood still and
+faced his son; not exactly with a look of anger, but assuming an
+appearance as though he were the person injured. He was a thin old
+man, who wore padded coats, and painted his beard and his eyebrows,
+and had false teeth, and who, in spite of chronic absence of means,
+always was possessed of clothes apparently just new from the hands of
+a West-end tailor. He was one of those men who, through their long,
+useless, ill-flavoured lives, always contrive to live well, to eat
+and drink of the best, to lie softly, and to go about in purple
+and fine linen,--and yet, never have any money. Among a certain
+set Colonel Marrable, though well known, was still popular. He was
+good-tempered, well-mannered, sprightly in conversation, and had not
+a scruple in the world. He was over seventy, had lived hard, and must
+have known that there was not much more of it for him. But yet he
+had no qualms, and no fears. It may be doubted whether he knew that
+he was a bad man,--he, than whom you could find none worse though
+you were to search the country from one end to another. To lie, to
+steal,--not out of tills or pockets, because he knew the danger; to
+cheat--not at the card-table, because he had never come in the way
+of learning the lesson; to indulge every passion, though the cost to
+others might be ruin for life; to know no gods but his own bodily
+senses, and no duty but that which he owed to those gods; to eat all,
+and produce nothing; to love no one but himself; to have learned
+nothing but how to sit at table like a gentleman; to care not at all
+for his country, or even for his profession; to have no creed, no
+party, no friend, no conscience, to be troubled with nothing that
+touched his heart;--such had been, was, and was to be the life of
+Colonel Marrable. Perhaps it was accounted to him as a merit by some
+that he did not quail at any coming fate. When his doctor warned him
+that he must go soon, unless he would refrain from this and that
+and the other,--so wording his caution that the Colonel could not
+but know and did know, that let him refrain as he would he must go
+soon,--he resolved that he would refrain, thinking that the charms
+of his wretched life were sweet enough to be worth such sacrifice;
+but in no other respect did the caution affect him. He never asked
+himself whether he had aught even to regret before he died, or to
+fear afterwards.
+
+There are many Colonel Marrables about in the world, known well to be
+so at clubs, in drawing-rooms, and by the tradesmen who supply them.
+Men give them dinners and women smile upon them. The best of coats
+and boots are supplied to them. They never lack cigars nor champagne.
+They have horses to ride, and servants to wait upon them more
+obsequious than the servants of other people. And men will lend them
+money too,--well knowing that there is no chance of repayment. Now
+and then one hears a horrid tale of some young girl who surrenders
+herself to such a one, absolutely for love! Upon the whole the
+Colonel Marrables are popular. It is hard to follow such a man quite
+to the end and to ascertain whether or no he does go out softly at
+last, like the snuff of a candle,--just with a little stink.
+
+"I will say it as quickly as I can," said the Captain. "I can gain
+nothing I know by staying here in your company."
+
+"Not while you are so very uncivil."
+
+"Civil, indeed! I have to-day made up my mind, not for your sake, but
+for that of the family, that I will not prosecute you as a criminal
+for the gross robbery which you have perpetrated."
+
+"That is nonsense, Walter, and you know it as well as I do."
+
+"I am going back to India in a few weeks, and I trust I may never be
+called upon to see you again. I will not, if I can help it. It may
+be a toss-up which of us may die first, but this will be our last
+meeting. I hope you may remember on your death-bed that you have
+utterly ruined your son in every relation of life. I was engaged to
+marry a girl,--whom I loved; but it is all over, because of you."
+
+"I had heard of that, Walter, and I really congratulate you on your
+escape."
+
+"I can't strike you--"
+
+"No; don't do that."
+
+"Because of your age, and because you are my father. I suppose you
+have no heart, and that I cannot make you feel it."
+
+"My dear boy, I have an appetite, and I must go and satisfy it." So
+saying the Colonel escaped, and the Captain allowed his father to
+make his way down the stairs and into the cab before he followed.
+
+Though he had thus spoken to his father of his blasted hopes in
+regard to Mary Lowther, he had not as yet signified his consent to
+the measure by which their engagement was to be brought altogether
+to an end. The question had come to be discussed widely among their
+friends, as is the custom with such questions in such circumstances,
+and Mary had been told from all sides that she was bound to give it
+up,--that she was bound to give it up for her own sake, and more
+especially for his; that the engagement, if continued, would never
+lead to a marriage, and that it would in the meantime be absolutely
+ruinous to her,--and to him. Parson John came up and spoke to her
+with a strength for which she had not hitherto given Parson John
+credit. Her Aunt Sarah was very gentle with her, but never veered
+from her opinion that the engagement must of necessity be abandoned.
+Mr. Fenwick wrote to her a letter full of love and advice, and Mrs.
+Fenwick made a journey to Loring to discuss the matter with her. The
+discussion between them was very long. "If you are saying this on my
+account," said Mary, "it is quite useless."
+
+"On what other account? Mr. Gilmore? Indeed, indeed, I am not
+thinking of him. He is out of my mind altogether. I say it because I
+know it is impossible that you and your cousin should be married, and
+because such an engagement is destructive to both the parties."
+
+"For myself," said Mary, "it can make no difference."
+
+"It will make the greatest difference. It would wear you to pieces
+with a deferred hope. There is nothing so killing, so terrible, so
+much to be avoided. And then for him!-- How is a man, thrown about on
+the world as he will be, to live in such a condition."
+
+The upshot of it all was that Mary wrote a letter to her cousin
+proposing to surrender her engagement, and declaring that it would be
+best for them both that he should agree to accept her surrender. That
+plan which she had adopted before, of leaving all the responsibility
+to him, would not suffice. She had come to perceive during these
+weary discussions that if a way out of his bondage was to be given to
+Walter Marrable it must come from her action and not from his. She
+had intended to be generous when she left everything to him; but it
+was explained to her, both by her aunt and Mrs. Fenwick, that her
+generosity was of a kind which he could not use. It was for her to
+take the responsibility upon herself; it was for her to make the
+move; it was, in short, for her to say that the engagement should be
+over.
+
+The very day that Mrs. Fenwick left her she wrote the letter, and
+Captain Marrable had it in his pocket when he went down to bid a
+last farewell to his father. It had been a sad, weary, tear-laden
+performance,--the writing of that letter. She had resolved that
+no sign of a tear should be on the paper, and she had rubbed the
+moisture away from her eyes a dozen times during the work lest it
+should fall. There was but little of intended pathos in it; there
+were no expressions of love till she told him at the end that she
+would always love him dearly; there was no repining,--no mention of
+her own misery. She used all the arguments which others had used to
+her, and then drew her conclusion. She remembered that were she to
+tell him that she would still be true to him, she would in fact be
+asking for some such pledge back from him; and she said not a word
+of any such constancy on her own part. It was best for both of them
+that the engagement should be broken off; and, therefore, broken off
+it was, and should be now and for ever. That was the upshot of Mary
+Lowther's letter.
+
+
+[Illustration: Mary Lowther writes to Walter Marrable.]
+
+
+Captain Marrable when he received it, though he acknowledged the
+truth of all the arguments, loved the girl far too well to feel that
+this release gave him any comfort. He had doubtless felt that the
+engagement was a burthen on him,--that he would not have entered into
+it had he not felt sure of his diminished fortune, and that there
+was a fearful probability that it might never result in their being
+married; but not the less did the breaking up of it make him very
+wretched. An engagement for marriage can never be so much to a man as
+it is to a woman,--marriage itself can never be so much, can never
+be so great a change, produce such utter misery, or of itself be
+efficient for such perfect happiness,--but his love was true and
+steadfast, and when he learned that she was not to be his, he was as
+a man who had been robbed of his treasure. Her letter was long and
+argumentative. His reply was short and passionate;--and the reader
+shall see it.
+
+
+   Duke Street, January, 186--.
+
+   DEAREST MARY,
+
+   I suppose you are right. Everybody tells me so, and no
+   doubt everybody tells you the same. The chances are that
+   I shall get bowled over; and as for getting back again, I
+   don't know when I can hope for it. In such a condition it
+   would I believe be very wrong and selfish were I to go and
+   leave you to think of me as your future husband. You would
+   be waiting for that which would never come.
+
+   As for me, I shall never care for any other woman. A
+   soldier can get on very well without a wife, and I shall
+   always regard myself now as one of those useless but
+   common animals who are called "not marrying men." I shall
+   never marry. I shall always carry your picture in my
+   heart, and shall not think that I am sinning against you
+   or any one else when I do so after hearing that you are
+   married.
+
+   I need not tell you that I am very wretched. It is not
+   only that I am separated from you, my own dear, dearest
+   girl, but that I cannot refrain from thinking how it has
+   come to pass that it is so. I went down to see my father
+   yesterday. I did see him, and you may imagine of what
+   nature was the interview. I sometimes think, when I lie in
+   bed, that no man was ever so ill-treated as I have been.
+
+   Dearest love, good-bye. I could not have brought myself to
+   say what you have said, but I know that you are right. It
+   has not been my fault, dear. I did love you, and do love
+   you as truly as any man ever loved a woman.
+
+   Yours with all my heart,
+
+   WALTER MARRABLE.
+
+   I should like to see you once more before I start. Is
+   there any harm in this? I must run down to my uncle's, but
+   I will not go up to you if you think it better not. If you
+   can bring yourself to see me, pray, pray do.
+
+
+In answer to this Mary wrote to him to say that she would certainly
+see him when he came. She knew no reason, she said, why they should
+not meet. When she had written her note she asked her aunt's opinion.
+Aunt Sarah would not take upon herself to say that no such meeting
+ought to take place, but it was very evident that she thought that it
+would be dangerous.
+
+Captain Marrable did come down to Loring about the end of January,
+and the meeting did take place. Mary had stipulated that she should
+be alone when he called. He had suggested that they should walk out
+together, as had been their wont; but this she had declined, telling
+him that the sadness of such a walk would be too much for her, and
+saying to her aunt with a smile that were she once again out with him
+on the towing-path, there would be no chance of their ever coming
+home. "I could not ask him to turn back," she said, "when I should
+know that it would be for the last time." It was arranged, therefore,
+that the meeting should take place in the drawing-room at Uphill
+Lane.
+
+He came into the room with a quick, uneasy step, and when he reached
+her he put his arm round her and kissed her. She had formed certain
+little resolutions on this subject. He should kiss her, if he
+pleased, once again when he went,--and only once. And now, almost
+without a motion on her part that was perceptible, she took herself
+out of his arms. There should be no word about that if she could help
+it,--but she was bound to remember that he was nothing to her now but
+a distant cousin. He must cease to be her lover, though she loved
+him. Nay,--he had so ceased already. There must be no more laying of
+her head upon his shoulder, no more twisting of her fingers through
+his locks, no more looking into his eyes, no more amorous pressing
+of her lips against his own. Much as she loved him she must remember
+now that such outward signs of love as these would not befit her.
+"Walter," she said, "I am so glad to see you! And yet I do not know
+but what it would have been better that you should have stayed away."
+
+"Why should it have been better? It would have been unnatural not to
+have met each other."
+
+"So I thought. Why should not friends endure to say good-bye, even
+though their friendship be as dear as ours? I told Aunt Sarah that
+I should be angry with myself afterwards if I feared to tell you to
+come."
+
+"There is nothing to fear,--only that it is so wretched an ending,"
+said he.
+
+"In one way I will not look on it as an ending. You and I cannot be
+married, Walter; but I shall always have your career to look to, and
+shall think of you as my dearest friend. I shall expect you to write
+to me;--not at first, but after a year or so. You will be able to
+write to me then as though you were my brother."
+
+"I shall never be able to do that."
+
+"Oh yes;--that is, if you will make the effort for my sake. I do not
+believe but what people can manage and mould their own wills if they
+will struggle hard enough. You must not be unhappy, Walter."
+
+"I am not so wise or self-confident as you, Mary. I shall be unhappy.
+I should be deceiving myself if I were to tell myself otherwise.
+There is nothing before me to make me happy. When I came home there
+was very little that I cared for, though I had the prospect of this
+money and thought that my cares in that respect were over. Then I
+met you, and the whole world seemed altered. I was happy even when
+I found how badly I had been treated. Now all that has gone, and I
+cannot think that I shall be happy again."
+
+"I mean to be happy, Walter."
+
+"I hope you may, dear."
+
+"There are gradations in happiness. The highest I ever came to yet
+was when you told me that you loved me." When she said that, he
+attempted to take her hand, but she withdrew from him, almost without
+a sign that she was doing so. "I have not quite lost that yet," she
+continued, "and I do not mean to lose it altogether. I shall always
+remember that you loved me; and you will not forget that I too loved
+you."
+
+"Forget it?--no, I don't exactly think that I shall forget it."
+
+"I don't know why it should make us altogether unhappy. For a time, I
+suppose, we shall be down-hearted."
+
+"I shall, I know. I can't pretend to such strength as to say that I
+can lose what I want, and not feel it."
+
+"We shall both feel it, Walter;--but I do not know that we must be
+miserable. When do you leave England?"
+
+"Nothing is settled. I have not had the heart to think of it. It will
+not be for a month or two yet. I suppose I shall stay out my regular
+Indian time."
+
+"And what shall you do with yourself?"
+
+"I have no plans at all, Mary. Sir Gregory has asked me to Dunripple,
+and I shall remain there probably till I am tired of it. It will be
+so pleasant, talking to my uncle of my father."
+
+"Do not talk of him at all, Walter. You will best forgive him by not
+talking of him. We shall hear, I suppose, of what you do from Parson
+John."
+
+She had seated herself a little away from him, and he did not attempt
+to draw near to her again till at her bidding he rose to leave her.
+He sat there for nearly an hour, and during that time much more was
+said by her than by him. She endeavoured to make him understand that
+he was as free as air, and that she would hope some day to hear that
+he was married. In reply to this, he asserted very loudly that he
+would never call any woman his wife, unless unexpected circumstances
+should enable him to return and again ask for her hand. "Not that you
+are to wait for me, Mary," he said. She smiled, but made no definite
+answer to this. She had told herself that it would not be for his
+welfare that she should allude to the possibility of a renewed
+engagement, and she did not allude to it.
+
+"God bless you, Walter," she said at last, coming to him and offering
+him her hand.
+
+"God bless you, for ever and ever, dearest Mary," he said, taking her
+in his arms and kissing her again and again. It was to be the last,
+and she did not seem to shun him. Then he left her, went as far as
+the door,--and returned again. "Dearest, dearest Mary. You will give
+me one more kiss?"
+
+"It shall be the last, Walter," she said. Then she did kiss him,
+as she would have kissed her brother that was going from her, and
+escaping from his arms she left the room.
+
+He had come to Loring late on the previous evening, and on that same
+day he returned to London. No doubt he dined at his club, drank a
+pint of wine and smoked a cigar or two, though he did it all after a
+lugubrious fashion. Men knew that he had fallen into great trouble in
+the matter of his inheritance, and did not expect him to be joyful
+and of pleasant countenance. "By George!" said little Captain Boodle,
+"if it was my governor, I'd go very near being hung for him; I would,
+by George!" Which remark obtained a good deal of general sympathy in
+the billiard-room of that military club. In the meantime Mary Lowther
+at Loring had resolved that she would not be lugubrious, and she sat
+down to dinner opposite to her aunt with a pleasant smile on her
+face. Before the evening was over, however, she had in some degree
+broken down. "I fear I can't get along with novels, Aunt Sarah," she
+said. "Don't you think I could find something to do." Then the old
+lady came round the room and kissed her niece;--but she made no other
+reply.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV.
+
+BULLHAMPTON NEWS.
+
+
+When the matter was quite settled at Loring,--when Miss Marrable not
+only knew that the engagement had been surrendered on both sides, but
+that it had been so surrendered as to be incapable of being again
+patched up, she bethought herself of her promise to Mr. Gilmore.
+This did not take place for a fortnight after the farewell which
+was spoken in the last chapter,--at which time Walter Marrable was
+staying with his uncle, Sir Gregory, at Dunripple. Miss Marrable
+had undertaken that Mr. Gilmore should be informed as soon as the
+engagement was brought to an end, and had been told that this
+information should reach him through Mrs. Fenwick. When a fortnight
+had passed, Miss Marrable was aware that Mary had not herself written
+to her friend at Bullhampton; and though she felt herself to be shy
+of the subject, though she entertained a repugnance to make any
+communication based on a hope that Mary might after a while receive
+her old lover graciously,--for time must of course be needed before
+such grace could be accorded,--she did write a few lines to Mrs.
+Fenwick. She explained that Captain Marrable was to return to India,
+and that he was to go as a free man. Mary, she said, bore her burden
+well. Of course, it must be some time before the remembrance of her
+cousin would cease to be a burden to her; but she went about her
+heavy task with a good will,--so said Miss Marrable,--and would no
+doubt conquer her own unhappiness after a time by the strength of her
+personal character. Not a word was spoken of Mr. Gilmore, but Mrs.
+Fenwick understood it all. The letter, she knew well, was a message
+to Mr. Gilmore;--a message which it would be her duty to give as soon
+as possible, that he might extract from it such comfort as it would
+contain for him,--though it would be his duty not to act upon it for,
+at any rate, many months to come. "And it will be a comfort to him,"
+said her husband when he read Miss Marrable's letter.
+
+"Of all the men I know, he is the most constant," said Mrs. Fenwick,
+"and best deserves that his constancy should be rewarded."
+
+"It is the man's nature," said the parson. "Of course, he will get
+her at last; and when he has got her, he will be quite contented with
+the manner in which he has won her. There's nothing like going on
+with a thing. I believe I might be a bishop if I set my heart on it."
+
+"Why don't you, then?"
+
+"I am not sure that the beauty of the thing is so well-defined to me
+as is Mary Lowther's to poor Harry. In perseverance and success of
+that kind the man's mind should admit of no doubt. Harry is quite
+clear of this,--that in spite of Mary's preference for her cousin, it
+would be the grandest thing in the world to him that she should marry
+him. The certainty of his condition will pull him through at last."
+
+Two days after this Mrs. Fenwick put Miss Marrable's letter into Mr.
+Gilmore's hand,--having perceived that it was specially written that
+it might be so treated. She kept it in her pocket till she should
+chance to see him, and at last handed it to him as she met him
+walking on his own grounds. "I have a letter from Loring," she said.
+
+"From Mary?"
+
+"No;--from Mary's aunt. I have it here, and I think you had better
+read it. To tell you the truth, Harry, I have been looking for you
+ever since I got it. Only you must not make too much of it."
+
+Then he read the letter. "What do you mean," he asked, "by making too
+much of it?"
+
+"You must not suppose that Mary is the same as before she saw this
+cousin of hers."
+
+"But she is the same."
+
+"Well;--yes, in body and in soul, no doubt. But such an experience
+leaves a mark which cannot be rubbed out quite at once."
+
+"You mean that I must wait before I ask her again."
+
+"Of course you must wait. The mark must be rubbed out first, you
+know."
+
+"I will wait; but as for the rubbing out of the mark, I take it that
+will be altogether beyond me. Do you think, Mrs. Fenwick, that no
+woman should ever, under any circumstances, marry one man when she
+loves another?"
+
+She could not bring herself to tell him that in her opinion Mary
+Lowther would of all women be the least likely to do so. "That is one
+of those questions," she said, "which it is almost impossible for a
+person to answer. In the first place, before answering it, we should
+have a clear definition of love."
+
+"You know what I mean well enough."
+
+"I do know what you mean, but I hardly do know how to answer you. If
+you went to Mary Lowther now, she would take it almost as an insult;
+and she would feel it in that light, because she is aware that you
+know of this story of her cousin."
+
+"Of course I shall not go to her at once."
+
+"She will never forget him altogether."
+
+"Such things cannot be forgotten," said Gilmore.
+
+"Nevertheless," said Mrs. Fenwick, "it is probable that Mary will be
+married some day. These wounds get themselves cured as do others."
+
+"I shall never be cured of mine," said he, laughing. "As for Mary,
+I hardly know what to think. I suppose girls do marry without caring
+very much for the men they take. One sees it every day; and then
+afterwards, they love their husbands. It isn't very romantic, but it
+seems to me that it is so."
+
+"Don't think of it too much, Harry," said Mrs. Fenwick. "If you still
+are devoted to her--"
+
+"Indeed I am."
+
+"Then wait awhile, and we will have her at Bullhampton again. You
+know at any rate what our wishes are."
+
+Everything had been very quiet at Bullhampton during the last three
+months. The mill was again in regular work, and Sam had remained at
+home with fair average regularity. The Vicar had heard nothing more
+of Carry Brattle, and had been unable to trace her or to learn where
+she was living. He had taken various occasions to mention her name to
+her mother, but Mrs. Brattle knew nothing of her, and believed that
+Sam was equally ignorant with herself. Both she and the Vicar found
+it impossible to speak to Sam on the subject, though they knew that
+he had been with his sister more than once when she was living at
+Pycroft Common. As for the miller himself, no one had mentioned
+Carry's name to him since the day on which the Vicar had made his
+attempt. And from that day to the present there had been, if not ill
+blood, at least cold blood between Mr. Fenwick and old Brattle. The
+Vicar had gone down to the mill as often as usual, having determined
+that what had occurred should make no difference with him; and the
+intercourse with Mrs. Brattle and Fanny had been as kind on each side
+as usual;--but the miller had kept out of his way, retreating from
+him openly, going from the house to the mill as soon as he appeared,
+never speaking to him, and taking no other notice of him beyond a
+slight touch of the hat. "Your husband is still angry with me," he
+said one day to Mrs. Brattle. She shook her head and smiled sadly,
+and said that it would pass over some day,--only that Jacob was so
+persistent. With Sam, the Vicar held little or no communication.
+Sam in these days never went to church, and though he worked at the
+mill pretty constantly, he would absent himself from the village
+occasionally for a day or two together, and tell no one where he had
+been.
+
+The strangest and most important piece of business going on at
+this time in Bullhampton was the building of a new chapel or
+tabernacle,--the people called it a Salem,--for Mr. Puddleham. The
+first word as to the erection reached Mr. Fenwick's ears from Grimes,
+the builder and carpenter, who, meeting him in Bullhampton Street,
+pointed out to him a bit of spare ground just opposite the vicarage
+gates,--a morsel of a green on which no building had ever yet stood,
+and told him that the Marquis had given it for a chapel. "Indeed,"
+said Fenwick. "I hope it may be convenient and large enough for them.
+All the same, I wish it had been a little farther from my gate." This
+he said in a cheery tone, showing thereby considerable presence of
+mind. That such a building should be so placed was a trial to him,
+and he knew at once that the spot must have been selected to annoy
+him. Doubtless, the land in question was the property of the Marquis
+of Trowbridge. When he came to think of it, he had no doubt on
+the matter. Nevertheless, the small semi-circular piece of grass
+immediately opposite to his own swinging gate, looked to all the
+world as though it were an appendage of the Vicarage. A cottage
+built there would have been offensive; but a staring brick Methodist
+chapel, with the word Salem inserted in large letters over the door,
+would, as he was aware, flout him every time he left or entered his
+garden. He had always been specially careful to avoid any semblance
+of a quarrel with the Methodist minister, and had in every way shown
+his willingness to regard Mr. Puddleham's flock as being equal to his
+own in the general gifts of civilisation. To Mr. Puddleham himself,
+he had been very civil, sending him fruit and vegetables out of
+the Vicarage garden, and lending him newspapers. When the little
+Puddlehams were born, Mrs. Fenwick always inquired after the mother
+and infant. The greatest possible care had been exercised at the
+Vicarage since Mr. Fenwick's coming to show that the Established
+Church did not despise the dissenting congregation. For the last
+three years there had been talk of a new chapel, and Mr. Fenwick had
+himself discussed the site with Mr. Puddleham. A large and commodious
+spot of ground, remote from the vicarage, had, as he believed, been
+chosen. When he heard those tidings, and saw what would be the effect
+of the building, it seemed to him almost impossible that a Marquis
+could condescend to such revenge. He went at once to Mr. Puddleham,
+and learned from him that Grimes' story was true. This had been in
+December. After Christmas, the foundations were to be begun at once,
+said Mr. Puddleham, so that the brickwork might go on as soon as the
+frosts were over. Mr. Puddleham was in high spirits, and expressed a
+hope that he should be in his new chapel by next August. When the
+Vicar asked why the change of site was made, being careful to show
+no chagrin by the tone of his voice, Mr. Puddleham remarked that
+the Marquis's agent thought that it would be an improvement, "in
+which opinion I quite coincide," said Mr. Puddleham, looking very
+stern,--showing his teeth, as it were, and displaying an inclination
+for a parish quarrel. Fenwick, still prudent, made no objection to
+the change, and dropped no word of displeasure in Mr. Puddleham's
+hearing.
+
+"I don't believe he can do it," said Mrs. Fenwick, boiling with
+passion.
+
+"He can, no doubt," said the Vicar.
+
+"Do you mean to say the street is his;--to do what he likes with it?"
+
+"The street is the Queen's highway,--which means that it belongs to
+the public; but this is not the street. I take it that all the land
+in the village belongs to the Marquis. I never knew of any common
+right, and I don't believe there is any."
+
+"It is the meanest thing I ever heard of in my life," said Mrs.
+Fenwick.
+
+"There I agree with you." Later in the day, when he had been thinking
+of it for hours, he again spoke to his wife. "I shall write to the
+Marquis and remonstrate. It will probably be of no avail; but I think
+I ought to do so for the sake of those who come after me. I shall be
+able to bother him a good deal, if I can do nothing else," he added,
+laughing. "I feel, too, that I must quarrel with somebody, and I
+won't quarrel with dear old Puddleham, if I can help it."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV.
+
+MR. PUDDLEHAM'S NEW CHAPEL.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+The Vicar devoted a week to the consideration of his grievance about
+the chapel, and then did write to the Marquis. Indeed, there was no
+time to be lost if he intended to do anything, as on the second day
+after his interview with Mr. Grimes, Grimes himself, with two men to
+assist him, began their measuring on the devoted spot, sticking in
+little marks for the corners of the projected building, and turning
+up a sod here and there. Mr. Grimes was a staunch Churchman; and
+though in the way of business he was very glad to have the building
+of a Methodist chapel,--or of a Pagan temple, if such might come in
+his way,--yet, even though he possibly might give some offence to
+the great man's shadow in Bullhampton, he was willing to postpone
+his work for two or three days at the Vicar's request. "Grimes," the
+Vicar said, "I'm not quite sure that I like this."
+
+
+[Illustration: Site of Mr. Puddleham's new chapel.]
+
+
+"Well, sir;--no, sir. I was thinking myself, sir, that maybe you
+might take it unkind in the Marquis."
+
+"I think I shall write to him. Perhaps you wouldn't mind giving over
+for a day or two." Grimes yielded at once, and took his spade and
+measurements away, although Mr. Puddleham fretted a good deal. Mr.
+Puddleham had been much elated by the prospect of his new Bethel, and
+had, it must be confessed, received into his mind an idea that it
+would be a good thing to quarrel with the Vicar under the auspices of
+the landlord. Fenwick's character had hitherto been too strong for
+him, and he had been forced into parochial quiescence and religious
+amity almost in spite of his conscience. He was a much older man than
+Mr. Fenwick, having been for thirty years in the ministry, and he had
+always previously enjoyed the privilege of being on bad terms with
+the clergyman of the Establishment. It had been his glory to be a
+poacher on another man's manor, to filch souls, as it were, out of
+the keeping of a pastor of a higher grade than himself, to say severe
+things of the short comings of an endowed clergyman, and to obtain
+recognition of his position by the activity of his operations in the
+guise of a blister. Our Vicar, understanding something of this, had,
+with some malice towards the gentleman himself, determined to rob
+Mr. Puddleham of his blistering powers. There is no doubt a certain
+pleasure in poaching which does not belong to the licit following of
+game; but a man can't poach if the right of shooting be accorded to
+him. Mr. Puddleham had not been quite happy in his mind amidst the
+ease and amiable relations which Mr. Fenwick enforced upon him, and
+had long since begun to feel that a few cabbages and peaches did not
+repay him for the loss of those pleasant and bitter things, which it
+would have been his to say in his daily walks and from the pulpit of
+his Salem, had he not been thus hampered, confined, and dominated.
+Hitherto he had hardly gained a single soul from under Mr. Fenwick's
+grasp,--had indeed on the balance lost his grasp on souls, and was
+beginning to be aware that this was so because of the cabbages and
+the peaches. He told himself that though he had not hankered after
+these flesh-pots, that though he would have preferred to be without
+the flesh-pots, he had submitted to them. He was painfully conscious
+of the guile of this young man, who had, as it were, cheated him out
+of that appropriate acerbity of religion, without which a proselyting
+sect can hardly maintain its ground beneath the shadow of an endowed
+and domineering Church. War was necessary to Mr. Puddleham. He had
+come to be hardly anybody at all, because he was at peace with the
+vicar of the parish in which he was established. His eyes had been
+becoming gradually open to all this for years; and when he had been
+present at the bitter quarrel between the Vicar and the Marquis,
+he had at once told himself that now was his opportunity. He had
+intended to express a clear opinion to Mr. Fenwick that he, Mr.
+Fenwick, had been very wrong in speaking to the Marquis as he had
+spoken, and as he was walking out of the farm-house he was preparing
+some words as to the respect due to those in authority. It happened,
+however, that at that moment the wind was taken out of his sails by
+a strange comparison which the Vicar made to him between the sins
+of them two, ministers of God as they were, and the sins of Carry
+Brattle. Mr. Puddleham at the moment had been cowed and quelled. He
+was not quite able to carry himself in the Vicar's presence as though
+he were the Vicar's equal. But the desire for a quarrel remained,
+and when it was suggested to him by Mr. Packer, the Marquis's man of
+business, that the green opposite to the Vicarage gate would be a
+convenient site for his chapel, and that the Marquis was ready to
+double his before-proffered subscription, then he saw plainly that
+the moment had come, and that it was fitting that he should gird up
+his loins and return all future cabbages to the proud donor.
+
+Mr. Puddleham had his eye keenly set on the scene of his future
+ministration, and was aware of Grimes's default almost as soon as
+that man with his myrmidons had left the ground. He at once went to
+Grimes with heavy denunciations, with threats of the Marquis, and
+with urgent explanation as to the necessity of instant work. But
+Grimes was obdurate. The Vicar had asked him to leave the work for
+a day or two, and of course he must do what the Vicar asked. If
+he couldn't be allowed to do as much as that for the Vicar of the
+parish, Bullhampton wouldn't be, in Mr. Grimes's opinion, any place
+for anybody to live in. Mr. Puddleham argued the matter out, but he
+argued in vain. Mr. Grimes declared that there was time enough, and
+that he would have the work finished by the time fixed,--unless,
+indeed, the Marquis should change his mind. Mr. Puddleham regarded
+this as a most improbable supposition. "The Marquis doesn't change
+his mind, Mr. Grimes," he said; and then he walked forth from Mr.
+Grimes's house with much offence.
+
+By this time all Bullhampton knew of the quarrel,--knew of it,
+although Mr. Fenwick had been so very careful to guard himself from
+any quarrelling at all. He had not spoken a word in anger on the
+subject to anyone but his wife; and in making his request to Grimes
+had done so with hypocritical good humour. But, nevertheless, he was
+aware that the parish was becoming hot about it; and when he sat down
+to write his letter to the Marquis he was almost minded to give up
+the idea of writing, to return to Grimes, and to allow the measuring
+and sod-turning to be continued. Why should a place of worship
+opposite to his gate be considered by him as an injury? Why should
+the psalm-singing of Christian brethren hurt his ears as he walked
+about his garden? And if, through the infirmity of his nature, his
+eyes and his ears were hurt, what was that to the great purport for
+which he had been sent into the parish? Was he not about to create
+enmity by his opposition; and was it not his special duty to foster
+love and goodwill among his people? After all he, within his own
+Vicarage grounds, had all that it was intended that he should
+possess; and that he held very firmly. Poor Mr. Puddleham had no such
+firm holding; and why should he quarrel with Mr. Puddleham because
+that ill-paid preacher sought to strengthen the ground on which his
+Salem stood?
+
+As he paused, however, to think of all this, there came upon him the
+conviction that in this thing that was to be done the Marquis was
+determined to punish him personally, and he could not resist the
+temptation of fighting the Marquis. And then, if he succumbed easily
+in this matter, would it not follow almost as a matter of course that
+the battle against him would be carried on elsewhere? If he yielded
+now, resolving to ignore altogether any idea of his own comfort or
+his own taste, would he thereby maintain that tranquillity in his
+parish which he thought so desirable? He had already seen that in Mr.
+Puddleham's manner to himself which made him sure that Mr. Puddleham
+was ambitious to be a sword in the right hand of the Marquis.
+Personally the Vicar was himself pugnacious. Few men, perhaps, were
+more so. If there must be a fight let them come on, and he would do
+his best. Turning the matter thus backwards and forwards in his mind,
+he came at last to the conclusion that there must be a fight, and
+consequently he wrote the following letter to the Marquis;--
+
+
+   Bullhampton Vicarage, January 3, 186--.
+
+   MY LORD MARQUIS,
+
+   I learned by chance the other day in the village that
+   a new chapel for the use of the Methodist congregation
+   of the parish was to be built on the little open green
+   immediately opposite the Vicarage gate, and that this
+   special spot of ground had been selected and given by
+   your lordship for this purpose. I do not at all know what
+   truth there may be in this,--except that Mr. Grimes, the
+   carpenter here, has received orders from your agent about
+   the work. It may probably be the case that the site has
+   been chosen by Mr. Packer, and not by your lordship. As no
+   real delay to the building can at this time of the year
+   arise from a short postponement of the beginning, I have
+   asked Mr. Grimes to desist till I shall have written to
+   you on the subject.
+
+   I can assure your lordship, in the first place, that no
+   clergyman of the Established Church in the kingdom can be
+   less unwilling than I am that they who dissent from my
+   teaching in the parish should have a commodious place of
+   worship. If land belonged to me in the place I would give
+   it myself for such a purpose; and were there no other
+   available site than that chosen, I would not for a moment
+   remonstrate against it. I had heard, with satisfaction,
+   from Mr. Puddleham himself that another spot was chosen
+   near the cross roads in the village, on which there is
+   more space, to which as I believe there is no objection,
+   and which would certainly be nearer than that now selected
+   to the majority of the congregation.
+
+   But of course it would not be for me to trouble your
+   lordship as to the ground on which a Methodist chapel
+   should be built, unless I had reason to show why the
+   site now chosen is objectionable. I do not for a moment
+   question your lordship's right to give the site. There is
+   something less than a quarter of an acre in the patch in
+   question; and though hitherto I have always regarded it
+   as belonging in some sort to the Vicarage,--as being a
+   part, as it were, of the entrance,--I feel convinced that
+   you, as landlord of the ground, would not entertain the
+   idea of bestowing it for any purpose without being sure
+   of your right to do so. I raise no question on this
+   point, believing that there is none to be raised; but I
+   respectfully submit to your lordship, whether such an
+   erection as that contemplated by you will not be a lasting
+   injury to the Vicarage of Bullhampton, and whether you
+   would wish to inflict a lasting and gratuitous injury
+   on the vicar of a parish, the greatest portion of which
+   belongs to yourself.
+
+   No doubt life will be very possible to me and my wife, and
+   to succeeding vicars and their wives, with a red-brick
+   chapel built as a kind of watch-tower over the Vicarage
+   gate. So would life be possible at Turnover Park with
+   a similar edifice immediately before your lordship's
+   hall-door. Knowing very well that the reasonable wants of
+   the Methodists cannot make such a building on such a spot
+   necessary, you no doubt would not consent to it; and I now
+   venture to ask you to put a stop to this building here for
+   the same reason. Were there no other site in the parish
+   equally commodious I would not say a word.
+
+   I have the honour to be,
+   Your lordship's most obedient servant,
+
+   FRANCIS FENWICK.
+
+
+Lord Trowbridge, when he received this letter,--when he had only
+partially read it, and had not at all digested it, was disposed to
+yield the point. He was a silly man, thinking much too highly of his
+own position, believing himself entitled to unlimited deference from
+all those who in any way came within the rays of his magnificence,
+and easily made angry by opposition; but he was not naturally prone
+to inflict evil, and did in some degree recognise it as a duty
+attached to his splendour that he should be beneficent to the
+inferiors with whom he was connected. Great as was his wrath against
+the present Vicar of Bullhampton, and thoroughly as he conceived it
+to be expedient that so evil-minded a pastor should be driven out of
+the parish, nevertheless he felt some scruple at taking a step which
+would be injurious to the parish vicar, let the parish vicar be who
+he might. Packer was the sinner who had originated the new plan for
+punishing Mr. Fenwick,--Packer, with the assistance of Mr. Puddleham;
+and the Marquis, though he had in some sort authorised the plan, had
+in truth thought very little about it. When the Vicar spoke of the
+lasting injury to the Vicarage, and when Lord Trowbridge remembered
+that he owned two thousand and two acres within the parish,--as Mr.
+Puddleham had told him,--he began to think that the chapel had better
+be built elsewhere. The Vicar was a pestilent man to whom punishment
+was due, but the punishment should be made to attach itself to the
+man, rather than to the man's office. So was working the Marquis's
+mind, till the Marquis came upon that horrid passage in the Vicar's
+letter, in which it was suggested that the building of a Methodist
+chapel in his own park, immediately in front of his own august
+hall-door might under certain circumstances be expedient. The remark
+was almost as pernicious and unpardonable as that which had been
+made about his lordship's daughters. It was manifest to him that the
+Vicar intended to declare that marquises were no more than other
+people,--and that the declaration was made and insisted on with the
+determination of insulting him. Had this apostate priest been capable
+of feeling any proper appreciation of his own position and that
+of the Marquis, he would have said nothing of Turnover Park. When
+the Marquis had read the letter a second time and had digested it
+he perceived that its whole tenour was bad, that the writer was
+evil-minded, and that no request made by him should be granted. Even
+though the obnoxious chapel should have to be pulled down for the
+benefit of another vicar, it should be put up for the punishment of
+this vicar. A man who wants to have a favour done for him, can hardly
+hope to be successful if he asks for the favour with insolence. So
+the heart of the Marquis was hardened, and he was strengthened to do
+that which misbecame him both as a gentleman and a landlord.
+
+He did not answer the letter for some time; but he saw Packer, saw
+his head agent, and got out the map of the property. The map of
+the property was not very clear in the matter, but he remembered
+the space well, and convinced himself that no other place in all
+Bullhampton could be so appropriate for a Methodist chapel. At the
+end of a week he caused a reply to be written to Mr. Fenwick. He
+would not demean himself by writing with his own hand, but he gave
+his orders to the head agent. The head agent merely informed the
+Vicar that it was considered that the spot of ground in question was
+the most appropriate in the village for the purpose in hand.
+
+Mrs. Fenwick when she heard the reply burst out into tears. She was a
+woman by no means over devoted to things of this world, who thought
+much of her duties and did them, who would have sacrificed anything
+for her husband and children, who had learned the fact that both
+little troubles and great, if borne with patience, may be borne with
+ease; but she did think much of her house, was proud of her garden,
+and rejoiced in the external prettiness of her surroundings. It was
+gall to her that this hideous building should be so placed as to
+destroy the comeliness of that side of her abode. "We shall hear
+their singing and ranting whenever we open our front windows," she
+said.
+
+"Then we won't open them," said the Vicar.
+
+"We can't help ourselves. Just see what it will be whenever we go in
+and out. We might just as well have it inside the house at once."
+
+"You speak as though Mr. Puddleham were always in his pulpit."
+
+"They're always doing something,--and then the building will be there
+whether it's open or shut. It will alter the parish altogether, and I
+really think it will be better that you should get an exchange."
+
+"And run away from my enemy?"
+
+"It would be running away from an intolerable nuisance."
+
+"I won't do that," said the Vicar. "If there were no other reason for
+staying, I won't put it in the power of the Marquis of Trowbridge
+to say that he has turned me out of my parish, and so punished me
+because I have not submitted myself to him. I have not sought the
+quarrel. He has been overbearing and insolent, and now is meanly
+desirous to injure me because I will not suffer his insolence. No
+doubt, placed as he is, he can do much; but he cannot turn me out of
+Bullhampton."
+
+"What is the good of staying, Frank, if we are to be made wretched?"
+
+"We won't be made wretched. What! be wretched because there is an
+ugly building opposite to your outside gate? It is almost wicked to
+say so. I don't like it. I like the doing of the thing less even than
+the thing itself. If it can be stopped, I will stop it. If it could
+be prevented by any amount of fighting, I should think myself right
+to fight in such a cause. If I can see my way to doing anything to
+oppose the Marquis, it shall be done. But I won't run away." Mrs.
+Fenwick said nothing more on the subject at that moment, but she felt
+that the glory and joy of the Vicarage were gone from it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI.
+
+SAM BRATTLE GOES OFF AGAIN.
+
+
+Mr. Grimes had suggested to the Vicar in a very low whisper that the
+new chapel might perhaps be put down as a nuisance. "It ain't for me
+to say, of course," said Mr. Grimes, "and in the way of business one
+building is as good as another as long as you see your money. But
+buildings is stopped because they're nuisances." This occurred a day
+or two after the receipt of the agent's letter from Turnover, and the
+communication was occasioned by orders given to Mr. Grimes to go on
+with the building instantly, unless he intended to withdraw from the
+job. "I don't think, Grimes, that I can call a place of Christian
+worship a nuisance," said the Vicar. To this Grimes rejoined that he
+had known a nunnery bell to be stopped because it was a nuisance, and
+that he didn't see why a Methodist chapel bell was not as bad as a
+nunnery bell. Fenwick had declared that he would fight if he could
+find a leg to stand upon, and he thanked Grimes, saying that he would
+think of the suggestion. But when he thought of it, he did not see
+that any remedy was open to him on that side. In the meantime Mr.
+Puddleham attacked Grimes with great severity because the work was
+not continued. Mr. Puddleham, feeling that he had the Marquis at
+his back, was eager for the fight. He had already received in the
+street a salutation from the Vicar, cordial as usual, with the
+very slightest bend of his neck, and the sourest expression of his
+mouth. Mrs. Puddleham had already taught the little Puddlehams that
+the Vicarage cabbages were bitter with the wormwood of an endowed
+Establishment, and ought no longer to be eaten by the free children
+of an open Church. Mr. Puddleham had already raised up his voice in
+his existing tabernacle, as to the injury which was being done to
+his flock, and had been very touching on the subject of the little
+vineyard which the wicked king coveted. When he described himself as
+Naboth, it could not but be supposed that Ahab and Jezebel were both
+in Bullhampton. It went forth through the village that Mr. Puddleham
+had described Mrs. Fenwick as Jezebel, and the torch of discord had
+been thrown down, and war was raging through the parish.
+
+There had come to be very high words indeed between Mr. Grimes and
+Mr. Puddleham, and some went so far as to declare that they had heard
+the builder threaten to punch the minister's head. This Mr. Grimes
+denied stoutly, as the Methodist party were making much of it in
+consequence of Mr. Puddleham's cloth and advanced years. "There's no
+lies is too hot for them," said Mr. Grimes, in his energy, and "no
+lawlessness too heavy." Then he absolutely refused to put his hand to
+a spade or a trowel. He had his time named in his contract, he said,
+and nobody had a right to drive him. This was ended by the appearance
+on a certain Monday morning of a Baptist builder from Salisbury, with
+all the appurtenances of his trade, and with a declaration on Mr.
+Grimes' part, that he would have the law on the two leading members
+of the Puddleham congregation, from whom he had received his original
+order. In truth, however, there had been no contract, and Mr.
+Grimes had gone to work upon a verbal order which, according to the
+Puddleham theory, he had already vitiated by refusing compliance with
+its terms. He, however, was hot upon his lawsuit, and thus the whole
+parish was by the ears.
+
+It may be easily understood how much Mr. Fenwick would suffer from
+all this. It had been specially his pride that his parish had been at
+peace, and he had plumed himself on the way in which he had continued
+to clip the claws with which nature had provided the Methodist
+minister. Though he was fond of a fight himself, he had taught
+himself to know that in no way could he do the business of his
+life more highly or more usefully than as a peacemaker; and as a
+peacemaker he had done it. He had never put his hand within Mr.
+Puddleham's arm, and whispered a little parochial nothing into his
+neighbour's ear, without taking some credit to himself for his
+cleverness. He had called his peaches angels of peace, and had spoken
+of his cabbages as being dove-winged. All this was now over, and
+there was hardly one in Bullhampton who was not busy hating and
+abusing somebody else.
+
+And then there came another trouble on the Vicar. Just at the end of
+January, Sam Brattle came up to the Vicarage and told Mr. Fenwick
+that he was going to leave the mill. Sam was dressed very decently;
+but he was attired in an un-Bullhampton fashion, which was not
+pleasant to Mr. Fenwick's eyes; and there was about him an air which
+seemed to tell of filial disobedience and personal independence.
+
+"But you mean to come back again, Sam?" said the Vicar.
+
+"Well, sir; I don't know as I do. Father and I has had words."
+
+"And that is to be a reason why you should leave him? You speak of
+your father as though he were no more to you than another man."
+
+"I wouldn't a' borne not a tenth of it from no other man, Mr.
+Fenwick."
+
+"Well--and what of that? Is there any measure of what is due by you
+to your father? Remember, Sam, I know your father well."
+
+"You do, sir."
+
+"He is a very just man, and he is very fond of you. You are the apple
+of his eye, and now you would bring his gray hairs with sorrow to the
+grave."
+
+"You ask mother, sir, and she'll tell you how it is. I just said a
+word to him,--a word as was right to be said, and he turned upon me,
+and bade me go away and come back no more."
+
+"Do you mean that he has banished you from the mill?"
+
+"He said what I tells you. He told mother afterwards, that if so as I
+would promise never to mention that thing again, I might come and go
+as I pleased. But I wasn't going to make no such promise. I up and
+told him so; and then he--cursed me."
+
+For a moment or two the Vicar was silent, thinking whether in this
+affair Sam had been most wrong, or the old man. Of course he was
+hearing but one side of the question. "What was it, Sam, that he
+forbade you to mention?"
+
+"It don't matter now, sir; only I thought I'd better come and tell
+you, along of your being the bail, sir."
+
+"Do you mean that you are going to leave Bullhampton altogether?"
+
+"To leave it altogether, Mr. Fenwick. I ain't doing no good here."
+
+"And why shouldn't you do good? Where can you do more good?"
+
+"It can't be good to be having words with father day after day."
+
+"But, Sam, I don't think you can go away. You are bound by the
+magistrates' orders. I don't speak for myself, but I fear the police
+would be after you."
+
+"And is it to go on allays,--that a chap can't move to better
+hisself, because them fellows can't catch the men as murdered old
+Trumbull? That can't be law,--nor yet justice." Upon this there arose
+a discussion in which the Vicar endeavoured to explain to the young
+man that as he had evidently consorted with the men who were, on the
+strongest possible grounds, suspected to be the murderers, and as
+he had certainly been with those men where he had no business to
+be,--namely, in Mr. Fenwick's own garden at night,--he had no just
+cause of complaint at finding his own liberty more crippled than that
+of other people. No doubt Sam understood this well enough, as he was
+sharp and intelligent; but he fought his own battle, declaring that
+as the Vicar had not prosecuted him for being in the garden, nobody
+could be entitled to punish him for that offence; and that as it had
+been admitted that there was no evidence connecting him with the
+murder, no policeman could have a right to confine him to one parish.
+He argued the matter so well, that Mr. Fenwick was left without much
+to say. He was unwilling to press his own responsibility in the
+matter of the bail, and therefore allowed the question to fall
+through,--tacitly admitting that if Sam chose to leave the parish,
+there was nothing in the affair of the murder to hinder him. He went
+back, therefore, to the inexpediency of the young man's departure,
+telling him that he would rush right into the Devil's jaws. "May be
+so, Mr. Fenwick," said Sam, "but I'm sure I'll never be out of 'em as
+long as I stays here in Bullhampton."
+
+"But what is it all about, Sam?" The Vicar, as he asked the question
+had a very distinct idea in his own head as to the cause of the
+quarrel, and was aware that his sympathies were with the son rather
+than with the father. Sam answered never a word, and the Vicar
+repeated his question. "You have quarrelled with your father before
+this, and have made it up. Why should not you make up this quarrel?"
+
+"Because he cursed me," said Sam.
+
+"An idle word, spoken in wrath! Don't you know your father well
+enough to take that for what it is worth? What was it about?"
+
+"It was about Carry, then."
+
+"What had you said?"
+
+"I said as how she ought to be let come home again, and that if I was
+to stay there at the mill, I'd fetch her. Then he struck at me with
+one of the mill-bolts. But I didn't think much o' that."
+
+"Was it then he--cursed you?"
+
+"No; mother came up, and I went aside with her. I told her as I'd go
+on speaking to the old man about Carry;--and so I did."
+
+"And where is Carry?" Sam made no reply to this whatever. "You know
+where she can be found, Sam?" Sam shook his head, but didn't speak.
+"You couldn't have said that you would fetch her, if you didn't know
+where to find her."
+
+"I wouldn't stop till I did find her, if the old man would take her
+back again. She's bad enough, no doubt, but there's others worse nor
+her."
+
+"When did you see her last?"
+
+"Over at Pycroft."
+
+"And whither did she go from Pycroft, Sam?"
+
+"She went to Lon'on, I suppose, Mr. Fenwick."
+
+"And what is her address in London?" In reply to this Sam again shook
+his head. "Do you mean to seek her now?"
+
+"What's the use of seeking her if I ain't got nowhere to put her
+into. Father's got a house and plenty of room in it. Where could I
+put her?"
+
+"Sam, if you'll find her, and bring her to any place for me to see
+her, I'll find a home for her somewhere. I will, indeed. Or, if I
+knew where she was, I'd go up to London to her myself. She's not my
+sister--!"
+
+"No, sir, she ain't. The likes of you won't likely have a sister the
+likes of her. She's a--"
+
+"Sam, stop. Don't say a bitter word of her. You love her."
+
+"Yes;--I do. That don't make her not a bad 'un."
+
+"So do I love her. And as for being bad, which of us isn't bad? The
+world is very hard on her offence."
+
+"Down on it, like a dog on a rat."
+
+"It is not for me to make light of her sin;--but her sin can be
+washed away as well as other sin. I love her too. She was the
+brightest, kindest, sauciest little lass in all the parish, when I
+came here."
+
+"Father was proud enough of her then, Mr. Fenwick."
+
+"You find her and let me know where she is, and I will make out a
+home for her somewhere;--that is, if she will be tractable. I'm
+afraid your father won't take her at the mill."
+
+"He'll never set eyes on her again, if he can help it. As for you,
+Mr. Fenwick, if there was only a few more like you about, the world
+wouldn't be so bad to get on in. Good-bye, Mr. Fenwick."
+
+"Good-bye, Sam;--if it must be so."
+
+"And don't you be afeared about me, Mr. Fenwick. If the hue-and-cry
+is out anyways again me, I'll turn up. That I will,--though it was to
+be hung afterwards,--sooner than you'd be hurt by anything I'd been a
+doing."
+
+So they parted, as friends rather than as enemies, though the Vicar
+knew very well that the young man was wrong to go and leave his
+father and mother, and that in all probability he would fall at
+once into some bad mode of living. But the conversation about Carry
+Brattle had so softened their hearts to each other, that Mr. Fenwick
+found it impossible to be severe. And he knew, moreover, that no
+severity of expression would have been of avail. He couldn't have
+stopped Sam from going had he preached to him for an hour.
+
+After that the building of the chapel went on apace, the large
+tradesman from Salisbury being quicker in his work than could have
+been the small tradesman belonging to Bullhampton. In February there
+came a hard frost, and still the bricklayers were at work. It was
+said in Bullhampton that walls built as those walls were being built
+could never stand. But then it might be that these reports were
+spread by Mr. Grimes, that the fanatical ardour of the Salisbury
+Baptist lent something to the rapidity of his operations, and that
+the Bullhampton feeling in favour of Mr. Fenwick and the Church
+Establishment added something to the bitterness of the prevailing
+criticisms. At any rate, the walls of the new chapel were mounting
+higher and higher all through February, and by the end of the first
+week in March there stood immediately opposite to the Vicarage gate a
+hideously ugly building, roofless, doorless, windowless;--with those
+horrid words,--"New Salem, 186--" legibly inscribed on a visible
+stone inserted above the doorway, a thing altogether as objectionable
+to the eyes of a Church of England parish clergyman as the
+imagination of any friend or enemy could devise. We all know the
+abominable adjuncts of a new building,--the squalid half-used heaps
+of bad mortar, the eradicated grass, the truculent mud, the scattered
+brickbats, the remnants of timber, the debris of the workmen's
+dinners, the morsels of paper scattered through the dirt! There had
+from time to time been actual encroachments on the Vicarage grounds,
+and Mrs. Fenwick, having discovered that the paint had been injured
+on the Vicarage gate, had sent an angry message to the Salisbury
+Baptist. The Salisbury Baptist had apologised to Mr. Fenwick, saying
+that such things would happen in the building of houses, &c., and Mr.
+Fenwick had assured him that the matter was of no consequence. He was
+not going to descend into the arena with the Salisbury Baptist. In
+this affair the Marquis of Trowbridge was his enemy, and with the
+Marquis he would fight, if there was to be any fight at all. He would
+stand at his gate and watch the work, and speak good-naturedly to
+the workmen; but he was in truth sick at heart. The thing, horrible
+as it was to him, so fascinated him that he could not keep his mind
+from it. During all this time it made his wife miserable. She had
+literally grown thin under the infliction of the new chapel. For more
+than a fortnight she had refused to visit the front gate of her own
+house. To and from church she always went by the garden wicket; but
+in going to the school, she had to make a long round to avoid the
+chapel,--and this round she made day after day. Fenwick himself,
+still hoping that there might be some power of fighting, had written
+to an enthusiastic archdeacon, a friend of his, who lived not very
+far distant. The Archdeacon had consulted the Bishop,--really
+troubled deeply about the matter,--and the Bishop had taken upon
+himself, with his own hands, to write words of mild remonstrance to
+the Marquis. "For the welfare of the parish generally," said the
+Bishop, "I venture to make this suggestion to your lordship, feeling
+sure that you will do anything that may not be unreasonable to
+promote the comfort of the parishioners." In this letter he made no
+allusion to his late correspondence with the Marquis as to the sins
+of the Vicar. Nor did the Marquis in his reply allude to the former
+correspondence. He expressed an opinion that the erection of a
+place of Christian worship on an open space outside the bounds of a
+clergyman's domain ought not to be held to be objectionable by that
+clergyman;--and that as he had already given the spot, he could not
+retract the gift. These letters, however, had been written before the
+first brick had been laid, and the world in that part of the country
+was of opinion that the Marquis might have retracted his gift. After
+this Mr. Fenwick found no ground whatever on which he could fight his
+battle. He could only stand at his gateway, and look at the thing as
+it rose above the ground, fascinated by its ugliness.
+
+He was standing there once, about a month or five weeks after his
+interview with Sam Brattle, just at the beginning of March, when he
+was accosted by the Squire. Mr. Gilmore, through the winter,--ever
+since he had heard that Mary Lowther's engagement with Walter
+Marrable had been broken off,--had lived very much alone. He had been
+pressed to come to the Vicarage, but had come but seldom, waiting
+patiently till the time should come when he might again ask Mary to
+be his wife. He was not so gloomy as he had been during the time the
+engagement had lasted, but still he was a man much altered from his
+former self. Now he came across the road, and spoke a word or two to
+his friend. "If I were you, Frank, I should not think so much about
+it."
+
+"Yes, you would, old boy, if it touched you as it does me. It isn't
+that the chapel should be there. I could have built a chapel for them
+with my own hands on the same spot, if it had been necessary."
+
+"I don't see what there is to annoy you."
+
+"This annoys me,--that after all my endeavours, there should be
+people here, and many people, who find a gratification in doing that
+which they think I shall look upon as an annoyance. The sting is
+in their desire to sting, and in my inability to show them their
+error, either by stopping what they are doing, or by proving myself
+indifferent to it. It isn't the building itself, but the double
+disgrace of the building."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII.
+
+FEMALE MARTYRDOM.
+
+
+Early in February Captain Marrable went to Dunripple to stay with
+his uncle, Sir Gregory, and there he still was when the middle of
+March had come. News of his doings reached the ladies at Loring, but
+it reached them through hands which were not held to be worthy of a
+perfect belief,--at any rate, on Mary Lowther's part. Dunripple Park
+is in Warwickshire, and lies in the middle of a good hunting country.
+Now, according to Parson John, from whom these tidings came, Walter
+Marrable was hunting three days a week; and, as Sir Gregory himself
+did not keep hunters, Walter must have hired his horses,--so said
+Parson John, deploring that a nephew so poor in purse should have
+allowed himself to be led into such heavy expense. "He brought home
+a little ready money with him," said the parson; "and I suppose he
+thinks he may have his fling as long as that lasts." No doubt Parson
+John, in saying this, was desirous of proving to Mary that Walter
+Marrable was not dying of love, and was, upon the whole, leading a
+jolly life, in spite of the little misfortune that had happened to
+him. But Mary understood all this quite as well as did Parson John
+himself; and simply declined to believe the hunting three days a
+week. She said not a word about it, however, either to him or to her
+aunt. If Walter could amuse himself, so much the better; but she was
+quite sure that, at such a period of his life as this, he would not
+spend his money recklessly. The truth lay between Parson John's
+stories and poor Mary's belief. Walter Marrable was hunting,--perhaps
+twice a week, hiring a horse occasionally, but generally mounted by
+his uncle, Sir Gregory. He hunted; but did so after a lugubrious
+fashion, as became a man with a broken heart, who was laden with many
+sorrows, and had just been separated from his lady love for ever and
+ever. But still, when there came anything good, in the way of a run,
+and when our Captain could get near to hounds, he enjoyed the fun,
+and forgot his troubles for a while. Is a man to know no joy because
+he has an ache at his heart?
+
+In this matter of disappointed and, as it were, disjointed affection,
+men are very different from women, and for the most part, much more
+happily circumstanced. Such sorrow a woman feeds;--but a man starves
+it. Many will say that a woman feeds it, because she cannot but feed
+it; and that a man starves it, because his heart is of the starving
+kind. But, in truth, the difference comes not so much from the inner
+heart, as from the outer life. It is easier to feed a sorrow upon
+needle-and-thread and novels, than it is upon lawyers' papers, or
+even the out-a-door occupations of a soldier home upon leave who has
+no work to do. Walter Marrable told himself again and again that he
+was very unhappy about his cousin, but he certainly did not suffer in
+that matter as Mary suffered. He had that other sorrow, arising from
+his father's cruel usage of him, to divide his thoughts, and probably
+thought quite as much of the manner in which he had been robbed, as
+he did of the loss of his love.
+
+But poor Mary was, in truth, very wretched. When a girl asks herself
+that question,--what shall she do with her life? it is so natural
+that she should answer it by saying that she will get married, and
+give her life to somebody else. It is a woman's one career--let
+women rebel against the edict as they may; and though there may
+be word-rebellion here and there, women learn the truth early in
+their lives. And women know it later in life when they think of
+their girls; and men know it, too, when they have to deal with their
+daughters. Girls, too, now acknowledge aloud that they have learned
+the lesson; and Saturday Reviewers and others blame them for their
+lack of modesty in doing so,--most unreasonably, most uselessly, and,
+as far as the influence of such censors may go, most perniciously.
+Nature prompts the desire, the world acknowledges its ubiquity,
+circumstances show that it is reasonable, the whole theory of
+creation requires it; but it is required that the person most
+concerned should falsely repudiate it, in order that a mock modesty
+may be maintained, in which no human being can believe! Such is the
+theory of the censors who deal heavily with our Englishwomen of
+the present day. Our daughters should be educated to be wives, but,
+forsooth, they should never wish to be wooed! The very idea is but a
+remnant of the tawdry sentimentality of an age in which the mawkish
+insipidity of the women was the reaction from the vice of that
+preceding it. That our girls are in quest of husbands, and know well
+in what way their lines in life should be laid, is a fact which none
+can dispute. Let men be taught to recognise the same truth as regards
+themselves, and we shall cease to hear of the necessity of a new
+career for women.
+
+Mary Lowther, though she had never encountered condemnation as a
+husband-hunter, had learned all this, and was well aware that for her
+there was but one future mode of life that could be really blessed.
+She had eyes, and could see; and ears, and could hear. She could
+make,--indeed, she could not fail to make,--comparisons between
+her aunt and her dear friend, Mrs. Fenwick. She saw, and could not
+fail to see, that the life of the one was a starved, thin, poor
+life,--which, good as it was in its nature, reached but to few
+persons, and admitted but of few sympathies; whereas the other woman,
+by means of her position as a wife and a mother, increased her roots
+and spread out her branches, so that there was shade, and fruit, and
+beauty, and a place in which the birds might build their nests. Mary
+Lowther had longed to be a wife,--as do all girls healthy in mind and
+body; but she had found it to be necessary to her to love the man who
+was to become her husband. There had come to her a suitor recommended
+to her by all her friends,--recommended to her also by all outward
+circumstances,--and she had found that she did not love him! For a
+while she had been sorely perplexed, hardly knowing what it might
+be her duty to do, not understanding how it was that the man was
+indifferent to her, doubting whether, after all, the love of which
+she had dreamt was not a passion which might come after marriage,
+rather than before it,--but still fearing to run so great a hazard.
+She had doubted, feared, and had hitherto declined,--when that other
+lover had fallen in her way. Mr. Gilmore had wooed her for months
+without touching her heart. Then Walter Marrable had come and had
+conquered her almost in an hour. She had never felt herself disposed
+to play with Mr. Gilmore's hair, to lean against his shoulder, to be
+touched by his fingers,--never disposed to wait for his coming, or
+to regret his going. But she had hardly become acquainted with her
+cousin before his presence was a pleasure to her; and no sooner had
+he spoken to her of his love, than everything that concerned him was
+dear to her. The atmosphere that surrounded him was sweeter to her
+than the air elsewhere. All those little aids which a man gives to a
+woman were delightful to her when they came to her from his hands.
+She told herself that she had found the second half that was needed
+to make herself one whole; that she had become round and entire in
+joining herself to him; and she thought that she understood well why
+it had been that Mr. Gilmore had been nothing to her. As Mr. Fenwick
+was manifestly the husband appointed for his wife, so had Walter
+Marrable been appointed for her. And so there had come upon her a
+dreamy conviction that marriages are made in heaven. That question,
+whether they were to be poor or rich, to have enough or much less
+than enough for the comforts of life, was, no doubt, one of much
+importance; but, in the few happy days of her assured engagement, it
+was not allowed by her to interfere for a moment with the fact that
+she and Walter were intended, each to be the companion of the other,
+as long as they two might live.
+
+Then by degrees,--by degrees, though the process had been quick,--had
+fallen upon her that other conviction, that it was her duty to him
+to save him from the burdens of that life to which she herself had
+looked forward so fondly. At first she had said that he should judge
+of the necessity; swearing to herself that his judgment, let it be
+what it might, should be right to her. Then she had perceived that
+this was not sufficient;--that in this way there would be no escape
+for him;--that she herself must make the decision, and proclaim
+it. Very tenderly and very cautiously had she gone about her task;
+feeling her way to the fact that this separation, if it came from
+her, would be deemed expedient by him. That she would be right in all
+this, was her great resolve; that she might after all be wrong, her
+constant fear. She, too, had heard of public censors, of the girl of
+the period, and of the forward indelicacy with which women of the
+age were charged. She knew not why, but it seemed to her that the
+laws of the world around her demanded more of such rectitude from
+a woman than from a man, and, if it might be possible to her, she
+would comply with these laws. She had convinced herself, forming her
+judgment from every tone of his voice, from every glance of his eye,
+from every word that fell from his lips, that this separation would
+be expedient for him. And then, assuring herself that the task should
+be hers, and not his, she had done it. She had done it, and, counting
+up the cost afterwards, she had found herself to be broken in pieces.
+That wholeness and roundness, in which she had rejoiced, had gone
+from her altogether. She would try to persuade herself that she could
+live as her aunt had lived, and yet be whole and round. She tried,
+but knew that she failed. The life to which she had looked forward
+had been the life of a married woman; and now, as that was taken from
+her, she could be but a thing broken, a fragment of humanity, created
+for use, but never to be used.
+
+She bore all this well, for a while,--and indeed never ceased to bear
+it well, to the eyes of those around her. When Parson John told her
+of Walter's hunting, she laughed, and said that she hoped he would
+distinguish himself. When her aunt on one occasion congratulated
+her, telling her that she had done well and nobly, she bore the
+congratulation with a smile and a kind word. But she thought about it
+much, and within the chambers of her own bosom there were complaints
+made that the play which had been played between him and her during
+the last few months should for her have been such a very tragedy,
+while for him the matter was no more than a melodrama, touched with
+a pleasing melancholy. He had not been made a waif upon the waters
+by the misfortune of a few weeks, by the error of a lawyer, by a
+mistaken calculation,--not even by the crime of his father. His
+manhood was, at any rate, perfect to him. Though he might be a poor
+man, he was still a man with his hands free, and with something
+before him which he could do. She understood, too, that the rough
+work of his life would be such that it would rub away, perhaps too
+quickly, the impression of his late love, and enable him hereafter
+to love another. But for her,--for her there could be nothing but
+memory, regrets, and a life which would simply be a waiting for
+death. But she had done nothing wrong,--and she must console herself
+with that, if consolation could then be found.
+
+Then there came to her a letter from Mrs. Fenwick which moved her
+much. It was the second which she had received from her friend since
+she had made it known that she was no longer engaged to her cousin.
+In her former letter Mrs. Fenwick had simply expressed her opinion
+that Mary had done rightly, and had, at the same time, promised that
+she would write again, more at length, when the passing by of a few
+weeks should have so far healed the first agony of the wound, as to
+make it possible for her to speak of the future. Mary, dreading this
+second letter, had done nothing to elicit it; but at last it came.
+And as it had some effect on Mary Lowther's future conduct, it shall
+be given to the reader:--
+
+
+   Bullhampton Vicarage, March 12, 186--.
+
+   DEAREST MARY,
+
+   I do so wish you were here, if it were only to share our
+   misery with us. I did not think that so small a thing as
+   the building of a wretched chapel could have put me out so
+   much, and made me so uncomfortable as this has done. Frank
+   says that it is simply the feeling of being beaten,--the
+   insult not the injury, which is the grievance; but they
+   both rankle with me. I hear the click of the trowel every
+   hour, and though I never go near the front gate, yet I
+   know that it is all muddy and foul with brickbats and
+   mortar. I don't think that anything so cruel and unjust
+   was ever done before; and the worst of it is that Frank,
+   though he hates it just as much as I do, does preach
+   such sermons to me about the wickedness of caring for
+   small evils. 'Suppose you had to go to it every Sunday
+   yourself,' he said the other day, trying to make me
+   understand what a real depth of misery there is in the
+   world. 'I shouldn't mind that half so much,' I answered.
+   Then he bade me try it,--which wasn't fair because he
+   knows I can't. However, they say it will all tumble down
+   because it has been built so badly.
+
+   I have been waiting to hear from you, but I can understand
+   why you should not write. You do not wish to speak of your
+   cousin, or to write without speaking of him. Your aunt has
+   written to me twice, as doubtless you know, and has told
+   me that you are well, only more silent than heretofore.
+   Dearest Mary, do write to me, and tell me what is in
+   your heart. I will not ask you to come to us,--not
+   yet,--because of our neighbour; but I do think that if you
+   were here I could do you good. I know so well, or fancy
+   that I know so well, the current in which your thoughts
+   are running! You have had a wound, and think that
+   therefore you must be a cripple for life. But it is not
+   so; and such thoughts, if not wicked, are at least wrong.
+   I would that it had been otherwise. I would that you had
+   not met your cousin.--
+
+
+"So would not I," said Mary to herself; but as she said it she knew
+that she was wrong. Of course it would be for her welfare, and for
+his too, if his heart was as hers, that she should never have seen
+him.--
+
+
+   But because you have met him, and have fancied that you
+   and he would be all in all together, you will be wrong
+   indeed if you let that fancy ruin your future life. Or
+   if you encourage yourself to feel that, because you
+   have loved one man from whom you are necessarily parted,
+   therefore you should never allow yourself to become
+   attached to another, you will indeed be teaching yourself
+   an evil lesson. I think I can understand the arguments
+   with which you may perhaps endeavour to persuade your
+   heart that its work of loving has been done, and should
+   not be renewed; but I am quite sure that they are false
+   and inhuman. The Indian, indeed, allows herself to be
+   burned through a false idea of personal devotion; and if
+   that idea be false in a widow, how much falser is it in
+   one who has never been a wife.
+
+   You know what have ever been our wishes. They are the same
+   now as heretofore; and his constancy is of that nature,
+   that nothing will ever change it. I am persuaded that it
+   would have been unchanged, even if you had married your
+   cousin, though in that case he would have been studious to
+   keep out of your way. I do not mean to press his claims at
+   present. I have told him that he should be patient, and
+   that if the thing be to him as important as he makes it,
+   he should be content to wait. He replied that he would
+   wait. I ask for no word from you at present on this
+   subject. It will be much better that there should be no
+   word. But it is right that you should know that there is
+   one who loves you with a devotion which nothing can alter.
+
+   I will only add to this my urgent prayer that you will not
+   make too much to yourself of your own misfortune, or allow
+   yourself to think that because this and that have taken
+   place, therefore everything must be over. It is hard to
+   say who makes the greatest mistakes, women who treat their
+   own selves with too great a reverence, or they who do so
+   with too little.
+
+   Frank sends his kindest love. Write to me at once, if only
+   to condole with me about the chapel.
+
+   Most affectionately yours,
+
+   JANET FENWICK.
+
+   My sister and Mr. Quickenham are coming here for
+   Easter week, and I have still some hopes of getting my
+   brother-in-law to put us up to some way of fighting the
+   Marquis and his myrmidons. I have always heard it said
+   that there was no case in which Mr. Quickenham couldn't
+   make a fight.
+
+
+Mary Lowther understood well the whole purport of this letter,--all
+that was meant as well as all that was written. She had told herself
+again and again that there had been that between her and the lover
+she had lost,--tender embraces, warm kisses, a bird-like pressure
+of the plumage,--which alone should make her deem it unfit that she
+should be to another man as she had been to him, even should her
+heart allow it. It was against this doctrine that her friend had
+preached, with more or less of explicitness in her sermon. And how
+was the truth? If she could take a lesson on that subject from any
+human being in the world, she would take it from her friend Janet
+Fenwick. But she rebelled against the preaching, and declared to
+herself that her friend had never been tried, and therefore did not
+understand the case. Must she not be guided by her own feelings, and
+did she not feel that she could never lay her head on the shoulder of
+another lover without blushing at her memories of the past?
+
+And yet how hard was it all! It was not the joys of young love
+that she regretted in her present mood, not the loss of those soft
+delights of which she had suddenly found herself to be so capable;
+but that all the world should be dark and dreary before her! And he
+could hunt, could dance, could work,--no doubt could love again! How
+happy would it be for her if her reason would allow her to be a Roman
+Catholic, and a nun!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII.
+
+A LOVER'S MADNESS.
+
+
+The letter from Mrs. Fenwick, which the reader has just seen, was the
+immediate effect of a special visit which Mr. Gilmore had made to
+her. On the 10th of March he had come to her with a settled purpose,
+pointing out to her that he had now waited a certain number of months
+since he had heard of the rupture between Mary and her cousin, naming
+the exact period which Mrs. Fenwick had bade him wait before he
+should move again in the matter, and asking her whether he might not
+now venture to take some step. Mrs. Fenwick had felt it to be unfair
+that her very words should be quoted against her, as to the three or
+four months, feeling that she had said three or four instead of six
+or seven to soften the matter to her friend; but, nevertheless, she
+had been induced to write to Mary Lowther.
+
+"I was thinking that perhaps you might ask her to come to you
+again," Mr. Gilmore had said when Mrs. Fenwick rebuked him for his
+impatience. "If you did that, the thing might come on naturally."
+
+"But she wouldn't come if I did ask her."
+
+"Because she hates me so much that she will not venture to come near
+me?"
+
+"What nonsense that is, Harry. It has nothing to do with hating. If I
+thought that she even disliked you, I should tell you so, believing
+that it would be for the best. But of course if I asked her here
+just at present, she could not but remember that you are our nearest
+neighbour, and feel that she was pressed to come with some reference
+to your hopes."
+
+"And therefore she would not come?"
+
+"Exactly; and if you will think of it, how could it be otherwise?
+Wait till he is in India. Wait at any rate till the summer, and then
+Frank and I will do our best to get her here."
+
+"I will wait," said Mr. Gilmore, and immediately took his leave, as
+though there were no other subject of conversation now possible to
+him.
+
+Since his return from Loring, Mr. Gilmore's life at his own house had
+been quite secluded. Even the Fenwicks had hardly seen him, though
+they lived so near to him. He had rarely been at church, had seen no
+company at home since his uncle, the prebendary, had left him, and
+had not dined even at the Vicarage more than once or twice. All this
+had of course been frequently discussed between Mr. and Mrs. Fenwick,
+and had made the Vicar very unhappy. He had expressed a fear that
+his friend would be driven half crazy by a foolish indulgence in a
+hopeless passion, and had suggested that it might perhaps be for the
+best that Gilmore should let his place and travel abroad for two
+or three years, so that, in that way, his disappointment might be
+forgotten. But Mrs. Fenwick still hoped better things than this. She
+probably thought more of Mary Lowther than she did of Harry Gilmore,
+and still believed that a cure for both their sorrows might be found,
+if one would only be patient, and the other would not despair.
+
+Mr. Gilmore had promised that he would wait, and then Mrs. Fenwick
+had written her letter. To this there came a very quick answer. In
+respect to the trouble about the chapel, Mary Lowther was sympathetic
+and droll, as she would have been had there been upon her the weight
+of no love misfortune. "She had trust," she said, "in Mr. Quickenham,
+who no doubt would succeed in harassing the enemy, even though he
+might be unable to obtain ultimate conquest. And then there seemed
+to be a fair prospect that the building would fall of itself, which
+surely would be a great triumph. And, after all, might it not fairly
+be hoped that the pleasantness of the Vicarage garden, which Mr.
+Puddleham must see every time he visited his chapel, might be quite
+as galling and as vexatious to him as would be the ugliness of the
+Methodist building to the Fenwicks?
+
+"You should take comfort in the reflection that his sides will be
+quite as full of thorns as your own," said Mary; "and perhaps there
+may come some blessed opportunity for crushing him altogether by
+heaping hot coals of fire on his head. Offer him the use of the
+Vicarage lawn for one of his school tea-parties, and that, I should
+think, would about finish him."
+
+This was all very well, and was written on purpose to show to Mrs.
+Fenwick that Mary could still be funny in spite of her troubles; but
+the pith of the letter, as Mrs. Fenwick well understood, lay in the
+few words of the last paragraph.
+
+"Don't suppose, dear, that I am going to die of a broken heart. I
+mean to live and to be as happy as any of you. But you must let me go
+on in my own way. I am not at all sure that being married is not more
+trouble than it is worth."
+
+That she was deceiving herself in saying this Mary knew well enough;
+and Mrs. Fenwick, too, guessed that it was so. Nevertheless, it was
+plain enough that nothing more could be said about Mr. Gilmore just
+at present.
+
+"You ought to blow him up, and make him come to us," Mrs. Fenwick
+said to her husband.
+
+"It is all very well to say that, but one man can't blow another
+up, as women do. Men don't talk to each other about the things that
+concern them nearly,--unless it be about money."
+
+"What do they talk about, then?"
+
+"About matters that don't concern them nearly;--game, politics, and
+the state of the weather. If I were to mention Mary's name to him, he
+would feel it to be an impertinence. You can say what you please."
+
+Soon after this, Gilmore came again to the Vicarage; but he was
+careful to come when the Vicar would not be there. He sauntered into
+the garden by the little gate from the churchyard, and showed himself
+at the drawing-room window, without going round to the front door. "I
+never go to the front now," said Mrs. Fenwick; "I have only once been
+through the gate since they began to build."
+
+"Is not that very inconvenient?"
+
+"Of course it is. When we came home from dining at Sir Thomas's the
+other day, I had myself put down at the church gate, and walked all
+the way round, though it was nearly pitch dark. Do come in, Harry."
+
+
+[Illustration: "Do come in, Harry."]
+
+
+Then Mr. Gilmore came in, and seated himself before the fire. Mrs.
+Fenwick understood his moods so well, that she would not say a word
+to hurry him. If he chose to talk about Mary Lowther, she knew very
+well what she would say to him; but she would not herself introduce
+the subject. She spoke for awhile about the Brattles, saying that the
+old man had suffered much since his son had gone from him. Sam had
+left Bullhampton at the end of January, never having returned to the
+mill after his visit to the Vicar, and had not been heard of since.
+Gilmore, however, had not been to see his tenant; and though he
+expressed an interest about the Brattles, had manifestly come to
+the Vicarage with the object of talking upon matters more closely
+interesting to himself.
+
+"Did you write to Loring, Mrs. Fenwick?" he asked at last.
+
+"I wrote to Mary soon after you were last here."
+
+"And has she answered you?"
+
+"Yes; she wrote again almost at once. She could not but write, as I
+had said so much to her about the chapel."
+
+"She did not allude to--anything else, then?"
+
+"I can't quite say that, Harry. I had written to her out of a
+very full heart, telling her what I thought as to her future life
+generally, and just alluding to our wishes respecting you."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"She said just what might have been expected,--that for the present
+she would rather be let alone."
+
+"I have let her alone. I have neither spoken to her nor written to
+her. She does not mean to say that I have troubled her?"
+
+"Of course you have not troubled her,--but she knows what we all
+mean."
+
+"I have waited all the winter, Mrs. Fenwick, and have said not a
+word. How long was it that she knew her cousin before she was engaged
+to him?"
+
+"What has that to do with it? You know what our wishes are; but,
+indeed, indeed, nothing can be done by hurrying her."
+
+"She was engaged to that man, and the engagement broken off all
+within a month. It was no more than a dream."
+
+"But the remembrance of such dreams will not fade away quickly.
+Let us hope that hereafter it may be as a dream;--but time must be
+allowed to efface the idea of its reality."
+
+"Time;--yes; but cannot we arrange some plan for the future? Cannot
+something be done? I thought you said you would ask her to come
+here?"
+
+"So I did,--but not yet."
+
+"Why shouldn't she come now? You needn't ask because I am here. There
+is no saying whom she may meet, and then my chance will be gone
+again."
+
+"Is that all you know about women, Harry? Do you think that the girl
+whom you love so dearly will take up with one man after another in
+that fashion?"
+
+"Who can say? She was not very long in taking up, as you call it,
+with Captain Marrable. I should be happier if she were here, even if
+I did not see her."
+
+"Of course you would see her, and of course you would propose
+again,--and of course she would refuse you."
+
+"Then there is no hope?"
+
+"I do not say that. Wait till the summer comes; and then, if I can
+influence her, we will have her here. If you find that remaining at
+the Privets all alone is wearisome to you--"
+
+"Of course it is wearisome."
+
+"Then go up to London--or abroad--or anywhere for a change. Take some
+occupation in hand and stick to it."
+
+"That is so easily said, Mrs. Fenwick."
+
+"No man ever did anything by moping; and you mope. I know I am
+speaking plainly, and you may be angry with me, if you please."
+
+"I am not at all angry with you; but I think you hardly understand."
+
+"I do understand," said Mrs. Fenwick, speaking with all the energy
+she could command; "and I am most anxious to do all that you wish.
+But it cannot be done in a day. If I were to ask her now, she would
+not come; and if she came it would not be for your good. Wait till
+the summer. You may be sure that no harm will be done by a little
+patience."
+
+Then he went away, declaring again that he would wait with patience;
+but saying, at the same time, that he would remain at home. "As for
+going to London," he said, "I should do nothing there. When I find
+that there is no chance left, then probably I shall go abroad."
+
+"It is my belief," said the Vicar, that evening, when his wife told
+him what had occurred, "that she will never have him; not because she
+does not like him, or could not learn to like him if he were as other
+men are, but simply because he is so unreasonably unhappy about her.
+No woman was ever got by that sort of puling and whining love. If it
+were not that I think him crazy, I should say that it was unmanly."
+
+"But he is crazy."
+
+"And will be still worse before he has done with it. Anything would
+be good now which would take him away from Bullhampton. It would be a
+mercy that his house should be burned down, or that some great loss
+should fall upon him. He sits there at home, and does nothing. He
+will not even look after the farm. He pretends to read, but I don't
+believe that he does even that."
+
+"And all because he is really in love, Frank."
+
+"I am very glad that I have never been in love with the same
+reality."
+
+"You never had any need, sir. The plums fell into your mouth too
+easily."
+
+"Plums shouldn't be too difficult," said the Vicar, "or they lose
+their sweetness."
+
+A few days after this Mr. Fenwick was standing at his own gate,
+watching the building of the chapel and talking to the men, when
+Fanny Brattle from the mill came up to him. He would stand there by
+the hour at a time, and had made quite a friendship with the foreman
+of the builder from Salisbury, although the foreman, like his master,
+was a Dissenter, and had come into the parish as an enemy. All
+Bullhampton knew how infinite was the disgust of the Vicar at what
+was being done; and that Mrs. Fenwick felt it so strongly, that she
+would not even go in and out of her own gate. All Bullhampton was
+aware that Mr. Puddleham spoke openly of the Vicar as his enemy,--in
+spite of the peaches and cabbages on which the young Puddlehams
+had been nourished; and that the Methodist minister had, more than
+once within the last month or two, denounced his brother of the
+Established Church from his own pulpit. All Bullhampton was talking
+of the building of the chapel,--some abusing the Marquis and Mr.
+Puddleham and the Salisbury builder; others, on the other hand,
+declaring that it was very good that the Establishment should have a
+fall. Nevertheless there Mr. Fenwick would stand and chat with the
+men, fascinated after a fashion by the misfortune which had come upon
+him. Mr. Packer, the Marquis's steward, had seen him there, and had
+endeavoured to slink away unobserved,--for Mr. Packer was somewhat
+ashamed of the share he had had in the matter,--but Mr. Fenwick had
+called to him, and had spoken to him of the progress of the building.
+
+"Grimes never could have done it so fast," said the Vicar.
+
+"Well,--not so fast, Mr. Fenwick, certainly."
+
+"I suppose it won't signify about the frost?" said the Vicar. "I
+should be inclined to think that the mortar will want repointing."
+
+Mr. Packer had nothing to say to this. He was not responsible for the
+building. He endeavoured to explain that the Marquis had nothing to
+do with the work, and had simply given the land.
+
+"Which was all that he could do," said the Vicar, laughing.
+
+It was on the same day and while Packer was still standing close to
+him, that Fanny Brattle accosted him. When he had greeted the young
+woman and perceived that she wished to speak to him, he withdrew
+within his own gate, and asked her whether there was anything that he
+could do for her. She had a letter in her hand, and after a little
+hesitation she asked him to read it. It was from her brother, and had
+reached her by private means. A young man had brought it to her when
+her father was in the mill, and had then gone off, declining to wait
+for any answer.
+
+"Father, sir, knows nothing about it as yet," she said.
+
+Mr. Fenwick took the letter and read it. It was as follows:--
+
+
+   DEAR SISTER,
+
+   I want you to help me a little, for things is very bad
+   with me. And it is not for me neither, or I'd sooner
+   starve nor ax for a sixpence from the mill. But Carry is
+   bad too, and if you've got a trifle or so, I think you'd
+   be of a mind to send it. But don't tell father, on no
+   account. I looks to you not to tell father. Tell mother,
+   if you will; but I looks to her not to mention it to
+   father. If it be so you have two pounds by you, send it to
+   me in a letter, to the care of
+
+      Muster Thomas Craddock,
+      Number 5, Crooked Arm Yard,
+      Cowcross Street,
+      City of London.
+
+   My duty to mother, but don't say a word to father,
+   whatever you do. Carry don't live nowhere there, nor they
+   don't know her.
+
+   Your affectionate brother,
+
+   SAM BRATTLE.
+
+
+"Have you told your father, Fanny?"
+
+"Not a word, sir."
+
+"Nor your mother?"
+
+"Oh yes, sir. She has read the letter, and thinks I had better come
+to you to ask what we should do."
+
+"Have you got the money, Fanny?"
+
+Fanny Brattle explained that she had in her pocket something over the
+sum named, but that money was so scarce with them now at the mill,
+that she could hardly send it without her father's knowledge. She
+would not, she said, be afraid to send it and then to tell her father
+afterwards. The Vicar considered the matter for some time, standing
+with the open letter in his hand, and then he gave his advice.
+
+"Come into the house, Fanny," he said, "and write a line to your
+brother, and then get a money order at the post-office for four
+pounds, and send it to your brother; and tell him that I lend it
+to him till times shall be better with him. Do not give him your
+father's money without your father's leave. Sam will pay me some day,
+unless I be mistaken in him."
+
+Then Fanny Brattle with many grateful thanks did as the Vicar bade
+her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX.
+
+THE THREE HONEST MEN.
+
+
+The Vicar of Bullhampton was--a "good sort of fellow." In praise of
+him to this extent it is hoped that the reader will cordially agree.
+But it cannot be denied that he was the most imprudent of men. He
+had done very much that was imprudent in respect to the Marquis of
+Trowbridge; and since he had been at Bullhampton had been imprudent
+in nearly everything that he had done regarding the Brattles. He was
+well aware that the bold words which he had spoken to the Marquis had
+been dragon's teeth sown by himself, and that they had sprung up from
+the ground in the shape of the odious brick building which now stood
+immediately in face of his own Vicarage gate. Though he would smile
+and be droll, and talk to the workmen, he hated that building quite
+as bitterly as did his wife. And now, in regard to the Brattles,
+there came upon him a great trouble. About a week after he had lent
+the four pounds to Fanny on Sam's behalf, there came to him a dirty
+note from Salisbury, written by Sam himself, in which he was told
+that Carry Brattle was now at the Three Honest Men, a public-house in
+one of the suburbs of the city, waiting there till Mr. Fenwick should
+find a home for her,--in accordance with his promise given to her
+brother. Sam, in his letter, had gone on to explain that it would be
+well that Mr. Fenwick should visit the Three Honest Men speedily, as
+otherwise there would be a bill there which neither Carry nor Sam
+would be able to defray. Poor Sam's letter was bald, and they who did
+not understand his position might have called it bold. He wrote to
+the Vicar as though the Vicar's coming to Salisbury for the required
+purpose was a matter of course; and demanded a home for his sister
+without any reference to her future mode of life, or power of earning
+her bread, as though it was the Vicar's manifest duty to provide such
+home. And then that caution in regard to the bill was rather a threat
+than anything else. If you don't take her quickly from the Three
+Honest Men there'll be the very mischief of a bill for you to pay.
+That was the meaning of the caution, and so the Vicar understood it.
+
+But Mr. Fenwick, though he was imprudent, was neither unreasonable
+nor unintelligent. He had told Sam Brattle that he would provide
+a home for Carry, if Sam would find his sister and induce her to
+accept the offer. Sam had gone to work, and had done his part. Having
+done it, he was right to claim from the Vicar his share of the
+performance. And then, was it not a matter of course that Carry, when
+found, should be without means to pay her own expenses? Was it to be
+supposed that a girl in her position would have money by her. And had
+not Mr. Fenwick known the truth about their poverty when he had given
+those four pounds to Fanny Brattle to be sent up to Sam in London?
+Mr. Fenwick was both reasonable and intelligent as to all this; and,
+though he felt that he was in trouble, did not for a moment think
+of denying his responsibility, or evading the performance of his
+promise. He must find a home for poor Carry, and pay any bill at the
+Three Honest Men which he might find standing there in her name.
+
+Of course he told his trouble to his wife; and of course he was
+scolded for the promise he had given. "But, my dear Frank, if for
+her, why not for others; and how is it possible?"
+
+"For her and not for others, because she is an old friend, a
+neighbour's child, and one of the parish." That question was easily
+answered.
+
+"But how is it possible, Frank? Of course one would do anything that
+it is possible to save her. What I mean is, that one would do it for
+all of them, if only it were possible."
+
+"If you can do it for one, will not even that be much?"
+
+"But what is to be done? Who will take her? Will she go into a
+reformatory?"
+
+"I fear not."
+
+"There are so many, and I do not know how they are to be treated
+except in a body. Where can you find a home for her?"
+
+"She has a married sister, Janet."
+
+"Who would not speak to her, or let her inside the door of her house!
+Surely, Frank, you know the unforgiving nature of women of that class
+for such sin as poor Carry Brattle's?"
+
+"I wonder whether they ever say their prayers," said the Vicar.
+
+"Of course they do. Mrs. Jay, no doubt, is a religious woman. But it
+is permitted to them not to forgive that sin."
+
+"By what law?"
+
+"By the law of custom. It is all very well, Frank, but you can't
+fight against it. At any rate, you can't ignore it till it has been
+fought against and conquered. And it is useful. It keeps women from
+going astray."
+
+"You think, then, that nothing should be done for this poor creature,
+who fell so piteously, with so small a sin?"
+
+"I have not said so. But when you promised her a home, where did
+you think of finding one for her? Her only fitting home is with her
+mother, and you know that her father will not take her there."
+
+Mr. Fenwick said nothing more at that moment, not having clearly made
+up his mind as to what he might best do; but he had before his eyes,
+dimly, a plan by which he thought it possible that he might force
+Carry Brattle on her father's heart. If this plan might be carried
+out, he would take her to the mill-house and seat her in the room
+in which the family lived, and then bring the old man in from his
+work. It might be that Jacob Brattle, in his wrath, would turn with
+violence upon the man who had dared thus to interfere in the affairs
+of his family; but he would certainly offer no rough usage to the
+poor girl. Fenwick knew the man well enough to be sure that he would
+not lay his hands in anger upon a woman.
+
+But something must be done at once,--something before any such plan
+as that which was running through his brain could be matured and
+carried into execution. There was Carry at the Three Honest Men, and,
+for aught the Vicar knew, her brother staying with her,--with his,
+the Vicar's credit, pledged for their maintenance. It was quite clear
+that something must be done. He had applied to his wife, and his
+wife did not know how to help him. He had suggested the wife of the
+ironmonger at Warminster as the proper guardian for the poor child,
+and his own wife had at once made him understand that this was
+impractical. Indeed, how was it possible that such a one as Carry
+Brattle should be kept out of sight and stowed away in an open
+hardware-shop in a provincial town? The properest place for her would
+be in the country, on some farm; and, so thinking, he determined to
+apply to the girl's eldest brother.
+
+George Brattle was a prosperous man, living on a large farm near
+Fordingbridge, ten or twelve miles the other side of Salisbury. Of
+him the Vicar knew very little, and of his wife nothing. That the man
+had been married fourteen or fifteen years, and had a family growing
+up, the Vicar did know; and, knowing it, feared that Mrs. Brattle of
+Startup, as their farm was called, would not be willing to receive
+this proposed new inmate. But he would try. He would go on to Startup
+after having seen Carry at the Three Honest Men, and use what
+eloquence he could command for the occasion.
+
+He drove himself over on the next day to meet an early train, and
+was in Salisbury by nine o'clock. He had to ask his way to the Three
+Honest Men, and at last had some difficulty in finding the house.
+It was a small beershop, in a lane on the very outskirts of the
+city, and certainly seemed to him, as he looked at it, to be as
+disreputable a house, in regard to its outward appearance, as ever he
+had proposed to enter. It was a brick building of two stories, with a
+door in the middle of it which stood open, and a red curtain hanging
+across the window on the left-hand side. Three men dressed like
+navvies were leaning against the door-posts. There is no sign,
+perhaps, which gives to a house of this class so disreputable an
+appearance as red curtains hung across the window; and yet there is
+no other colour for pot-house curtains that has any popularity. The
+one fact probably explains the other. A drinking-room with a blue or
+a brown curtain would offer no attraction to the thirsty navvy who
+likes to have his thirst indulged without criticism. But, in spite of
+the red curtain, Fenwick entered the house, and asked the uncomely
+woman at the bar after Sam Brattle. Was there a man named Sam Brattle
+staying there;--a man with a sister?
+
+Then were let loose against the unfortunate clergyman the floodgates
+of a drunken woman's angry tongue. It was not only that the landlady
+of the Three Honest Men was very drunk, but also that she was very
+angry. Sam Brattle and his sister had been there, but they had been
+turned out of the house. There had manifestly been some great row,
+and Carry Brattle was spoken of with all the worst terms of reproach
+which one woman can heap upon the name of another. The mistress of
+the Three Honest Men was a married woman,--and, as far as that went,
+respectable; whereas poor Carry was not married, and certainly not
+respectable. Something of her past history had been known. She had
+been called names which she could not repudiate, and the truth of
+which even her brother on her behalf could not deny; and then she had
+been turned into the street. So much Mr. Fenwick learned from the
+drunken woman, and nothing more he could learn. When he asked after
+Carry's present address the woman jeered at him, and accused him of
+base purposes in coming after such a one. She stood with arms akimbo
+in the passage, and said she would raise the neighbourhood on him.
+She was drunk, and dirty, as foul a thing as the eye could look upon;
+every other word was an oath, and no phrase used by the lowest of
+men in their lowest moments was too hot or too bad for her woman's
+tongue; and yet there was the indignation of outraged virtue in her
+demeanour and in her language, because this stranger had come to her
+door asking after a girl who had been led astray. Our Vicar cared
+nothing for the neighbourhood, and, indeed, cared very little for
+the woman at all,--except in so far as she disgusted him; but he did
+care much at finding that he could obtain no clue to her whom he was
+seeking. The woman would not even tell him when the girl had left
+her house, or give him any assistance towards finding her. He had at
+first endeavoured to mollify the virago by offering to pay the amount
+of any expenses which might have been left unsettled; but even on
+this score he could obtain no consideration. She continued to revile
+him, and he was obliged to leave her,--which he did, at last, with a
+hurried step to avoid a quart pot which the woman had taken up to
+hurl at his head, upon some comparison which he most indiscreetly
+made between herself and poor Carry Brattle.
+
+What should he do now? The only chance of finding the girl was, as he
+thought, to go to the police-office. He was still in the lane, making
+his way back to the street which would take him into the city,
+when he was accosted by a little child. "You be the parson," said
+the child. Mr. Fenwick owned that he was a parson. "Parson from
+Bull'umpton?" said the child, inquiringly. Mr. Fenwick acknowledged
+the fact. "Then you be to come with me." Whereupon Mr. Fenwick
+followed the child, and was led into a miserable little court in
+which population was squalid, thick, and juvenile. "She be here, at
+Mrs. Stiggs's," said the child. Then the Vicar understood that he had
+been watched, and that he was being taken to the place where she whom
+he was seeking had found shelter.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XL.
+
+TROTTER'S BUILDINGS.
+
+
+In the back room up-stairs of Mr. Stiggs's house in Trotter's
+Buildings the Vicar did find Carry Brattle, and he found also that
+since her coming thither on the preceding evening,--for only on the
+preceding evening had she been turned away from the Three Honest
+Men,--one of Mrs. Stiggs's children had been on the look-out in the
+lane.
+
+"I thought that you would come to me, sir," said Carry Brattle.
+
+"Of course I should come. Did I not promise that I would come? And
+where is your brother?"
+
+But Sam had left her as soon as he had placed her in Mrs. Stiggs's
+house, and Carry could not say whither he had gone. He had brought
+her to Salisbury, and had remained with her two days at the Three
+Honest Men, during which time the remainder of their four pounds
+had been spent; and then there had been a row. Some visitors to the
+house recognised poor Carry, or knew something of her tale, and evil
+words were spoken. There had been a fight and Sam had thrashed some
+man,--or some half-dozen men, if all that Carry said was true. She
+had fled from the house in sad tears, and after a while her brother
+had joined her,--bloody, with his lip cut and a black eye. It seemed
+that he had had some previous knowledge of this woman who lived in
+Trotter's Buildings,--had known her or her husband,--and there he had
+found shelter for his sister, having explained that a clergyman would
+call for her and pay for her modest wants, and then take her away.
+She supposed that Sam had gone back to London; but he had been so
+bruised and mauled in the fight that he had determined that Mr.
+Fenwick should not see him. This was the story as Carry told it; and
+Mr. Fenwick did not for a moment doubt its truth.
+
+"And now, Carry," said he, "what is it that you would do?"
+
+She looked up into his face, and yet not wholly into his face,--as
+though she were afraid to raise her eyes so high,--and was silent.
+His were intently fixed upon her, as he stood over her, and he
+thought that he had never seen a sight more sad to look at. And yet
+she was very pretty,--prettier, perhaps, than she had been in the
+days when she would come up the aisle of his church, to take her
+place among the singers, with red cheeks and bright flowing clusters
+of hair. She was pale now, and he could see that her cheeks were
+rough,--from paint, perhaps, and late hours, and an ill-life; but
+the girl had become a woman, and the lines of her countenance were
+fixed, and were very lovely, and there was a pleading eloquence about
+her mouth for which there had been no need in her happy days at
+Bullhampton. He had asked her what she would do! But had she not come
+there, at her brother's instigation, that he might tell her what she
+should do? Had he not promised that he would find her a home if she
+would leave her evil ways? How was it possible that she should have a
+plan for her future life? She answered him not a word; but tried to
+look into his face and failed.
+
+Nor had he any formed plan. That idea, indeed, of going to Startup
+had come across his brain,--of going to Startup, and of asking
+assistance from the prosperous elder brother. But so diffident was he
+of success that he hardly dared to mention it to the poor girl.
+
+"It is hard to say what you should do," he said.
+
+"Very hard, sir."
+
+His heart was so tender towards her that he could not bring himself
+to propose to her the cold and unpleasant safety of a Reformatory. He
+knew, as a clergyman and as a man of common sense, that to place her
+in such an establishment would, in truth, be the greatest kindness
+that he could do her. But he could not do it. He satisfied his own
+conscience by telling himself that he knew that she would accept no
+such refuge. He thought that he had half promised not to ask her to
+go to any such place. At any rate, he had not meant that when he had
+made his rash promise to her brother; and though that promise was
+rash, he was not the less bound to keep it. She was very pretty, and
+still soft, and he had loved her well. Was it a fault in him that he
+was tender to her because of her prettiness, and because he had loved
+her as a child? We must own that it was a fault. The crooked places
+of the world, if they are to be made straight at all, must be made
+straight after a sterner and a juster fashion.
+
+"Perhaps you could stay here for a day or two?" he said.
+
+"Only that I've got no money."
+
+"I will see to that,--for a few days, you know. And I was thinking
+that I would go to your brother George."
+
+"My brother George?"
+
+"Yes;--why not? Was he not always good to you?"
+
+"He was never bad, sir; only--"
+
+"Only what?"
+
+"I've been so bad, sir, that I don't think he'd speak to me, or
+notice me, or do anything for me. And he has got a wife, too."
+
+"But a woman doesn't always become hard-hearted as soon as she is
+married. There must be some of them that will take pity on you,
+Carry." She only shook her head. "I shall tell him that it is his
+duty, and if he be an honest, God-fearing man, he will do it."
+
+"And should I have to go there?"
+
+"If he will take you--certainly. What better could you wish? Your
+father is hard, and though he loves you still, he cannot bring
+himself to forget."
+
+"How can any of them forget, Mr. Fenwick?"
+
+"I will go out at once to Startup, and as I return through Salisbury
+I will let you know what your brother says." She again shook her
+head. "At any rate, we must try, Carry. When things are difficult,
+they cannot be mended by people sitting down and crying. I will
+ask your brother; and if he refuses, I will endeavour to think of
+something else. Next to your father and mother, he is certainly the
+first that should be asked to look to you." Then he said much to her
+as to her condition, preached to her the little sermon with which he
+had come prepared; was as stern to her as his nature and love would
+allow,--though, indeed, his words were tender enough. He strove to
+make her understand that she could have no escape from the dirt and
+vileness and depth of misery into which she had fallen, without the
+penalty of a hard, laborious life, in which she must submit to be
+regarded as one whose place in the world was very low. He asked her
+whether she did not hate the disgrace and the ignominy and the vile
+wickedness of her late condition. "Yes, indeed, sir," she answered,
+with her eyes still only half-raised towards him. What other answer
+could she make? He would fain have drawn from her some deep and
+passionate expression of repentance, some fervid promise of future
+rectitude, some eager offer to bear all other hardships, so that
+she might be saved from a renewal of the past misery. But he knew
+that no such eloquence, no such energy, no such ecstacy, would be
+forthcoming. And he knew, also, that humble, contrite, and wretched
+as was the girl now, the nature within her bosom was not changed.
+Were he to place her in a reformatory, she would not stay there. Were
+he to make arrangements with Mrs. Stiggs, who in her way seemed to
+be a decent, hard-working woman,--to make arrangements for her board
+and lodging, with some collateral regulations as to occupation,
+needle-work, and the like,--she would not adhere to them. The change
+from a life of fevered, though most miserable, excitement, to one of
+dull, pleasureless, and utterly uninteresting propriety, is one that
+can hardly be made without the assistance of binding control. Could
+she have been sent to the mill, and made subject to her mother's
+softness as well as to her mother's care, there might have been room
+for confident hope. And then, too,--but let not the reader read this
+amiss,--because she was pretty and might be made bright again, and
+because he was young, and because he loved her, he longed, were it
+possible, to make her paths pleasant for her. Her fall, her first
+fall had been piteous to him, rather than odious. He, too, would have
+liked to get hold of the man and to have left him without a sound
+limb within his skin,--to have left him pretty nearly without a skin
+at all; but that work had fallen into the miller's hands, who had
+done it fairly well. And, moreover, it would hardly have fitted the
+Vicar. But, as regarded Carry herself, when he thought of her in his
+solitary rambles, he would build little castles in the air on her
+behalf, in which her life should be anything but one of sackcloth and
+ashes. He would find for her some loving husband, who should know
+and should have forgiven the sin which had hardly been a sin, and
+she should be a loving wife with loving children. Perhaps, too, he
+would add to this, as he built his castles, the sweet smiles of
+affectionate gratitude with which he himself would be received when
+he visited her happy hearth. But he knew that these were castles
+in the air, and he endeavoured to throw them all behind him as he
+preached his sermon. Nevertheless, he was very tender with her,
+and treated her not at all as he would have done an ugly young
+parishioner who had turned thief upon his hands.
+
+"And now, Carry," he said, as he left her, "I will get a gig in the
+town, and will drive over to your brother. We can but try it. I am
+clear as to this, that the best thing for you will be to be among
+your own people."
+
+"I suppose it would, sir; but I don't think she'll ever be brought to
+have me."
+
+"We will try, at any rate. And if she will have you, you must
+remember that you must not eat the bread of idleness. You must be
+prepared to work for your living."
+
+"I don't want to be idle, sir." Then he took her by the hand, and
+pressed it, and bade God bless her, and gave her a little money in
+order that she might make some first payment to Mrs. Stiggs. "I'm
+sure I don't know why you should do all this for the likes of me,
+sir," said the girl, bursting into tears. The Vicar did not tell her
+that he did it because she was gracious in his eyes, and perhaps was
+not aware of the fact himself.
+
+He went to the Dragon of Wantley, and there procured a gig. He had
+a contest in the inn-yard before they would let him have the gig
+without a man to drive him; but he managed it at last, fearing that
+the driver might learn something of his errand. He had never been at
+Startup Farm before; and knew very little of the man he was going
+to see on so very delicate a mission; but he did know that George
+Brattle was prosperous, and that in early life he had been a good
+son. His last interview with the farmer had had reference to the
+matter of bail required for Sam, and on that occasion the brother
+had, with some persuasion, done as he was asked. George Brattle had
+contrived to win for himself a wife from the Fordingbridge side of
+the country, who had had a little money; and as he, too, had carried
+away from the mill a little money in his father's prosperous days,
+he had done very well. He paid his rent to the day, owed no man
+anything, and went to church every other Sunday, eschewing the bad
+example set to him by his father in matters of religion. He was
+hard-fisted, ignorant, and self-confident, knowing much about corn
+and the grinding of it, knowing something of sheep and the shearing
+of them, knowing also how to get the worth of his ten or eleven
+shillings a week out of the bones of the rural labourers;--but
+knowing very little else. Of all this Fenwick was aware; and, in
+spite of that church-going twice a month, rated the son as inferior
+to the father; for about the old miller there was a stubborn
+constancy which almost amounted to heroism. With such a man as was
+this George Brattle, how was he to preach a doctrine of true human
+charity with any chance of success? But the man was one who was
+pervious to ideas of duty, and might be probably pervious to feelings
+of family respect. And he had been good to his father and mother,
+regarding with something of true veneration the nest from which he
+had sprung. The Vicar did not like the task before him, dreading the
+disappointment which failure would produce; but he was not the man to
+shrink from any work which he had resolved to undertake, and drove
+gallantly into the farmyard, though he saw both the farmer and his
+wife standing at the back-door of the house.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLI.
+
+STARTUP FARM.
+
+
+Farmer Brattle, who was a stout man about thirty-eight years of age
+but looking as though he were nearly ten years older, came up to the
+Vicar, touching his hat, and then putting his hand out in greeting.
+
+"This be a pleasure something like, Muster Fenwick, to see thee
+here at Startup. This be my wife. Molly, thou has never seen Muster
+Fenwick from Bull'umpton. This be our Vicar, as mother and Fanny says
+is the pick of all the parsons in Wiltshire."
+
+Then Mr. Fenwick got down, and walked into the spacious kitchen,
+where he was cordially welcomed by the stout mistress of Startup
+Farm.
+
+He was very anxious to begin his story to the brother alone. Indeed,
+as to that, his mind was quite made up; but Mrs. Brattle, who within
+the doors of that house held a position at any rate equal to that
+of her husband, did not seem disposed to give him the opportunity.
+She understood well enough that Mr. Fenwick had not come over from
+Bullhampton to shake hands with her husband, and to say a few civil
+words. He must have business, and that business must be about the
+Brattle family. Old Brattle was supposed to be in money difficulties,
+and was not this an embassy in search of money? Now Mrs. George
+Brattle, who had been born a Huggins, was very desirous that none
+of the Huggins money should be sent into the parish of Bullhampton.
+When, therefore, Mr. Fenwick asked the farmer to step out with him
+for a moment, Mrs. George Brattle looked very grave, and took her
+husband apart and whispered a word of caution into his ear.
+
+"It's about the mill, George; and don't you do nothing till you've
+spoke to me."
+
+Then there came a solid look, almost of grief, upon George's face.
+There had been a word or two before this between him and the wife of
+his bosom as to the affairs of the mill.
+
+"I've just been seeing somebody at Salisbury," began the Vicar,
+abruptly, as soon as they had crossed from the yard behind the house
+into the enclosure around the ricks.
+
+"Some one at Salisbury, Muster Fenwick? Is it any one as I knows?"
+
+"One that you did know well, Mr. Brattle. I've seen your sister
+Carry." Again there came upon the farmer's face that heavy look,
+which was almost a look of grief; but he did not at once utter a
+word. "Poor young thing!" continued the Vicar. "Poor, dear,
+unfortunate girl!"
+
+"She brought it on herself, and on all of us," said the farmer.
+
+"Yes, indeed, my friend. The light, unguarded folly of a moment has
+ruined her, and brought dreadful sorrow upon you all. But something
+should be done for her;--eh?"
+
+Still the brother said nothing.
+
+"You will help, I'm sure, to rescue her from the infamy into which
+she must fall if none help her?"
+
+"If there's money wanted to get her into any of them places--," begun
+the farmer.
+
+"It isn't that;--it isn't that, at any rate, as yet."
+
+"What be it, then?"
+
+"The personal countenance and friendship of some friend that loves
+her. You love your sister, Mr. Brattle?"
+
+"I don't know as I does, Muster Fenwick."
+
+"You used to, and you must still pity her."
+
+"She's been and well-nigh broke the hearts of all on us. There wasn't
+one of us as wasn't respectable, till she come up;--and now there's
+Sam. But a boy as is bad ain't never so bad as a girl."
+
+It must be understood that in the expression of this opinion Mr.
+Brattle was alluding, not to the personal wickedness of the wicked
+of the two sexes, but to the effect of their wickedness on those
+belonging to them.
+
+"And therefore more should be done to help a girl."
+
+"I'll stand the money, Muster Fenwick,--if it ain't much."
+
+"What is wanted is a home in your own house."
+
+"Here--at Startup?"
+
+"Yes; here, at Startup. Your father will not take her."
+
+"Neither won't I. But it ain't me in such a matter as this. You ask
+my missus, and see what she'll say. Besides, Muster Fenwick, it's
+clean out of all reason."
+
+"Out of all reason to help a sister?"
+
+"So it be. Sister, indeed! Why did she go and make--. I won't say
+what she's made of herself. Ain't she brought trouble and sorrow
+enough upon us? Have her here! Why, I'm that angry with her, I
+shouldn't be keeping my hands off her. Why didn't she keep herself to
+herself, and not disgrace the whole family?"
+
+Nevertheless, in spite of these strong expressions of opinion, Mr.
+Fenwick, by the dint of the bitter words which he spoke in reference
+to the brother's duty as a Christian, did get leave from the farmer
+to make the proposition to Mrs. George Brattle,--such permission as
+would have bound the brother to accept Carry, providing that Mrs.
+George would also consent to accept her. But even this permission
+was accompanied by an assurance that it would not have been given had
+he not felt perfectly convinced that his wife would not listen for
+a moment to the scheme. He spoke of his wife almost with awe, when
+Mr. Fenwick left him to make this second attack. "She has never had
+nothing to say to none sich as that," said the farmer, shaking his
+head, as he alluded both to his wife and to his sister; "and I ain't
+sure as she'll be first-rate civil to any one as mentions sich in her
+hearing."
+
+But Mr. Fenwick persevered, in spite even of this caution. When
+the Vicar re-entered the house, Mrs. George Brattle had retired to
+her parlour, and the kitchen was in the hands of the maid-servant.
+He followed the lady, however, and found that she had been at the
+trouble, since he had seen her last, of putting on a clean cap on his
+behalf. He began at once, jumping again into the middle of things by
+a reference to her husband.
+
+"Mrs. Brattle," he said, "your husband and I have been talking about
+his poor sister Carry."
+
+"The least said the soonest mended about that one, I'm afeared," said
+the dame.
+
+"Indeed, I agree with you. Were she once placed in safe and kind
+hands, the less then said the better. She has left the life she was
+leading--"
+
+"They never leaves it," said the dame.
+
+"It is so seldom that an opportunity is given them. Poor Carry is
+at the present moment most anxious to be placed somewhere out of
+danger."
+
+"Mr. Fenwick, if you ask me, I'd rather not talk about her;--I would
+indeed. She's been and brought a slur upon us all, the vile thing! If
+you ask me, Mr. Fenwick, there ain't nothing too bad for her."
+
+Fenwick, who, on the other hand, thought that there could be hardly
+anything too good for his poor penitent, was beginning to be angry
+with the woman. Of course, he made in his own mind those comparisons
+which are common to us all on such occasions. What was the great
+virtue of this fat, well-fed, selfish, ignorant woman before
+him, that she should turn up her nose at a sister who had been
+unfortunate? Was it not an abominable case of the Pharisee thanking
+the Lord that he was not such a one as the Publican;--whereas the
+Publican was in a fair way to heaven?
+
+"Surely you would have her saved, if it be possible to save her?"
+said the Vicar.
+
+"I don't know about saving. If such as them is to be made all's one
+as others as have always been decent, I'm sure I don't know who it is
+as isn't to be saved."
+
+"Have you never read of Mary Magdalen, Mrs. Brattle?"
+
+"Yes, I have, Mr. Fenwick. Perhaps she hadn't got no father, nor
+brothers, and sisters, and sisters-in-law, as would be pretty well
+broken-hearted when her vileness would be cast up again' 'em. Perhaps
+she hadn't got no decent house over her head afore she begun. I don't
+know how that was."
+
+"Our Saviour's tender mercy, then, would not have been wide enough
+for such sin as that." This the Vicar said with intended irony; but
+irony was thrown away on Mrs. George Brattle.
+
+"Them days and ours isn't the same, Mr. Fenwick, and you can't make
+'em the same. And Our Saviour isn't here now to say who is to be a
+Mary Magdalen and who isn't. As for Carry Brattle, she has made her
+bed and she must lie upon it. We shan't interfere."
+
+Fenwick was determined, however, that he would make his proposition.
+It was almost certain now that he could do no good to Carry by making
+it; but he felt that it would be a pleasure to him to make this
+self-righteous woman know what he conceived to be her duty in the
+matter. "My idea was this--that you should take her in here, and
+endeavour to preserve her from future evil courses."
+
+"Take her in here?" shrieked the woman.
+
+"Yes; here. Who is nearer to her than a brother?"
+
+"Not if I know it, Mr. Fenwick; and if that is what you have been
+saying to Brattle, I must tell you that you've come on a very bad
+errand. People, Mr. Fenwick, knows how to manage things such as that
+for themselves in their own houses. Strangers don't usually talk
+about such things, Mr. Fenwick. Perhaps, Mr. Fenwick, you didn't know
+as how we have got girls of our own coming up. Have her in here--at
+Startup? I think I see her here!"
+
+"But, Mrs. Brattle--"
+
+"Don't Mrs. Brattle me, Mr. Fenwick, for I won't be so treated. And I
+must tell you that I don't think it over decent of you,--a clergyman,
+and a young man, too, in a way,--to come talking of such a one in a
+house like this."
+
+"Would you have her starve, or die in a ditch?"
+
+"There ain't no question of starving. Such as her don't starve. As
+long as it lasts, they've the best of eating and drinking,--only
+too much of it. There's prisons; let 'em go there if they means
+repentance. But they never does,--never, till there ain't nobody to
+notice 'em any longer; and by that time they're mostly thieves and
+pickpockets."
+
+"And you would do nothing to save your own husband's sister from such
+a fate?"
+
+"What business had she to be sister to any honest man? Think of
+what she's been and done to my children, who wouldn't else have had
+nobody to be ashamed of. There never wasn't one of the Hugginses who
+didn't behave herself;--that is of the women," added Mrs. George,
+remembering the misdeeds of a certain drunken uncle of her own, who
+had come to great trouble in a matter of horseflesh. "And now, Mr.
+Fenwick, let me beg that there mayn't be another word about her. I
+don't know nothing of such women, nor what is their ways, and I don't
+want. I never didn't speak a word to such a one in my life, and I
+certainly won't begin under my own roof. People knows well enough
+what's good for them to do and what isn't without being dictated to
+by a clergyman. You'll excuse me, Mr. Fenwick; but I'll just make
+bold to say as much as that. Good morning, Mr. Fenwick."
+
+In the yard, standing close by the gig, he met the farmer again.
+
+"You didn't find she'd be of your way of thinking, Muster Fenwick?"
+
+"Not exactly, Mr. Brattle."
+
+"I know'd she wouldn't. The truth is, Muster Fenwick, that young
+women as goes astray after that fashion is just like any sick animal,
+as all the animals as ain't comes and sets upon immediately. It's
+just as well, too. They knows it beforehand, and it keeps 'em
+straight."
+
+"It didn't keep poor Carry straight."
+
+"And, by the same token, she must suffer, and so must we all. But,
+Muster Fenwick, as far as ten or fifteen pounds goes, if it can be of
+use--"
+
+But the Vicar, in his indignation, repudiated the offer of money, and
+drove himself back to Salisbury with his heart full of sorrow at the
+hardness of the world. What this woman had been saying to him was
+only what the world had said to her,--the world that knows so much
+better how to treat an erring sinner than did Our Saviour when on
+earth.
+
+He went with his sad news to Mrs. Stiggs's house, and then made terms
+for Carry's board and lodging, at any rate, for a fortnight. And he
+said much to the girl as to the disposition of her time. He would
+send her books, and she was to be diligent in needle-work on behalf
+of the Stiggs family. And then he begged her to go to the daily
+service in the cathedral,--not so much because he thought that the
+public worship was necessary for her, as that thus she would be
+provided with a salutary employment for a portion of her day. Carry,
+as she bade him farewell, said very little. Yes; she would stay with
+Mrs. Stiggs. That was all that she did say.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLII.
+
+MR. QUICKENHAM, Q.C.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+On the Thursday in Passion week, which fell on the 6th of April, Mr.
+and Mrs. Quickenham came to Bullhampton Vicarage. The lawyer intended
+to take a long holiday,--four entire days,--and to return to London
+on the following Tuesday; and Mrs. Quickenham meant to be very happy
+with her sister.
+
+"It is such a comfort to get him out of town, if it's only for two
+days," said Mrs. Quickenham; "and I do believe he has run away this
+time without any papers in his portmanteau."
+
+Mrs. Fenwick, with something of apology in her tone, explained to her
+sister that she was especially desirous of getting a legal opinion on
+this occasion from her brother-in-law.
+
+"That's mere holiday work," said the barrister's anxious wife.
+"There's nothing he likes so much as that; but it is the reading of
+those horrible long papers by gaslight. I wouldn't mind how much he
+had to talk, nor yet how much he had to write, if it wasn't for all
+that weary reading. Of course he does have juniors with him now,
+but I don't find that it makes much difference. He's at it every
+night, sheet after sheet; and though he always says he's coming up
+immediately, it's two or three before he's in bed."
+
+Mrs. Quickenham was three or four years older than her sister, and
+Mr. Quickenham was twelve years older than his wife. The lawyer
+therefore was considerably senior to the clergyman. He was at the
+Chancery bar, and after the usual years of hard and almost profitless
+struggling, had worked himself up into a position in which his income
+was very large, and his labours never ending. Since the days in which
+he had begun to have before his eyes some idea of a future career
+for himself, he had always been struggling hard for a certain goal,
+struggling successfully, and yet never getting nearer to the thing
+he desired. A scholarship had been all in all to him when he left
+school; and, as he got it, a distant fellowship already loomed before
+his eyes. That attained was only a step towards his life in London.
+His first brief, anxiously as it had been desired, had given no real
+satisfaction. As soon as it came to him it was a rung of the ladder
+already out of sight. And so it had been all through his life, as he
+advanced upwards, making a business, taking a wife to himself, and
+becoming the father of many children. There was always something
+before him which was to make him happy when he reached it. His gown
+was of silk, and his income almost greater than his desires; but he
+would fain sit upon the Bench, and have at any rate his evenings for
+his own enjoyment. He firmly believed now, that that had been the
+object of his constant ambition; though could he retrace his thoughts
+as a young man, he would find that in the early days of his forensic
+toils, the silent, heavy, unillumined solemnity of the judge had
+appeared to him to be nothing in comparison with the glittering
+audacity of the successful advocate. He had tried the one, and might
+probably soon try the other. And when that time shall have come,
+and Mr. Quickenham shall sit upon his seat of honour in the new
+Law Courts, passing long, long hours in the tedious labours of
+conscientious painful listening; then he will look forward again
+to the happy ease of dignified retirement, to the coming time in
+which all his hours will be his own. And then, again, when those
+unfurnished hours are there, and with them shall have come the
+infirmities which years and toil shall have brought, his mind will
+run on once more to that eternal rest in which fees and salary,
+honours and dignity, wife and children, with all the joys of
+satisfied success, shall be brought together for him in one perfect
+amalgam which he will call by the name of Heaven. In the meantime, he
+has now come down to Bullhampton to enjoy himself for four days,--if
+he can find enjoyment without his law papers.
+
+Mr. Quickenham was a tall, thin man, with eager gray eyes, and a long
+projecting nose, on which, his enemies in the courts of law were wont
+to say, his wife would hang a kettle, in order that the unnecessary
+heat coming from his mouth might not be wasted. His hair was already
+grizzled, and, in the matter of whiskers, his heavy impatient hand
+had nearly altogether cut away the only intended ornament to his
+face. He was a man who allowed himself time for nothing but his law
+work, eating all his meals as though the saving of a few minutes
+in that operation were matter of vital importance, dressing and
+undressing at railroad speed, moving ever with a quick, impetuous
+step, as though the whole world around him went too slowly. He was
+short-sighted, too, and would tumble about in his unnecessary hurry,
+barking his shins, bruising his knuckles, and breaking most things
+that were breakable,--but caring nothing for his sufferings either in
+body or in purse so that he was not reminded of his awkwardness by
+his wife. An untidy man he was, who spilt his soup on his waistcoat
+and slobbered with his tea, whose fingers were apt to be ink-stained,
+and who had a grievous habit of mislaying papers that were most
+material to him. He would bellow to the servants to have his things
+found for him, and would then scold them for looking. But when alone
+he would be ever scolding himself because of the faults which he
+thus committed. A conscientious, hard-working, friendly man he was,
+but one difficult to deal with; hot in his temper, impatient of all
+stupidities, impatient often of that which he wrongly thought to be
+stupidity, never owning himself to be wrong, anxious always for the
+truth, but often missing to see it, a man who would fret grievously
+for the merest trifle, and think nothing of the greatest success when
+it had once been gained. Such a one was Mr. Quickenham; and he was
+a man of whom all his enemies and most of his friends were a little
+afraid. Mrs. Fenwick would declare herself to be much in awe of him;
+and our Vicar, though he would not admit as much, was always a little
+on his guard when the great barrister was with him.
+
+How it had come to pass that Mr. Chamberlaine had not been called
+upon to take a part in the Cathedral services during Passion
+week cannot here be explained; but it was the fact, that when Mr.
+Quickenham arrived at Bullhampton, the Canon was staying at The
+Privets. He had come over there early in the week,--as it was
+supposed by Mr. Fenwick with some hope of talking his nephew into a
+more reasonable state of mind respecting Miss Lowther; but, according
+to Mrs. Fenwick's uncharitable views, with the distinct object of
+escaping the long church services of the Holy week,--and was to
+return to Salisbury on the Saturday. He was, therefore, invited to
+meet Mr. Quickenham at dinner on the Thursday. In his own city and
+among his own neighbours he would have thought it indiscreet to dine
+out in Passion week; but, as he explained to Mr. Fenwick, these
+things were very different in a rural parish.
+
+Mr. Quickenham arrived an hour or two before dinner, and was
+immediately taken out to see the obnoxious building; while Mrs.
+Fenwick, who never would go to see it, described all its horrors to
+her sister within the guarded precincts of her own drawing-room.
+
+"It used to be a bit of common land, didn't it?" said Mr. Quickenham.
+
+"I hardly know what is common land," replied the Vicar. "The children
+used to play here, and when there was a bit of grass on it some of
+the neighbours' cows would get it."
+
+"It was never advertised--to be let on building lease?"
+
+"Oh dear no! Lord Trowbridge never did anything of that sort."
+
+"I dare say not," said the lawyer. "I dare say not." Then he walked
+round the plot of ground, pacing it, as though something might be
+learned in that way. Then he looked up at the building with his hands
+in his pockets, and his head on one side. "Has there been a deed of
+gift,--perhaps a peppercorn rent, or something of that kind?" The
+Vicar declared that he was altogether ignorant of what had been done
+between the agent for the Marquis and the trustees to whom had been
+committed the building of the chapel. "I dare say nothing," said Mr.
+Quickenham. "They've been in such a hurry to punish you, that they've
+gone on a mere verbal permission. What's the extent of the glebe?"
+
+"They call it forty-two acres."
+
+"Did you ever have it measured?"
+
+"Never. It would make no difference to me whether it is forty-one or
+forty-three."
+
+"That's as may be," said the lawyer. "It's as nasty a thing as I've
+looked at for many a day, but it wouldn't do to call it a nuisance."
+
+"Of course not. Janet is very hot about it; but, as for me, I've made
+up my mind to swallow it. After all, what harm will it do me?"
+
+"It's an insult,--that's all."
+
+"But if I can show that I don't take it as an insult, the insult will
+be nothing. Of course the people know that their landlord is trying
+to spite me."
+
+"That's just it."
+
+"And for awhile they'll spite me too, because he does. Of course it's
+a bore. It cripples one's influence, and to a certain degree spreads
+dissent at the cost of the Church. Men and women will go to that
+place merely because Lord Trowbridge favours the building. I know all
+that, and it irks me; but still it will be better to swallow it."
+
+"Who's the oldest man in the parish?" asked Mr. Quickenham; "the
+oldest with his senses still about him." The parson reflected for
+awhile, and then said that he thought Brattle, the miller, was as
+old a man as there was there, with the capability left to him of
+remembering and of stating what he remembered. "And what's his
+age,--about?" Fenwick said that the miller was between sixty and
+seventy, and had lived in Bullhampton all his life. "A church-going
+man?" asked the lawyer. To this the Vicar was obliged to reply that,
+to his very great regret, old Brattle never entered a church. "Then
+I'll step over and see him during morning service to-morrow," said
+the lawyer. The Vicar raised his eyebrows, but said nothing as to
+the propriety of Mr. Quickenham's personal attendance at a place of
+worship on Good Friday.
+
+"Can anything be done, Richard?" said Mrs. Fenwick, appealing to her
+brother-in-law.
+
+"Yes;--undoubtedly something can be done."
+
+"Can there, indeed? I am so glad. What can be done?"
+
+"You can make the best of it."
+
+"That's just what I'm determined I won't do. It's mean-spirited, and
+so I tell Frank. I never would have hurt them as long as they treated
+us well; but now they are enemies, and as enemies I will regard them.
+I should think myself disgraced if I were to sit down in the presence
+of the Marquis of Trowbridge; I should, indeed."
+
+"You can easily manage that by standing up when you meet him," said
+Mr. Quickenham. Mr. Quickenham could be very funny at times, but
+those who knew him would remark that whenever he was funny he had
+something to hide. His wife as she heard his wit was quite sure that
+he had some plan in his head about the chapel.
+
+At half-past six there came Mr. Chamberlaine and his nephew. The
+conversation about the chapel was still continued, and the canon from
+Salisbury was very eloquent, and learned also, upon the subject. His
+eloquence was brightest while the ladies were still in the room,
+but his learning was brought forth most manifestly after they had
+retired. He was very clear in his opinion that the Marquis had the
+law on his side in giving the land for the purpose in question, even
+if it could be shown that he was simply the lord of the manor, and
+not so possessed of the spot as to do what he liked in it for his own
+purposes. Mr. Chamberlaine expressed his opinion that, although he
+himself might think otherwise, it would be held to be for the benefit
+of the community that the chapel should be built, and in no court
+could an injunction against the building be obtained.
+
+"But he couldn't give leave to have it put on another man's ground,"
+said the Queen's Counsel.
+
+"There is no question of another man's ground here," said the member
+of the Chapter.
+
+"I'm not so sure of that," continued Mr. Quickenham. "It may not
+be the ground of any one man, but if it's the ground of any ten or
+twenty it's the same thing."
+
+"But then there would be a lawsuit," said the Vicar.
+
+"It might come to that," said the Queen's Counsel.
+
+"I'm sure you wouldn't have a leg to stand upon," said the member of
+the Chapter.
+
+"I don't see that at all," said Gilmore. "If the land is common to
+the parish, the Marquis of Trowbridge cannot give it to a part of the
+parishioners because he is Lord of the Manor."
+
+"For such a purpose I should think he can," said Mr. Chamberlaine.
+
+"And I'm quite sure he can't," said Mr. Quickenham. "All the same, it
+may be very difficult to prove that he hasn't the right; and in the
+meantime there stands the chapel, a fact accomplished. If the ground
+had been bought and the purchasers had wanted a title, I think it
+probable the Marquis would never have got his money."
+
+"There can be no doubt that it is very ungentlemanlike," said Mr.
+Chamberlaine.
+
+"There I'm afraid I can't help you," said Mr. Quickenham. "Good law
+is not defined very clearly here in England; but good manners have
+never been defined at all."
+
+"I don't want anyone to help me on such a matter as that," said Mr.
+Chamberlaine, who did not altogether like Mr. Quickenham.
+
+"I dare say not," said Mr. Quickenham; "and yet the question may be
+open to argument. A man may do what he likes with his own, and can
+hardly be called ungentlemanlike because he gives it away to a person
+you don't happen to like."
+
+
+[Illustration: "I dare say not," said Mr. Quickenham.]
+
+
+"I know what we all think about it in Salisbury," said Mr.
+Chamberlaine.
+
+"It's just possible that you may be a little hypercritical in
+Salisbury," said Quickenham.
+
+There was nothing else discussed and nothing else thought of in
+the Vicarage. The first of June had been the day now fixed for the
+opening of the new chapel, and here they were already in April. Mr.
+Fenwick was quite of opinion that if the services of Mr. Puddleham's
+congregation were once commenced in the building they must
+be continued there. As long as the thing was a thing not yet
+accomplished it might be practicable to stop it; but there could be
+no stopping it when the full tide of Methodist eloquence should have
+begun to pour itself from the new pulpit. It would then have been
+made the House of God,--even though not consecrated,--and as such
+it must remain. And now he was becoming sick of the grievance, and
+wished that it was over. As to going to law with the Marquis on a
+question of Common-right, it was a thing that he would not think
+of doing. The living had come to him from his college, and he had
+thought it right to let the Bursar of Saint John's know what was
+being done; but it was quite clear that the college could not
+interfere or spend their money on a matter which, though it was
+parochial, had no reference to their property in the parish. It was
+not for the college, as patron of the living, to inquire whether
+certain lands belonged to the Marquis of Trowbridge or to the parish
+at large, though the Vicar no doubt, as one of the inhabitants of the
+place, might raise the question at law if he chose to find the money
+and could find the ground on which to raise it. His old friend the
+Bursar wrote him back a joking letter, recommending him to put more
+fire into his sermons and thus to preach his enemy down.
+
+"I have become so sick of this chapel," the Vicar said to his wife
+that night, "that I wish the subject might never be mentioned again
+in the house."
+
+"You can't be more sick of it than I am," said his wife.
+
+"What I mean is, that I'm sick of it as a subject of conversation.
+There it is, and let us make the best of it, as Quickenham says."
+
+"You can't expect anything like sympathy from Richard, you know."
+
+"I don't want any sympathy. I want simply silence. If you'll only
+make up your mind to take it for granted, and to put up with it--as
+you had to do with the frost when the shrubs were killed, or with
+anything that is disagreeable but unavoidable, the feeling of
+unhappiness about it would die away at once. One does not grieve at
+the inevitable."
+
+"But one must be quite sure that it is inevitable."
+
+"There it stands, and nothing that we can do can stop it."
+
+"Charlotte says that she is sure Richard has got something in his
+head. Though he will not sympathise, he will think and contrive and
+fight."
+
+"And half ruin us by his fighting," said the husband. "He fancies the
+land may be common land, and not private property."
+
+"Then of course the chapel has no right to be there."
+
+"But who is to have it removed? And if I could succeed in doing so,
+what would be said to me for putting down a place of worship after
+such a fashion as that?"
+
+"Who could say anything against you, Frank?"
+
+"The truth is, it is Lord Trowbridge who is my enemy here, and not
+the chapel or Mr. Puddleham. I'd have given the spot for the chapel,
+had they wanted it, and had I had the power to give it. I'm annoyed
+because Lord Trowbridge should know that he had got the better of
+me. If I can only bring myself to feel,--and you too,--that there is
+no better in it, and no worse, I shall be annoyed no longer. Lord
+Trowbridge cannot really touch me; and could he, I do not know that
+he would."
+
+"I know he would."
+
+"No, my dear. If he suddenly had the power to turn me out of the
+living I don't believe he'd do it,--any more than I would him out of
+his estate. Men indulge in little injuries who can't afford to be
+wicked enough for great injustice. My dear, you will do me a great
+favour,--the greatest possible kindness,--if you'll give up all
+outer, and, as far as possible, all inner hostility to the chapel."
+
+"Oh, Frank!"
+
+"I ask it as a great favour,--for my peace of mind."
+
+"Of course I will."
+
+"There's my darling! It shan't make me unhappy any longer. What!--a
+stupid lot of bricks and mortar, that, after all, are intended for a
+good purpose,--to think that I should become a miserable wretch just
+because this good purpose is carried on outside my own gate. Were it
+in my dining-room, I ought to bear it without misery."
+
+"I will strive to forget it," said his wife. And on the next morning,
+which was Good Friday, she walked to church, round by the outside
+gate, in order that she might give proof of her intention to keep her
+promise to her husband. Her husband walked before her; and as she
+went she looked round at her sister and shuddered and turned up her
+nose. But this was involuntary.
+
+In the mean time Mr. Quickenham was getting himself ready for his
+walk to the mill. Any such investigation as this which he had on hand
+was much more compatible with his idea of a holiday than attendance
+for two hours at the Church Service. On Easter Sunday he would make
+the sacrifice,--unless a headache, or pressing letters from London,
+or Apollo in some other beneficent shape, might interfere and save
+him from the necessity. Mr. Quickenham, when at home, would go to
+church as seldom as was possible, so that he might save himself from
+being put down as one who neglected public worship. Perhaps he was
+about equal to Mr. George Brattle in his religious zeal. Mr. George
+Brattle made a clear compromise with his own conscience. One good
+Sunday against a Sunday that was not good left him, as he thought,
+properly poised in his intended condition of human infirmity. It may
+be doubted whether Mr. Quickenham's mind was equally philosophic on
+the matter. He could hardly tell why he went to church, or why he
+stayed away. But he was aware when he went of the presence of some
+unsatisfactory feelings of imposture on his own part, and he was
+equally alive, when he did not go, to a sting of conscience in that
+he was neglecting a duty. But George Brattle had arranged it all in a
+manner that was perfectly satisfactory to himself.
+
+Mr. Quickenham had inquired the way, and took the path to the mill
+along the river. He walked rapidly, with his nose in the air, as
+though it was a manifest duty, now that he found himself in the
+country, to get over as much ground as possible, and to refresh his
+lungs thoroughly. He did not look much as he went at the running
+river, or at the opening buds on the trees and hedges. When he met
+a rustic loitering on the path, he examined the man unconsciously,
+and could afterwards have described, with tolerable accuracy, how
+he was dressed; and he had smiled as he had observed the amatory
+pleasantness of a young couple, who had not thought it at all
+necessary to increase the distance between them because of his
+presence. These things he had seen, but the stream, and the hedges,
+and the twittering of the birds, were as nothing to him.
+
+As he went he met old Mrs. Brattle making her weary way to church. He
+had not known Mrs. Brattle, and did not speak to her, but he had felt
+quite sure that she was the miller's wife. Standing with his hands in
+his pockets on the bridge which divided the house from the mill, with
+his pipe in his mouth, was old Brattle, engaged for the moment in
+saying some word to his daughter, Fanny, who was behind him. But she
+retreated as soon as she saw the stranger, and the miller stood his
+ground, waiting to be accosted, suspicion keeping his hands deep
+down in his pockets, as though resolved that he would not be tempted
+to put them forth for the purpose of any friendly greeting. The
+lawyer saluted him by name, and then the miller touched his hat,
+thrusting his hand back into his pocket as soon as the ceremony
+was accomplished. Mr. Quickenham explained that he had come from
+the Vicarage, that he was brother-in-law to Mr. Fenwick, and a
+lawyer,--at each of which statements old Brattle made a slight
+projecting motion with his chin, as being a mode of accepting the
+information slightly better than absolute discourtesy. At the present
+moment Mr. Fenwick was out of favour with him, and he was not
+disposed to open his heart to visitors from the Vicarage. Then Mr.
+Quickenham plunged at once into the affair of the day.
+
+"You know that chapel they are building, Mr. Brattle, just opposite
+to the parson's gate?"
+
+Mr. Brattle replied that he had heard of the chapel, but had never,
+as yet, been up to see it.
+
+"Indeed; but you remember the bit of ground?"
+
+Yes;--the miller remembered the ground very well. Man and boy he had
+known it for sixty years. As far as his mind went he thought it a
+very good thing that the piece of ground should be put to some useful
+purpose at last.
+
+"I'm not sure but what you may be right there," said the lawyer.
+
+"It's not been of use,--not to nobody,--for more than forty year,"
+said the miller.
+
+"And before that what did they do with it?"
+
+"Parson, as we had then in Bull'umpton, kep' a few sheep."
+
+"Ah!--just so. And he would get a bit of feeding off the ground?" The
+miller nodded his head. "Was that the Vicar just before Mr. Fenwick?"
+asked the lawyer.
+
+"Not by no means. There was Muster Brandon, who never come here at
+all, but had a curate who lived away to Hinton. He come after Parson
+Smallbones."
+
+"It was Parson Smallbones who kept the sheep?"
+
+"And then there was Muster Threepaway, who was parson well nigh
+thirty years afore Muster Fenwick come. He died up at Parsonage
+House, did Muster Threepaway."
+
+"He didn't keep sheep?"
+
+"No; he kep' no sheep as ever I heard tell on. He didn't keep much
+barring hisself,--didn't Muster Threepaway. He had never no child,
+nor yet no wife, nor nothing at all, hadn't Muster Threepaway. But he
+was a good man as didn't go meddling with folk."
+
+"But Parson Smallbones was a bit of a farmer?"
+
+"Ay, ay. Parsons in them days warn't above a bit of farming. I warn't
+much more than a scrap of a boy, but I remember him. He wore a wig,
+and old black gaiters; and knew as well what was his'n and what
+wasn't as any parson in Wiltshire. Tithes was tithes then; and parson
+was cute enough in taking on 'em."
+
+"But these sheep of his were his own, I suppose?"
+
+"Whose else would they be, sir?"
+
+"And did he fence them in on that bit of ground?"
+
+"There'd be a boy with 'em, I'm thinking, sir. There wasn't so much
+fencing of sheep then as there be now. Boys was cheaper in them
+days."
+
+"Just so; and the parson wouldn't allow other sheep there?"
+
+"Muster Smallbones mostly took all he could get, sir."
+
+"Exactly. The parsons generally did, I believe. It was the way in
+which they followed most accurately the excellent examples set them
+by the bishops. But, Mr. Brattle, it wasn't in the way of tithes that
+he had this grass for his sheep?"
+
+"I can't say how he had it, nor yet how Muster Fenwick has the
+meadows t'other side of the river, which he lets to farmer Pierce;
+but he do have 'em, and farmer Pierce do pay him the rent."
+
+"Glebe land, you know," said Mr. Quickenham.
+
+"That's what they calls it," said the miller.
+
+"And none of the vicars that came after old Smallbones have ever done
+anything with that bit of ground?"
+
+"Ne'er a one on'em. Mr. Brandon, as I tell 'ee, never come nigh the
+place. I don't know as ever I see'd him. It was him as they made
+bishop afterwards, some'eres away in Ireland. He had a lord to his
+uncle. Then Muster Threepaway, he was here ever so long."
+
+"But he didn't mind such things."
+
+"He never owned no sheep; and the old 'oomen's cows was let to go on
+the land, as was best, and then the boys took to playing hopskotch
+there, with a horse or two over it at times, and now Mr. Puddleham
+has it for his preaching. Maybe, sir, the lawyers might have a turn
+at it yet;" and the miller laughed at his own wit.
+
+"And get more out of it than any former occupant," said Mr.
+Quickenham, who would indeed have been very loth to allow his wife's
+brother-in-law to go into a law suit, but still felt that a very
+pretty piece of litigation was about to be thrown away in this matter
+of Mr. Puddleham's chapel.
+
+Mr. Quickenham bade farewell to the miller, and thought that he saw
+a way to a case. But he was a man very strongly given to accuracy,
+and on his return to the Vicarage said no word of his conversation
+with the miller. It would have been natural that Fenwick should
+have interrogated him as to his morning's work; but the Vicar had
+determined to trouble himself no further about his grievance, to
+say nothing further respecting it to any man, not even to allow the
+remembrance of Mr. Puddleham and his chapel to dwell in his mind; and
+consequently held his peace. Mrs. Fenwick was curious enough on the
+subject, but she had made a promise to her husband, and would at
+least endeavour to keep it. If her sister should tell her anything
+unasked, that would not be her fault.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIII.
+
+EASTER AT TURNOVER CASTLE.
+
+
+It was not only at Bullhampton that this affair of the Methodist
+chapel demanded and received attention. At Turnover also a good deal
+was being said about it, and the mind of the Marquis was not easy. As
+has been already told, the bishop had written to him on the subject,
+remonstrating with him as to the injury he was doing to the present
+vicar, and to future vicars, of the parish which he, as landlord,
+was bound to treat with beneficent consideration. The Marquis had
+replied to the bishop with a tone of stern resolve. The Vicar of
+Bullhampton had treated him with scorn, nay, as he thought, with most
+unpardonable insolence, and he would not spare the Vicar. It was
+proper that the dissenters at Bullhampton should have a chapel, and
+he had a right to do what he liked with his own. So arguing with
+himself, he had written to the bishop very firmly; but his own mind
+had not been firm within him as he did so. There were misgivings
+at his heart. He was a Churchman himself, and he was pricked with
+remorse as he remembered that he was spiting the Church which was
+connected with the state, of which he was so eminent a supporter. His
+own chief agent, too, had hesitated, and had suggested that perhaps
+the matter might be postponed. His august daughters, though they
+had learned to hold the name of Fenwick in proper abhorrence,
+nevertheless were grieved about the chapel. Men and women were
+talking about it, and the words of the common people found their way
+to the august daughters of the house of Stowte.
+
+"Papa," said Lady Carolina; "wouldn't it, perhaps, be better to build
+the Bullhampton chapel a little farther off from the Vicarage?"
+
+"The next vicar might be a different sort of person," said the Lady
+Sophie.
+
+"No; it wouldn't," said the Earl, who was apt to be very imperious
+with his own daughters, although he was of opinion that they should
+be held in great awe by all the world--excepting only himself and
+their eldest brother.
+
+That eldest brother, Lord Saint George, was in truth regarded at
+Turnover as being, of all persons in the world, the most august.
+The Marquis himself was afraid of his son, and held him in extreme
+veneration. To the mind of the Marquis the heir expectant of all the
+dignities of the House of Stowte was almost a greater man than the
+owner of them; and this feeling came not only from a consciousness
+on the part of the father that his son was a bigger man than himself,
+cleverer, better versed in the affairs of the world, and more thought
+of by those around them, but also to a certain extent from an idea
+that he who would have all these grand things thirty or perhaps even
+fifty years hence, must be more powerful than one with whom their
+possession would come to an end probably after the lapse of eight
+or ten years. His heir was to him almost divine. When things at
+the castle were in any way uncomfortable, he could put up with the
+discomfort for himself and his daughters; but it was not to be
+endured that Saint George should be incommoded. Old carriage-horses
+must be changed if he were coming; the glazing of the new greenhouse
+must be got out of the way, lest he should smell the paint; the game
+must not be touched till he should come to shoot it. And yet Lord
+Saint George himself was a man who never gave himself any airs; and
+who in his personal intercourse with the world around him demanded
+much less acknowledgment of his magnificence than did his father.
+
+And now, during this Easter week, Lord Saint George came down to
+the castle, intending to kill two birds with one stone, to take his
+parliamentary holiday, and to do a little business with his father.
+It not unfrequently came to pass that he found it necessary to
+repress the energy of his father's august magnificence. He would go
+so far as to remind his father that in these days marquises were not
+very different from other people, except in this, that they perhaps
+might have more money. The Marquis would fret in silence, not daring
+to commit himself to an argument with his son, and would in secret
+lament over the altered ideas of the age. It was his theory of
+politics that the old distances should be maintained, and that the
+head of a great family should be a patriarch, entitled to obedience
+from those around him. It was his son's idea that every man was
+entitled to as much obedience as his money would buy, and to no more.
+This was very lamentable to the Marquis; but nevertheless, his son
+was the coming man, and even this must be borne.
+
+"I'm sorry about this chapel at Bullhampton," said the son to the
+father after dinner.
+
+"Why sorry, Saint George? I thought you would have been of opinion
+that the dissenters should have a chapel."
+
+"Certainly they should, if they're fools enough to want to build
+a place to pray in, when they have got one already built for them.
+There's no reason on earth why they shouldn't have a chapel, seeing
+that nothing that we can do will save them from schism."
+
+"We can't prevent dissent, Saint George."
+
+"We can't prevent it, because, in religion as in everything else, men
+like to manage themselves. This farmer or that tradesman becomes a
+dissenter because he can be somebody in the management of his chapel,
+and would be nobody in regard to the parish church."
+
+"That is very dreadful."
+
+"Not worse than our own people, who remain with us because it sounds
+the most respectable. Not one in fifty really believes that this or
+that form of worship is more likely to send him to heaven than any
+other."
+
+"I certainly claim to myself to be one of the few," said the Marquis.
+
+"No doubt; and so you ought, my lord, as every advantage has been
+given you. But, to come back to the Bullhampton chapel,--don't you
+think we could move it away from the parson's gate?"
+
+"They have built it now, Saint George."
+
+"They can't have finished it yet."
+
+"You wouldn't have me ask them to pull it down? Packer was here
+yesterday, and said that the framework of the roof was up."
+
+"What made them hurry it in that way? Spite against the Vicar, I
+suppose."
+
+"He is a most objectionable man, Saint George; most insolent,
+overbearing, and unlike a clergyman. They say that he is little
+better than an infidel himself."
+
+"We had better leave that to the bishop, my lord."
+
+"We must feel about it, connected as we are with the parish," said
+the Marquis.
+
+"But I don't think we shall do any good by going into a parochial
+quarrel."
+
+"It was the very best bit of land for the purpose in all
+Bullhampton," said the Marquis. "I made particular inquiry, and there
+can be no doubt of that. Though I particularly dislike that Mr.
+Fenwick, it was not done to injure him."
+
+"It does injure him damnably, my lord."
+
+"That's only an accident."
+
+"And I'm not at all sure that we shan't find that we have made a
+mistake."
+
+"How a mistake?"
+
+"That we have given away land that doesn't belong to us."
+
+"Who says it doesn't belong to us?" said the Marquis, angrily. A
+suggestion so hostile, so unjust, so cruel as this, almost overcame
+the feeling of veneration which he entertained for his son. "That is
+really nonsense, Saint George."
+
+"Have you looked at the title deeds?"
+
+"The title deeds are of course with Mr. Boothby. But Packer knows
+every foot of the ground,--even if I didn't know it myself."
+
+"I wouldn't give a straw for Packer's knowledge."
+
+"I haven't heard that they have even raised the question themselves."
+
+"I'm told that they will do so,--that they say it is common land.
+It's quite clear that it has never been either let or enclosed."
+
+"You might say the same of the bit of green that lies outside the
+park gate,--where the great oak stands; but I don't suppose that that
+is common."
+
+"I don't say that this is--but I do say that there may be difficulty
+of proof; and that to be driven to the proof in such a matter would
+be disagreeable."
+
+"What would you do, then?"
+
+"Take the bull by the horns, and move the chapel at our own expense
+to some site that shall be altogether unobjectionable."
+
+"We should be owning ourselves wrong, Augustus."
+
+"And why not? I cannot see what disgrace there is in coming forward
+handsomely and telling the truth. When the land was given we thought
+it was our own. There has come up a shadow of a doubt, and sooner
+than be in the wrong, we give another site and take all the expense.
+I think that would be the right sort of thing to do."
+
+Lord Saint George returned to town two days afterwards, and the
+Marquis was left with the dilemma on his mind. Lord Saint George,
+though he would frequently interfere in matters connected with the
+property in the manner described, would never dictate and seldom
+insist. He had said what he had got to say, and the Marquis was left
+to act for himself. But the old lord had learned to feel that he was
+sure to fall into some pit whenever he declined to follow his son's
+advice. His son had a painful way of being right that was a great
+trouble to him. And this was a question which touched him very
+nearly. It was not only that he must yield to Mr. Fenwick before the
+eyes of Mr. Puddleham and all the people of Bullhampton; but that he
+must confess his own ignorance as to the borders of his own property,
+and must abandon a bit of land which he believed to belong to the
+Stowte estate. Now, if there was a point in his religion as to which
+Lord Trowbridge was more staunch than another, it was as to the
+removal of landmarks. He did not covet his neighbour's land; but he
+was most resolute that no stranger should, during his reign, ever
+possess a rood of his own.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIV.
+
+THE MARRABLES OF DUNRIPPLE.
+
+
+"If I were to go, there would be nobody left but you. You should
+remember that, Walter, when you talk of going to India." This was
+said to Walter Marrable at Dunripple, by his cousin Gregory, Sir
+Gregory's only son.
+
+"And if I were to die in India, as I probably shall, who will come
+next?"
+
+"There is nobody to come next for the title."
+
+"But for the property?"
+
+"As it stands at present, if you and I were to die before your father
+and uncle John, the survivor of them would be the last in the entail.
+If they, too, died, and the survivor of us all left no will, the
+property would go to Mary Lowther. But that is hardly probable. When
+my grandfather made the settlement, on my father's marriage, he had
+four sons living."
+
+"Should my father have the handling of it I would not give much for
+anybody's chance after him," said Walter.
+
+"If you were to marry there would, of course, be a new settlement
+as to your rights. Your father could do no harm except as your
+heir,--unless, indeed, he were heir to us all. My uncle John will
+outlive him, probably."
+
+"My uncle John will live for ever, I should think," said Walter
+Marrable.
+
+This conversation took place between the two cousins when Walter
+had been already two or three weeks at Dunripple. He had come there
+intending to stay over two or three days, and he had already accepted
+an invitation to make the house his home as long as he should remain
+in England. He had known but little of his uncle and nothing of his
+cousin, before this visit was made. He had conceived them to be
+unfriendly to him, having known them to be always unfriendly to his
+father. He was, of course, aware,--very well aware now, since he had
+himself suffered so grievously from his father's dishonesty,--that
+the enmity which had reached them from Dunripple had been well
+deserved. Colonel Marrable had, as a younger brother, never been
+content with what he was able to extract from the head of the family,
+who was, in his eyes, a milch cow that never ought to run dry. With
+Walter Marrable there had remained a feeling adverse to his uncle and
+cousin, even after he had been forced to admit to himself how many
+and how grievous were the sins of his own father. He had believed
+that the Dunripple people were stupid, and prejudiced, and selfish;
+and it had only been at the instance of his uncle, the parson, that
+he had consented to make the visit. He had gone there, and had been
+treated, at any rate, with affectionate consideration. And he had
+found the house to be not unpleasant, though very quiet. Living at
+Dunripple there was a Mrs. Brownlow, a widowed sister of the late
+Lady Marrable, with her daughter, Edith Brownlow. Previous to this
+time Walter Marrable had never even heard of the Brownlows, so little
+had he known about Dunripple; and when he arrived there it had been
+necessary to explain to him who these people were.
+
+He had found his uncle, Sir Gregory, to be much such a man as he had
+expected in outward appearance and mode of life. The baronet was old
+and disposed to regard himself as entitled to all the indulgences
+of infirmity. He rose late, took but little exercise, was very
+particular about what he ate, and got through his day with the
+assistance of his steward, his novel, and occasionally of his doctor.
+He slept a great deal, and was never tired of talking of himself.
+Occupation in life he had none, but he was a charitable, honourable
+man, who had high ideas of what was due to others. His son, however,
+had astonished Walter considerably. Gregory Marrable the younger
+was a man somewhat over forty, but he looked as though he were
+sixty. He was very tall and thin, narrow in the chest, and so round
+in the shoulders as to appear to be almost humpbacked. He was so
+short-sighted as to be nearly blind, and was quite bald. He carried
+his head so forward that it looked as though it were going to fall
+off. He shambled with his legs, which seemed never to be strong
+enough to carry him from one room to another; and he tried them by no
+other exercise, for he never went outside the house except when, on
+Sundays and some other very rare occasions, he would trust himself to
+be driven in a low pony-phaeton. But in one respect he was altogether
+unlike his father. His whole time was spent among his books, and he
+was at this moment engaged in revising and editing a very long and
+altogether unreadable old English chronicle in rhyme, for publication
+by one of those learned societies which are rife in London. Of Robert
+of Gloucester, and William Langland, of Andrew of Wyntown and the
+Lady Juliana Berners, he could discourse, if not with eloquence, at
+least with enthusiasm. Chaucer was his favourite poet, and he was
+supposed to have read the works of Gower in English, French, and
+Latin. But he was himself apparently as old as one of his own
+black-letter volumes, and as unfit for general use. Walter could
+hardly regard him as a cousin, declaring to himself that his uncle
+the parson, and his own father were, in effect, younger men than the
+younger Gregory Marrable. He was never without a cough, never well,
+never without various ailments and troubles of the flesh,--of which,
+however, he himself made but slight account, taking them quite as a
+matter of course. With such inmates the house no doubt would have
+been dull, had there not been women there to enliven it.
+
+By degrees, too, and not by slow degrees, the new comer found that
+he was treated as one of the family,--found that, after a certain
+fashion, he was treated as the heir to the family. Between him and
+the title and the estate there were but the lives of four old men.
+Why had he not known that this was so before he had allowed himself
+to be separated from Mary Lowther? But he had known nothing of
+it,--had thought not at all about it. There had been another
+Marrable, of the same generation with himself, between him and
+the succession, who might marry and have children, and he had not
+regarded his heirship as being likely to have any effect, at any rate
+upon his early life. It had never occurred to him that he need not go
+to India, because he would probably outlive four old gentlemen and
+become Sir Walter Marrable and owner of Dunripple.
+
+Nor would he have looked at the matter in that light now had not his
+cousin forced the matter upon him. Not a word was said to him at
+Dunripple about Mary Lowther, but very many words were said about his
+own condition. Gregory Marrable strongly advised him against going to
+India,--so strongly that Walter was surprised to find that such a man
+would have so much to say on such a subject. The young captain, in
+such circumstances, could not very well explain that he was driven
+to follow his profession in a fashion so disagreeable to him because,
+although he was heir to Dunripple, he was not near enough to it to be
+entitled to any allowance from its owner; but he felt that that would
+have been the only true answer when it was proposed to him to stay
+in England because he would some day become Sir Walter Marrable. But
+he did plead the great loss which he had encountered by means of his
+father's ill-treatment of him, and endeavoured to prove to his cousin
+that there was no alternative before him but to serve in some quarter
+of the globe in which his pay would be sufficient for his wants.
+
+"Why should you not sell out, or go on half-pay, and remain here and
+marry Edith Brownlow?" said his cousin.
+
+"I don't think I could do that," said Walter, slowly.
+
+"Why not? There is nothing my father would like so much." Then he
+was silent for awhile, but, as his cousin made no further immediate
+reply, Gregory Marrable went on with his plan. "Ten years ago, when
+she was not much more than a little girl, and when it was first
+arranged that she should come here, my father proposed--that I should
+marry her."
+
+"And why didn't you?"
+
+The elder cousin smiled and shook his head, and coughed aloud as
+he smiled. "Why not, indeed? Well; I suppose you can see why not.
+I was an old man almost before she was a young woman. She is just
+twenty-four now, and I shall be dead, probably, in two years' time."
+
+"Nonsense."
+
+"Twice since that time I have been within an inch of dying. At any
+rate, even my father does not look to that any longer."
+
+"Is he fond of Miss Brownlow?"
+
+"There is no one in the world whom he loves so well. Of course an old
+man loves a young woman best. It is natural that he should do so. He
+never had a daughter; but Edith is the same to him as his own child.
+Nothing would please him so much as that she should be the mistress
+of Dunripple."
+
+"I'm afraid that it cannot be so," said Walter.
+
+"But why not? There need be no India for you then. If you would do
+that you would be to my father exactly as though you were his son.
+Your father might, of course, outlive my father, and no doubt will
+outlive me, and then for his life he will have the place, but some
+arrangement could be made so that you should continue here."
+
+"I'm afraid it cannot be so," said Walter. Many thoughts were passing
+through his mind. Why had he not known that these good things were so
+near to him before he had allowed Mary Lowther to go off from him?
+And, had it chanced that he had visited Dunripple before he had gone
+to Loring, how might it have been between him and this other girl?
+Edith Brownlow was not beautiful, not grand in her beauty as was
+Mary Lowther; but she was pretty, soft, lady-like, with a sweet dash
+of quiet pleasant humour,--a girl who certainly need not be left
+begging about the world for a husband. And this life at Dunripple was
+pleasant enough. Though the two elder Marrables were old and infirm,
+Walter was allowed to do just as he pleased in the house. He was
+encouraged to hunt. There was shooting for him if he wished it. Even
+the servants about the place, the gamekeeper, the groom, and the old
+butler, seemed to have recognised him as the heir. There would have
+been so comfortable an escape from the dilemma into which his father
+had brought him,--had he not made his visit to Loring.
+
+"Why not?" demanded Gregory Marrable.
+
+"A man cannot become attached to a girl by order, and what right have
+I to suppose that she would accept me?"
+
+"Of course she would accept you. Why not? Everybody around her would
+be in your favour. And as to not falling in love with her, I declare
+I do not know a sweeter human being in the world than Edith
+Brownlow."
+
+Before the hunting season was over Captain Marrable had abandoned
+his intention of going to India, and had made arrangements for
+serving for awhile with his regiment in England. This he did after a
+discussion of some length with his uncle, Sir Gregory. During that
+discussion nothing was said about Edith Brownlow, and of course, not
+a word was said about Mary Lowther. Captain Marrable did not even
+know whether his uncle or his cousin was aware that that engagement
+had ever existed. Between him and his uncle there had never been an
+allusion to his marriage, but the old man had spoken of his nearness
+to the property, and had expressed his regret that the last heir,
+the only heir likely to perpetuate the name and title, should take
+himself to India in the pride of his life. He made no offer as to
+money, but he told his nephew that there was a home for him if he
+would give up his profession, or a retreat whenever his professional
+duties might allow him to visit it. Horses should be kept for him,
+and he should be treated in every way as a son of the family.
+
+"Take my father at his word," said Gregory Marrable. "He will never
+let you be short of money."
+
+After much consideration Walter Marrable did take Sir Gregory at his
+word, and abandoned for ever all idea of a further career in India.
+
+As soon as he had done this he wrote to Mary Lowther to inform her of
+his decision. "It does seem hard," he said in his letter, "that an
+arrangement which is in so many respects desirable, should not have
+been compatible with one which is so much more desirable." But he
+made no renewed offer. Indeed he felt that he could not do so at the
+present moment, in honesty either to his cousin or to his uncle, as
+he had accepted their hospitality and acceded to the arrangements
+which they had proposed without any word on his part of such
+intention. A home had been offered to him at Dunripple,--to him in
+his present condition, but certainly not a home to any wife whom
+he might bring there, nor a home to the family which might come
+afterwards. He thought that he was doing the best that he could with
+himself by remaining in England, and the best also towards a possible
+future renewal of his engagement with Mary Lowther. But of that he
+said nothing in his letter to her. He merely told her the fact as it
+regarded himself, and told that somewhat coldly. Of Edith Brownlow,
+and of the proposition in regard to her, of course he said nothing.
+
+It was the intention both of Sir Gregory and his son that the new
+inmate of the house should marry Edith. The old man, who, up to a
+late date had with weak persistency urged the match upon his son,
+had taken up the idea from the very first arrival of his nephew
+at Dunripple. Such an arrangement would solve all the family
+difficulties, and would enable him to provide for Edith as though she
+were indeed his daughter. He loved Edith dearly, but he could not
+bear that she should leave Dunripple, and it had grieved him sorely
+when he reflected that in coming years Dunripple must belong to
+relatives of whom he knew nothing that was good, and that Edith
+Brownlow must be banished from the house. If his son would have
+married Edith, all might have been well, but even Sir Gregory was at
+last aware that no such marriage as that could take place. Then had
+come the quarrel between the Colonel and the Captain, and the latter
+had been taken into favour. Colonel Marrable would not have been
+allowed to put his foot inside Dunripple House, so great was the
+horror which he had created. And the son had been feared too as long
+as the father and son were one. But now the father, who had treated
+the whole family vilely, had treated his own son most vilely, and
+therefore the son had been received with open arms. If only he could
+be trusted with Edith,--and if Edith and he might be made to trust
+each other,--all might be well. Of the engagement between Walter and
+Mary Lowther no word had ever reached Dunripple. Twice or thrice
+in the year a letter would pass between Parson John and his nephew,
+Gregory Marrable, but such letters were very short, and the parson
+was the last man in the world to spread the tittle-tattle of a
+love-story. He had always known that that affair would lead to
+nothing, and that the less said about it the better.
+
+Walter Marrable was to join his regiment at Windsor before the end
+of April. When he wrote to Mary Lowther to tell her of his plans he
+had only a fortnight longer for remaining in idleness at Dunripple.
+The hunting was over, and his life was simply idle. He perceived, or
+thought that he perceived, that all the inmates of the house, and
+especially his uncle, expected that he would soon return to them,
+and that they spoke of his work of soldiering as of a thing that
+was temporary. Mrs. Brownlow, who was a quiet woman, very reticent,
+and by no means inclined to interfere with things not belonging to
+her, had suggested that he would soon be with them again, and the
+housekeeper had given him to understand that his room was not to be
+touched. And then, too, he thought that he saw that Edith Brownlow
+was specially left in his way. If that were so it was necessary that
+the eyes of some one of the Dunripple party should be opened to the
+truth.
+
+He was walking home with Miss Brownlow across the park from church
+one Sunday morning. Sir Gregory never went to church; his age was
+supposed to be too great, or his infirmities too many. Mrs. Brownlow
+was in the pony carriage driving her nephew, and Walter Marrable was
+alone with Edith. There had been some talk of cousinship,--of the
+various relationships of the family, and the like,--and of the way
+in which the Marrables were connected. They two, Walter and Edith,
+were not cousins. She was related to the family only by her aunt's
+marriage, and yet, as she said, she had always heard more of the
+Marrables than of the Brownlows.
+
+
+[Illustration: Sunday Morning at Dunripple.]
+
+
+"You never saw Mary Lowther?" Walter asked.
+
+"Never."
+
+"But you have heard of her?"
+
+"I just know her name,--hardly more. The last time your uncle was
+here,--Parson John, we were talking of her. He made her out to be
+wonderfully beautiful."
+
+"That was as long ago as last summer," said the Captain, reflecting
+that his uncle's account had been given before he and Mary Lowther
+had seen each other.
+
+"Oh, yes;--ever so long ago."
+
+"She is wonderfully beautiful."
+
+"You know her, then, Captain Marrable?"
+
+"I know her very well. In the first place, she is my cousin."
+
+"But ever so distant?"
+
+"We are not first cousins. Her mother was a daughter of General
+Marrable, who was a brother of Sir Gregory's father."
+
+"It is so hard to understand, is it not? She is wonderfully
+beautiful, is she?"
+
+"Indeed, she is."
+
+"And she is your cousin--in the first place. What is she in the
+second place?"
+
+He was not quite sure whether he wished to tell the story or not.
+The engagement was broken, and it might be a question whether, as
+regarded Mary, he had a right to tell it; and, then, if he did
+tell it, would not his reason for doing so be apparent? Was it not
+palpable that he was expected to marry this girl, and that she would
+understand that he was explaining to her that he did not intend to
+carry out the general expectation of the family? And, then, was he
+sure that it might not be possible for him at some future time to do
+as he was desired?
+
+"I meant to say that, as I was staying at Loring, of course I met her
+frequently. She is living with a certain old Miss Marrable, whom you
+will meet some day."
+
+"I have heard of her, but I don't suppose I ever shall meet her. I
+never go anywhere. I don't suppose there are such stay-at-home people
+in the world as we are."
+
+"Why don't you get Sir Gregory to ask them here?"
+
+"Both he and my cousin are so afraid of having strange women in
+the house; you know, we never have anybody here; your coming has
+been quite an event. Old Mrs. Potter seems to think that an era of
+dissipation is to be commenced because she has been called upon to
+open so many pots of jam to make pies for you."
+
+"I'm afraid I have been very troublesome."
+
+"Awfully troublesome. You can't think of all that had to be said and
+done about the stables! Do you have your oats bruised? Even I was
+consulted about that. Most of the people in the parish are quite
+disappointed because you don't go about in your full armour."
+
+"I'm afraid it's too late now."
+
+"I own I was a little disappointed myself when you came down to
+dinner without a sword. You can have no idea in what a state of rural
+simplicity we live here. Would you believe it?--for ten years I have
+never seen the sea, and have never been into any town bigger than
+Worcester,--unless Hereford be bigger. We did go once to the festival
+at Hereford. We have not managed Gloucester yet."
+
+"You've never seen London?"
+
+"Not since I was twelve years old. Papa died when I was fourteen,
+and I came here almost immediately afterwards. Fancy, ten years at
+Dunripple! There is not a tree or a stone I don't know, and of course
+not a face in the parish."
+
+She was very nice; but it was out of the question that she should
+ever become his wife. He had thought that he might explain this to
+herself by letting her know that he had within the last few months
+become engaged to, and had broken his engagement with, his cousin,
+Mary Lowther. But he found that he could not do it. In the first
+place, she would understand more than he meant her to understand if
+he made the attempt. She would know that he was putting her on her
+guard, and would take it as an insult. And then he could not bring
+himself to talk about Mary Lowther, and to tell their joint secrets.
+He was discontented with himself and with Dunripple, and he repented
+that he had yielded in respect to his Indian service. Everything had
+gone wrong with him. Had he refused to accede to Mary's proposition
+for a separation, and had he come to Dunripple as an engaged man, he
+might, he thought, have reconciled his uncle,--or at least his Cousin
+Gregory,--to his marriage with Mary. But he did not see his way back
+to that position now, having been entertained at his uncle's house as
+his uncle's heir for so long a time without having mentioned it.
+
+At last he went off to Windsor, sad at heart, having received from
+Mary an answer to his letter, which he felt to be very cold, very
+discreet, and very unsatisfactory. She had merely expressed a fervent
+wish that whether he went to India or whether he remained in England,
+he might be prosperous and happy. The writer evidently intended that
+the correspondence should not be continued.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLV.
+
+WHAT SHALL I DO WITH MYSELF?
+
+
+Parson John Marrable, though he said nothing in his letters to
+Dunripple about the doings of his nephew at Loring, was by no
+means equally reticent in his speech at Loring as to the doings at
+Dunripple. How he came by his news he did not say, but he had ever so
+much to tell. And Miss Marrable, who knew him well, was aware that
+his news was not simple gossip, but was told with an object. In
+his way, Parson John was a crafty man, who was always doing a turn
+of business. To his mind it was clearly inexpedient, and almost
+impracticable, that his nephew and Mary Lowther should ever become
+man and wife. He knew that they were separated; but he knew, also,
+that they had agreed to separate on terms which would easily admit
+of being reconsidered. He, too, had heard of Edith Brownlow, and had
+heard that if a marriage could be arranged between Walter and Edith,
+the family troubles would be in a fair way of settlement. No good
+could come to anybody from that other marriage. As for Mary Lowther,
+it was manifestly her duty to become Mrs. Gilmore. He therefore took
+some trouble to let the ladies at Uphill know that Captain Marrable
+had been received very graciously at Dunripple; that he was making
+himself very happy there, hunting, shooting, and forgetting his old
+troubles; that it was understood that he was to be recognised as the
+heir;--and that there was a young lady in the case, the favourite of
+Sir Gregory.
+
+He understood the world too well to say a word to Mary Lowther
+herself about her rival. Mary would have perceived his drift. But
+he expressed his ideas about Edith confidentially to Miss Marrable,
+fully alive to the fact that Miss Marrable would know how to deal
+with her niece. "It is by far the best thing that could have happened
+to him," said the parson. "As for going out to India again, for a man
+with his prospects it was very bad."
+
+"But his cousin isn't much older than he is," suggested Miss
+Marrable.
+
+"Yes he is,--a great deal older. And Gregory's health is so bad that
+his life is not worth a year's purchase. Poor fellow! they tell me he
+only cares to live till he has got his book out. The truth is that
+if Walter could make a match of it with Edith Brownlow, they might
+arrange something about the property which would enable him to live
+there just as though the place were his own. The Colonel would be the
+only stumbling-block, and after what he has done, he could hardly
+refuse to agree to anything."
+
+"They'd have to pay him," said Miss Marrable.
+
+"Then he must be paid, that's all. My brother Gregory is wrapped up
+in that girl, and he would do anything for her welfare. I'm told that
+she and Walter have taken very kindly to each other already."
+
+It would be better for Mary Lowther that Walter Marrable should marry
+Edith Brownlow. Such, at least, was Miss Marrable's belief. She could
+see that Mary, though she bore herself bravely, still did so as one
+who had received a wound for which there was no remedy;--as a man
+who has lost a leg and who nevertheless intends to enjoy life though
+he knows that he never can walk again. But in this case, the real
+bar to walking was the hope in Mary's breast,--a hope that was
+still present, though it was not nourished,--that the leg was not
+irremediably lost. If Captain Marrable would finish all that by
+marrying Edith, then,--so thought Miss Marrable,--in process of time
+the cure would be made good, and there might be another leg. She did
+not believe much in the Captain's constancy, and was quite ready to
+listen to the story about another love. And so from day to day words
+were dropped into Mary's ear which had their effect.
+
+"I must say that I am glad that he is not to go to India," said Miss
+Marrable to her niece.
+
+"So, indeed, am I," answered Mary.
+
+"In the first place it is such an excellent thing that he should be
+on good terms at Dunripple. He must inherit the property some day,
+and the title too."
+
+To this Mary made no reply. It seemed to her to have been hard that
+the real state of things should not have been explained to her before
+she gave up her lover. She had then regarded any hope of relief
+from Dunripple as being beyond measure distant. There had been a
+possibility, and that was all,--a chance to which no prudent man or
+woman would have looked in making their preparations for the life
+before them. That had been her idea as to the Dunripple prospects;
+and now it seemed that on a sudden Walter was to be regarded as
+almost the immediate heir. She did not blame him; but it did appear
+to be hard upon her.
+
+"I don't see the slightest reason why he shouldn't live at
+Dunripple," continued Miss Marrable.
+
+"Only that he would be dependent. I suppose he does not mean to sell
+out of the army altogether."
+
+"At any rate, he may be backwards and forwards. You see, there is no
+chance of Sir Gregory's own son marrying."
+
+"So they say."
+
+"And his position would be really that of a younger brother in
+similar circumstances."
+
+Mary paused a moment before she replied, and then she spoke out.
+
+"Dear Aunt Sarah, what does all this mean? I know you are speaking at
+me, and yet I don't quite understand it. Everything between me and
+Captain Marrable is over. I have no possible means of influencing
+his life. If I were told to-morrow that he had given up the army and
+taken to living altogether at Dunripple, I should have no means of
+judging whether he had done well or ill. Indeed, I should have no
+right to judge."
+
+"You must be glad that the family should be united."
+
+"I am glad. Now, is that all?"
+
+"I want you to bring yourself to think without regret of his probable
+marriage with this young lady."
+
+"You don't suppose I shall blame him if he marries her."
+
+"But I want you to see it in such a light that it shall not make you
+unhappy."
+
+"I think, dear aunt, that we had better not talk of it. I can assure
+you of this, that if I could prevent him from marrying by holding up
+my little finger, I would not do it."
+
+"It would be ten thousand pities," urged the old lady, "that either
+his life or yours should be a sacrifice to a little episode, which,
+after all, only took a week or two in the acting."
+
+"I can only answer for myself," said Mary. "I don't mean to be a
+sacrifice."
+
+There were many such conversations, and by degrees they did have an
+effect upon Mary Lowther. She learned to believe that it was probable
+that Captain Marrable should marry Miss Brownlow, and, of course,
+asked herself questions as to the effect such a marriage would have
+upon herself, which she answered more fully than she did those which
+were put to her by her aunt. Then there came to Parson John some
+papers, which required his signature, in reference to the disposal
+of a small sum of money, he having been one of the trustees to his
+brother's marriage settlement. This was needed in regard to some
+provision which the baronet was making for his niece, and which, if
+read aright, would rather have afforded evidence against than in
+favour of the chance of her immediate marriage; but it was taken
+at Loring to signify that the thing was to be done, and that the
+courtship was at any rate in progress. Mary did not believe all
+that she heard; but there was left upon her mind an idea that
+Walter Marrable was preparing himself for the sudden change of his
+affections. Then she determined that, should he do so, she would not
+judge him to have done wrong. If he could settle himself comfortably
+in this way, why should he not do so? She was told that Edith
+Brownlow was pretty, and gentle, and good, and would undoubtedly
+receive from Sir Gregory's hands all that Sir Gregory could give
+her. It was expedient, for the sake of the whole family, that such
+a marriage should be arranged. She would not stand in the way of
+it; and, indeed, how could she stand in the way of it? Had not her
+engagement with Captain Marrable been dissolved at her own instance
+in the most solemn manner possible? Let him marry whom he might, she
+could have no ground of complaint on that score.
+
+She was in this state of mind when she received Captain Marrable's
+letter from Dunripple. When she opened it, for a moment she thought
+that it would convey to her tidings respecting Miss Brownlow. When
+she had read it, she told herself how impossible it was that he
+should have told her of his new matrimonial intentions, even if he
+entertained them. The letter gave no evidence either one way or the
+other; but it confirmed to her the news which had reached her through
+Parson John, that her former lover intended to abandon that special
+career, his choice of which had made it necessary that they two
+should abandon their engagement. When at Loring he had determined
+that he must go to India. He had found it to be impossible that he
+should live without going to India. He had now been staying a few
+weeks at Dunripple with his uncle, and with Edith Brownlow, and it
+turned out that he need not go to India at all. Then she sat down,
+and wrote to him that guarded, civil, but unenthusiastic letter, of
+which the reader has already heard. She had allowed herself to be
+wounded and made sore by what they had told her of Edith Brownlow.
+
+It was still early in the spring, just in the middle of April, when
+Mary received another letter from her friend at Bullhampton, a letter
+which made her turn all these things in her mind very seriously. If
+Walter Marrable were to marry Edith Brownlow, what sort of future
+life should she, Mary Lowther, propose to herself? She was firmly
+resolved upon one thing, that it behoved her to look rather to what
+was right than to what might simply be pleasant. But would it be
+right that she should consider herself to be, as it were, widowed by
+the frustration of an unfortunate passion? Life would still be left
+to her,--such a life as that which her aunt lived,--such a life, with
+this exception, that whereas her aunt was a single lady with moderate
+means, she would be a single lady with very small means indeed. But
+that question of means did not go far with her; there was something
+so much more important that she could put that out of sight. She had
+told herself very plainly that it was a good thing for a woman to be
+married; that she would live and die unsuccessfully if she lived and
+died a single woman; that she had desired to do better with herself
+than that. Was it proper that she should now give up all such
+ambition because she had made a mistake? If it were proper, she would
+do so; and then the question resolved itself into this;--Could she be
+right if she married a man without loving him? To marry a man without
+esteeming him, without the possibility of loving him hereafter, she
+knew would be wrong.
+
+Mrs. Fenwick's letter was as follows;--
+
+
+   Vicarage, Tuesday.
+
+   MY DEAR MARY,
+
+   My brother-in-law left us yesterday, and has put us all
+   into a twitter. He said, just as he was going away, that
+   he didn't believe that Lord Trowbridge had any right to
+   give away the ground, because it had not been in his
+   possession or his family's for a great many years, or
+   something of that sort. We don't clearly understand all
+   about it, nor does he; but he is to find out something
+   which he says he can find out, and then let us know.
+   But in the middle of all this, Frank declares that he
+   won't stir in the matter, and that if he could put the
+   abominable thing down by holding up his finger, he would
+   not do it. And he has made me promise not to talk about
+   it, and, therefore, all I can do is to be in a twitter.
+   If that spiteful old man has really given away land
+   that doesn't belong to him, simply to annoy us,--and it
+   certainly has been done with no other object,--I think
+   that he ought to be told of it. Frank, however, has got to
+   be quite serious about it, and you know how very serious
+   he can be when he is serious.
+
+   But I did not sit down to write specially about that
+   horrid chapel. I want to know what you mean to do in
+   the summer. It is always better to make these little
+   arrangements beforehand; and when I speak of the summer,
+   I mean the early summer. The long and the short of it is,
+   will you come to us about the end of May?
+
+   Of course, I know which way your thoughts will go when you
+   get this, and, of course, you will know what I am thinking
+   of when I write it; but I will promise that not a word
+   shall be said to you to urge you in any way. I do not
+   suppose you will think it right that you should stay away
+   from friends whom you love, and who love you dearly, for
+   fear of a man who wants you to marry him. You are not
+   afraid of Mr. Gilmore, and I don't suppose that you are
+   going to shut yourself up all your life because Captain
+   Marrable has not a fortune of his own. Come at any rate.
+   If you find it unpleasant you shall go back just when you
+   please, and I will pledge myself that you shall not be
+   harassed by persuasions.
+
+   Yours most affectionately,
+
+   JANET FENWICK.
+
+   Frank has read this. He says that all I have said about
+   his being serious is a tarradiddle; but that nothing can
+   be more true than what I have said about your friends
+   loving you, and wishing to have you here again. If you
+   were here we might talk him over yet about the chapel.
+
+
+To which, in the Vicar's handwriting, was added the word, "Never!"
+
+It was two days before she showed this letter to her aunt--two days
+in which she had thought much upon the subject. She knew well that
+her aunt would counsel her to go to Bullhampton, and, therefore, she
+would not mention the letter till she had made up her own mind.
+
+"What will you do?" said her aunt.
+
+"I will go, if you do not object."
+
+"I certainly shall not object," said Miss Marrable.
+
+Then Mary wrote a very short letter to her friend, which may as well,
+also, be communicated to the reader:--
+
+
+   Loring, Thursday.
+
+   DEAR JANET,
+
+   I will go to you about the end of May; and yet, though I
+   have made up my mind to do so, I almost doubt that I am
+   not wise. If one could only ordain that things should
+   be as though they had never been! That, however, is
+   impossible, and one can only endeavour to live so as to
+   come as nearly as possible to such a state. I know that I
+   am confused; but I think you will understand what I mean.
+
+   I intend to be very full of energy about the chapel, and
+   I do hope that your brother-in-law will be able to prove
+   that Lord Trowbridge has been misbehaving himself. I never
+   loved Mr. Puddleham, who always seemed to look upon me
+   with wrath because I belonged to the Vicarage; and I
+   certainly should take delight in seeing him banished from
+   the Vicarage gate.
+
+   Always affectionately yours,
+
+   MARY LOWTHER.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVI.
+
+MR. JAY OF WARMINSTER.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+The Vicar had undertaken to maintain Carry Brattle at Mrs. Stiggs's
+house, in Trotter's Buildings, for a fortnight, but he found at the
+end of the fortnight that his responsibility on the poor girl's
+behalf was by no means over. The reader knows with what success
+he had made his visit to Startup, and how far he was from ridding
+himself of his burden by the aid of the charity and affections of
+the poor girl's relatives there. He had shaken the Startup dust, as
+it were, from his gig-wheels as he drove out of George Brattle's
+farmyard, and had declined even the offer of money which had been
+made. Ten or fifteen pounds! He would make up the amount of that
+offer out of his own pocket rather than let the brother think that
+he had bought off his duty to a sister at so cheap a rate. Then he
+convinced himself that in this way he owed Carry Brattle fifteen
+pounds, and comforted himself by reflecting that these fifteen pounds
+would carry the girl on a good deal beyond the fortnight; if only she
+would submit herself to the tedium of such a life as would be hers
+if she remained at Mrs. Stiggs's house. He named a fortnight both to
+Carry and to Mrs. Stiggs, saying that he himself would either come or
+send before the end of that time. Then he returned home, and told the
+whole story to his wife. All this took place before Mr. Quickenham's
+arrival at the vicarage.
+
+"My dear Frank," said his wife to him, "you will get into trouble."
+
+"What sort of trouble?"
+
+"In the first place, the expense of maintaining this poor girl,--for
+life, as far as we can see,--will fall upon you."
+
+"What if it does? But, as a matter of course, she will earn her bread
+sooner or later. How am I to throw her over? And what am I to do with
+her?"
+
+"But that is not the worst of it, Frank."
+
+"Then what is the worst of it? Let us have it at once."
+
+"People will say that you, a clergyman and a married man, go to see a
+pretty young woman at Salisbury."
+
+"You believe that people will say that?"
+
+"I think you should guard against it, for the sake of the parish."
+
+"What sort of people will say it?"
+
+"Lord Trowbridge, and his set."
+
+"On my honour, Janet, I think that you wrong Lord Trowbridge. He is a
+fool, and to a certain extent a vindictive fool; and I grant you that
+he has taken it into his silly old head to hate me unmercifully; but
+I believe him to be a gentleman, and I do not think that he would
+condescend to spread a damnably malicious report of which he did not
+believe a word himself."
+
+"But, my dear, he will believe it."
+
+"Why? How? On what evidence? He couldn't believe it. Let a man be
+ever such a fool, he can't believe a thing without some reason.
+I dislike Lord Trowbridge very much; and you might just as well
+say that because I dislike him I shall believe that he is a hard
+landlord. He is not a hard landlord; and were he to stick dissenting
+chapels all about the county, I should be a liar and a slanderer were
+I to say that he was."
+
+"But then, you see, you are not a fool, Frank."
+
+This brought the conversation to an end. The Vicar was willing enough
+to turn upon his heel and say nothing more on a matter as to which
+he was by no means sure that he was in the right; and his wife felt
+a certain amount of reluctance in urging any arguments upon such a
+subject. Whatever Lord Trowbridge might say or think, her Frank must
+not be led to suppose that any unworthy suspicion troubled her own
+mind. Nevertheless, she was sure that he was imprudent.
+
+When the fortnight was near at an end, and nothing had been done, he
+went again over to Salisbury. It was quite true that he had business
+there, as a gentleman almost always does have business in the county
+town where his banker lives, whence tradesmen supply him, and in
+which he belongs to some club. And our Vicar, too, was a man fond of
+seeing his bishop, and one who loved to move about in the precincts
+of the cathedral, to shake hands with the dean, and to have a
+little subrisive fling at Mr. Chamberlaine, or such another as Mr.
+Chamberlaine, if the opportunity came in his way. He was by no means
+indisposed to go into Salisbury in the ordinary course of things; and
+on this occasion absolutely did see Mr. Chamberlaine, the dean, his
+saddler, and the clerk at the Fire Insurance Office,--as well as Mrs.
+Stiggs and Carry Brattle. If, therefore, anyone had said that on this
+day he had gone into Salisbury simply to see Carry Brattle, such
+person would have maligned him. He reduced the premium on his Fire
+Insurance by 5_s._ 6_d._ a year, and he engaged Mr. Chamberlaine to
+meet Mr. Quickenham, and he borrowed from the dean an old book about
+falconry; so that in fact the few minutes which he spent at Mrs.
+Stiggs's house were barely squeezed in among the various affairs of
+business which he had to transact at Salisbury.
+
+All that he could say to Carry Brattle was this,--that hitherto he
+had settled nothing. She must stay in Trotter's Buildings for another
+week or so. He had been so busy, in consequence of the time of the
+year, preparing for Easter and the like, that he had not been able
+to look about him. He had a plan; but would say nothing about it till
+he had seen whether it could be carried out. When Carry murmured
+something about the cost of her living the Vicar boldly declared that
+she need not fret herself about that, as he had money of hers in
+hand. He would some day explain all about that, but not now. Then he
+interrogated Mrs. Stiggs as to Carry's life. Mrs. Stiggs expressed
+her belief that Carry wouldn't stand it much longer. The hours had
+been inexpressibly long, and she had declared more than once that the
+best thing she could do was to go out and kill herself. Nevertheless,
+Mrs. Stiggs's report as to her conduct was favourable. Of Sam
+Brattle, the Vicar, though he inquired, could learn nothing. Carry
+declared that she had not heard from him since he left her all
+bruised and bleeding after his fight at the Three Honest Men.
+
+The Vicar had told Carry Brattle that he had a plan,--but, in truth,
+he had no plan. He had an idea that he might overcome the miller by
+taking his daughter straight into his house, and placing the two face
+to face together; but it was one in which he himself put so little
+trust, that he could form no plan out of it. In the first place,
+would he be justified in taking such a step? Mrs. George Brattle
+had told him that people knew what was good for them without being
+dictated to by clergymen; and the rebuke had come home to him.
+He was the last man in the world to adopt a system of sacerdotal
+interference. "I could do it so much better if I was not a
+clergyman," he would say to himself. And then, if old Brattle chose
+to turn his daughter out of the house, on such provocation as the
+daughter had given him, what was that to him, Fenwick, whether priest
+or layman? The old man knew what he was about, and had shown his
+determination very vigorously.
+
+"I'll try the ironmonger at Warminster," he said, to his wife.
+
+"I'm afraid it will be of no use."
+
+"I don't think it will. Ironmongers are probably harder than millers
+or farmers,--and farmers are very hard. That fellow, Jay, would not
+even consent to be bail for Sam Brattle. But something must be done."
+
+"She should be put into a reformatory."
+
+"It would be too late now. That should have been done at once. At any
+rate, I'll go to Warminster. I want to call on old Dr. Dickleburg,
+and I can do that at the same time."
+
+He did go to Warminster. He did call on the Doctor, who was not at
+home;--and he did call also upon Mr. Jay, who was at home.
+
+With Mr. Jay himself his chance was naturally much less than it
+would be with George Brattle. The ironmonger was connected with the
+unfortunate young woman only by marriage; and what brother-in-law
+would take such a sister-in-law to his bosom? And of Mrs. Jay he
+thought that he knew that she was puritanical, stiff, and severe.
+Mr. Jay he found in his shop along with an apprentice, but he had no
+difficulty in leading the master ironmonger along with him through
+a vista of pots, grates and frying pans, into a small recess at the
+back of the establishment, in which requests for prolonged credit
+were usually made, and urgent appeals for speedy payment as often put
+forth.
+
+"Know the story of Caroline Brattle? Oh yes! I know it, sir," said
+Mr. Jay. "We had to know it." And as he spoke he shook his head, and
+rubbed his hands together, and looked down upon the ground. There
+was, however, a humility about the man, a confession on his part,
+that in talking to an undoubted gentleman he was talking to a
+superior being, which gave to Fenwick an authority which he had felt
+himself to want in his intercourse with the farmer.
+
+"I am sure, Mr. Jay, you will agree with me in that she should be
+saved if possible."
+
+"As to her soul, sir?" asked the ironmonger.
+
+"Of course, as to her soul. But we must get at that by saving her in
+this world first."
+
+Mr. Jay was a slight man, of middle height, with very respectable
+iron-grey hair that stood almost upright upon his head, but with a
+poor, inexpressive, thin face below it. He was given to bowing a good
+deal, rubbing his hands together, smiling courteously, and to the
+making of many civil little speeches; but his strength as a leading
+man in Warminster lay in his hair, and in the suit of orderly
+well-brushed black clothes which he wore on all occasions. He was,
+too, a man fairly prosperous, who went always to church, paid his
+way, attended sedulously to his business, and hung his bells, and
+sold his pots in such a manner as not actually to drive his old
+customers away by default of work. "Jay is respectable, and I don't
+like to leave him," men would say, when their wives declared that the
+backs of his grates fell out, and that his nails never would stand
+hammering. So he prospered; but, perhaps, he owed his prosperity
+mainly to his hair. He rubbed his hands, and smiled, and bowed his
+head about, as he thought what answer he might best make. He was
+quite willing that poor Carry's soul should be saved. That would
+naturally be Mr. Fenwick's affair. But as to saving her body, with
+any co-operation from himself or Mrs. Jay,--he did not see his way at
+all through such a job as that.
+
+"I'm afraid she is a bad 'un, Mr. Fenwick; I'm afraid she is," said
+Mr. Jay.
+
+"The thing is, whether we can't put our heads together and make her
+less bad," said the Vicar. "She must live somewhere, Mr. Jay."
+
+"I don't know whether almost the best thing for 'em isn't to die,--of
+course after they have repented, Mr. Fenwick. You see, sir, it is so
+very low, and so shameful, and they do bring such disgrace on their
+poor families. There isn't anything a young man can do that is nearly
+so bad,--is there, Mr. Fenwick?"
+
+"I'm not at all sure of that, Mr. Jay."
+
+"Ain't you now?"
+
+"I'm not going to defend Carry Brattle;--but if you will think how
+very small an amount of sin may bring a woman to this wretched
+condition, your heart will be softened. Poor Carry;--she was so
+bright, and so good and so clever!"
+
+"Clever she was, Mr. Fenwick;--and bright, too, as you call it.
+But--"
+
+"Of course we know all that. The question now is, what can we do to
+help her? She is living now at this present moment, an orderly, sober
+life; but without occupation, or means, or friends. Will your wife
+let her come to her,--for a month or so, just to try her?"
+
+"Come and live here!" exclaimed the ironmonger.
+
+"That is what I would suggest. Who is to give her the shelter of a
+roof, if a sister will not?"
+
+"I don't think that Mrs. Jay would undertake that," said the
+ironmonger, who had ceased to rub his hands and to bow, and whose
+face had now become singularly long and lugubrious.
+
+"May I ask her?"
+
+"It wouldn't do any good, Mr. Fenwick;--it wouldn't indeed."
+
+"It ought to do good. May I try?"
+
+"If you ask me, Mr. Fenwick, I should say no; indeed I should. Mrs.
+Jay isn't any way strong, and the bare mention of that disreputable
+connexion produces a sickness internally;--it does, indeed, Mr.
+Fenwick."
+
+"You will do nothing, then, to save from perdition the sister of your
+own wife;--and will let your wife do nothing?"
+
+"Now, Mr. Fenwick, don't be hard on me;--pray don't be hard on me. I
+have been respectable, and have always had respectable people about
+me. If my wife's family are turning wrong, isn't that bad enough on
+me without your coming to say such things as this to me? Really, Mr.
+Fenwick, if you'd think of it, you wouldn't be so hard."
+
+"She may die in a ditch, then, for you?" said the Vicar, whose
+feeling against the ironmonger was much stronger than it had been
+against the farmer. He could say nothing further, so he turned
+upon his heel and marched down the length of the shop, while the
+obsequious tradesman followed him,--again bowing and rubbing his
+hands, and attending him to his carriage. The Vicar didn't speak
+another word, or make any parting salutation to Mr. Jay. "Their
+hearts are like the nether millstone," he said to himself, as he
+drove away, flogging his horse. "Of what use are all the sermons?
+Nothing touches them. Do unto others as you think they would do unto
+you. That's their doctrine." As he went home he made up his mind that
+he would, as a last effort, carry out that scheme of taking Carry
+with him to the mill;--he would do so, that is, if he could induce
+Carry to accompany him. In the meantime, there was nothing left to
+him but to leave her with Mrs. Stiggs, and to pay ten shillings a
+week for her board and lodging. There was one point on which he could
+not quite make up his mind;--whether he would or would not first
+acquaint old Mrs. Brattle with his intention.
+
+He had left home early, and when he returned his wife had received
+Mary Lowther's reply to her letter.
+
+"She will come?" asked Frank.
+
+"She just says that and nothing more."
+
+"Then she'll be Mrs. Gilmore."
+
+"I hope so, with all my heart," said Mrs. Fenwick.
+
+"I look upon it as tantamount to accepting him. She wouldn't come
+unless she had made up her mind to take him. You mark my words.
+They'll be married before the chapel is finished."
+
+"You say it as if you thought she oughtn't to come."
+
+"No;--I don't mean that. I was only thinking how quickly a woman may
+recover from such a hurt."
+
+"Frank, don't be ill-natured. She will be doing what all her friends
+advise."
+
+"If I were to die, your friends would advise you not to grieve; but
+they would think you very unfeeling if you did not."
+
+"Are you going to turn against her?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Then why do you say such things? Is it not better that she should
+make the effort than lie there helpless and motionless, throwing her
+whole life away? Will it not be much better for Harry Gilmore?"
+
+"Very much better for him, because he'll go crazy if she don't."
+
+"And for her too. We can't tell what is going on inside her breast.
+I believe that she is making a great effort because she thinks it is
+right. You will be kind to her when she comes?"
+
+"Certainly I will,--for Harry's sake--and her own."
+
+But in truth the Vicar at this moment was not in a good humour.
+He was becoming almost tired of his efforts to set other people
+straight, so great were the difficulties that came in his way. As he
+had driven into his own gate he had met Mr. Puddleham, standing in
+the road just in front of the new chapel. He had made up his mind to
+accept the chapel, and now he said a pleasant word to the minister.
+Mr. Puddleham turned up his eyes and his nose, bowed very stiffly,
+and then twisted himself round, without answering a word. How was
+it possible for a man to live among such people in good humour and
+Christian charity?
+
+In the evening he was sitting with his wife in the drawing-room
+discussing all these troubles, when the maid came in to say that
+Constable Toffy was at the door.
+
+Constable Toffy was shown into his study, and then the Vicar followed
+him. He had not spoken to the constable now for some months,--not
+since the time at which Sam had been liberated; but he had not a
+moment's doubt when he was thus summoned, that something was to be
+said as to the murder of Mr. Trumbull. The constable put his hand up
+to his head, and sat down at the Vicar's invitation, before he began
+to speak.
+
+"What is it, Toffy?" said the Vicar.
+
+"We've got 'em at last, I think," said Mr. Toffy, in a very low, soft
+voice.
+
+"Got whom;--the murderers?"
+
+"Just so, Mr. Fenwick; all except Sam Brattle,--whom we want."
+
+"And who are the men?"
+
+"Them as we supposed all along,--Jack Burrows, as they call the
+Grinder, and Lawrence Acorn as was along with him. He's a Birmingham
+chap, is Acorn. He's know'd very well at Birmingham. And then, Mr.
+Fenwick, there's Sam. That's all as seems to have been in it. We
+shall want Sam, Mr. Fenwick."
+
+"You don't mean to tell me that he was one of the murderers?"
+
+"We shall want him, Mr. Fenwick."
+
+"Where did you find the other men?"
+
+"They did get as far as San Francisco,--did the others. They haven't
+had a bad game of it,--have they, Mr. Fenwick? They've had more than
+seven months of a run. It was the 31st of August as Mr. Trumbull was
+murdered, and here's the 15th of April, Mr. Fenwick. There ain't a
+many runs as long as that. You'll have Sam Brattle for us all right,
+no doubt, Mr. Fenwick?" The Vicar told the constable that he would
+see to it, and get Sam Brattle to come forward as soon as he could.
+"I told you all through, Mr. Fenwick, as Sam was one of them as was
+in it, but you wouldn't believe me."
+
+"I don't believe it now," said the Vicar.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVII.
+
+SAM BRATTLE IS WANTED.
+
+
+The next week was one of considerable perturbation, trouble, and
+excitement at Bullhampton, and in the neighbourhood of Warminster
+and Heytesbury. It soon became known generally that Jack the Grinder
+and Lawrence Acorn were in Salisbury gaol, and that Sam Brattle--was
+wanted. The perturbation and excitement at Bullhampton were, of
+course, greater than elsewhere. It was necessary that the old miller
+should be told,--necessary also that the people at the mill should be
+asked as to Sam's present whereabouts. If they did not know it, they
+might assist the Vicar in discovering it. Fenwick went to the mill,
+taking the Squire with him; but they could obtain no information. The
+miller was very silent, and betrayed hardly any emotion when he was
+told that the police again wanted his son.
+
+"They can come and search," he said. "They can come and search."
+And then he walked slowly away into the mill. There was a scene, of
+course, with Mrs. Brattle and Fanny, and the two women were in a sad
+way.
+
+"Poor boy,--wretched boy!" said the unfortunate mother, who sat
+sobbing with her apron over her face.
+
+"We know nothing of him, Mr. Gilmore, or we would tell at once," said
+Fanny.
+
+"I'm sure you would," said the Vicar. "And you may remember this,
+Mrs. Brattle; I do not for one moment believe that Sam had any more
+to do with the murder than you or I. You may tell his father that I
+say so, if you please."
+
+For saying this the Squire rebuked him as soon as they had left the
+mill. "I think you go too far in giving such assurance as that," he
+said.
+
+"Surely you would have me say what I think?"
+
+"Not on such a matter as this, in which any false encouragement may
+produce so much increased suffering. You, yourself, are so prone to
+take your own views in opposition to those of others that you should
+be specially on your guard when you may do so much harm."
+
+"I feel quite sure that he had nothing to do with it."
+
+"You see that you have the police against you after a most minute and
+prolonged investigation."
+
+"The police are asses," insisted the Vicar.
+
+"Just so. That is, you prefer your own opinion to theirs in regard to
+a murder. I should prefer yours to theirs on a question of scriptural
+evidence, but not in such an affair as this. I don't want to talk you
+over, but I wish to make you careful with other people who are so
+closely concerned. In dealing with others you have no right to throw
+over the ordinary rules of evidence."
+
+The Vicar accepted the rebuke and promised to be more
+careful,--repeating, however, his own opinion about Sam, to which he
+declared his intention of adhering in regard to his own conduct, let
+the police and magistrates say what they might. He almost went so far
+as to declare that he should do so even in opposition to the verdict
+of a jury; but Gilmore understood that this was simply the natural
+obstinacy of the man, showing itself in its natural form.
+
+At this moment, which was certainly one of gloom to the parish at
+large, and of great sorrow at the Vicarage, the Squire moved about
+with a new life which was evident to all who saw him. He went about
+his farm, and talked about his trees, and looked at his horses and
+had come to life again. No doubt many guesses as to the cause of this
+were made throughout his establishment, and some of them, probably,
+very near the truth. But, for the Fenwicks there was no need of
+guessing. Gilmore had been told that Mary Lowther was coming to
+Bullhampton in the early summer, and had at once thrown off the cloak
+of his sadness. He had asked no further questions; Mrs. Fenwick had
+found herself unable to express a caution; but the extent of her
+friend's elation almost frightened her.
+
+"I don't look at it," she said to her husband, "quite as he does."
+
+"She'll have him now," he answered, and then Mrs. Fenwick said
+nothing further.
+
+To Fenwick himself, this change was one of infinite comfort. The
+Squire was his old friend and almost his only near neighbour. In all
+his troubles, whether inside or outside of the parish, he naturally
+went to Gilmore; and, although he was a man not very prone to walk by
+the advice of friends, still it had been a great thing to him to have
+a friend who would give an opinion, and perhaps the more so, as the
+friend was one who did not insist on having his opinion taken. During
+the past winter Gilmore had been of no use whatever to his friend.
+His opinions on all matters had gone so vitally astray, that they had
+not been worth having. And he had become so morose, that the Vicar
+had found it to be almost absolutely necessary to leave him alone as
+far as ordinary life was concerned. But now the Squire was himself
+again, and on this exciting topic of Trumbull's murder, the prisoners
+in Salisbury gaol, and the necessity for Sam's reappearance, could
+talk sensibly and usefully.
+
+It was certainly very expedient that Sam should be made to reappear
+as soon as possible. The idea was general in the parish that the
+Vicar knew all about him. George Brattle, who had become bail for his
+brother's reappearance, had given his name on the clear understanding
+that the Vicar would be responsible. Some half-sustained tidings of
+Carry's presence in Salisbury and of the Vicar's various visits to
+the city were current in Bullhampton, and with these were mingled an
+idea that Carry and Sam were in league together. That Fenwick was
+chivalrous, perhaps Quixotic, in his friendships for those whom he
+regarded, had long been felt, and this feeling was now stronger than
+ever. He certainly could bring up Sam Brattle if he pleased;--or, if
+he pleased, as might, some said, not improbably be the case, he could
+keep him away. There would be L400 to pay for the bail-bond, but the
+Vicar was known to be rich as well as Quixotic, and,--so said the
+Puddlehamites,--would care very little about that, if he might thus
+secure for himself his own way.
+
+He was constrained to go over again to Salisbury in order that he
+might, if possible, learn from Carry how to find some trace to
+her brother, and of this visit the Puddlehamites also informed
+themselves. There were men and women in Bullhampton who knew exactly
+how often the Vicar had visited the young woman at Salisbury, how
+long he had been with her on each occasion, and how much he paid Mrs.
+Stiggs for the accommodation. Gentlemen who are Quixotic in their
+kindness to young women are liable to have their goings and comings
+chronicled with much exactitude, if not always with accuracy.
+
+His interview with Carry on this occasion was very sad. He could not
+save himself from telling her in part the cause of his inquiries.
+"They haven't taken the two men, have they?" she asked, with an
+eagerness that seemed to imply that she possessed knowledge on the
+matter which could hardly not be guilty.
+
+"What two men?" he asked, looking full into her face. Then she was
+silent and he was unwilling to catch her in a trap, to cross-examine
+her as a lawyer would do, or to press out of her any communication
+which she would not make willingly and of her own free action. "I am
+told," he said, "that two men have been taken for the murder."
+
+"Where did they find 'em, sir?"
+
+"They had escaped to America, and the police have brought them back.
+Did you know them, Carry?" She was again silent. The men had not been
+named, and it was not for her to betray them. Hitherto, in their
+interviews, she had hardly ever looked him in the face, but now she
+turned her blue eyes full upon him. "You told me before at the old
+woman's cottage," he said, "that you knew them both,--had known one
+too well."
+
+"If you please, sir, I won't say nothing about 'em."
+
+"I will not ask you, Carry. But you would tell me about your brother,
+if you knew?"
+
+"Indeed I would, sir;--anything. He hadn't no more to do with Farmer
+Trumbull's murder nor you had. They can't touch a hair of his head
+along of that."
+
+"Such is my belief;--but who can prove it?" Again she was silent.
+"Can you prove it? If speaking could save your brother, surely you
+would speak out. Would you hesitate, Carry, in doing anything for
+your brother's sake? Whatever may be his faults, he has not been hard
+to you like the others."
+
+"Oh, sir, I wish I was dead."
+
+"You must not wish that, Carry. And if you know ought of this you
+will be bound to speak. If you could bring yourself to tell me what
+you know, I think it might be good for both of you."
+
+"It was they who had the money. Sam never seed a shilling of it."
+
+"Who is 'they'?"
+
+"Jack Burrows and Larry Acorn. And it wasn't Larry Acorn neither,
+sir. I know very well who did it. It was Jack Burrows who did it."
+
+"That is he they call the Grinder?"
+
+"But Larry was with him then," said the girl, sobbing.
+
+"You are sure of that?"
+
+"I ain't sure of nothing, Mr. Fenwick, only that Sam wasn't there
+at all. Of that I am quite, quite, quite sure. But when you asks me,
+what am I to say?"
+
+Then he left her without speaking to her on this occasion a word
+about herself. He had nothing to say that would give her any comfort.
+He had almost made up his mind that he would take her over with him
+to the mill, and try what might be done by the meeting between the
+father, mother, and daughter, but all this new matter about the
+police and the arrest, and Sam's absence, made it almost impossible
+for him to take such a step at present. As he went, he again
+interrogated Mrs. Stiggs, and was warned by her that words fell daily
+from her lodger which made her think that the young woman would not
+remain much longer with her. In the meantime there was nothing of
+which she could complain. Carry insisted on her liberty to go out and
+about the city alone; but the woman was of opinion that she did this
+simply with the object of asserting her independence. After that the
+necessary payment was made, and the Vicar returned to the Railway
+Station. Of Sam he had learned nothing, and now he did not know where
+to go for tidings. He still believed that the young man would come of
+his own accord, if the demand for his appearance were made so public
+as to reach his ear.
+
+On that same day there was a meeting of the magistrates at
+Heytesbury, and the two men who had been so cruelly fetched back from
+San Francisco were brought before it. Mr. Gilmore was on the bench,
+along with Sir Thomas Charleys, who was the chairman, and three other
+gentlemen. Lord Trowbridge was in the court house, and sat upon the
+bench, but gave it out that he was not sitting there as a magistrate.
+Samuel Brattle was called upon to answer to his bail, and Jones, the
+attorney appearing for him, explained that he had gone from home
+to seek work elsewhere, alluded to the length of time that had
+elapsed, and to the injustice of presuming that a man against whom no
+evidence had been adduced, should be bound to remain always in one
+parish,--and expressed himself without any doubt that Mr. Fenwick
+and Mr. George Brattle, who were his bailsmen, would cause him to be
+found and brought forward. As neither the clergyman nor the farmer
+were in court, nothing further could be done at once; and the
+magistrates were quite ready to admit that time must be allowed. Nor
+was the case at all ready against the two men who were in custody.
+Indeed, against them the evidence was so little substantial that a
+lawyer from Devizes, who attended on their behalf, expressed his
+amazement that the American authorities should have given them
+up, and suggested that it must have been done with some view to a
+settlement of the Alabama claims. Evidence, however, was brought
+up to show that the two men had been convicted before, the one for
+burglary, and the other for horse-stealing; that the former, John
+Burrows, known as the Grinder, was a man from Devizes with whom the
+police about that town, and at Chippenham, Bath, and Wells, were
+well acquainted; that the other, Acorn, was a young man who had been
+respectable, as a partner in a livery stable at Birmingham, but who
+had taken to betting, and had for a year past been living by evil
+courses, having previously undergone two years of imprisonment
+with hard labour. It was proved that they had been seen in the
+neighbourhood both before and after the murder; that boots found in
+the cottage at Pycroft Common fitted certain footmarks in the mud
+of the farmer's yard; that Burrows had been supplied with a certain
+poison at a county chemist's at Lavington, and that the dog Bone'm
+had been poisoned with the like. Many other matters were proved,
+all of which were declared by the lawyer from Devizes to amount to
+nothing, and by the police authorities, who were prosecutors, to be
+very much. The magistrates of course ordered a remand, and ordered
+also that on the day named Sam Brattle should appear. It was
+understood that that day week was only named pro forma, the
+constables having explained that at least a fortnight would be
+required for the collection of further evidence. This took place on
+Tuesday, the 25th of April, and it was understood that time up to the
+8th of May would be given to the police to complete their case.
+
+So far all went on quietly at Heytesbury; but before the magistrates
+left the little town there was a row. Sir Thomas Charleys, in
+speaking to his brother magistrate, Mr. Gilmore, about the whole
+affair and about the Brattles in particular, had alluded to "Mr.
+Fenwick's unfortunate connexion with Carry Brattle" at Salisbury.
+Gilmore fired up at once, and demanded to know the meaning of this.
+Sir Thomas, who was not the wisest man in the world, but who had
+ideas of justice, and as to whom, in giving him his due, it must
+be owned that he was afraid of no one, after some hesitation,
+acknowledged that what he had heard respecting Mr. Fenwick had fallen
+from Lord Trowbridge. He had heard from Lord Trowbridge that the
+Vicar of Bullhampton was  *  *  *. Gilmore on the occasion became
+full of energy, and pressed the baronet very hard. Sir Thomas hoped
+that Mr. Gilmore was not going to make mischief. Mr. Gilmore declared
+that he would not submit to the injury done to his friend, and that
+he would question Lord Trowbridge on the subject. He did question
+Lord Trowbridge, whom he found waiting for his carriage, in the
+parlour of the Bull Inn, Sir Thomas having accompanied him in the
+search. The Marquis was quite outspoken. He had heard, he said, from
+what he did not doubt to be good authority, that Mr. Fenwick was
+in the habit of visiting alone a young woman who had lived in his
+parish, but whom he now maintained in lodgings in a low alley in the
+suburbs of Salisbury. He had said so much as that. In so saying, had
+he spoken truth or falsehood? If he had said anything untrue, he
+would be the first to acknowledge his own error.
+
+Then there had come to be very hot words. "My lord," said Mr.
+Gilmore, "your insinuation is untrue. Whatever your words may have
+been, in the impression which they have made, they are slanderous."
+
+"Who are you, sir," said the Marquis, looking at him from head to
+foot, "to talk to me of the impression of my words?"
+
+But Mr. Gilmore's blood was up. "You intended to convey to Sir Thomas
+Charleys, my lord, that Mr. Fenwick's visits were of a disgraceful
+nature. If your words did not convey that, they conveyed nothing."
+
+"Who are you, sir, that you should interpret my words? I did no more
+than my duty in conveying to Sir Thomas Charleys my conviction,--my
+well-grounded conviction,--as to the gentleman's conduct. What I said
+to him I will say aloud to the whole county. It is notorious that the
+Vicar of Bullhampton is in the habit of visiting a profligate young
+woman in a low part of the city. That I say is disgraceful to him,
+to his cloth, and to the parish, and I shall give my opinion to the
+bishop to that effect. Who are you, sir, that you should question
+my words?" And again the Marquis eyed the Squire from head to foot,
+leaving the room with a majestic strut as Gilmore went on to assert
+that the allegation made, with the sense implied by it, contained
+a wicked and a malicious slander. Then there were some words, much
+quieter than those preceding them, between Mr. Gilmore and Sir
+Thomas, in which the Squire pledged himself to,--he hardly knew what,
+and Sir Thomas promised to hold his tongue,--for the present. But,
+as a matter of course, the quarrel flew all over the little town. It
+was out of the question that such a man as the Marquis of Trowbridge
+should keep his wrath confined. Before he had left the inn-yard he
+had expressed his opinion very plainly to half-a-dozen persons, both
+as to the immorality of the Vicar and the impudence of the Squire;
+and as he was taken home his hand was itching for pen and paper in
+order that he might write to the bishop. Sir Thomas shrugged his
+shoulders, and did not tell the story to more than three or four
+confidential friends, to all of whom he remarked that on the matter
+of the visits made to the girl, there never was smoke without fire.
+Gilmore's voice, too, had been loud, and all the servants about the
+inn had heard him. He knew that the quarrel was already public, and
+felt that he had no alternative but to tell his friend what had
+passed.
+
+
+[Illustration: "Who are you, sir, that you should interpret
+my words?"]
+
+
+On that same evening he saw the Vicar. Fenwick had returned from
+Salisbury, tired, dispirited, and ill at ease, and was just going in
+to dress for dinner, when Gilmore met him at his own stable-door, and
+told him what had occurred.
+
+"Then, after all, my wife was right and I was wrong," said Fenwick.
+
+"Right about what?" Gilmore asked.
+
+"She said that Lord Trowbridge would spread these very lies. I
+confess that I made the mistake of believing him to be a gentleman.
+Of course I may use your information?"
+
+"Use it just as you please," said Gilmore. Then they parted, and
+Gilmore, who was on horseback, rode home.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVIII.
+
+MARY LOWTHER RETURNS TO BULLHAMPTON.
+
+
+A month went by after the scenes described in the last chapter, and
+summer had come at Bullhampton. It was now the end of May, and, with
+the summer, Mary Lowther had arrived. During the month very little
+progress had been made with the case at Heytesbury. There had been
+two or three remands, and now there was yet another. The police
+declared that this was rendered necessary by the absence of Sam
+Brattle,--that the magistrates were anxious to give all reasonable
+time for the production of the man who was out upon bail,--and that,
+as he was undoubtedly concerned in the murder, they were determined
+to have him. But they who professed to understand the case, among
+whom were the lawyer from Devizes and Mr. Jones of Heytesbury,
+declared that no real search had been made for Brattle because
+the evidence in regard to the other men was hitherto inefficient.
+The remand now stood again till Tuesday, June the 5th, and it was
+understood that if Brattle did not then appear the bail would be
+declared to have been forfeited.
+
+Fenwick had written a very angry letter to Lord Trowbridge, to which
+he had got no answer, and Lord Trowbridge had written a very silly
+letter to the bishop, in replying to which the bishop had snubbed
+him. "I am informed by my friend, Mr. Gilmore," said the Vicar to
+the Marquis, "that your lordship has stated openly that I have made
+visits to a young woman in Salisbury which are disgraceful to me, to
+my cloth, and to the parish of which I am the incumbent. I do not
+believe that your lordship will deny that you have done so, and I,
+therefore, call upon you at once to apologise to me for the calumny,
+which, in its nature, is as injurious and wicked as calumny can
+be, and to promise that you will not repeat the offence." The
+Marquis, when he received this, had not as yet written that letter
+to the bishop on which he had resolved after his interview with
+Gilmore,--feeling, perhaps, some qualms of conscience, thinking that
+it might be well that he should consult his son,--though with a
+full conviction that, if he did so, his son would not allow him to
+write to the bishop at all,--possibly with some feeling that he had
+been too hard upon his enemy, the Vicar. But, when the letter from
+Bullhampton reached him, all feelings of doubt, caution, and mercy,
+were thrown to the winds. The tone of the letter was essentially
+aggressive and impudent. It was the word calumny that offended him
+most, that, and the idea that he, the Marquis of Trowbridge, should
+be called upon to promise not to commit an offence! The pestilent
+infidel at Bullhampton, as he called our friend, had not attempted to
+deny the visits to the young woman at Salisbury. And the Marquis had
+made fresh inquiry which had completely corroborated his previous
+information. He had learned Mrs. Stiggs's address, and the name of
+Trotter's Buildings, which details were to his mind circumstantial,
+corroborative, and damnatory. Some dim account of the battle at the
+Three Honest Men had reached him, and the undoubted fact that Carry
+Brattle was maintained by the Vicar. Then he remembered all Fenwick's
+old anxiety on behalf of the brother, whom the Marquis had taught
+himself to regard as the very man who had murdered his tenant.
+He reminded himself, too, of the murderer's present escape from
+justice by aid of this pestilent clergyman; and thus became
+convinced that in dealing with Mr. Fenwick, as it was his undoubted
+duty to do, he had to deal with one of the very worst of the human
+race. His lordship's mind was one utterly incapable of sifting
+evidence,--unable even to understand evidence when it came to him.
+He was not a bad man. He desired nothing that was not his own, and
+remitted much that was. He feared God, honoured the Queen, and loved
+his country. He was not self-indulgent. He did his duties as he knew
+them. But he was an arrogant old fool, who could not keep himself
+from mischief,--who could only be kept from mischief by the aid of
+some such master as his son. As soon as he received the Vicar's
+letter he at once sat down and wrote to the bishop. He was so sure
+that he was right, that he sent Fenwick's letter to the bishop,
+acknowledging what he himself had said at Heytesbury, and justifying
+it altogether by an elaborate account of the Vicar's wickedness. "And
+now, my lord, let me ask you," said he, in conclusion, "whether you
+deem this a proper man to have the care of souls in the large and
+important parish of Bullhampton."
+
+The bishop felt himself to be very much bullied. He had no doubt
+whatsoever about his parson. He knew that Fenwick was too strong a
+man to be acted upon beneficially by such advice as to his private
+conduct as a bishop might give, and too good a man to need any
+caution as to his conduct. "My Lord Marquis," he said, in reply, "in
+returning the endorsed letter from Mr. Fenwick to your lordship, I
+can only say that nothing has been brought before me by your lordship
+which seems to me to require my interference. I should be wrong if I
+did not add to this the expression of my opinion that Mr. Fenwick is
+a moral man, doing his duty in his parish well, and an example in my
+diocese to be followed, rather than a stumbling block."
+
+When this letter reached the Castle Lord St. George was there. The
+poor old Marquis was cut to the quick. He immediately perceived,--so
+he told himself,--that the bishop was an old woman, who understood
+nothing; but he was sure that St. George would not look at the matter
+in the same light. And yet it was impossible not to tell St. George.
+Much as he dreaded his son, he did honestly tell everything to his
+Mentor. He had already told St. George of Fenwick's letter to him
+and of his letter to the bishop, and St. George had whistled. Now he
+showed the bishop's letter to his son. St. George read the letter,
+refolded it slowly, shrugged his shoulders, and said, as he returned
+it to his father,--
+
+"Well, my lord, I suppose you like a hornet's nest."
+
+This was the uncomfortable position of things at Bullhampton about
+the beginning of June, at which time Mary Lowther was again staying
+with her friend Mrs. Fenwick. Carry Brattle was still at Salisbury,
+but had not been seen by the Vicar for more than a fortnight. The
+Marquis's letter, backed as it was in part by his wife's counsel,
+had, much to his own disgust, deterred him from seeing the girl. His
+wife, however, had herself visited Trotter's Buildings, and had seen
+Carry, taking to her a little present from her mother, who did not
+dare to go over to Salisbury to see her child, because of words that
+had passed between her and her husband.
+
+Mrs. Fenwick, on her return home, had reported that Carry was silent,
+sullen, and idle; that her only speech was an expression of a wish
+that she was dead, and that Mrs. Stiggs had said that she could get
+no good of her. In the meantime Sam Brattle had not yet turned up,
+and the 5th of June was at hand.
+
+Mary Lowther was again at the vicarage, and of course it was
+necessary that she and Mr. Gilmore should meet each other. A promise
+had been made to her that no advice should be pressed upon her,--the
+meaning of which, of course, was that nothing should be said to her
+urging her to marry Mr. Gilmore. But it was of course understood by
+all the parties concerned that Mr. Gilmore was to be allowed to come
+to the house; and, indeed, this was understood by the Fenwicks to
+mean almost as plainly that she would at least endeavour to bring
+herself to accept him when he did come. To Mary herself, as she made
+the journey, the same meaning seemed to be almost inevitable; and as
+she perceived this, she told herself that she had been wrong to leave
+home. She knew,--she thought she knew,--that she must refuse him, and
+in doing so would simply be making fresh trouble. Would it not have
+been better for her to have remained at Loring,--to have put herself
+at once on a par with her aunt, and have commenced her life of
+solitary spinsterhood and dull routine? But, then, why should she
+refuse him? She endeavoured to argue it out with herself in the
+railway carriage. She had been told that Walter Marrable would
+certainly marry Edith Brownlow, and she believed it. No doubt it was
+much better that he should do so. At any rate, she and Walter were
+separated for ever. When he wrote to her, declaring his purpose
+of remaining in England, he had said not a word of renewing his
+engagement with her. No doubt she loved him. About that she did not
+for a moment endeavour to deceive herself. No doubt, if that fate in
+life which she most desired might be hers, she would become the wife
+of Walter Marrable. But that fate would not be hers, and then there
+arose the question whether, on that account, she was unfit to be the
+wife of any other man. Of this she was quite certain, that should it
+ever seem to her to be her duty to accept the other man, she would
+first explain to him clearly the position in which she found herself.
+At last the whole matter resolved itself to this;--was it possible
+for her to divest her idea of life of all romance, and to look for
+contentment and satisfaction in the performance of duties to others?
+The prospect of an old maid's life at Loring was not pleasant to her
+eyes; but she would bear that, and worse than that, rather than do
+wrong. It was, however, so hard for her to know what was right and
+what was wrong! Supposing that she were to consent to marry Mr.
+Gilmore, would she be forsworn when at the altar she promised to love
+him? All her care would be henceforth for him, all her heart, as far
+as she could command her heart, and certainly all her truth. There
+should not be a secret of her mind hidden from him. She would force
+herself to love him, and to forget that other man. He should be the
+object of all her idolatry. She would, in that case, do her very
+utmost to reward him for the constancy of the affection with which he
+had regarded her; and yet, as she was driven in at the vicarage gate,
+she told herself that it would have been better for her to remain at
+Loring.
+
+During the first evening Mr. Gilmore's name was not mentioned. There
+were subjects enough for conversation, as the period was one of great
+excitement in Bullhampton.
+
+"What did you think of our chapel?" asked Mrs. Fenwick.
+
+"I had no idea it was so big."
+
+"Why, they are not going to leave us a single soul to go to church.
+Mr. Puddleham means to make a clean sweep of the parish."
+
+"You don't mean to say that any have left you?"
+
+"Well; none as yet," replied Mrs. Fenwick. "But then the chapel isn't
+finished; and the Marquis has not yet sent his order to his tenants
+to become dissenters. We expect that he will do so, unless he can
+persuade the bishop to turn Frank out of the living."
+
+"But the bishop couldn't turn him out."
+
+"Of course, he couldn't,--and wouldn't if he could. The bishop and
+Frank are the best friends in the world. But that has nothing to do
+with it. You mustn't abuse the chapel to Frank; just at this moment
+the subject is tabooed. My belief is that the whole edifice will have
+to come down, and that the confusion of Mr. Puddleham and the Marquis
+will be something more complete than ever was yet seen. In the
+meantime, I put my finger to my lip, and just look at Frank whenever
+the chapel is mentioned."
+
+And then there was the matter of the murder, and the somewhat sad
+consideration of Sam's protracted absence.
+
+"And will you have to pay four hundred pounds, Mr. Fenwick?" Mary
+asked.
+
+"I shall be liable to pay it if he does not appear to-morrow, and no
+doubt must absolutely pay it if he does not turn up soon."
+
+"But you don't think that he was one of them?"
+
+"I am quite sure he was not. But he has had trouble in his family,
+and he got into a quarrel, and I fancy he has left the country. The
+police say that he has been traced to Liverpool."
+
+"And will the other men be convicted?" Mrs. Fenwick asked.
+
+"I believe they will, and most fervently hope so. They have some
+evidence about the wheels of a small cart in which Burrows certainly,
+and, I believe, no doubt Acorn also, were seen to drive across
+Pycroft Common early on the Sunday morning. A part of the tire had
+come off, and another bit, somewhat broader, and an inch or so too
+short, had been substituted. The impress made by this wheel in the
+mud, just round the corner by the farm gate, was measured and copied
+at the time, and they say that this will go far to identify the men.
+That the man's cart was there is certain,--also that he was in the
+same cart at Pycroft Common an hour or two after the murder."
+
+"That does seem clear," said Mary.
+
+"But somebody suggests that Sam had borrowed the cart. I believe,
+however, that it will all come out;--only, if I have to pay four
+hundred pounds I shall think that Farmer Trumbull has cost me very
+dear."
+
+On the next morning Gilmore came to the vicarage. It had been
+arranged that he would drive Fenwick over to Heytesbury, and that he
+would call for him after breakfast. A somewhat late hour,--two in the
+afternoon,--had been fixed for going on with the murder case, as it
+was necessary that a certain constable should come down from London
+on that morning; and, therefore, there would be no need for the two
+men to start very early from Bullhampton. This was explained to Mary
+by Mrs. Fenwick. "He dines here to-day," she had said when they met
+in the morning before prayers, "and you may as well get over the
+first awkwardness at once." Mary had assented to this, and, after
+breakfast, Gilmore made his appearance among them in the garden. He
+was just one moment alone with the girl he loved.
+
+"Miss Lowther," he said, "I cannot be with you for an instant without
+telling you that I am unchanged."
+
+Mary made no reply, and he said nothing further. Mrs. Fenwick was
+with them so quickly that there was no need for a reply,--and then he
+was gone. During the whole day the two friends talked of the murder,
+and of the Brattles, and the chapel,--which was thoroughly inspected
+from the roof to the floor,--but not a word was said about the
+loves of Harry Gilmore or Walter Marrable. Gilmore's name was often
+mentioned as the whole story was told of Lord Trowbridge's new
+quarrel, and of the correspondence with the bishop,--of which Fenwick
+had learned the particulars from the bishop's chaplain. And in the
+telling of this story Mrs. Fenwick did not scruple to express her
+opinion that Harry Gilmore had behaved well, with good spirit, and
+like a true friend. "If the Marquis had been anywhere near his own
+age I believe he would have horsewhipped him," said the Vicar's wife,
+with that partiality for the corporal chastisement of an enemy which
+is certainly not uncommon to the feminine mind. This was all very
+well, and called for no special remark from Mary, and possibly might
+have an effect.
+
+The gentlemen returned late in the evening, and the Squire dressed at
+the vicarage. But the great event of the day had to be told before
+anyone was allowed to dress. Between four and five o'clock, just as
+the magistrates were going to leave the bench, Sam Brattle had walked
+into Court.
+
+"And your money is safe?" said his wife.
+
+"Yes, my money is safe; but, I declare, I think more of Sam's truth.
+He was there, as it seemed, all of a sudden. The police had learned
+nothing of him. He just walked into the court, and we heard his
+voice. 'They tell me I'm wanted,' he said; and so he gave himself
+up."
+
+"And what was done?" asked his wife.
+
+"It was too late to do anything; so they allowed a remand for another
+week, and Sam was walked off to prison."
+
+At dinner time the conversation was still about the murder. It had
+been committed after Mary Lowther had left Bullhampton; but she had
+heard all the details, and was now as able to be interested about
+it as were the others. It was Gilmore's opinion that, instead of
+proceeding against Sam, they would put him into the witness-box and
+make him tell what he knew about the presence of the other two men.
+Fenwick declared that, if they did so, such was Sam's obstinacy that
+he would tell nothing. It was his own idea,--as he had explained
+both to his wife and to Gilmore,--that Carry Brattle could give more
+evidence respecting the murder than her brother. Of this he said
+nothing at present, but he had informed Constable Toffy that if
+Caroline Brattle were wanted for the examination she would be found
+at the house of Mrs. Stiggs.
+
+Thus for an hour or two the peculiar awkwardness of the meeting
+between Harry Gilmore and Mary was removed. He was enabled to
+talk with energy on a matter of interest, and she could join the
+conversation. But when they were round the tea-table it seemed to be
+arranged by common consent that Trumbull's murder and the Brattles
+should, for a while, be laid aside. Then Mary became silent and
+Gilmore became awkward. When inquiries were made as to Miss Marrable,
+he did not know whether to seem to claim, or not to claim, that
+lady's acquaintance. He could not, of course, allude to his visit
+to Loring, and yet he could hardly save himself from having to
+acknowledge that he had been there. However, the hour wore itself
+away, and he was allowed to take his departure.
+
+During the next two days he did not see Mary Lowther. On the Friday
+he met her with Mrs. Fenwick as the two were returning from the mill.
+They had gone to visit Mrs. Brattle and Fanny, and to administer such
+comfort as was possible in the present circumstances. The poor woman
+told them that the father was now as silent about his son as about
+his daughter, but that he had himself gone over to Heytesbury to
+secure legal advice for the lad, and to learn from Mr. Jones, the
+attorney, what might be the true aspect of the case. Of what he had
+learned he had told nothing to the women at the mill, but the two
+ladies had expressed their strong opinion of Sam's innocence. All
+this was narrated by Mrs. Fenwick to Gilmore, and Mary Lowther was
+enabled to take her part in the narrative. The Squire was walking
+between the two, and it seemed to him as he walked that Mary at least
+had no desire to avoid him. He became high in hope, and began to wish
+that even now, at this moment, he might be left alone with her and
+might learn his fate. He parted from them when they were near the
+village, and as he went he held Mary's hand within his own for a few
+moments. There was no return of his pressure, but it seemed to him
+that her hand was left with him almost willingly.
+
+"What do you think of him?" her friend said to her, as soon as he had
+parted from them.
+
+"What do I think of him? I have always thought well of him."
+
+"I know you have; to think otherwise of one who is positively so good
+would be impossible. But do you feel more kindly to him than you
+used?"
+
+"Janet," said Mary, after pausing awhile, "you had better leave me
+alone. Don't be angry with me; but really it will be better that you
+should leave me alone."
+
+"I won't be angry with you, and I will leave you alone," said Mrs.
+Fenwick. And, as she considered this request afterwards, it seemed to
+her that the very making of such a request implied a determination on
+the girl's part to bring herself to accept the man's offer,--if it
+might be possible.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIX.
+
+MARY LOWTHER'S DOOM.
+
+
+The police were so very tedious in managing their business, and
+the whole affair of the second magisterial investigation was so
+protracted, that people in the neighbourhood became almost tired of
+it, in spite of that appetite for excitement which the ordinary quiet
+life of a rural district produces. On the first Tuesday in June Sam
+had surrendered himself at Heytesbury, and on the second Tuesday it
+was understood that the production of the prisoners was only formal.
+The final examination, and committal, if the evidence should be
+sufficient, was to take place on the third Tuesday in the month.
+Against this Mr. Jones had remonstrated very loudly on Sam's behalf,
+protesting that the magistrates were going beyond their power in
+locking up a man against whom there was no more evidence now than
+there had been when before they had found themselves compelled to
+release him on bail. But this was of no avail. Sam had been released
+before because the men who were supposed to have been his accomplices
+were not in custody; and now that they were in custody the police
+declared it to be out of the question that he should be left at
+large. The magistrates of course agreed with the police, in spite of
+the indignation of Mr. Jones. In the meantime a subpoena was served
+upon Carry Brattle to appear on that final Tuesday,--Tuesday the
+nineteenth of June. The policeman, when he served her with the paper,
+told her that on the morning in question he would come and fetch her.
+The poor girl said not a word as she took into her hand the dreadful
+document. Mrs. Stiggs asked a question or two of the man, but
+got from him no information. But it was well known in Trotter's
+Buildings, and round about the Three Honest Men, that Sam Brattle was
+to be tried for the murder of Mr. Trumbull, and public opinion in
+that part of Salisbury was adverse to Sam. Public opinion was averse,
+also, to poor Carry; and Mrs. Stiggs was becoming almost tired of her
+lodger, although the payment made for her was not ungenerous and was
+as punctual as the sun. In truth, the tongue of the landlady of the
+Three Honest Men was potential in those parts, and was very bitter
+against Sam and his sister.
+
+In the meantime there was a matter of interest which, to our friends
+at Bullhampton, exceeded even that of the Heytesbury examinations.
+Mr. Gilmore was now daily at the vicarage on some new or old lover's
+pretence. It might be that he stood but for a minute or two on the
+terrace outside the drawing-room windows, or that he would sit with
+the ladies during half the afternoon, or that he would come down to
+dinner,--some excuse having arisen for an invitation to that effect
+during the morning. Very little was said on the subject between Mrs.
+Fenwick and Mary Lowther, and not a word between the Vicar and his
+guest; but between Mr. and Mrs. Fenwick many words were spoken, and
+before the first week was over they were sure that she would yield.
+
+"I think she will," said Mrs. Fenwick;--"but she will do it in
+agony."
+
+"Then if I were Harry I would leave her alone," said the Vicar.
+
+"But you are not Harry; and if you were, you would be wrong. She will
+not be happy when she accepts him; but by the time the day fixed for
+the wedding comes round, she will have reconciled herself to it, and
+then she will be as loving a wife as ever a man had." But the Vicar
+shook his head and said that, so far as he was concerned, love of
+that sort would not have sufficed for him.
+
+"Of course," said his wife, "it is very pleasant for a man to be told
+that the woman he loves is dying for him; but men can't always have
+everything that they want."
+
+Mary Lowther at this time became subject to a feeling of shame which
+almost overwhelmed her. There grew upon her a consciousness that she
+had allowed herself to come to Bullhampton on purpose that she might
+receive a renewed offer of marriage from her old lover, and that
+she had done so because her new and favoured lover had left her. Of
+course she must accept Mr. Gilmore. Of that she had now become quite
+sure. She had come to Bullhampton,--so she now told herself,--because
+she had been taught to believe that it would not be right for her to
+abandon herself to a mode of life which was not to her taste. All the
+friends in whose judgment she could confide expressed to her in every
+possible way their desire that she should marry this man; and now she
+had made this journey with the view of following their counsel. So
+she thought of herself and her doings; but such was not in truth the
+case. When she first determined to visit Bullhampton, she was very
+far from thinking that she would accept the man. Mrs. Fenwick's
+argument that she should not be kept away from Bullhampton by fear of
+Mr. Gilmore, had prevailed with her,--and she had come. And now that
+she was there, and that this man was daily with her, it was no longer
+possible that she should refuse him. And, after all, what did it
+matter? She was becoming sick of the importance which she imputed to
+herself in thinking of herself. If she could make the man happy why
+should she not do so? The romance of her life had become to her a
+rhodomontade of which she was ashamed. What was her love, that she
+should think so much about it? What did it mean? Could she not do her
+duty in the position in life in which her friends wished to place
+her, without hankering after a something which was not to be bestowed
+on her? After all, what did it all matter? She would tell the man the
+exact truth as well as she knew how to tell it, and then let him take
+her or leave her as he listed.
+
+And she did tell him the truth, after the following fashion. It
+came to pass at last that a day and an hour was fixed in which Mr.
+Gilmore might come to the vicarage and find Mary alone. There were no
+absolute words arranging this to which she was a party, but it was
+understood. She did not even pretend an unwillingness to receive him,
+and had assented by silence when Mrs. Fenwick had said that the man
+should be put out of his suspense. Mary, when she was silent, knew
+well that it was no longer within her power to refuse him.
+
+He came and found her alone. He knew, too, or fancied that he knew,
+what would be the result of the interview. She would accept him,
+without protestations of violent love for himself, acknowledging what
+had passed between her and her cousin, and proffering to him the
+offer of future affection. He had pictured it all to himself, and
+knew that he intended to accept what would be tendered. There were
+drawbacks in the happiness which was in store for him, but still
+he would take what he could get. As each so nearly understood the
+purpose of the other it was almost a pity that the arrangement could
+not be made without any words between them,--words which could hardly
+be pleasant either in the speaking or in the hearing.
+
+He had determined that he would disembarrass himself of all
+preliminary flourishes in addressing her, and had his speech ready as
+he took her by the hand. "Mary," he said, "you know why I am here."
+Of course she made no reply. "I told you when I first saw you again
+that I was unchanged." Then he paused, as though he expected that she
+would answer him, but still she said nothing. "Indeed I am unchanged.
+When you were here before I told you that I could look forward to no
+happiness unless you would consent to be my wife. That was nearly a
+year ago, and I have come again now to tell you the same thing. I do
+not think but what you will believe me to be in earnest."
+
+"I know that you are in earnest," she said.
+
+"No man was ever more so. My constancy has been tried during the time
+that you have been away. I do not say so as a reproach to you. Of
+course there can be no reproach. I have nothing to complain of in
+your conduct to me. But I think I may say that if my regard for you
+has outlived the pain of those months there is some evidence that it
+is sincere."
+
+"I have never doubted your sincerity."
+
+"Nor can you doubt my constancy."
+
+"Except in this, that it is so often that we want that which we have
+not, and find it so little worthy of having when we get it."
+
+"You do not say that from your heart, Mary. If you mean to refuse me
+again, it is not because you doubt the reality of my love."
+
+"I do not mean to refuse you again, Mr. Gilmore." Then he attempted
+to put his arm round her waist, but she recoiled from him, not in
+anger, but very quietly, and with a womanly grace that was perfect.
+"But you must hear me first, before I can allow you to take me in the
+only way in which I can bestow myself. I have been steeling myself to
+this, and I must tell you all that has occurred since we were last
+together."
+
+"I know it all," said he, anxious that she should be spared;--anxious
+also that he himself should be spared the pain of hearing that which
+she was about to say to him.
+
+But it was necessary for her that she should say it. She would not go
+to him as his accepted mistress upon other terms than those she had
+already proposed to herself. "Though you know it, I must speak of
+it," she said. "I should not, otherwise, be dealing honestly either
+with you or with myself. Since I saw you last, I have met my cousin,
+Captain Marrable. I became attached to him with a quickness which
+I cannot even myself understand. I loved him dearly, and we were
+engaged to be married."
+
+"You wrote to me, Mary, and told me all that." This he said, striving
+to hide the impatience which he felt; but striving in vain.
+
+"I did so, and now I have to tell you that that engagement is at
+an end. Circumstances occurred,--a sad loss of income that he had
+expected,--which made it imperative on him, and also on me in his
+behalf, that we should abandon our hopes. He would have been ruined
+by such a marriage,--and it is all over." Then she paused, and he
+thought that she had done; but there was more to be said, words
+heavier to be borne than any which she had yet uttered. "And I love
+him still. I should lie if I said that it was not so. If he were free
+to marry me this moment I should go to him." As she said this, there
+came a black cloud across his brow; but he stood silent to hear it
+all to the last. "My respect and esteem for you are boundless," she
+continued,--"but he has my heart. It is only because I know that I
+cannot be his wife that I have allowed myself to think whether it is
+my duty to become the wife of another man. After what I now say to
+you, I do not expect that you will persevere. Should you do so, you
+must give me time." Then she paused, as though it were now his turn
+to speak; but there was something further that she felt herself
+bound to say, and, as he was still silent, she continued. "My
+friends,--those whom I most trust in the world, my aunt and Janet
+Fenwick, all tell me that it will be best for me to accept your
+offer. I have made no promise to either of them. I would tell my
+mind to no one till I told it to you. I believe I owe as much to
+you,--almost as much as a woman can owe to a man; but still, were my
+cousin so placed that he could afford to marry a poor wife, I should
+leave you and go to him at once. I have told you everything now; and
+if, after this, you can think me worth having, I can only promise
+that I will endeavour, at some future time, to do my duty to you as
+your wife." Then she had finished, and she stood before him--waiting
+her doom.
+
+His brow had become black and still blacker as she continued her
+speech. He had kept his eyes upon her without quailing for a moment,
+and had hoped for some moment of tenderness, some sparkle of feeling,
+at seeing which he might have taken her in his arms and have stopped
+the sternness of her speech. But she had been at least as strong as
+he was, and had not allowed herself to show the slightest sign of
+weakness.
+
+"You do not love me, then?" he said.
+
+"I esteem you as we esteem our dearest friends."
+
+"And you will never love me?"
+
+"How shall I answer you? I do love you,--but not as I love him. I
+shall never again have that feeling."
+
+"Except for him?"
+
+"Except for him. If it is to be conquered, I will conquer it. I know,
+Mr. Gilmore, that what I have told you will drive you from me. It
+ought to do so."
+
+"It is for me to judge of that," he said, turning upon her quickly.
+
+"In judging for myself I have thought it right to tell you the exact
+truth, and to let you know what it is that you would possess if you
+should choose to take me." Then again she was silent, and waited for
+her doom.
+
+There was a pause of, perhaps, a couple of minutes, during which he
+made no reply. He walked the length of the room twice, slowly, before
+he uttered a word, and during that time he did not look at her. Had
+he chosen to take an hour, she would not have interrupted him again.
+She had told him everything, and it was for him now to decide. After
+what she had said he could not but recall his offer. How was it
+possible that he should desire to make a woman his wife after such a
+declaration as that which she had made to him?
+
+"And now," he said, "it is for me to decide."
+
+"Yes, Mr. Gilmore, it is for you to decide."
+
+"Then," said he, coming up to her and putting out his hand, "you are
+my betrothed. May God in his mercy soften your heart to me, and
+enable you to give me some return for all the love that I bear you."
+She took his hand and raised it to her lips and kissed it, and then
+had left the room before he was able to stop her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER L.
+
+MARY LOWTHER INSPECTS HER FUTURE HOME.
+
+
+Of course it was soon known in the vicarage that Mary Lowther
+had accepted the Squire's hand. She had left him standing in
+the drawing-room;--had left him very abruptly, though she had
+condescended to kiss his hand. Perhaps in no way could she have made
+a kinder reply to his petition for mercy. In ordinary cases it is
+probably common for a lady, when she has yielded to a gentleman's
+entreaties for the gift of herself, to yield also something further
+for his immediate gratification, and to submit herself to his
+embrace. In this instance it was impossible that the lady should do
+so. After the very definite manner in which she had explained to him
+her feelings, it was out of the question that she should stay and toy
+with him;--that she should bear the pressure of his arm, or return
+his caresses. But there had come upon her a sharp desire to show her
+gratitude before she left him,--to show her gratitude, and to prove,
+by some personal action towards him, that though she had been forced
+to tell him that she did not love him,--that she did not love him
+after the fashion in which his love was given to her,--that yet he
+was dear to her, as our dearest friends are dear. And therefore, when
+he had stretched out his hand to her in sign of the offer which he
+was making her, she had raised it to her lips and kissed it.
+
+Very shortly after she had left the room Mrs. Fenwick came to him.
+"Well, Harry," she said, coming up close to him, and looking into his
+eyes to see how it had fared with him, "tell me that I may wish you
+joy."
+
+"She has promised that she will be my wife," he said.
+
+"And is not that what you have so long wished?"
+
+"Yes, indeed."
+
+"Then why are you not elated?"
+
+"I have no doubt she will tell you all. But do not suppose, Mrs.
+Fenwick, that I am not thankful. She has behaved very well,--and she
+has accepted me. She has explained to me in what way her acceptance
+has been given, and I have submitted to it."
+
+"Now, Harry, you are going to make yourself wretched about some
+romantic trifle."
+
+"I am not going to make myself miserable at all. I am much less
+miserable than I could have believed to be possible six months ago.
+She has told me that she will be my wife, and I do not for a moment
+think that she will go back from her word."
+
+"Then what is it?"
+
+"I have not won her as other men do. Never mind;--I do not mean to
+complain. Mrs. Fenwick, I shall trust you to let me know when she
+will be glad to see me here."
+
+"Of course you will come when you like and how you like. You must be
+quite at home here."
+
+"As far as you and Frank are concerned, that would be a
+matter-of-course to me. But it cannot be so--yet--in regard to Mary.
+At any rate, I will not intrude upon her till I know that my coming
+will not be a trouble to her." After this it was not necessary that
+Mrs. Fenwick should be told much more of the manner in which these
+new betrothals had been made.
+
+Mary was, of course, congratulated both by the Vicar and his wife,
+and she received their congratulations with a dignity of deportment
+which, even from her, almost surprised them. She said scarcely a
+word, but smiled as she was kissed by each of them and did whisper
+something as to her hope that she might be able to make Mr. Gilmore
+happy. There was certainly no triumph; and there was no visible sign
+of regret. When she was asked whether she would not wish that he
+should come to the vicarage, she declared that she would have him
+come just as he pleased. If she only knew of his coming beforehand
+she would take care that she would be within to receive him. Whatever
+might be his wishes, she would obey them. Mrs. Fenwick suggested that
+Gilmore would like her to go up to the Privets, and look at the house
+which was to be her future home. She promised that she would go with
+him at any hour that he might appoint. Then there was something said
+as to fixing the day of the wedding. "It is not to be immediately,"
+she replied; "he promised me that he would give me time." "She speaks
+of it as though she was going to be hung," the Vicar said afterwards
+to his wife.
+
+On the day after her engagement she saw Gilmore, and then she wrote
+to her aunt to tell her the tidings. Her letter was very short, and
+had not Miss Marrable thoroughly understood the character of her
+niece, and the agony of the struggle to which Mary was now subjected,
+it would have seemed to be cold and ungrateful. "My dear Aunt," said
+the letter, "Yesterday I accepted Mr. Gilmore's offer. I know you
+will be glad to hear this, as you have always thought that I ought
+to do so. No time has been fixed for the wedding, but it will not be
+very soon. I hope I may do my duty to him and make him happy; but I
+do not know whether I should not have been more useful in remaining
+with my affectionate aunt." That was the whole letter, and there
+was no other friend to whom she herself communicated the tidings.
+It occurred to her for a moment that she would write to Walter
+Marrable;--but Walter Marrable had told her nothing of Edith
+Brownlow. Walter Marrable would learn the news fast enough. And then,
+the writing of such a letter would not have been very easy to her.
+
+On the Sunday afternoon, after church, she walked up to the Privets
+with her lover. The engagement had been made on the previous
+Thursday, and this was the first occasion on which she had been
+alone with him for more than a minute or two at a time since she had
+then parted from him. They started immediately from the churchyard,
+passing out through the gate which led into Mr. Trumbull's field, and
+it was understood that they were to return for an early dinner at the
+vicarage. Mary had made many resolutions as to this walk. She would
+talk much, so that it might not be tedious and melancholy to him; she
+would praise everything, and show the interest which she took in the
+house and grounds; she would ask questions, and display no hesitation
+as to claiming her own future share of possession in all that
+belonged to him. She went off at once as soon as she was through the
+wicket gate, asking questions as to the division of the property of
+the parish between the two owners, as to this field and that field,
+and the little wood which they passed, till her sharp intelligence
+told her that she was over-acting her part. He was no actor,
+but unconsciously he perceived her effort; and he resented it,
+unconsciously also, by short answers and an uninterested tone. She
+was aware of it all, and felt that there had been a mistake. It
+would be better for her to leave the play in his hands, and to adapt
+herself to his moods.
+
+"We had better go straight up to the house," he said, as soon as the
+pathway had led them off Lord Trowbridge's land into his own domain.
+
+"I think we had," said she.
+
+"If we go round by the stables it will make us late for Fenwick's
+dinner."
+
+"We ought to be back by half-past two," she said. They had left the
+church exactly at half-past twelve, and were therefore to be together
+for two hours.
+
+He took her over the house. The showing of a house in such
+circumstances is very trying, both to the man and to the woman. He is
+weighted by a mixed load of pride in his possession and of assumed
+humility. She, to whom every detail of the future nest is so vitally
+important, is almost bound to praise, though every encomium she
+pronounces will be a difficulty in the way of those changes which
+she contemplates. But on the present occasion Mary contemplated
+no change. Marrying this man, as she was about to do, professedly
+without loving him, she was bound to take everything else as she
+found it. The dwelling rooms of the house she had known before; the
+dining-room, the drawing-room, and the library. She was now taken
+into his private chamber, where he sat as a magistrate, and paid his
+men, and kept his guns and fishing-rods. Here she sat down for a
+moment, and when he had told her this and that,--how he was always
+here for so long in the morning, and how he hoped that she would come
+to him sometimes when he was thus busy, he came and stood over her,
+putting his hand upon her shoulder. "Mary," he said, "will you not
+kiss me?"
+
+"Certainly I will," she said, jumping up, and offering her face to
+his salute. A month or two ago he would have given the world for
+permission to kiss her; and now it seemed as though the thing itself
+were a matter but of little joy. A kiss to be joyful should be
+stolen, with a conviction on the part of the offender that she who
+has suffered the loss will never prosecute the thief. She had meant
+to be good to him, but the favour would have gone further with him
+had she made more of it.
+
+Then they went up stairs. Who does not know the questions that were
+asked and that were answered? On this occasion they were asked and
+answered with matter-of-fact useful earnestness. The papers on the
+walls were perhaps old and ugly; but she did not mind it if they
+were so. If he liked to have the rooms new papered, of course it
+would be nice. Would she like new furniture? Did she object to the
+old-fashioned four-post bedsteads? Had she any special taste about
+hangings and colours? Of course she had, but she could not bring
+herself to indulge them by giving orders as to this or that. She
+praised everything; was satisfied with everything; was interested in
+everything; but would propose no changes. What right had she, seeing
+that she was to give him so little, to ask him to do this or that
+for her? She meant on this occasion to do all that she could for his
+happiness, but had she ordered new furniture for the whole house,
+begged that every room might be fresh papered, and pointed out that
+the panelling was old and must be altered, and the entire edifice
+re-painted inside and out, he would have been a happier man. "I hope
+you will find it comfortable," he said, in a tone of voice that was
+beyond measure lugubrious.
+
+"I am sure that I shall," she replied. "What more can any woman want
+than there is here? And then there are so many comforts to which I
+have never been used."
+
+This passed between them as they stood on the steps of the house,
+looking down upon green paddocks in front of the house; "I think we
+will come and see the gardens another day," he said.
+
+"Whenever you like," she answered. "Perhaps if we stay now we shall
+be keeping them waiting." Then, as they returned by the road, she
+remembered an account that Janet Fenwick had given her of a certain
+visit which Janet had made to the vicarage as Miss Balfour, and
+of all the joys of that inspection. But what right had she, Mary
+Lowther, to suppose that she could have any of the same pleasure?
+Janet Balfour, in her first visit to the vicarage, had been to see
+the home in which she was to live with the man to whom her whole
+heart had been given without reserve.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LI.
+
+THE GRINDER AND HIS COMRADE.
+
+
+As the day drew near for the final examination at Heytesbury of the
+suspected murderers,--the day on which it was expected that either
+all the three prisoners, or at least two of them, would be committed
+to take their trial at the summer assizes, the Vicar became anxious
+as to the appearance of Carry Brattle in the Court. At first he
+entertained an idea that he would go over to Salisbury and fetch her;
+but his wife declared that this was imprudent and Quixotic,--and
+that he shouldn't do it. Fenwick's argument in support of his own
+idea amounted to little more than this,--that he would go for the
+girl because the Marquis of Trowbridge would be sure to condemn
+him for taking such a step. "It is intolerable to me," he said,
+"that I should be impeded in my free action by the interference and
+accusations of such an ass as that." But the question was one on
+which his wife felt herself to be so strong that she would not yield,
+either to his logic or to his anger. "It can't be fit for you to go
+about and fetch witnesses; and it won't make it more fit because
+she is a pretty young woman who has lost her character." "Honi soit
+qui mal y pense," said the Vicar. But his wife was resolute, and he
+gave up the plan. He wrote, however, to the constable at Salisbury,
+begging the man to look to the young woman's comfort, and offering to
+pay for any special privilege or accommodation that might be accorded
+to her. This occurred on the Saturday before the day on which Mary
+Lowther was taken up to look at her new home.
+
+The Sunday passed by, with more or less of conversation respecting
+the murder; and so also the Monday morning. The Vicar had himself
+been summoned to give his evidence as to having found Sam Brattle
+in his own garden, in company with another man with whom he had
+wrestled, and whom he was able to substantiate as the Grinder; and,
+indeed, the terrible bruise made by the Vicar's life-preserver on
+the Grinder's back, would be proved by evidence from Lavington. On
+the Monday evening he was sitting, after dinner, with Gilmore, who
+had dined at the vicarage, when he was told that a constable from
+Salisbury wished to see him. The constable was called into the room,
+and soon told his story. He had gone up to Trotter's Buildings that
+day after dinner, and was told that the bird had flown. She had gone
+out that morning, and Mrs. Stiggs knew nothing of her departure. When
+they examined the room in which she slept, they found that she had
+taken what little money she possessed and her best clothes. She had
+changed her frock and put on a pair of strong boots, and taken her
+cloak with her. Mrs. Stiggs acknowledged that had she seen the girl
+going forth thus provided, her suspicions would have been aroused;
+but Carry had managed to leave the house without being observed. Then
+the constable went on to say that Mrs. Stiggs had told him that she
+had been sure that Carry would go. "I've been a waiting for it all
+along," she had said; "but when there came the law rumpus atop of the
+other, I knew as how she'd hop the twig." And now Carry Brattle had
+hopped the twig, and no one knew whither she had gone. There was much
+sorrow at the vicarage; for Mrs. Fenwick, though she had been obliged
+to restrain her husband's impetuosity in the matter, had nevertheless
+wished well for the poor girl;--and who could not believe aught of
+her now but that she would return to misery and degradation? When the
+constable was interrogated as to the need for her attendance on the
+morrow, he declared that nothing could now be done towards finding
+her and bringing her to Heytesbury in time for the magistrates'
+session. He supposed there would be another remand, and that then
+she, too, would be--wanted.
+
+But there had been so many remands that on the Tuesday the
+magistrates were determined to commit the men, and did commit two of
+them. Against Sam there was no tittle of evidence, except as to that
+fact that he had been seen with these men in Mr. Fenwick's garden;
+and it was at once proposed to put him into the witness-box, instead
+of proceeding against him as one of the murderers. As a witness he
+was adjudged to have behaved badly; but the assumed independence of
+his demeanour was probably the worst of his misbehaviour. He would
+tell them nothing of the circumstances of the murder, except that
+having previously become acquainted with the two men, Burrows and
+Acorn, and having, as he thought, a spite against the Vicar at the
+time, he had determined to make free with some of the vicarage fruit.
+He had, he said, met the men in the village that afternoon, and
+had no knowledge of their business there. He had known Acorn more
+intimately than the other man, and confessed at last that his
+acquaintance with that man had arisen from a belief that Acorn was
+about to marry his sister. He acknowledged that he knew that Burrows
+had been a convicted thief, and that Acorn had been punished for
+horse stealing. When he was asked how it had come to pass that he was
+desirous of seeing his sister married to a horse-stealer, he declined
+to answer, and, looking round the Court, said that he hoped there was
+no man there who would be coward enough to say anything against his
+sister. They who heard him declared that there was more of a threat
+than a request expressed in his words and manner.
+
+A question was put to him as to his knowledge of Farmer Trumbull's
+money. "There was them as knew; but I knew nothing," he said. He was
+pressed on this point by the magistrates, but would say not a word
+further. As to this, however, the police were indifferent, as they
+believed that they would be able to prove at the trial, from other
+sources, that the mother of the man called the Grinder had certainly
+received tidings of the farmer's wealth. There were many small
+matters of evidence to which the magistrates trusted. One of the men
+had bought poison, and the dog had been poisoned. The presence of the
+cart at the farmer's gate was proved, and the subsequent presence
+of the two men in the same cart at Pycroft Common. The size of the
+footprints, the characters and subsequent flight of the men, and
+certain damaging denials and admissions which they themselves had
+made, all went to make up the case against them, and they were
+committed to be tried for the murder. Sam, however, was allowed to go
+free, being served, however, with a subpoena to attend at the trial
+as a witness. "I will," said he, "if you send me down money enough
+to bring me up from South Shields, and take me back again. I ain't a
+coming on my own hook as I did this time;--and wouldn't now, only for
+Muster Fenwick." Our friends left the police to settle this question
+with Sam, and then drove home to Bullhampton.
+
+The Vicar was triumphant, though his triumph was somewhat quelled
+by the disappearance of Carry Brattle. There could, however, be no
+longer any doubt that Sam Brattle's innocence as to the murder was
+established. Head-Constable Toffy had himself acknowledged to him
+that Sam could have had no hand in it. "I told you so from the
+beginning," said the Vicar. "We 'as got the right uns, at any rate,"
+said the constable; "and it wasn't none of our fault that we hadn't
+'em before." But though Constable Toffy was thus honest, there were
+one or two in Heytesbury on that day who still persisted in declaring
+that Sam was one of the murderers. Sir Thomas Charleys stuck to that
+opinion to the last; and Lord Trowbridge, who had again sat upon the
+bench, was quite convinced that justice was being shamefully robbed
+of her due.
+
+When the Vicar reached Bullhampton, instead of turning into his own
+place at once, he drove himself on to the mill. He dropped Gilmore at
+the gate, but he could not bear that the father and mother should not
+know immediately, from a source which they would trust, that Sam had
+been declared innocent of that great offence. Driving round by the
+road, Fenwick met the miller about a quarter of a mile from his own
+house. "Mr. Brattle," he said, "they have committed the two men."
+
+"Have they, sir?" said the miller, not condescending to ask a
+question about his own son.
+
+"As I have said all along, Sam had no more to do with it than you or
+I."
+
+"You have been very good, Muster Fenwick."
+
+"Come, Mr. Brattle, do not pretend that this is not a comfort to
+you."
+
+"A comfort as my son ain't proved a murderer! If they'd a hanged 'im,
+Muster Fenwick, that'd a been bad, for certain. It ain't much of
+comfort we has; but there may be a better and a worser in everything,
+no doubt. I'm obleeged to you, all as one, Muster Fenwick--very much
+obleeged; and it will take a heavy load off his mother's heart." Then
+the Vicar turned his gig round, and drove himself home.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LII.
+
+CARRY BRATTLE'S JOURNEY.
+
+
+Mrs. Stiggs had been right in her surmise about Carry Brattle. The
+confinement in Trotter's Buildings and want of interest in her life
+was more than the girl could bear, and she had been thinking of
+escape almost from the first day that she had been there. Had it
+not been for the mingled fear and love with which she regarded Mr.
+Fenwick, had she not dreaded that he should think her ungrateful, she
+would have flown even before the summons came to her which told her
+that she must appear before the magistrates and lawyers, and among a
+crowd of people, in the neighbourhood of her old home. That she could
+not endure, and therefore she had flown. When it had been suggested
+to her that she should go and live with her brother's wife as
+her servant, that idea had been hard to bear. But there had been
+uncertainty, and an opinion of her own which proved to be right,
+that her sister-in-law would not receive her. Now about this paper
+that the policeman had handed to her, and the threatened journey to
+Heytesbury, there was no uncertainty,--unless she might possibly
+escape the evil by running away. Therefore she ran away.
+
+The straight-going people of the world, in dealing with those who go
+crooked, are almost always unreasonable. "Because you have been bad,"
+say they who are not bad to those who are bad, "because you have
+hitherto indulged yourself with all pleasures within your reach,
+because you have never worked steadily or submitted yourself to
+restraint, because you have been a drunkard, and a gambler, and have
+lived in foul company, therefore now,--now that I have got a hold of
+you and can manipulate you in reference to your repentance and future
+conduct,--I will require from you a mode of life that, in its general
+attractions, shall be about equal to that of a hermit in the desert.
+If you flinch you are not only a monster of ingratitude towards me,
+who am taking all this trouble to save you, but you are also a poor
+wretch for whom no possible hope of grace can remain." When it is
+found that a young man is neglecting his duties, doing nothing,
+spending his nights in billiard rooms and worse places, and getting
+up at two o'clock in the day, the usual prescription of his friends
+is that he should lock himself up in his own dingy room, drink tea,
+and spend his hours in reading good books. It is hardly recognised
+that a sudden change from billiards to good books requires a strength
+of character which, if possessed, would probably have kept the young
+man altogether from falling into bad habits. If we left the doors of
+our prisons open, and then expressed disgust because the prisoners
+walked out, we should hardly be less rational. The hours at Mrs.
+Stiggs's house had been frightfully heavy to poor Carry Brattle, and
+at last she escaped.
+
+It was half-past ten on the Monday morning when she went out. It was
+her custom to go out at that hour. Mr. Fenwick had desired her to
+attend the morning services at the Cathedral. She had done so for a
+day or two, and had then neglected them. But she had still left the
+house always at that time; and once, when Mrs. Stiggs had asked some
+question on the subject, she had replied almost in anger that she was
+not a prisoner. On this occasion she made changes in her dress which
+were not usual, and therefore she was careful to avoid being seen as
+she went; but had she been interrogated she would have persevered.
+Who had a right to stop her?
+
+But where should she go? The reader may perhaps remember that once
+when Mr. Fenwick first found this poor girl, after her flight from
+home and her great disgrace, she had expressed a desire to go to the
+mill and just look at it,--even if she might do no more than that.
+The same idea was now in her mind, but as she left the city she had
+no concerted plan. There were two things between which she must
+choose at once,--either to go to London, or not to go to London. She
+had money enough for her fare, and perhaps a few shillings over. In
+a dim way she did understand that the choice was between going to
+the devil at once,--and not going quite at once; and then, weakly,
+wistfully, with uncertain step, almost without an operation of her
+mind, she did not take the turn which, from the end of Trotter's
+Buildings, would have brought her to the Railway Station, but did
+take that which led her by the Three Honest Men out on to the Devizes
+road,--the road which passes across Salisbury Plain, and leads from
+the city to many Wiltshire villages,--of which Bullhampton is one.
+
+She walked slowly, but she walked nearly the whole day. Nothing could
+be more truly tragical than the utterly purposeless tenour of her
+day,--and of her whole life. She had no plan,--nothing before her;
+no object even for the evening and night of that very day in which
+she was wasting her strength on the Devizes road. It is the lack of
+object, of all aim, in the lives of the houseless wanderers that
+gives to them the most terrible element of their misery. Think of it!
+To walk forth with, say, ten shillings in your pocket,--so that there
+need be no instant suffering from want of bread or shelter,--and
+have no work to do, no friend to see, no place to expect you, no
+duty to accomplish, no hope to follow, no bourn to which you can
+draw nigher,--except that bourn which, in such circumstances, the
+traveller must surely regard as simply the end of his weariness! But
+there is nothing to which humanity cannot attune itself. Men can
+live upon poison, can learn to endure absolute solitude, can bear
+contumely, scorn, and shame, and never show it. Carry Brattle had
+already become accustomed to misery, and as she walked she thought
+more of the wretchedness of the present hour, of her weary feet, of
+her hunger, and of the nature of the rest which she might purchase
+for herself at some poor wayside inn, than she did of her future
+life.
+
+
+[Illustration: Carry Brattle.]
+
+
+She got a lump of bread and a glass of beer in the middle of the day,
+and then she walked on and on till the evening came. She went very
+slowly, stopping often and sitting down when the road side would
+afford her some spot of green shade. At eight o'clock she had walked
+fifteen miles, straight along the road, and, as she knew well, had
+passed the turn which would have taken her by the nearest way from
+Salisbury to Bullhampton. She had formed no plan, but entertained a
+hope that if she continued to walk they would not catch her so as to
+take her to Heytesbury on the morrow. She knew that if she went on
+she might get to Pycroft Common by this road; and though there was no
+one in the whole world whom she hated worse than Mrs. Burrows, still
+at Pycroft Common she might probably be taken in and sheltered. At
+eight she reached a small village which she remembered to have seen
+before, of which she saw the name written up on a board, and which
+she knew to be six miles from Bullhampton. She was so tired and weary
+that she could go no further, and here she asked for a bed. She told
+them that she was walking from Salisbury to the house of a friend who
+lived near Devizes, and that she had thought she could do it in one
+day and save her railway fare. She was simply asked to pay for her
+bed and supper beforehand, and then she was taken in and fed and
+sheltered. On the next morning she got up very late and was unwilling
+to leave the house. She paid for her breakfast, and, as she was
+not told to go her way, she sat on the chair in which she had been
+placed, without speaking, almost without moving, till late in the
+afternoon. At three o'clock she roused herself, asked for some bread
+and cheese which she put in her pocket, and started again upon her
+journey. She thought that she would be safe, at any rate for that
+day, from the magistrates and the policemen, from the sight of her
+brother, and from the presence of that other man at Heytesbury. But
+whither she would go when she left the house,--whether on to the
+hated cottage at Pycroft Common, or to her father's house, she had
+not made up her mind when she tied on her hat. She went on along
+the road towards Devizes, and about two miles from the village she
+came to a lane turning to the left, with a finger-post. On this was
+written a direction,--To Bullhampton and Imber; and here she turned
+short off towards the parish in which she had been born. It was then
+four o'clock, and when she had travelled a mile further she found
+a nook under the wall of a little bridge, and there she seated
+herself, and ate her dinner of bread and cheese. While she was there
+a policeman on foot passed along the road. The man did not see her,
+and had he seen her would have taken no more than a policeman's
+ordinary notice of her; but she saw him, and in consequence did not
+leave her hiding-place for hours.
+
+About nine o'clock she crept on again, but even then her mind was not
+made up. She did not even yet know where she would bestow herself for
+that night. It seemed to her that there would be an inexpressible
+pleasure to her, even in her misery, in walking round the precincts
+of the mill, in gazing at the windows of the house, in standing on
+the bridge where she had so often loitered, and in looking once more
+on the scene of her childhood. But, as she thought of this, she
+remembered the darkness of the stream, and the softly-gurgling but
+rapid flow with which it hurried itself on beneath the black abyss of
+the building. She had often shuddered as she watched it, indulging
+herself in the luxury of causeless trepidation. But now, were she
+there, she would surely take that plunge into the blackness, which
+would bring her to the end of all her misery!
+
+And yet, as she went on towards her old home, through the twilight,
+she had no more definite idea than that of looking once more on
+the place which had been cherished in her memory through all her
+sufferings. As to her rest for the night she had no plan,--unless,
+indeed, she might find her rest in the hidden mill-pool of that dark,
+softly-gurgling stream.
+
+On that same day, between six and seven in the evening, the miller
+was told by Mr. Fenwick that his son was no longer accused of the
+murder. He had not received the information in the most gracious
+manner; but not the less quick was he in making it known at the mill.
+"Them dunderheads over at He'tsbry has found out at last as our
+Sam had now't to do with it." This he said, addressing no one in
+particular, but in the hearing of his wife and Fanny Brattle. Then
+there came upon him a torrent of questions and a torrent also of
+tears. Mrs. Brattle and Fanny had both made up their minds that Sam
+was innocent; but the mother had still feared that he would be made
+to suffer in spite of his innocence. Fanny, however, had always
+persisted that the goodness of the Lord would save him and them from
+such injustice. To the old man himself they had hardly dared to talk
+about it, but now they strove to win him to some softness. Might not
+a struggle be made to bring Sam back to the mill? But it was very
+hard to soften the miller. "After what's come and gone, the lad is
+better away," he said, at last. "I didn't think as he'd ever raised
+his hand again an old man," he said, shortly afterwards; "but he's
+kep' company with them as did. It's a'most as bad." Beyond this
+the miller would not go; but, when they separated for the night,
+the mother took herself for awhile into the daughter's chamber in
+order that they might weep and rejoice together. It was now all but
+midsummer, and the evenings were long and sultry. The window of
+Fanny's bedroom looked out on to the garden of the mill, and was but
+a foot or two above the ground. This ground had once been pleasant to
+them all, and profitable withal. Of late, since the miller had become
+old, and Sam had grown to be too restive and self-willed to act
+as desired for the general welfare of the family, but little of
+pleasure, or profit either, had been forthcoming from the patch
+of ground. There were a few cabbages there, and rows of untended
+gooseberry and currant bushes, and down towards the orchard there was
+a patch of potatoes; but no one took pride now in the garden. As for
+Fanny, if she could provide that there should always be a sufficient
+meal on the table for her father and mother, it was as much as she
+could do. The days were clean gone by in which she had had time and
+spirits to tend her roses, pinks, and pansies. Now she sat at the
+open window with her mother, and with bated breath they spoke of the
+daughter and sister that was lost to them.
+
+"He wouldn't take it amiss, mother, if I was to go over to
+Salisbury?"
+
+"If you was to ask him, Fan, he'd bid you not," said the mother.
+
+"But I wouldn't ask him. I wouldn't tell him till I was back. She
+was to be before the magistrates to-day. Mr. Fenwick told me so on
+Sunday."
+
+"It will about be the death of her."
+
+"I don't know, mother. She's bolder now, mother, I fear, than what
+she was in old days. And she was always sprightly,--speaking up to
+the quality, with no fear like. Maybe it was what she said that got
+them to let Sam go. She was never a coward, such as me."
+
+"Oh, Fan, if she'd only a taken after thee!"
+
+"The Lord, mother, makes us different for purposes of his own. Of all
+the lasses I ever see, to my eyes she was the comeliest." The old
+woman couldn't speak now, but rubbed her moist cheeks with her raised
+apron. "I'll ask Mr. Toffy to-morrow, mother," continued Fanny, "and
+if she be still at that place in Salisbury where Mr. Fenwick put her,
+I'll just go to her. Father won't turn me out of the house along of
+it."
+
+"Turn thee out, Fan! He'll never turn thee out. What 'd a do, or what
+'d I do if thee was to go away from us? If thou dost go, Fan, take
+her a few bits of things that are lying there in the big press, and
+'ll never be used other gait. I warrant the poor child 'll be but
+badly off for under-clothing."
+
+And then they planned how the journey on the morrow should be
+made,--after the constable should have been questioned, and the Vicar
+should have been consulted. Fanny would leave home immediately after
+breakfast, and when the miller should ask after her at dinner his
+wife should tell him that his daughter had gone to Salisbury. If
+further question should be asked,--and it was thought possible that
+no further question would be asked, as the father would then guess
+the errand on which his daughter would have gone,--but if the subject
+were further mooted, Mrs. Brattle, with such courage as she might be
+able to assume, should acknowledge the business that had taken Fanny
+to Salisbury. Then there arose questions about money. Mr. Fenwick had
+owned, thinking that he might thereby ease the mother's heart, that
+for the present Carry was maintained by him. To take this task upon
+themselves the mother and daughter were unable. The money which they
+had in hand, very small in amount, was, they knew, the property of
+the head of the family. That they could do no permanent good to Carry
+was a great grief. But it might be something if they could comfort
+her for awhile.
+
+"I don't think but what her heart 'll still be soft to thee, Fan; and
+who knows but what it may bring her round to see thy face, and hear
+thy voice."
+
+At that moment Fanny heard a sound in the garden, and stretched her
+head and shoulders quickly out of the window. They had been late at
+the mill that evening, and it was now eleven o'clock. It had been
+still daylight when the miller had left them at tea; but the night
+had crept on them as they had sat there. There was no moon, but there
+was still something left of the reflection of the last colours of
+the setting sun, and the night was by no means dark. Fanny saw at
+once the figure of a woman, though she did not at once recognise the
+person of her sister. "Oh, mother! oh, mother! oh, mother!" said a
+voice from the night; and in a moment Carry Brattle had stretched
+herself so far within the window that she had grasped her mother by
+the arm.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LIII.
+
+THE FATTED CALF.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Mrs. Brattle, when she heard her daughter's voice, was so confounded,
+dismayed, and frightened, that for awhile she could give no direction
+as to what should be done. She had screamed at first, having some dim
+idea in her mind that the form she saw was not of living flesh and
+blood. And Carry herself had been hardly more composed or mistress of
+herself than her mother. She had strayed thither, never having quite
+made up her mind to any settled purpose. From the spot in which she
+had hidden herself under the bridge when the policeman passed her she
+had started when the evening sun was setting, and had wandered on
+slowly till the old familiar landmarks of the parish were reached.
+And then she came to the river, and looking across could just see
+the eaves of the mill through the willows by the last gloaming of
+the sunlight. Then she stood and paused, and every now and again had
+crept on a few feet as her courage came to her, and at last, by the
+well known little path, she had crept down behind the mill, crossing
+the stream by the board which had once been so accustomed to her
+feet, and had made her way into the garden and had heard her mother
+and sister as they talked together at the open window. Any idea which
+she had hitherto entertained of not making herself known to them at
+the mill,--of not making herself known at any rate to her mother and
+sister,--left her at once at that moment. There had been upon her
+a waking dream, a horrid dream, that the waters of the mill-stream
+might flow over her head, and hide her wickedness and her misery
+from the eyes of men; and she had stood and shuddered as she saw the
+river; but she had never really thought that her own strength would
+suffice for that termination to her sorrows. It was more probable
+that she would be doomed to lie during the night beneath a hedge, and
+then perish of the morning cold! But now, as she heard the voices at
+the window, there could be no choice for her but that she should make
+herself known,--not though her father should kill her.
+
+Even Fanny was driven beyond the strength of her composure by the
+strangeness of this advent. "Carry! Carry!" she exclaimed over and
+over again, not aloud,--and indeed her voice was never loud,--but
+with bated wonder. The two sisters held each other by the hand, and
+Carry's other hand still grasped her mother's arm. "Oh, mother, I am
+so tired," said the girl. "Oh, mother, I think that I shall die."
+
+"My child;--my poor child. What shall we do, Fan?"
+
+"Bring her in, of course," said Fanny.
+
+"But your father--"
+
+"We couldn't turn her away from the very window, and she like that,
+mother."
+
+"Don't turn me away, Fanny. Dear Fanny, do not turn me away," said
+Carry, striving to take her sister by the other hand.
+
+"No, Carry, we will not," said Fanny, trying to settle her mind to
+some plan of action. Any idea of keeping the thing long secret from
+her father she knew that she could not entertain; but for this night
+she resolved at last that shelter should be given to the discarded
+daughter without the father's knowledge. But even in doing this there
+would be difficulty. Carry must be brought in through the window, as
+any disturbance at the front of the house would arouse the miller.
+And then Mrs. Brattle must be made to go to her own room, or her
+absence would create suspicion and confusion. Fanny, too, had
+terrible doubts as to her mother's powers of going to her bed and
+lying there without revealing to her husband that some cause of great
+excitement had arisen. And then it might be that the miller would
+come to his daughter's room, and insist that the outcast should be
+made an outcast again, even in the middle of the night. He was a man
+so stern, so obstinate, so unforgiving, so masterful, that Fanny,
+though she would face any danger as regarded herself, knew that
+terrible things might happen. It seemed to her that Carry was very
+weak. If their father came to them in his wrath, might she not die in
+her despair? Nevertheless it was necessary that something should be
+done. "We must let her get in at the window, mother," she said. "It
+won't do, nohow, to unbar the door."
+
+"But what if he was to kill her outright! Oh, Carry; oh, my child. I
+dunna know as she can get in along of her weakness." But Carry was
+not so tired as that. She had been in and out of that window scores
+of times; and now, when she heard that the permission was accorded
+to her, she was not long before she was in her mother's arms. "My
+own Carry, my own bairn;--my girl, my darling." And the poor mother
+satisfied the longings of her heart with infinite caresses.
+
+Fanny in the meantime had crept out to the kitchen, and now returned
+with food in a plate and cold tea. "My girl," she said, "you must eat
+a bit, and then we will have you to bed. When the morn comes, we must
+think about it."
+
+"Fanny, you was always the best that there ever was," said Carry,
+speaking from her mother's bosom.
+
+"And now, mother," continued Fanny, "you must creep off. Indeed you
+must, or of course father'll wake up. And mother, don't say a word
+to-morrow when he rises. I'll go to him in the mill myself. That'll
+be best." Then, with longings that could hardly be repressed, with
+warm, thick, clinging kisses, with a hot, rapid, repeated assurance
+that everything,--everything had been forgiven, that her own Carry
+was once more her own, own Carry, the poor mother allowed herself
+to be banished. There seemed to her to be such a world of cruelty
+in the fact that Fanny might remain for the whole of that night
+with the dear one who had returned to them, while she must be sent
+away,--perhaps not to see her again if the storm in the morning
+should rise too loudly! Fanny, with great craft, accompanied her
+mother to her room, so that if the old man should speak she might
+be there to answer;--but the miller slept soundly after his day of
+labour, and never stirred.
+
+"What will he do to me, Fan?" the wanderer asked as soon as her
+sister returned.
+
+"Don't think of it now, my pet," said Fanny, softened almost as her
+mother was softened by the sight of her sister.
+
+"Will he kill me, Fan?"
+
+"No, dear; he will not lay a hand upon you. It is his words that are
+so rough! Carry, Carry, will you be good?"
+
+"I will, dear; indeed I will. I have not been bad since Mr. Fenwick
+came."
+
+"My sister,--if you will be good, I will never leave you. My heart's
+darling, my beauty, my pretty one! Carry, you shall be the same to
+me as always, if you'll be good. I'll never cast it up again you, if
+you'll be good." Then she, too, filled herself full, and satisfied
+the hungry craving of her love with the warmth of her caresses. "But
+thee'll be famished, lass. I'll see thee eat a bit, and then I'll put
+thee comfortable to bed."
+
+Poor Carry Brattle was famished, and ate the bread and bacon which
+were set before her, and drank the cold tea, with an appetite which
+was perhaps unbecoming the romance of her position. Her sister stood
+over her, cutting a slice now and then from the loaf, telling her
+that she had taken nothing, smoothing her hair, and wishing for her
+sake that the fire were better. "I'm afeard of father, Fan,--awfully;
+but for all that, it's the sweetest meal as I've had since I left the
+mill." Then Fanny was on her knees beside the returned profligate,
+covering even the dear one's garments with her kisses.
+
+It was late before Fanny laid herself down by her sister's side that
+night. "Carry," she whispered when her sister was undressed, "will
+you kneel here and say your prayers as you used to?" Carry, without a
+word, did as she was bidden, and hid her face upon her hands in her
+sister's lap. No word was spoken out loud, but Fanny was satisfied
+that her sister had been in earnest. "Now sleep, my darling;--and
+when I've just tidied your things for the morning, I will be with
+you." The wanderer again obeyed, and in a few moments the work of the
+past two days befriended her, and she was asleep. Then the sister
+went to her task with the soiled frock and the soiled shoes, and
+looked up things clean and decent for the morrow. It would be at any
+rate well that Carry should appear before her father without the
+stain of the road upon her.
+
+As the lost one lay asleep there, with her soft ringlets all loose
+upon the pillow, still beautiful, still soft, lovely though an
+outcast from the dearest rights of womanhood, with so much of
+innocence on her brow, with so much left of the grace of childhood
+though the glory of the flower had been destroyed by the unworthy
+hand that had ravished its sweetness, Fanny, sitting in the corner
+of the room over her work, with her eye from moment to moment turned
+upon the sleeper, could not keep her mind from wandering away in
+thoughts on the strange destiny of woman. She knew that there had
+been moments in her life in which her great love for her sister had
+been tinged with envy. No young lad had ever waited in the dusk to
+hear the sound of her footfall; no half-impudent but half-bashful
+glances had ever been thrown after her as she went through the
+village on her business. To be a homely, household thing, useful
+indeed in this world, and with high hopes for the future,--but still
+to be a drudge; that had been her destiny. There was never a woman
+to whom the idea of being loved was not the sweetest thought that
+her mind could produce. Fate had made her plain, and no man had
+loved her. The same chance had made Carry pretty,--the belle of the
+village, the acknowledged beauty of Bullhampton. And there she lay,
+a thing said to be so foul that even a father could not endure to
+have her name mentioned in his ears! And yet, how small had been
+her fault compared with other crimes for which men and women are
+forgiven speedily, even if it has been held that pardon has ever been
+required.
+
+She came over, and knelt down and kissed her sister on her brow; and
+as she did so she swore to herself that by her, even in the inmost
+recesses of her bosom, Carry should never be held to be evil, to be a
+castaway, to be one of whom, as her sister, it would behove her to be
+ashamed. She had told Carry that she would "never cast it up against
+her." She now resolved that there should be no such casting up even
+in her own judgment. Had she, too, been fair, might not she also have
+fallen?
+
+At five o'clock on the following morning the miller went out from the
+house to his mill, according to his daily practice. Fanny heard his
+heavy step, heard the bar withdrawn, heard the shutters removed from
+the kitchen window, and knew that her father was as yet in ignorance
+of the inmate who had been harboured. Fanny at once arose from her
+bed, careful not to disturb her companion. She had thought it all
+out, whether she would have Carry ready dressed for an escape, should
+it be that her father would demand imperiously that she should be
+sent adrift from the mill, or whether it might not be better that she
+should be able to plead at the first moment that her sister was in
+bed, tired, asleep,--at any rate undressed,--and that some little
+time must be allowed. Might it not be that even in that hour her
+father's heart might be softened? But she must lose no time in going
+to him. The hired man who now tended the mill with her father came
+always at six, and that which she had to say to him must be said with
+no ear to hear her but his own. It would have been impossible even
+for her to remind him of his daughter before a stranger. She slipped
+her clothes on, therefore, and within ten minutes of her father's
+departure followed him into the mill.
+
+The old man had gone aloft, and she heard his slow, heavy feet as he
+was moving the sacks which were above her head. She considered for a
+moment, and thinking it better that she should not herself ascend the
+little ladder,--knowing that it might be well that she should have
+the power of instant retreat to the house,--she called to him from
+below. "What's wanted now?" demanded the old man as soon as he heard
+her. "Father, I must speak to you," she said. "Father, you must come
+down to me." Then he came down slowly, without a word, and stood
+before her waiting to hear her tidings. "Father," she said, "there is
+some one in the house, and I have come to tell you."
+
+"Sam has come, then?" said he; and she could see that there was a
+sparkle of joy in his eye as he spoke. Oh, if she could only make the
+return of that other child as grateful to him as would have been the
+return of his son!
+
+"No, father; it isn't Sam."
+
+"Who be it, then?" The tone of his voice, and the colour and bearing
+of his face were changed as he asked the question. She saw at once
+that he had guessed the truth. "It isn't--it isn't--?"
+
+"Yes, father; it is Carry." As she spoke she came close to him,
+and strove to take his hand; but he thrust both his hands into his
+pockets and turned himself half away from her. "Father, she is our
+flesh and blood; you will not turn against her now that she has come
+back to us, and is sorry for her faults."
+
+"She is a--" But his other daughter had stopped his mouth with her
+hand before the word had been uttered.
+
+"Father, who among us has not done wrong at times?"
+
+"She has disgraced my gray hairs, and made me a reproach and a shame.
+I will not see her. Bid her begone. I will not speak to her or look
+at her. How came she there? When did she come?"
+
+Then Fanny told her father the whole story,--everything as it
+occurred, and did not forget to add her own conviction that Carry's
+life had been decent in all respects since the Vicar had found a home
+for her in Salisbury. "You would not have it go on like that, father.
+She is naught to our parson."
+
+"I will pay. As long as there is a shilling left, I will pay for her.
+She shall not live on the charity of any man, whether parson or no
+parson. But I will not see her. While she be here you may just send
+me my vittels to the mill. If she be not gone afore night, I will
+sleep here among the sacks."
+
+She stayed with him till the labourer came, and then she returned to
+the house, having failed as yet to touch his heart. She went back and
+told her story to her mother, and then a part of it to Carry who was
+still in bed. Indeed, she had found her mother by Carry's bedside,
+and had to wait till she could separate them before she could tell
+any story to either. "What does he say of me, Fan?" asked the poor
+sinner. "Does he say that I must go? Will he never speak to me again?
+I will just throw myself into the mill-race and have done with it."
+Her sister bade her to rise and dress herself, but to remain where
+she was. It could not be expected, she said, but that their father
+would be hard to persuade. "I know that he will kill me when he sees
+me," said Carry.
+
+At eight o'clock Fanny took the old man his breakfast to the mill,
+while Mrs. Brattle waited on Carry, as though she had deserved all
+the good things which a mother could do for a child. The miller sat
+upon a sack at the back of the building, while the hired man took his
+meal of bread and cheese in the front, and Fanny remained close at
+his elbow. While the old man was eating she said nothing to him. He
+was very slow, and sat with his eyes fixed upon the morsel of sky
+which was visible through the small aperture, thinking evidently of
+anything but the food that he was swallowing. Presently he returned
+the empty bowl and plate to his daughter, as though he were about at
+once to resume his work. Hitherto he had not uttered a single word
+since she had come to him.
+
+"Father," she said, "think of it. Is it not good to have mercy and to
+forgive? Would you drive your girl out again upon the streets?"
+
+The miller still did not speak, but turned his face round upon his
+daughter with a gaze of such agony that she threw herself on the sack
+beside him, and clung to him with her arms round his neck.
+
+"If she were such as thee, Fan," he said. "Oh, if she were such as
+thee!" Then again he turned away his face that she might not see the
+tear that was forcing itself into the corner of his eye.
+
+She remained with him an hour before he moved. His companion in the
+mill did not come near them, knowing, as the poor do know on such
+occasions, there was something going on which would lead them to
+prefer that he should be absent. The words that were said between
+them were not very many; but at the end of the hour Fanny returned to
+the house.
+
+"Carry," she said, "father is coming in."
+
+"If he looks at me, it will kill me," said Carry.
+
+Mrs. Brattle was so lost in her hopes and fears that she knew not
+what to do, or how to bestow herself. A minute had hardly passed
+when the miller's step was heard, and Carry knew that she was in the
+presence of her father. She had been sitting, but now she rose, and
+went to him and knelt at his feet.
+
+"Father," she said, "if I may bide with you,--if I may bide with
+you--." But her voice was lost in sobbing, and she could make no
+promise as to her future conduct.
+
+
+[Illustration: "If I may bide with you,--if I may bide
+with you."]
+
+
+"She may stay with us," the father said, turning to his eldest
+daughter; "but I shall never be able to show my face again about the
+parish."
+
+He had uttered no words of forgiveness to his daughter, nor had he
+bestowed upon her any kiss. Fanny had raised her when she was on the
+ground at his feet, and had made her seat herself apart.
+
+"In all the whole warld," he said, looking round upon his wife and
+his elder child, raising his hand as he uttered the words, and
+speaking with an emphasis that was terrible to the hearers, "there
+is no thing so vile as a harlot." All the dreaded fierceness of his
+manner had then come back to him, and neither of them had dared to
+answer him. After that he at once went back to the mill, and to Fanny
+who followed him he vouchsafed to repeat the permission that his
+daughter should be allowed to remain beneath his roof.
+
+Between twelve and one she again went to fetch him to his dinner. At
+first he declared that he would not come, that he was busy, and that
+he would eat a morsel, where he was, in the mill. But Fanny argued
+the matter with him.
+
+"Is it always to be so, father?"
+
+"I do not know. What matters it, so as I have strength to do a turn
+of work?"
+
+"It must not be that her presence should drive you from the house.
+Think of mother, and what she will suffer. Father, you must come."
+
+Then he allowed himself to be led into the house, and he sat in his
+accustomed chair, and ate his dinner in gloomy silence. But after
+dinner he would not smoke.
+
+"I tell 'ee, lass, I do not want the pipe to-day. Now't has got
+itself done. D'ye think as grist 'll grind itself without hands?"
+
+When Carry said that it would be better than this that she should go
+again, Fanny told her to remember that evil things could not be cured
+in a day. With the mother that afternoon was, on the whole, a happy
+time, for she sat with her lost child's hand within her own. Late in
+the evening, when the miller returned to his rest, Carry moved about
+the house softly, resuming some old task to which in former days she
+had been accustomed; and as she did so the miller's eyes would wander
+round the room after her; but he did not speak to her on that day,
+nor did he pronounce her name.
+
+Two other circumstances which bear upon our story occurred at the
+mill that afternoon. After their tea, at which the miller did not
+make his appearance, Fanny Brattle put on her bonnet and ran across
+the fields to the vicarage. After all the trouble that Mr. Fenwick
+had taken, it was, she thought, necessary that he should be told what
+had happened.
+
+"That is the best news," said he, "that I have heard this many a
+day."
+
+"I knew that you would be glad to hear that the poor child has found
+her home again." Then Fanny told the whole story,--how Carry had
+escaped from Salisbury, being driven to do so by fear of the law
+proceedings at which she had been summoned to attend, how her father
+had sworn that he would not yield, and how at length he had yielded.
+When Fanny told the Vicar and Mrs. Fenwick that the old man had as
+yet not spoken to his daughter, they both desired her to be of good
+cheer.
+
+"That will come, Fanny," said Mrs. Fenwick, "if she once be allowed
+to sit at table with him."
+
+"Of course it will come," said the Vicar. "In a week or two you will
+find that she is his favourite."
+
+"She was the favourite with us all, sir, once," said Fanny, "and may
+God send that it shall be so again. A winsome thing like her is made
+to be loved. You'll come and see her, Mr. Fenwick, some day?" Mr.
+Fenwick promised that he would, and Fanny returned to the mill.
+
+The other circumstance was the arrival of Constable Toffy at the mill
+during Fanny's absence. In the course of the day news had travelled
+into the village that Carry Brattle was again at the mill;--and
+Constable Toffy, who in regard to the Brattle family, was somewhat
+discomfited by the transactions of the previous day at Heytesbury,
+heard the news. He was aware,--being in that respect more capable
+than Lord Trowbridge of receiving enlightenment,--that the result
+of all the inquiries made, in regard to the murder, did, in truth,
+contain no tittle of evidence against Sam. As constables go,
+Constable Toffy was a good man, and he would be wronged if it were to
+be said of him that he regretted Sam's escape; but his nature was as
+is the nature of constables, and he could not rid himself of that
+feeling of disappointment which always attends baffled efforts. And
+though he saw that there was no evidence against Sam, he did not,
+therefore, necessarily think that the young man was innocent. It may
+be doubted whether, to the normal policeman's mind, any man is ever
+altogether absolved of any crime with which that man's name has
+been once connected. He felt, therefore, somewhat sore against the
+Brattles;--and then there was the fact that Carry Brattle, who had
+been regularly "subpoenaed," had kept herself out of the way,--most
+flagitiously, illegally and damnably. She had run off from Salisbury,
+just as though she were a free person to do as she pleased with
+herself, and not subject to police orders! When, therefore, he heard
+that Carry was at the mill,--she having made herself liable to some
+terribly heavy fine by her contumacy,--it was manifestly his duty to
+see after her and let her know that she was wanted.
+
+At the mill he saw only the miller himself, and his visit was not
+altogether satisfactory. Old Brattle, who understood very little of
+the case, but who did understand that his own son had been made clear
+in reference to that accusation, had no idea that his daughter had
+any concern with that matter, other than what had fallen to her lot
+in reference to her brother. When, therefore, Toffy inquired after
+Caroline Brattle, and desired to know whether she was at the mill,
+and also was anxious to be informed why she had not attended at
+Heytesbury in accordance with the requirements of the law, the miller
+turned upon him and declared that if anybody said a word against Sam
+Brattle in reference to the murder,--the magistrates having settled
+that matter,--he, Jacob Brattle, old as he was, would "see it out"
+with that malignant slanderer. Constable Toffy did his best to make
+the matter clear to the miller, but failed utterly. Had he a warrant
+to search for anybody? Toffy had no warrant. Toffy only desired to
+know whether Caroline Brattle was or was not beneath her father's
+roof. The old miller, declaring to himself that, though his child had
+shamed him, he would not deny her now that she was again one of the
+family, acknowledged so much, but refused the constable admittance to
+the house.
+
+"But, Mr. Brattle," said the constable, "she was subpoenaed."
+
+"I know now't o' that," answered the miller, not deigning to turn his
+face round to his antagonist.
+
+"But you know, Mr. Brattle, the law must have its course."
+
+"No, I don't. And it ain't law as you should come here a hindering o'
+me; and it ain't law as you should walk that unfortunate young woman
+off with you to prison."
+
+"But she's wanted, Mr. Brattle;--not in the way of going to prison,
+but before the magistrates."
+
+"There's a deal of things is wanted as ain't to be had. Anyways, you
+ain't no call to my house now, and as them as is there is in trouble,
+I'll ax you to be so kind as--as just to leave us alone."
+
+Toffy, pretending that he was satisfied with the information
+received, and merely adding that Caroline Brattle must certainly,
+at some future time, be made to appear before the magistrates at
+Heytesbury, took his departure with more good-humour than the miller
+deserved from him, and returned to the village.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LIV.
+
+MR. GILMORE'S RUBIES.
+
+
+Mary Lowther struggled hard for a week to reconcile herself to her
+new fate, and at the end of the week had very nearly given way. The
+gloom which had fallen upon her acted upon her lover and then reacted
+upon herself. Could he have been light in hand, could he have talked
+to her about ordinary subjects, could he have behaved towards her
+with any even of the light courtesies of the every-day lover, she
+would have been better able to fight her battle. But when he was
+with her there was a something in his manner which always seemed to
+accuse her in that she, to whom he was giving so much, would give him
+nothing in return. He did not complain in words. He did not wilfully
+resent her coldness to him. But he looked, and walked, and spoke,
+and seemed to imply by every deed that he was conscious of being an
+injured man. At the end of the week he made her a handsome present,
+and in receiving it she had to assume some pleasure. But the failure
+was complete, and each of the two knew how great was the failure. Of
+course, there would be other presents. And he had already,--already,
+though no allusion to the day for the marriage had yet been
+made,--begun to press on for those changes in his house for which she
+would not ask, but which he was determined to effect for her comfort.
+There had been another visit to the house and gardens, and he had
+told her that this should be done,--unless she objected; and that
+that other change should be made, if it were not opposed to her
+wishes. She made an attempt to be enthusiastic,--enthusiastic on the
+wrong side, to be zealous to save him money, and the whole morning
+was beyond measure sad and gloomy. Then she asked herself whether she
+meant to go through with it. If not, the sooner that she retreated
+and hid herself and her disgrace for the rest of her life the better.
+She had accepted him at last, because she had been made to believe
+that by doing so she would benefit him, and because she had taught
+herself to think that it was her duty to disregard herself. She had
+thought of herself till she was sick of the subject. What did it
+matter,--about herself,--as long as she could be of some service to
+some one? And so thinking, she had accepted him. But now she had
+begun to fear that were she to marry this man she could not be of
+service to him. And when the thing should be done,--if ever it were
+done,--there would be no undoing it. Would not her life be a life
+of sin if she were to live as the wife of a man whom she did not
+love,--while, perhaps, she would be unable not to love another man?
+
+Nothing of all this was told to the Vicar, but Mrs. Fenwick knew what
+was going on in her friend's mind, and spoke her own very freely.
+"Hitherto," she said, "I have given you credit all through for good
+conduct and good feeling; but I shall be driven to condemn you if
+you now allow a foolish, morbid, sickly idea to interfere with his
+happiness and your own."
+
+"But what if I can do nothing for his happiness?"
+
+"That is nonsense. He is not a man whom you despise or dislike.
+If you will only meet him half-way you will soon find that your
+sympathies will grow."
+
+"There never will be a spark of sympathy between us."
+
+"Mary, that is most horribly wicked. What you mean is this, that
+he is not light and gay as a lover. Of course he remembers the
+occurrences of the last six months. Of course he cannot be so happy
+as he might have been had Walter Marrable never been at Loring. There
+must be something to be conquered, something to be got over, after
+such an episode. But you may set your face against doing that, or you
+may strive to do it. For his sake, if not for your own, the struggle
+should be made."
+
+"A man may struggle to draw a loaded wagon, but he won't move it."
+
+"The load in this case is of your own laying on. One hour of frank
+kindness on your part would dispel his gloom. He is not gloomy by
+nature."
+
+Then Mary Lowther tried to achieve that hour of frank kindness and
+again failed. She failed and was conscious of her failure, and there
+came a time,--and that within three weeks of her engagement,--in
+which she had all but made up her mind to return the ring which he
+had given her, and to leave Bullhampton for ever. Could it be right
+that she should marry a man that she did not love?
+
+That was her argument with herself, and yet she was deterred from
+doing as she contemplated by a circumstance which could have had no
+effect on that argument. She received from her Aunt Marrable the
+following letter, in which was certainly no word capable of making
+her think that now, at last, she could love the man whom she had
+promised to marry. And yet this letter so affected her, that she told
+herself that she would go on and become the wife of Harry Gilmore.
+She would struggle yet again, and force herself to succeed. The
+wagon, no doubt, was heavily laden, but still, with sufficient
+labour, it might perhaps be moved.
+
+Miss Marrable had been asked to go over to Dunripple, when Mary
+Lowther went to Bullhampton. It had been long since she had been
+there, and she had not thought ever to make such a visit. But there
+came letters, and there were rejoinders,--which were going on before
+Mary's departure,--and at last it was determined that Miss Marrable
+should go to Dunripple, and pay a visit to her cousin. But she did
+not do this till long after Walter Marrable had left the place. She
+had written to Mary soon after her arrival, and in this first letter
+there had been no word about Walter; but in her second letter she
+spoke very freely of Walter Marrable,--as the reader shall see.
+
+
+   Dunripple, 2nd July, 1868.
+
+   DEAR MARY,
+
+   I got your letter on Saturday, and cannot help wishing
+   that it had been written in better spirits. However, I do
+   not doubt but that it will all come right soon. I am quite
+   sure that the best thing you can do is to let Mr. Gilmore
+   name an early day. Of course you never intended that there
+   should be a long engagement. Such a thing, where there is
+   no possible reason for it, must be out of the question.
+   And it will be much better to take advantage of the fine
+   weather than to put it off till the winter has nearly
+   come. Fix some day in August or early in September. I am
+   sure you will be much happier married than you are single;
+   and he will be gratified, which is, I suppose, to count
+   for something.
+
+   I am very happy here, but yet I long to get home. At my
+   time of life, one must always be strange among strangers.
+   Nothing can be kinder than Sir Gregory, in his sort of
+   fashion. Gregory Marrable, the son, is, I fear, in a
+   bad way. He is unlike his father, and laughs at his own
+   ailments, but everybody in the house,--except perhaps Sir
+   Gregory,--knows that he is very ill. He never comes down
+   at all now, but lives in two rooms, which he has together
+   up-stairs. We go and see him every day, but he is hardly
+   able to talk to any one. Sir Gregory never mentions the
+   subject to me, but Mrs. Brownlow is quite confident that
+   if anything were to happen to Gregory Marrable, Walter
+   would be asked to come to Dunripple as the heir, and to
+   give up the army altogether.
+
+   I get on very well with Mrs. Brownlow, but of course we
+   cannot be like old friends. Edith is a very nice girl,
+   but rather shy. She never talks about herself, and is too
+   silent to be questioned. I do not, however, doubt for a
+   moment but that she will be Walter Marrable's wife. I
+   think it likely that they are not engaged as yet, as in
+   that case I think Mrs. Brownlow would tell me; but many
+   things have been said which leave on my mind a conviction
+   that it will be so. He is to be here again in August, and
+   from the way in which Mrs. Brownlow speaks of his coming,
+   there is no doubt that she expects it. That he paid great
+   attention to Edith when he was here before, I am quite
+   sure; and I take it he is only waiting till--
+
+
+In writing so far, Miss Marrable had intended to signify that Captain
+Marrable had been slow to ask Edith Brownlow to be his wife while he
+was at Dunripple, because he could not bring himself so soon to show
+himself indifferent to his former love; but that now he would not
+hesitate, knowing as he would know, that his former love had bestowed
+herself elsewhere; but in this there would have been a grievous
+accusation against Mary, and she was therefore compelled to fill up
+her sentence in some other form;--
+
+
+   till things should have arranged themselves a little.
+
+   And it will be all for the best. She is a very nice,
+   quiet, lady-like girl, and so great a favourite with her
+   uncle, that should his son die before him, his great
+   object in life will be her welfare. Walter Marrable, as
+   her husband, would live at Dunripple, just as though the
+   place were his own. And indeed there would be no one
+   between him and the property except his own father. Some
+   arrangement could be made as to buying out his life
+   interest,--for which indeed he has taken the money
+   beforehand with a vengeance,--and then Walter would be
+   settled for life. Would not this be all for the best?
+
+   I shall go home about the 14th. They want me to stay,
+   but I shall have been away quite long enough. I don't
+   know whether people ought to go from home at all after a
+   certain age. I get cross because I can't have the sort of
+   chair I like to sit on; and then they don't put any green
+   tea into the pot, and I don't like to ask to have any
+   made, as I doubt whether they have any green tea in the
+   house. And I find it bad to be among invalids with whom,
+   indeed, I can sympathise, but for whom I cannot pretend
+   that I feel any great affection. As we grow old we become
+   incapable of new tenderness, and rather resent the calls
+   that are made upon us for pity. The luxury of devotion to
+   misery is as much the privilege of the young as is that of
+   devotion to love.
+
+   Write soon, dearest; and remember that the best news
+   I can have, will be tidings as to the day fixed for
+   your marriage. And remember, too, that I won't have any
+   question about your being married at Bullhampton. It would
+   be quite improper. He must come to Loring; and I needn't
+   say how glad I shall be to see the Fenwicks. Parson John
+   will expect to marry you, but Mr. Fenwick might come and
+   assist.
+
+   Your most affectionate aunt,
+
+   SARAH MARRABLE.
+
+
+It was not the entreaty made by her aunt that an early day should
+be fixed for the marriage which made Mary Lowther determine that
+she would yet once more attempt to drag the wagon. She could have
+withstood such entreaty as that, and, had the letter gone no further,
+would probably have replied to it by saying that no day could be
+fixed at all. But, with the letter there came an assurance that
+Walter Marrable had forgotten her, was about to marry Edith Brownlow,
+and that therefore all ideas of love and truth and sympathy and joint
+beating of mutual hearts, with the rest of it, might be thrown to the
+winds. She would marry Harry Gilmore, and take care that he had good
+dinners, and would give her mind to flannel petticoats and coal for
+the poor of Bullhampton, and would altogether come down from the
+pedestal which she had once striven to erect for herself. From that
+high but tottering pedestal, propped up on shafts of romance and
+poetry, she would come down; but there would remain for her the
+lower, firmer standing block, of which duty was the sole support. It
+was no doubt most unreasonable that any such change should come upon
+her in consequence of her aunt's letter. She had never for a moment
+told herself that Walter Marrable could ever be anything to her,
+since that day on which she had by her own deed liberated him from
+his troth; and, indeed, had done more than that, had forced him to
+accept that liberation. Why then should his engagement with another
+woman have any effect with her either in one direction or in the
+other? She herself had submitted to a new engagement,--had done so
+before he had shown any sign of being fickle. She could not therefore
+be angry with him. And yet, because he could be fickle, because he
+could do that very thing which she had openly declared her purpose of
+doing, she persuaded herself,--for a week or two,--that any sacrifice
+made to him would be a sacrifice to folly, and a neglect of duty.
+
+At this time, during this week or two, there came to her direct from
+the jewellers in London, a magnificent set of rubies,--ear-rings,
+brooch, bracelets, and necklace. The rubies she had seen before, and
+knew that they had belonged to Mr. Gilmore's mother. Mrs. Fenwick had
+told him that the setting was so old that no lady could wear them
+now, and there had been a presentiment that they would be forthcoming
+in a new form. Mary had said that, of course, such ornaments as these
+would come into her hands only when she became Mrs. Gilmore. Mrs.
+Fenwick had laughed and told her that she did not understand the
+romantic generosity of her lover. And now the jewellery had come to
+her at the parsonage without a word from Gilmore, and was spread out
+in its pretty cases on the vicarage drawing-room table. Now, if ever,
+must she say that she could not do as she had promised.
+
+"Mary," said Mrs. Fenwick, "you must go up to him to-morrow, and tell
+him how noble he is."
+
+Mary waited, perhaps, for a whole minute before she answered. She
+would willingly have given the jewels away for ever and ever, so that
+they might not have been there now to trouble her. But she did answer
+at last, knowing, as she did so, that her last chance was gone.
+
+"He is noble," she said, slowly; "and I will go and tell him so. I'll
+go now, if it is not too late."
+
+"Do, do. You'll be sure to find him." And Mrs. Fenwick, in her
+enthusiasm, embraced her friend and kissed her.
+
+Mary put on her hat and walked off at once through the garden and
+across the fields, and into the Privets; and close to the house she
+met her lover. He did not see her till he heard her step, and then
+turned short round, almost as though fearing something.
+
+"Harry," she said, "those jewels have come. Oh, dear. They are not
+mine yet. Why did you have them sent to me?"
+
+There was something in the word yet, or in her tone as she spoke it,
+which made his heart leap as it had never leaped before.
+
+"If they're not yours, I don't know whom they belong to," he said.
+And his eye was bright, and his voice almost shook with emotion.
+
+"Are you doing anything?" she asked.
+
+"Nothing on earth."
+
+"Then come and see them."
+
+So they walked off, and he, at any rate, on that occasion was a happy
+lover. For a few minutes,--perhaps for an hour,--he did allow himself
+to believe that he was destined to enjoy that rapture of requited
+affection, in longing for which his very soul had become sick. As she
+walked back with him to the vicarage her hand rested heavily on his
+arm, and when she asked him some question about his land, she was
+able so to modulate her voice as to make him believe that she was
+learning to regard his interests as her own. He stopped her at the
+gate leading into the vicarage garden, and once more made to her an
+assurance of his regard.
+
+"Mary," he said, "if love will beget love, I think that you must love
+me at last."
+
+"I will love you," she said, pressing his arm still more closely. But
+even then she could not bring herself to tell him that she did love
+him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LV.
+
+GLEBE LAND.
+
+
+The fifteenth of July was a Sunday, and it had been settled for some
+time past that on this day Mr. Puddleham would preach for the first
+time in his new chapel. The building had been hurried on through the
+early summer in order that this might be achieved; and although the
+fittings were not completed, and the outward signs of the masons and
+labourers had not been removed,--although the heaps of mortar were
+still there, and time had not yet sufficed to have the chips cleared
+away,--on Sunday the fifteenth of July the chapel was opened. Great
+efforts were made to have it filled on the occasion. The builder
+from Salisbury came over with all his family, not deterred by the
+consideration that whereas the Puddlehamites of Bullhampton were
+Primitive Methodists, he was a regular Wesleyan. And many in the
+parish were got to visit the chapel on this the day of its glory, who
+had less business there than even the builder from Salisbury. In most
+parishes there are some who think it well to let the parson know that
+they are independent and do not care for him, though they profess
+to be of his flock; and then, too, the novelty of the thing had its
+attraction, and the well-known fact that the site chosen for the
+building had been as gall and wormwood to the parson and his family.
+These causes together brought a crowd to the vicarage-gate on that
+Sunday morning, and it was quite clear that the new chapel would be
+full, and that Mr. Puddleham's first Sunday would be a success. And
+the chapel, of course, had a bell,--a bell which was declared by Mrs.
+Fenwick to be the hoarsest, loudest, most unmusical, and ill-founded
+miscreant of a bell that was ever suspended over a building for the
+torture of delicate ears. It certainly was a loud and brazen bell;
+but Mr. Fenwick expressed his opinion that there was nothing amiss
+with it. When his wife declared that it sounded as though it came
+from the midst of the shrubs at their own front gate, he reminded
+her that their own church bells sounded as though they came from the
+lower garden. That one sound should be held by them to be musical
+and the other abominable, he declared to be a prejudice. Then there
+was a great argument about the bells, in which Mrs. Fenwick, and
+Mary Lowther, and Harry Gilmore were all against the Vicar. And,
+throughout the discussion, it was known to them all that there were
+no ears in the parish to which the bells were so really odious as
+they were to the ears of the Vicar himself. In his heart of hearts
+he hated the chapel, and, in spite of all his endeavours to the
+contrary, his feelings towards Mr. Puddleham were not those which
+the Christian religion requires one neighbour to bear to another.
+But he made the struggle, and for some weeks past had not said a
+word against Mr. Puddleham. In regard to the Marquis the thing was
+different. The Marquis should have known better, and against the
+Marquis he did say a great many words.
+
+They began to ring the bell on that Sunday morning before ten
+o'clock. Mrs. Fenwick was still sitting at the breakfast-table, with
+the windows open, when the sound was first heard,--first heard, that
+is, on that morning. She looked at Mary, groaned, and put her hands
+to her ears. The Vicar laughed, and walked about the room.
+
+"At what time do they begin?" said Mary.
+
+"Not till eleven," said Mrs. Fenwick. "There, it wants a quarter to
+ten now, and they mean to go on with that music for an hour and a
+quarter."
+
+"We shall be keeping them company by-and-by," said the Vicar.
+
+"The poor old church bells won't be heard through it," said Mrs.
+Fenwick.
+
+Mrs. Fenwick was in the habit of going to the village school for half
+an hour before the service on Sunday mornings, and on this morning
+she started from the house according to her custom at a little after
+ten. Mary Lowther went with her, and as the school was in the village
+and could be reached much more shortly by the front gate than by the
+path round by the church, the two ladies walked out boldly before the
+new chapel. The reader may perhaps remember that Mrs. Fenwick had
+promised her husband to withdraw that outward animosity to the chapel
+which she had evinced by not using the vicarage entrance. As they
+went there was a crowd collected, and they found that after the
+manner of the Primitive Methodists in their more enthusiastic days,
+a procession of worshippers had been formed in the village, which at
+this very moment was making its way to the chapel. Mrs. Fenwick, as
+she stood aside to make way for them, declared that the bell sounded
+as though it were within her bonnet. When they reached the school
+they found that many a child was absent who should have been there,
+and Mrs. Fenwick knew that the truant urchins were amusing themselves
+at the new building. And with those who were not truant the clang of
+the new bell distracted terribly that attention which was due to the
+collect. Mrs. Fenwick herself confessed afterwards that she hardly
+knew what she was teaching.
+
+Mr. Fenwick, according to his habit, went into his own study when the
+ladies went to the school, and there, according to custom also on
+Sunday mornings, his letters were brought to him, some few minutes
+before he started on his walk through the garden to the church. On
+this morning there were a couple of letters for himself, and he
+opened them both. One was from a tradesman in Salisbury, and the
+other was from his wife's brother-in-law, Mr. Quickenham. Before he
+started he read Mr. Quickenham's letter, and then did his best to
+forget it and put it out of his mind till the morning service should
+be over. The letter was as follows:--
+
+
+   Pump Court, June 30, 1868.
+
+   DEAR FENWICK,
+
+   I have found, as I thought I should, that Lord Trowbridge
+   has no property in, or right whatever to, the bit of
+   ground on which your enemies have been building their new
+   Ebenezer. The spot is a part of the glebe, and as such
+   seems to have been first abandoned by a certain parson
+   named Brandon, who was your predecessor's predecessor.
+   There can, however, be no doubt that the ground is glebe,
+   and that you are bound to protect it as such, on behalf of
+   your successors, and of the patrons of the living.
+
+   I found some difficulty in getting at the terrier of the
+   parish,--which you, who consider yourself to be a model
+   parson, I dare say, have never seen. I have, however,
+   found it in duplicate. The clerk of the Board of
+   Guardians, who should, I believe, have a copy of it, knew
+   nothing about it; and had never heard of such a document.
+   Your bishop's registrar was not much more learned,--but I
+   did find it in the bishop's chancery; and there is a copy
+   of it also at Saint John's, which seems to imply that
+   great attention has been paid by the college as patron to
+   the interests of the parish priest. This is more than has
+   been done by the incumbent, who seems to be an ignorant
+   fellow in such matters. I wonder how many parsons there
+   are in the Church who would let a Marquis and a Methodist
+   minister between them build a chapel on the parish glebe?
+
+   Yours ever,
+
+   RICHARD QUICKENHAM.
+
+   If I were to charge you through an attorney for my trouble
+   you'd have to mortgage your life interest in the bit of
+   land to pay me. I enclose a draft from the terrier as far
+   as the plot of ground and the vicarage-gate are concerned.
+
+
+Here was information! This detestable combination of dissenting
+and tyrannically territorial influences had been used to build a
+Methodist Chapel upon land of which he, during his incumbency in the
+parish, was the freehold possessor! What an ass he must have been
+not to know his own possessions! How ridiculous would he appear when
+he should come forward to claim as a part of the glebe a morsel of
+land to which he had paid no special attention whatever since he had
+been in the parish! And then, what would it be his duty to do? Mr.
+Quickenham had clearly stated that on behalf of the college, which
+was the patron of the living, and on behalf of his successors, it was
+his duty to claim the land. And was it possible that he should not
+do so after such usage as he had received from Lord Trowbridge? So
+meditating,--but grieving that he should be driven at such a moment
+to have his mind forcibly filled with such matters,--still hearing
+the chapel bell, which in his ears drowned the sound from his own
+modest belfry, and altogether doubtful as to what step he would take,
+he entered his own church. It was manifest to him that of the poorer
+part of his usual audience, and of the smaller farmers, one half were
+in attendance upon Mr. Puddleham's triumph.
+
+During the whole of that afternoon he said not a word of the
+barrister's letter to any one. He struggled to banish the subject
+from his thoughts. Failing to do that, he did banish it from his
+tongue. The letter was in the pocket of his coat; but he showed it to
+no one. Gilmore dined at the vicarage; but even to him he was silent.
+Of course the conversation at dinner turned upon the chapel. It was
+impossible that on such a day they should speak of anything else.
+Even as they sat at their early dinner Mr. Puddleham's bell was
+ringing, and no doubt there was a vigour in the pulling of it which
+would not be maintained when the pulling of it should have become a
+thing of every week. There had been a compact made, in accordance
+with which the Vicar's wife was to be debarred from saying anything
+against the chapel, and, no doubt, when the compact was made, the
+understanding was that she should give over hating the chapel. This
+had, of course, been found to be impossible, but in a certain way she
+had complied with the compact. The noise of the bell however, was
+considered to be beyond the compact, and on this occasion she was
+almost violent in the expression of her wrath. Her husband listened
+to her, and sat without rebuking her, silent, with the lawyer's
+letter in his pocket. This bell had been put up on his own land, and
+he could pull it down to-morrow. It had been put up by the express
+agency of Lord Trowbridge, and with the direct view of annoying him;
+and Lord Trowbridge had behaved to him in a manner which set all
+Christian charity at defiance. He told himself plainly that he had no
+desire to forgive Lord Trowbridge,--that life in this world, as it is
+constituted, would not be compatible with such forgiveness,--that he
+would not, indeed, desire to injure Lord Trowbridge otherwise than by
+exacting such penalty as would force him and such as he to restrain
+their tyranny; but that to forgive him, till he should have been so
+forced, would be weak and injurious to the community. As to that, he
+had quite made up his mind, in spite of all doctrine to the contrary.
+Men in this world would have to go naked if they gave their coats
+to the robbers who took their cloaks; and going naked is manifestly
+inexpedient. His office of parish priest would be lowered in the
+world if he forgave, out of hand, such offences as these which had
+been committed against him by Lord Trowbridge. This he understood
+clearly. And now he might put down, not only the bell, but with the
+bell the ill-conditioned peer who had caused it to be put up--on
+glebe land. All this went through his mind again and again, as he
+determined that on that day, being Sunday, he would think no more
+about it.
+
+When the Monday came it was necessary that he should show the letter
+to his wife,--to his wife, and to the Squire, and to Mary Lowther. He
+had no idea of keeping the matter secret from his near friends and
+advisers; but he had an idea that it would be well that he should
+make up his mind as to what he would do before he asked their advice.
+He started, therefore, for a turn through the parish before breakfast
+on Monday morning,--and resolved as to his course of action. On no
+consideration whatever would he have the chapel pulled down. It was
+necessary for his purpose that he should have his triumph over the
+Marquis,--and he would have it. But the chapel had been built for a
+good purpose which it would adequately serve, and let what might be
+said to him by his wife or others, he would not have a brick of it
+disturbed. No doubt he had no more power to give the land for its
+present or any other purpose than had the Marquis. It might very
+probably be his duty to take care that the land was not appropriated
+to wrong purposes. It might be that he had already neglected his
+duty, in not knowing, or in not having taken care to learn the
+precise limits of the glebe which had been given over to him for
+his use during his incumbency. Nevertheless, there was the chapel,
+and there it should stand, as far as he was concerned. If the
+churchwardens, or the archdeacon, or the college, or the bishop had
+power to interfere, as to which he was altogether ignorant, and chose
+to exercise that power, he could not help it. He was nearly sure that
+his own churchwardens would be guided altogether by himself,--and as
+far as he was concerned the chapel should remain unmolested. Having
+thus resolved he came back to breakfast and read Mr. Quickenham's
+letter aloud to his wife and Mary Lowther.
+
+"Glebe!" said the Vicar's wife.
+
+"Do you mean that it is part of your own land?" asked Mary.
+
+"Exactly that," said the Vicar.
+
+"And that old thief of a Marquis has given away what belongs to us?"
+said Mrs. Fenwick.
+
+"He has given away what did not belong to himself," said the Vicar.
+"But I can't admit that he's a thief."
+
+"Surely he ought to have known," said Mary.
+
+"As for that, so ought I to have known, I suppose. The whole thing
+is one of the most ridiculous mistakes that ever was made. It has
+absolutely come to pass that here, in the middle of Wiltshire, with
+all our maps, and surveys, and parish records, no one concerned has
+known to whom belonged a quarter of an acre of land in the centre
+of the village. It is just a thing to write an article about in a
+newspaper; but I can't say that one party is more to blame than the
+other; that is, in regard to the ignorance displayed."
+
+"And what will you do, Frank?"
+
+"Nothing."
+
+"You will do nothing, Frank?"
+
+"I will do nothing; but I will take care to let the Marquis know the
+nature of his generosity. I fancy that I am bound to take on myself
+that labour, and I must say that it won't trouble me much to have to
+write the letter."
+
+"You won't pull it down, Frank?"
+
+"No, my dear."
+
+"I would, before a week was over."
+
+"So would I," said Mary. "I don't think it ought to be there."
+
+"Of course it ought not to be there," said Mrs. Fenwick.
+
+"They might as well have it here in the garden," said Mary.
+
+"Just the same," said Mrs. Fenwick.
+
+"It is not in the garden; and, as it has been built, it shall
+remain,--as far as I am concerned. I shall rather like it, now that
+I know I am the landlord. I think I shall claim a sitting." This was
+the Vicar's decision on the Monday morning, and from that decision
+the two ladies were quite unable to move him.
+
+This occurred a day or two after the affair of the rubies, and at
+a time when Mary was being very hard pressed to name a day for her
+wedding. Of course such pressure had been the result of Mr. Gilmore's
+success on that occasion. She had then resolutely gone to work to
+overcome her own, and his, melancholy gloom, and, having in a great
+degree succeeded, it was only natural that he should bring up that
+question of his marriage day. She, when she had accepted him, had
+done so with a stipulation that she should not be hurried; but we all
+know what such stipulations are worth. Who is to define what is and
+what is not hurry? They had now been engaged a month, and the Squire
+was clearly of opinion that there had been no hurry. "September was
+the nicest month in the year," he said, "for getting married and
+going abroad. September in Switzerland, October among the Italian
+lakes, November in Florence and Rome. So that they might get home
+before Christmas after a short visit to Naples." That was the
+Squire's programme, and his whole manner was altered as he made it.
+He thought he knew the nature of the girl well enough to be sure
+that, though she would profess no passionate love for him before
+starting on such a journey, she would change her tone before she
+returned. It should be no fault of his if she did not change it. Mary
+had at first declined to fix any day, had talked of next year, had
+declared that she would not be hurried. She had carried on the fight
+even after the affair of the rubies, but she had fought in opposition
+to strong and well-disciplined forces on the other side, and she had
+begun to admit to herself that it might be expedient that she should
+yield. The thing was to be done, and why not have it done at once?
+She had not as yet yielded, but she had begun to think that she would
+yield.
+
+At such a period it was of course natural that the Squire should
+be daily at the vicarage, and on this Monday morning he came down
+while the minds of all his friends there were intent on the strange
+information received from Mr. Quickenham. The Vicar was not by when
+Mr. Gilmore was told, and he was thus easily induced to join in
+the opinion that the chapel should be made to disappear. He had a
+landlord's idea about land, and was thoroughly well-disposed to stop
+any encroachment on the part of the Marquis.
+
+"Lord Trowbridge must pull it down himself, and put it up again
+elsewhere," said the Squire.
+
+"But Frank says that he won't let the Marquis pull it down," said
+Mrs. Fenwick, almost moved to tears by the tragedy of the occasion.
+
+
+[Illustration: Mr. Quickenham's letter discussed.]
+
+
+Then the Vicar joined them, and the matter was earnestly debated;--so
+earnestly that, on that occasion, not a word was said as to the day
+of the wedding.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LVI.
+
+THE VICAR'S VENGEANCE.
+
+
+No eloquence on the part of the two ladies at the vicarage, or of the
+Squire, could turn Mr. Fenwick from his purpose, but he did consent
+at last to go over with the Squire to Salisbury, and to consult Mr.
+Chamberlaine. A proposition was made to him as to consulting the
+bishop, for whom personally he always expressed a liking, and whose
+office he declared that he held in the highest veneration; but he
+explained that this was not a matter in which the bishop should be
+invited to exercise authority.
+
+"The bishop has nothing to do with my freehold," he said.
+
+"But if you want an opinion," said the Squire, "why not go to a man
+whose opinion will be worth having?"
+
+Then the Vicar explained again. His respect for the bishop was so
+great, that any opinion coming from his lordship would, to him,
+be more than advice; it would be law. So great was his mingled
+admiration of the man and respect for the office!
+
+"What he means," said Mrs. Fenwick, "is, that he won't go to the
+bishop, because he has made up his mind already. You are, both of
+you, throwing away your time and money in going to Salisbury at all."
+
+"I'm not sure but what she's right there," said the Vicar.
+Nevertheless they went to Salisbury.
+
+The Rev. Henry Fitzackerly Chamberlaine was very eloquent, clear, and
+argumentative on the subject, and perhaps a little overbearing. He
+insisted that the chapel should be removed without a moment's delay;
+and that notice as to its removal should be served upon all the
+persons concerned,--upon Mr. Puddleham, upon the builder, upon
+the chapel trustees, the elders of the congregation,--"if there
+be any elders," said Mr. Chamberlaine, with a delightful touch
+of irony,--and upon the Marquis and the Marquis's agent. He was
+eloquent, authoritative and loud. When the Vicar remarked that after
+all the chapel had been built for a good purpose, Mr. Chamberlaine
+became quite excited in his eloquence.
+
+"The glebe of Bullhampton, Mr. Fenwick," said he, "has not been
+confided to your care for the propagation of dissent."
+
+"Nor has the vicarage house been confided to me for the reading of
+novels; but that is what goes on there."
+
+"The house is for your private comfort," said the prebendary.
+
+"And so is the glebe," said the Vicar; "and I shall not be
+comfortable if I make these people put down a house of prayer."
+
+And there was another argument against the Vicar's views, very
+strong. This glebe was only given to him in trust. He was bound
+so to use it, that it should fall into the hands of his successor
+unimpaired and with full capability for fruition. "You have no right
+to leave to another the demolition of a building, the erection of
+which you should have prevented." This argument was more difficult of
+answer than the other, but Mr. Fenwick did answer it.
+
+"I feel all that," said he; "and I think it likely that my estate may
+be liable for the expense of removal. The chapel may be brought in
+as a dilapidation. But that which I can answer with my purse, need
+not lie upon my conscience. I could let the bit of land, I have no
+doubt,--though not on a building lease."
+
+"But they have built on it," said Mr. Chamberlaine.
+
+"No doubt, they have; and I can see that my estate may be called upon
+to restore the bit of ground to its former position. What I can't see
+is, that I am bound to enforce the removal now."
+
+Mr. Chamberlaine took up the matter with great spirit, and gave a
+couple of hours to the discussion, but the Vicar was not shaken.
+
+The Vicar was not shaken, but his manner as he went out from the
+prebendary's presence, left some doubt as to his firmness in the mind
+both of that dignitary and of the Squire. He thanked Mr. Chamberlaine
+very courteously, and acknowledged that there was a great deal in the
+arguments which had been used.
+
+"I am sure you will find it best to clear your ground of the nuisance
+at once," said Mr. Chamberlaine, with that high tone which he knew so
+well how to assume; and these were the last words spoken.
+
+"Well?" said the Squire, as soon as they were out in the Close,
+asking his friend as to his decision.
+
+"It's a very knotty point," said Fenwick.
+
+"I don't much like my uncle's tone," said the Squire; "I never do.
+But I think he is right."
+
+"I won't say but what he may be."
+
+"It'll have to come down, Frank," said the Squire.
+
+"No doubt, some day. But I am quite sure as to this, Harry; that when
+you have a doubt as to your duty, you can't be wrong in delaying
+that, the doing of which would gratify your own ill will. Don't you
+go and tell this to the women; but to my eyes that conventicle at
+Bullhampton is the most hideous, abominable, and disagreeable object
+that ever was placed upon the earth!"
+
+"So it is to mine," said the Squire.
+
+"And therefore I won't touch a brick of it. It shall be my hair
+shirt, my fast day, my sacrifice of a broken heart, my little pet
+good work. It will enable me to take all the good things of the world
+that come in my way, and flatter myself that I am not self-indulgent.
+There is not a dissenter in Bullhampton will get so much out of the
+chapel as I will."
+
+"I fancy they can make you have it pulled down."
+
+"Then their making me shall be my hair shirt, and I shall be fitted
+just as well." Upon that they went back to Bullhampton, and the
+Squire told the two ladies what had passed; as to the hair shirt and
+all.
+
+Mr. Fenwick in making for himself his hair shirt did not think it
+necessary to abstain from writing to the Marquis of Trowbridge.
+This he did on that same day after his return from Salisbury. In
+the middle of the winter he had written a letter to the Marquis,
+remonstrating against the building of the chapel opposite to his own
+gate. He now took out his copy of that letter, and the answer to
+it, in which the agent of the Marquis had told him that the Marquis
+considered that the spot in question was the most eligible site which
+his lordship could bestow for the purpose in question. Our Vicar was
+very anxious not to disturb the chapel now that it was built; but he
+was quite as anxious to disturb the Marquis. In the formation of that
+hair shirt which he was minded to wear, he did not intend to weave
+in any mercy towards the Marquis. It behoved him to punish the
+Marquis,--for the good of society in general. As a trespasser he
+forgave the Marquis, in a Christian point of view; but as a pestilent
+wasp on the earth, stinging folks right and left with an arrogance,
+the ignorance of which was the only excuse to be made for his
+cruelty, he thought it to be his duty to set his heel upon the
+Marquis; which he did by writing the following letter.
+
+
+   Bullhampton Vicarage, July 18, 186--.
+
+   MY LORD MARQUIS,
+
+   On the 3rd of January last I ventured to write to your
+   lordship with the object of saving myself and my family
+   from a great annoyance, and of saving you also from the
+   disgrace of subjecting me to it. I then submitted to you
+   the expediency of giving in the parish some other site for
+   the erection of a dissenting chapel than the small patch
+   of ground immediately opposite to the vicarage gate,
+   which, as I explained to you, I had always regarded as
+   belonging to the vicarage. I did not for a moment question
+   your lordship's right to give the land in question, but
+   appealed simply to your good-feeling. I confess that I
+   took it for granted that even your lordship, in so very
+   high-handed a proceeding, would take care to have right
+   on your side. In answer to this I received a letter from
+   your man of business, of which, as coming from him, I do
+   not complain, but which, as a reply to my letter to your
+   lordship, was an insult. The chapel has been built, and on
+   last Sunday was opened for worship.
+
+   I have now learned that the land which you have given
+   away did not belong to your lordship, and never formed a
+   portion of the Stowte estate in this parish. It was, and
+   is, glebe land; and formed, at the time of your bestowal,
+   a portion of my freehold as Vicar. I acknowledge that I
+   was remiss in presuming that you as a landlord knew the
+   limits of your own rights, and that you would not trespass
+   beyond them. I should have made my inquiry more urgently.
+   I have made it now, and your lordship may satisfy yourself
+   by referring to the maps of the parish lands, which are to
+   be found in the bishop's chancery, and also at St. John's,
+   Oxford, if you cannot do so by any survey of the estate in
+   your own possession. I enclose a sketch showing the exact
+   limits of the glebe in respect to the vicarage entrance
+   and the patch of ground in question. The fact is, that the
+   chapel in question has been built on the glebe land by
+   authority--illegally and unjustly given by your lordship.
+
+   The chapel is there, and though it is a pity that it
+   should have been built, it would be a greater pity that it
+   should be pulled down. It is my purpose to offer to the
+   persons concerned a lease of the ground for the term of my
+   incumbency at a nominal rent. I presume that a lease may
+   be so framed as to protect the rights of my successor.
+
+   I will not conclude this letter without expressing my
+   opinion that gross as has been your lordship's ignorance
+   in giving away land which did not belong to you, your
+   fault in that respect has been very trifling in comparison
+   with the malice you have shown to a clergyman of your own
+   church, settled in a parish partly belonging to yourself,
+   in having caused the erection of this chapel on the
+   special spot selected with no other object than that of
+   destroying my personal comfort and that of my wife.
+
+   I have the honour to be
+   Your lordship's most obedient servant,
+
+   FRANCIS FENWICK.
+
+
+When he had finished his epistle he read it over more than once, and
+was satisfied that it would be vexatious to the Marquis. It was his
+direct object to vex the Marquis, and he had set about it with all
+his vigour. "I would skin him if I knew how," he had said to Gilmore.
+"He has done that to me which no man should forgive. He has spoken
+ill of me, and calumniated me, not because he has thought ill of me,
+but because he has had a spite against me. They may keep their chapel
+as far as I am concerned. But as for his lordship, I should think ill
+of myself if I spared him." He had his lordship on the hip, and he
+did not spare him. He showed the letter to his wife.
+
+"Isn't malice a very strong word?" she said.
+
+"I hope so," answered the Vicar.
+
+"What I mean is, might you not soften it without hurting your cause?"
+
+"I think not. I conscientiously believe the accusation to be true.
+I endeavour so to live among my neighbours that I may not disgrace
+them, or you, or myself. This man has dared to accuse me openly of
+the grossest immorality and hypocrisy, when I am only doing my duty
+as I best know how to do it; and I do now believe in my heart that in
+making these charges he did not himself credit them. At any rate, no
+man can be justified in making such charges without evidence."
+
+"But all that had nothing to do with the bit of ground, Frank."
+
+"It is part and parcel of the same thing. He has chosen to treat me
+as an enemy, and has used all the influence of his wealth and rank to
+injure me. Now he must look to himself. I will not say a word of him,
+or to him, that is untrue; but as he has said evil of me behind my
+back which he did not believe, so will I say the evil of him, which I
+do believe, to his face." The letter was sent, and before the day was
+over the Vicar had recovered his good humour.
+
+And before the day was over the news was all through the parish.
+There was a certain ancient shoemaker in the village who had carried
+on business in Devizes, and had now retired to spend the evening of
+his life in his native place. Mr. Bolt was a quiet, inoffensive old
+man, but he was a dissenter, and was one of the elders and trustees
+who had been concerned in raising money for the chapel. To him the
+Vicar had told the whole story, declaring at the same time that, as
+far as he was concerned, Mr. Puddleham and his congregation should,
+at any rate for the present, be made welcome to their chapel. This
+he had done immediately on his return from Salisbury, and before the
+letter to the Marquis was written. Mr. Bolt, not unnaturally, saw
+his minister the same evening, and the thing was discussed in full
+conclave by the Puddlehamites. At the end of that discussion, Mr.
+Puddleham expressed his conviction that the story was a mare's nest
+from beginning to end. He didn't believe a word of it. The Marquis
+was not the man to give away anything that did not belong to him.
+Somebody had hoaxed the Vicar, or the Vicar had hoaxed Mr. Bolt; or
+else,--which Mr. Puddleham thought to be most likely,--the Vicar
+had gone mad with vexation at the glory and the triumph of the new
+chapel.
+
+"He was uncommon civil," said Mr. Bolt, who at this moment was
+somewhat inclined to favour the Vicar.
+
+"No doubt, Mr. Bolt; no doubt," said Mr. Puddleham, who had quite
+recovered from his first dismay, and had worked himself up to a state
+of eloquent enthusiasm. "I dare say he was civil. Why not? In old
+days when we hardly dared to talk of having a decent house of prayer
+of our own in which to worship our God, he was always civil. No one
+has ever heard me accuse Mr. Fenwick of incivility. But will any one
+tell me that he is a friend to our mode of worship? Gentlemen, we
+must look to ourselves, and I for one tell you that that chapel is
+ours. You won't find that his ban will keep me out of my pulpit.
+Glebe, indeed! why should the Vicar have glebe on the other side of
+the road from his house? Or, for the matter of that, why should he
+have glebe at all?" This was so decisive that no one at the meeting
+had a word to say after Mr. Puddleham had finished his speech.
+
+When the Marquis received his letter he was up in London. Lord
+Trowbridge was not much given to London life, but was usually
+compelled by circumstances,--the circumstances being the custom of
+society as pleaded by his two daughters,--to spend the months of May,
+June, and July at the family mansion in Grosvenor Square. Moreover,
+though the Marquis never opened his mouth in the House of Lords, it
+was, as he thought, imperative on him to give to the leader of his
+party the occasional support of his personal presence. Our Vicar,
+knowing this, had addressed his letter to Grosvenor Square, and
+it had thus reached its destination without loss of time. Lord
+Trowbridge by this time knew the handwriting of his enemy; and, as he
+broke the envelope, there came upon him an idea that it might be wise
+to refuse the letter, and to let it go back to its writer unopened.
+It was beneath his dignity to correspond with a man, or to receive
+letters from a man who would probably insult him. But before he could
+make up his mind, the envelope had been opened, and the letter had
+been read. His wrath, when he had read it, no writer of a simple
+prose narration should attempt to describe. "Disgrace," "insult,"
+"ignorance," and "malice,"--these were the words with which the
+Marquis found himself pelted by this pestilent, abominable, and most
+improper clergyman. As to the gist of the letter itself, it was some
+time before he understood it. And when he did begin to understand
+it, he did not as yet begin to believe it. His intelligence worked
+slowly, whereas his wrath worked quickly. But at last he began to ask
+himself whether the accusation made against him could possibly be
+based on truth. When the question of giving the land had been under
+consideration, it had never occurred to any one concerned that it
+could belong to the glebe. There had been some momentary suspicion
+that the spot might possibly have been so long used as common land as
+to give room for a question on that side; but no one had dreamed that
+any other claimant could arise. That the whole village of Bullhampton
+belonged to the Marquis was notorious. Of course there was the glebe.
+But who could think that the morsel of neglected land lying on the
+other side of the road belonged to the vicarage? The Marquis did not
+believe it now. This was some piece of wickedness concocted by the
+venomous brain of the iniquitous Vicar, more abominable than all his
+other wickednesses. The Marquis did not believe it; but he walked up
+and down his room all the morning thinking of it. The Marquis was
+sure that it was not true, and yet he could not for a moment get the
+idea out of his mind. Of course he must tell St. George. The language
+of the letter which had been sent to him was so wicked, that St.
+George must at least agree with him now in his anger against this
+man. And could nothing be done to punish the man? Prosecutions in
+regard to anonymous letters, threatening letters, begging letters,
+passed through his mind. He knew that punishment had been inflicted
+on the writers of insolent letters to royalty. And letters had been
+proved to be criminal as being libellous,--only then they must be
+published; and letters were sometimes held to form a conspiracy;--but
+he could not quite see his way to that. He knew that he was not
+royal; and he knew that the Vicar neither threatened him or begged
+aught from him. What if St. George should tell him again that this
+Vicar had right on his side! He cast the matter about in his mind all
+the day; and then, late in the afternoon, he got into his carriage,
+and had himself driven to the chambers of Messrs. Boothby, the family
+lawyers.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LVII.
+
+OIL IS TO BE THROWN UPON THE WATERS.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Messrs. Boothby in Lincoln's Inn had for very many years been the
+lawyers of the Stowte family, and probably knew as much about
+the property as any of the Stowtes themselves. They had not been
+consulted about the giving away of the bit of land for the chapel
+purposes, nor had they been instructed to draw up any deed of gift.
+The whole thing had been done irregularly. The land had been only
+promised, and not in truth as yet given, and the Puddlehamites, in
+their hurry, had gone to work and had built upon a promise. The
+Marquis, when, after the receipt of Mr. Fenwick's letter, his first
+rage was over, went at once to the chambers of Messrs. Boothby, and
+was forced to explain all the circumstances of the case to the senior
+partner before he could show the clergyman's wicked epistle. Old Mr.
+Boothby was a man of the same age as the Marquis, and, in his way,
+quite as great. Only the lawyer was a clever old man, whereas the
+Marquis was a stupid old man. Mr. Boothby sat, bowing his head, as
+the Marquis told his story. The story was rather confused, and for
+awhile Mr. Boothby could only understand that a dissenting chapel had
+been built upon his client's land.
+
+"We shall have to set it right by some scrap of a conveyance," said
+the lawyer.
+
+"But the Vicar of the parish claims it," said the Marquis.
+
+"Claims the chapel, my lord!"
+
+"He is a most pestilent, abominable man, Mr. Boothby. I have brought
+his letter here." Mr. Boothby held out his hand to receive the
+letter. From almost any client he would prefer a document to an oral
+explanation, but he would do so especially from his lordship. "But
+you must understand," continued the Marquis, "that he is quite unlike
+any ordinary clergyman. I have the greatest respect for the church,
+and am always happy to see clergymen at my own house. But this is a
+litigious, quarrelsome fellow. They tell me he's an infidel, and he
+keeps--! Altogether, Mr. Boothby, nothing can be worse."
+
+"Indeed!" said the lawyer, still holding out his hand for the letter.
+
+"He has taken the trouble to insult me continually. You heard how a
+tenant of mine was murdered? He was murdered by a young man whom this
+clergyman screens, because,--because,--he is the brother of,--of,--of
+the young woman."
+
+"That would be very bad, my lord."
+
+"It is very bad. He knows all about the murder;--I am convinced he
+does. He went bail for the young man. He used to associate with him
+on most intimate terms. As to the sister;--there's no doubt about
+that. They live on the land of a person who owns a small estate in
+the parish."
+
+"Mr. Gilmore, my lord?"
+
+"Exactly so. This Mr. Fenwick has got Mr. Gilmore in his pocket.
+You can have no idea of such a state of things as this. And now he
+writes me this letter! I know his handwriting now, and any further
+communication I shall return." The Marquis ceased to speak, and the
+lawyer at once buried himself in the letter.
+
+"It is meant to be offensive," said the lawyer.
+
+"Most insolent, most offensive, most improper! And yet the bishop
+upholds him!"
+
+"But if he is right about the bit of land, my lord, it will be rather
+awkward." And as he spoke, the lawyer examined the sketch of the
+vicarage entrance. "He gives this as copied from the terrier of the
+parish, my lord."
+
+"I don't believe a word of it," said the Marquis.
+
+"You didn't look at the plan of the estate, my lord?"
+
+"I don't think we did; but Packer had no doubt. No one knows the
+property in Bullhampton so well as Packer, and Packer said--"
+
+But while the Marquis was still speaking the lawyer rose, and begging
+his client's pardon, went to the clerk in the outer room. Nor did
+he return till the clerk had descended to an iron chamber in the
+basement, and returned from thence with a certain large tin box.
+Into this a search was made, and presently Mr. Boothby came back
+with a weighty lump of dusty vellum documents, and a manuscript map,
+or sketch of a survey of the Bullhampton estate, which he had had
+opened. While the search was being made he had retired to another
+room, and had had a little conversation with his partner about
+the weather. "I am afraid the parson is right, my lord," said Mr.
+Boothby, as he closed the door.
+
+"Right!"
+
+"Right in his facts, my lord. It is glebe, and is marked so here very
+plainly. There should have been a reference to us,--there should,
+indeed, my lord. Packer, and men like him, really know nothing. The
+truth is, in such matters nobody knows anything. You should always
+have documentary evidence."
+
+"And it is glebe?"
+
+"Not a doubt of it, my lord."
+
+Then the Marquis knew that his enemy had him on the hip, and he laid
+his old head down upon his folded arms and wept. In his weeping it
+is probable that no tears rolled down his cheeks, but he wept inward
+tears,--tears of hatred, remorse, and self-commiseration. His enemy
+had struck him with scourges, and, as far as he could see at present,
+he could not return a blow. And he must submit himself,--must restore
+the bit of land, and build those nasty dissenters a chapel elsewhere
+on his own property. He had not a doubt as to that for a moment.
+Could he have escaped the shame of it,--as far as the expense was
+concerned he would have been willing to build them ten chapels. And
+in doing this he would give a triumph, an unalloyed triumph, to a
+man whom he believed to be thoroughly bad. The Vicar had accused the
+Marquis of spreading reports which he, the Marquis, did not himself
+believe; but the Marquis believed them all. At this moment there was
+no evil that he could not have believed of Mr. Fenwick. While sitting
+there an idea, almost amounting to a conviction, had come upon
+him, that Mr. Fenwick had himself been privy to the murder of old
+Trumbull. What would not a parson do who would take delight in
+insulting and humiliating the nobleman who owned the parish in which
+he lived? To Lord Trowbridge the very fact that the parson of the
+parish which he regarded as his own was opposed to him, proved
+sufficiently that that parson was,--scum, dregs, riff-raff, a low
+radical, and everything that a parson ought not to be. The Vicar had
+been wrong there. The Marquis did believe it all religiously.
+
+"What must I do?" said the Marquis.
+
+"As to the chapel itself, my lord, the Vicar, bad as he is, does not
+want to move it."
+
+"It must come down," said the Marquis, getting up from his chair.
+"It shall come down. Do you think that I would allow it to stand
+when it has been erected on his ground,--through my error? Not for a
+day!--not for an hour! I'll tell you what, Mr. Boothby,--that man has
+known it all through;--has known it as well as you do now; but he has
+waited till the building was complete before he would tell me. I see
+it all as plain as the nose on your face, Mr. Boothby."
+
+The lawyer was meditating how best he might explain to his
+angry client that he had no power whatsoever to pull down the
+building,--that if the Vicar and the dissenting minister chose
+to agree about it the new building must stand, in spite of the
+Marquis,--must stand, unless the churchwardens, patron, or
+ecclesiastical authorities generally should force the Vicar to
+have it removed,--when a clerk came in and whispered a word to the
+attorney. "My lord," said Mr. Boothby, "Lord St. George is here.
+Shall he come in?"
+
+The Marquis did not wish to see his son exactly at this minute;
+but Lord St. George was, of course, admitted. This meeting at the
+lawyer's chambers was altogether fortuitous, and father and son were
+equally surprised. But so great was the anger and dismay and general
+perturbation of the Marquis at the time, that he could not stop to
+ask any question. St. George must, of course, know what had happened,
+and it was quite as well that he should be told at once.
+
+"That bit of ground they've built the chapel on at Bullhampton, turns
+out to be--glebe," said the Marquis. Lord St. George whistled. "Of
+course, Mr. Fenwick knew it all along," said the Marquis.
+
+"I should hardly think that," said his son.
+
+"You read his letter. Mr. Boothby, will you be so good as to show
+Lord St. George the letter? You never read such a production.
+Impudent scoundrel! Of course he knew it all the time."
+
+Lord St. George read the letter. "He is very impudent, whether he be
+a scoundrel or not."
+
+"Impudent is no word for it."
+
+"Perhaps he has had some provocation, my lord."
+
+"Not from me, St. George;--not from me. I have done nothing to him.
+Of course the chapel must be--removed."
+
+"Don't you think the question might stand over for a while?"
+suggested Mr. Boothby. "Matters would become smoother in a month or
+two."
+
+"Not for an hour," said the Marquis.
+
+Lord St. George walked about the room with the letter in his hand,
+meditating. "The truth is," he said, at last, "we have made a
+mistake, and we must get out of it as best we can. I think my father
+is a little wrong about this clergyman's character."
+
+"St. George! Have you read his letter? Is that a proper letter to
+come from a clergyman of the Church of England to--to--to--" the
+Marquis longed to say to the Marquis of Trowbridge; but he did not
+dare so to express himself before his son,--"to the landlord of his
+parish?"
+
+"A red-brick chapel, just close to your lodge, isn't nice, you know."
+
+"He has got no lodge," said the Marquis.
+
+"And so we thought we'd build him one. Let me manage this. I'll see
+him, and I'll see the minister, and I'll endeavour to throw some oil
+upon the waters."
+
+"I don't want to throw oil upon the waters."
+
+"Lord St. George is in the right, my lord," said the attorney; "he
+really is. It is a case in which we must throw a little oil upon the
+waters. We've made a mistake, and when we've done that we should
+always throw oil upon the waters. I've no doubt Lord St. George
+will find a way out of it." Then the father and the son went away
+together, and before they had reached the Houses of Parliament Lord
+St. George had persuaded his father to place the matter of the
+Bullhampton chapel in his hands. "And as for the letter," said St.
+George, "do not you notice it."
+
+"I have not the slightest intention of noticing it," said the
+Marquis, haughtily.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LVIII.
+
+EDITH BROWNLOW'S DREAM.
+
+
+"My dear, sit down; I want to speak to you. Do you know I should like
+to see you--married." This speech was made at Dunripple to Edith
+Brownlow by her uncle, Sir Gregory, one morning in July, as she was
+attending him with his breakfast. His breakfast consisted always of
+a cup of chocolate, made after a peculiar fashion, and Edith was in
+the habit of standing by the old man's bedside while he took it. She
+would never sit down, because she knew that were she to do so she
+would be pretty nearly hidden out of sight in the old arm-chair that
+stood at the bed-head; but now she was specially invited to do so,
+and that in a manner which almost made her think that it would be
+well that she should hide herself for a space. But she did not sit
+down. There was the empty cup to be taken from Sir Gregory's hands,
+and, after the first moment of surprise, Edith was not quite sure
+that it would be good that she should hide herself. She took the cup
+and put it on the table, and then returned, without making any reply.
+"I should like very much to see you married, my dear," said Sir
+Gregory, in the mildest of voices.
+
+"Do you want to get rid of me, uncle?"
+
+"No, my dear; that is just what I don't want. Of course you'll marry
+somebody."
+
+"I don't see any of course, Uncle Gregory."
+
+"But why shouldn't you? I suppose you have thought about it."
+
+"Only in a general way, Uncle Gregory."
+
+Sir Gregory Marrable was not a wise man. His folly was of an order
+very different from that of Lord Trowbridge,--very much less likely
+to do harm to himself or others, much more innocent, and, folly
+though it was, a great deal more compatible with certain intellectual
+gifts. Lord Trowbridge, not to put too fine a point upon it, was
+a fool all round. He was much too great a fool to have an idea of
+his own folly. Now Sir Gregory distrusted himself in everything,
+conceived himself to be a poor creature, would submit himself to a
+child on any question of literature, and had no opinion of his own
+on any matter outside his own property,--and even as to that his
+opinion was no more than lukewarm. Yet he read a great deal, had much
+information stored away somewhere in his memory, and had learned at
+any rate to know how small a fly he was himself on the wheel of the
+world. But, alas, when he did meddle with anything he was apt to
+make a mess of it. There had been some conversation between him
+and his sister-in-law, Edith's mother, about Walter Marrable; some
+also between him and his son, and between him and Miss Marrable,
+his cousin. But as yet no one had spoken to Edith, and as Captain
+Marrable himself had not spoken, it would have been as well, perhaps,
+if Sir Gregory had held his tongue. After Edith's last answer the old
+man was silent for awhile, and then he returned to the subject with a
+downright question,--
+
+"How did you like Walter when he was here?"
+
+"Captain Marrable?"
+
+"Yes,--Captain Marrable."
+
+"I liked him well enough,--in a way, Uncle Gregory."
+
+"Nothing would please me so much, Edith, as that you should become
+his wife. You know that Dunripple will belong to him some day."
+
+"If Gregory does not marry." Edith had hardly known whether to say
+this or to leave it unsaid. She was well aware that her cousin
+Gregory would never marry,--that he was a confirmed invalid, a man
+already worn out, old before his time, and with one foot in the
+grave. But had she not said it, she would have seemed to herself to
+have put him aside as a person altogether out of the way.
+
+"Gregory will never marry. Of course while he lives Dunripple will be
+his; but if Walter were to marry he would make arrangements. I dare
+say you can't understand all about that, my dear; but it would be a
+very good thing. I should be so happy if I thought that you were to
+live at Dunripple always."
+
+Edith kissed him and escaped without giving any other answer. Ten
+days after that Walter Marrable was to be again at Dunripple,--only
+for a few days; but still in a few days the thing might be settled.
+Edith had heard something of Mary Lowther, but not much. There had
+been some idea of a match between Walter and his cousin Mary, but the
+idea had been blown away. So much Edith had heard. To herself Walter
+Marrable had been very friendly, and, in truth, she had liked him
+much. They two were not cousins, but they were so connected, and had
+for some weeks been so thrown together, as to be almost as good as
+cousins. His presence at Dunripple had been very pleasant to her, but
+she had never thought of him as a lover. And she had an idea of her
+own, that girls ought not to think of men as lovers without a good
+deal of provocation.
+
+Sir Gregory spoke to Mrs. Brownlow on the same subject, and as he
+told her what had taken place between him and Edith, she felt herself
+compelled to speak to her daughter.
+
+"If it should take place, my dear, it would be very well; but I would
+rather your uncle had not mentioned it."
+
+"It won't do any harm, mamma. I mean, that I shan't break my heart."
+
+"I believe him to be a very excellent young man,--not at all like his
+father, who has been as bad as he can be."
+
+"Wasn't he in love with Mary Lowther last winter?"
+
+"I don't know, my dear. I never believe stories of this kind. When I
+hear that a young man is going to be married to a young lady, then I
+believe that they are in love with each other."
+
+"It is to be hoped so then, mamma?"
+
+"But I never believe any thing before. And I think you may take it
+for granted that there is nothing in that."
+
+"It would be nothing to me, mamma."
+
+"It might be something. But I will say nothing more about it. You've
+so much good sense that I am quite sure you won't get into trouble. I
+wish Sir Gregory had not spoken to you; but as he has, it may be as
+well that you should know that the family arrangement would be very
+agreeable to your uncle and to cousin Gregory. The title and the
+property must go to Captain Marrable at last, and Sir Gregory would
+make immediate sacrifices for you, which perhaps he would not make
+for him."
+
+Edith understood all about it very clearly, and would have understood
+all about it with half the words. She would have little or no fortune
+of her own, and in money her uncle would have very little to give to
+her. Indeed, there was no reason why he should give her anything. She
+was not connected with any of the Marrables by blood, though chance
+had caused her to live at Dunripple almost all her life. She had
+become half a Marrable already, and it might be very well that she
+should become a Marrable altogether. Walter was a remarkably handsome
+man, would be a baronet, and would have an estate, and might,
+perhaps, have the enjoyment of the estate by marrying her earlier
+than he would were he to marry any one else. Edith Brownlow
+understood it all with sufficient clearness. But then she understood
+also that young women shouldn't give away their hearts before they
+are asked for them; and she was quite sure that Walter Marrable had
+made no sign of asking for hers. Nevertheless, within her own bosom
+she did become a little anxious about Mary Lowther, and she wished
+that she knew that story.
+
+On the fourth of August Walter Marrable reached Dunripple, and found
+the house given up almost entirely to the doctor. Both his uncle and
+his cousin were very ill. When he was able to obtain from the doctor
+information on which he could rely, he learned that Mr. Marrable was
+in real danger, but that Sir Gregory's ailment was no more than his
+usual infirmity heightened by anxiety on behalf of his son. "Your
+uncle may live for the next ten years," said the doctor; "but I do
+not know what to say about Mr. Marrable." All this time the care
+and time of the two ladies were divided between the invalids.
+Mrs. Brownlow tended her nephew, and Edith, as usual, waited
+upon Sir Gregory. In such circumstances it was not extraordinary
+that Edith Brownlow and Walter Marrable should be thrown much
+together,--especially as it was the desire of all concerned with them
+that they should become man and wife. Poor Edith was subject to a
+feeling that everybody knew that she was expected to fall in love
+with the man. She thought it probable, too, that the man himself had
+been instructed to fall in love with her. This no doubt created a
+great difficulty for her, a difficulty which she felt to be heavy and
+inconvenient;--but it was lessened by the present condition of the
+household. When there is illness in a house, the feminine genius and
+spirit predominates the male. If the illness be so severe as to cause
+a sense of danger, this is so strongly the case that the natural
+position of the two is changed. Edith, quite unconscious of the
+reason, was much less afraid of her proposed lover than she would
+have been had there been no going about on tiptoe, no questions asked
+with bated breath, no great need for womanly aid.
+
+Walter had been there four days, and was sitting with Edith one
+evening out on the lawn among the rhododendrons. When he had found
+what was the condition of the household, he had offered to go back at
+once to his regiment at Birmingham. But Sir Gregory would not hear of
+it. Sir Gregory hated the regiment, and had got an idea in his head
+that his nephew ought not to be there at all. He was too weak and
+diffident to do it himself; but if any one would have arranged it for
+him, he would have been glad to fix an income for Walter Marrable
+on condition that Walter should live at home, and look after the
+property, and be unto him as a son. But nothing had been fixed,
+nothing had been said, and on the day but one following, the captain
+was to return to Birmingham. Mrs. Brownlow was with her nephew, and
+Walter was sitting with Edith among the rhododendrons, the two having
+come out of the house together after such a dinner as is served in a
+house of invalids. They had become very intimate, but Edith Brownlow
+had almost determined that Walter Marrable did not intend to fall in
+love with her. She had quite determined that she would not fall in
+love with him till he did. What she might do in that case she had not
+told herself. She was not quite sure. He was very nice,--but she was
+not quite sure. One ought to be very fond of a young man, she said
+to herself, before one falls in love with him. Nevertheless her mind
+was by no means set against him. If one can oblige one's friends one
+ought, she said, again to herself.
+
+She had brought him out a cup of coffee, and he was sitting in a
+garden chair with a cigar in his mouth. They were Walter and Edith
+to each other, just as though they were cousins. Indeed, it was
+necessary that they should be cousins to each other, for the rest of
+their lives, if no more.
+
+
+[Illustration: She had brought him out a cup of coffee.]
+
+
+"Let us drop the Captain and the Miss," he had said himself; "the
+mischief is in it if you and I can't suppose ourselves to be
+related." She had assented cordially, and had called him Walter
+without a moment's hesitation. "Edith," he said to her now, after he
+had sat for a minute or two with the coffee in his hand; "did you
+ever hear of a certain cousin of ours, called Mary Lowther?"
+
+"Oh, dear, yes; she lives with Aunt Sarah at Loring; only Aunt Sarah
+isn't my aunt, and Miss Lowther isn't my cousin."
+
+"Just so. She lives at Loring. Edith, I love you so much that I
+wonder whether I may tell you the great secret of my life?"
+
+"Of course you may. I love secrets; and I specially love the secrets
+of those who love me." She said this with a voice perfectly clear,
+and a face without a sign of disappointment; but her little dream had
+already been dissipated. She knew the secret as well as though it had
+been told.
+
+"I was engaged to marry her."
+
+"And you will marry her?"
+
+"It was broken off,--when I thought that I should be forced to go to
+India. The story is very long, and very sad. It is my own father who
+has ruined me. But I will tell it you some day." Then he told it all,
+as he was sitting there with his cigar in his hand. Stories may seem
+to be very long, and yet be told very quickly.
+
+"But you will go back to her now?" said Edith.
+
+"She has not waited for me."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"They tell me that she is to be married to a--to a--certain Mr.
+Gilmore."
+
+"Already!"
+
+"He had offered to her twenty times before I ever saw her. She never
+loved him, and does not now."
+
+"Who has told you this, Captain Marrable?" She had not intended to
+alter her form of speech, and when she had done so would have given
+anything to have called him then by his Christian name.
+
+"My Uncle John."
+
+"I would ask herself."
+
+"I mean to do so. But somehow, treated as I am here, I am bound to
+tell my uncle of it first. And I cannot do that while Gregory is so
+ill."
+
+"I must go up to my uncle now, Walter. And I do so hope she may be
+true to you. And I do so hope I may like her. Don't believe anything
+till she has told you herself." Saying this, Edith Brownlow returned
+to the house, and at once put her dream quietly out of her sight. She
+said nothing to her mother about it then. It was not necessary that
+she should tell her mother as yet.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LIX.
+
+NEWS FROM DUNRIPPLE.
+
+
+At the end of the first week in August news reached the vicarage at
+Bullhampton that was not indeed very important to the family of Mr.
+Fenwick, but which still seemed to have an immediate effect on their
+lives and comfort. The Vicar for some days past had been, as regarded
+himself, in a high good humour, in consequence of a communication
+which he had received from Lord St. George. Further mention of this
+communication must be made, but it may be deferred to the next
+chapter, as other matters, more momentous, require our immediate
+attention. Mr. Gilmore had pleaded very hard that a day might be
+fixed, and had almost succeeded. Mary Lowther, driven into a corner,
+had been able to give no reason why she should not fix a day, other
+than this,--that Mr. Gilmore had promised her that she should not be
+hurried. "What do you mean?" Mrs. Fenwick had said, angrily. "You
+speak of the man who is to be your husband as though your greatest
+happiness in life were to keep away from him." Mary Lowther had not
+dared to answer that such would be her greatest happiness. Then news
+had reached the vicarage of the illness of Gregory Marrable, and of
+Walter Marrable's presence at Dunripple. This had come of course from
+Aunt Sarah, at Loring; but it had come in such a manner as to seem to
+justify, for a time, Mary's silence in reference to that question of
+naming the day. The Marrables of Dunripple were not nearly related
+to her. She had no personal remembrance of either Sir Gregory or his
+son. But there was an importance attached to the tidings, which, if
+analysed, would have been found to attach itself to Captain Marrable,
+rather than to the two men who were ill; and this was tacitly allowed
+to have an influence. Aunt Sarah had expressed her belief that
+Gregory Marrable was dying; and had gone on to say,--trusting to the
+known fact that Mary had engaged herself to Mr. Gilmore, and to the
+fact, as believed to be a fact, that Walter was engaged to Edith
+Brownlow,--had gone on to say that Captain Marrable would probably
+remain at Dunripple, and would take immediate charge of the estate.
+"I think there is no doubt," said Aunt Sarah, "that Captain Marrable
+and Edith Brownlow will be married." Mary was engaged to Mr. Gilmore,
+and why should not Aunt Sarah tell her news?
+
+The Squire, who had become elated and happy at the period of the
+rubies, had, in three days, again fallen away into a state of angry
+gloom, rather than of melancholy. He said very little just now either
+to Fenwick or to Mrs. Fenwick about his marriage; and, indeed, he did
+not say very much to Mary herself. Men were already at work about
+the gardens at the Privets, and he would report to her what was done,
+and would tell her that the masons and painters would begin in a few
+days. Now and again he would ask for her company up to the place; and
+she had been there twice at his instance since the day on which she
+had gone after him of her own accord, and had fetched him down to
+look at the jewels. But there was little or no sympathy between them.
+Mary could not bring herself to care about the house or the gardens,
+though she told herself again and again that there was she to live
+for the remainder of her life.
+
+Two letters she received from her aunt at Loring within an interval
+of three days, and these letters were both filled with details as to
+the illness of Sir Gregory and his son, at Dunripple. Walter Marrable
+sent accounts to his uncle, the parson, and Mrs. Brownlow sent
+accounts to Miss Marrable herself. And then, on the day following the
+receipt of the last of these two letters, there came one from Walter
+Marrable himself, addressed to Mary Lowther. Gregory Marrable was
+dead, and the letter announcing the death of the baronet's only son
+was as follows:--
+
+
+   Dunripple, August 12, 1868.
+
+   MY DEAR MARY,
+
+   I hardly know whether you will have expected that the news
+   which I have to tell you should reach you direct from me;
+   but I think, upon the whole, that it is better that I
+   should write. My cousin, Gregory Marrable, Sir Gregory's
+   only son, died this morning. I do not doubt but that you
+   know that he has been long ill. He has come to the end of
+   all his troubles, and the old baronet is now childless. He
+   also has been, and is still, unwell, though I do not know
+   that he is much worse than usual. He has been an invalid
+   for years and years. Of course he feels his son's death
+   acutely; for he is a father who has ever been good to his
+   son. But it always seems to me that old people become so
+   used to death, that they do not think of it as do we who
+   are younger. I have seen him twice to-day since the news
+   was told to him, and though he spoke of his son with
+   infinite sorrow, he was able to talk of other things.
+
+   I write to you myself, especially, instead of getting one
+   of the ladies here to do so, because I think it proper
+   to tell you how things stand with myself. Everything is
+   changed with me since you and I parted because it was
+   necessary that I should seek my fortune in India. You
+   already know that I have abandoned that idea; and I now
+   find that I shall leave the army altogether. My uncle has
+   wished it since I first came here, and he now proposes
+   that I shall live here permanently. Of course the meaning
+   is that I should assume the position of his heir. My
+   father, with whom I personally will have no dealing in
+   the matter, stands between us. But I do suppose that the
+   family affairs will be so arranged that I may feel secure
+   that I shall not be turned altogether adrift upon the
+   world.
+
+   Dear Mary,--I do not know how to tell you, that as regards
+   my future everything now depends on you. They have told me
+   that you have accepted an offer from Mr. Gilmore. I know
+   no more than this,--that they have told me so. If you will
+   tell me also that you mean to be his wife, I will say no
+   more. But until you tell me so, I will not believe it. I
+   do not think that you can ever love him as you certainly
+   once loved me;--and when I think of it, how short a time
+   ago that was! I know that I have no right to complain.
+   Our separation was my doing as much as yours. But I will
+   settle nothing as to my future life till I hear from
+   yourself whether or no you will come back to me.
+
+   I shall remain here till after the funeral, which will
+   take place on Friday. On Monday I shall go back to
+   Birmingham. This is Sunday, and I shall expect to hear
+   from you before the week is over. If you bid me, I will be
+   with you early next week. If you tell me that my coming
+   will be useless,--why, then, I shall care very little what
+   happens.
+
+   Yours, with all the love of my heart,
+
+   WALTER MARRABLE.
+
+
+Luckily for Mary she was alone when she read the letter. Her first
+idea on reading it was to think of the words which she had used
+when she had most ungraciously consented to become the wife of
+Harry Gilmore. "Were he so placed that he could afford to marry a
+poor wife, I should leave you and go to him." She remembered them
+accurately. She had made up her mind at the time that she would say
+them, thinking that thus he would be driven from her, and that she
+would be at rest from his solicitation, from those of her friends,
+and from the qualms of her own conscience. He had chosen to claim
+her in spite of those words,--and now the thing had happened to
+the possibility of which she had referred. Poor as she was, Walter
+Marrable was able to make her his wife. She held in her hand his
+letter telling her that it was so. All her heart was his,--as much
+now as it had ever been; and it was impossible that she should not go
+to him. She had told Mr. Gilmore herself that she could never love
+again as she loved Walter Marrable. She had been driven to believe
+that she could never be his wife, and she had separated herself from
+him. She had separated herself from him, and persuaded herself that
+it would be expedient for her to become the wife of this other man.
+But up to this very moment she had never been able to overcome her
+horror at the prospect. From day to day she had thought that she must
+give it up, even when they were dinning into her ears the tidings
+that Walter Marrable was to marry that girl at Dunripple. But that
+had been a falsehood,--an absolute falsehood. There had been no such
+thought in his bosom. He had never been untrue to her. Ah! how much
+the nobler of the two had he been!
+
+And yet she had struggled hard to do right,--to think of others more
+than of herself;--so to dispose of herself that she might be of some
+use in the world. And it had come to this! It was quite impossible
+now that she should marry Harry Gilmore. There had hitherto been
+at any rate an attempt on her part to reconcile herself to that
+marriage; but now the attempt was impossible. What right could she
+have to refuse the man she loved when he told her that all his
+happiness depended on her love! She could see it now. With all her
+desire to do right, she had done foul wrong in accepting Mr. Gilmore.
+She had done foul wrong, though she had complied with the advice of
+all her friends. It could not but have been wrong, as it had brought
+her to this,--her and him. But for the future, she might yet be
+right,--if she only knew how. That it would be wrong to marry Harry
+Gilmore,--to think of marrying him when her heart was so stirred by
+the letter which she held in her hand,--of that she was quite sure.
+She had done the man an injury for which she could never atone. Of
+that she was well aware. But the injury was done and could not now be
+undone. And had she not told him when he came to her, that she would
+even yet return to Walter Marrable if Walter Marrable were able to
+take her?
+
+She went down stairs, slowly, just before the hour for the children's
+dinner, and found her friend, with one or two of the bairns, in the
+garden. "Janet," she said, "I have had a letter from Dunripple."
+
+Mrs. Fenwick looked into her face, and saw that it was sad and
+sorrowful. "What news, Mary?"
+
+"My cousin, Gregory Marrable, is--no more; he died on Sunday
+morning." This was on the Tuesday.
+
+"You expected it, I suppose, from your aunt's letter?"
+
+"Oh, yes;--it has been sudden at last, it seems."
+
+"And Sir Gregory?"
+
+"He is pretty well. He is getting better."
+
+"I pity him the loss of his son;--poor old man!" Mrs. Fenwick was far
+too clever not to see that the serious, solemn aspect of Mary's face
+was not due altogether to the death of a distant cousin, whom she
+herself did not even remember;--but she was too wise, also, to refer
+to what she presumed to be Mary's special grief at the moment. Mary
+was doubtless thinking of the altered circumstances of her cousin
+Walter; but it was as well now that she should speak as little as
+possible about that cousin. Mrs. Fenwick could not turn altogether to
+another subject, but she would, if possible, divert her friend from
+her present thoughts. "Shall you go into mourning?" she asked; "he
+was only your second cousin; but people have ideas so different about
+those things."
+
+"I do not know," said Mary, listlessly.
+
+"If I were you, I would consult Mr. Gilmore. He has a right to be
+consulted. If you do, it should be very slight."
+
+"I shall go into mourning," said Mary, suddenly,--remembering at the
+moment what was Walter's position in the household at Dunripple. Then
+the tears came up into her eyes, she knew not why; and she walked off
+by herself amidst the garden shrubs. Mrs. Fenwick watched her as she
+went, but could not quite understand it. Those tears had not been for
+a second cousin who had never been known. And then, during the last
+few weeks, Mary, in regard to herself, had been prone to do anything
+that Mr. Gilmore would advise, as though she could make up by
+obedience for the want of that affection which she owed to him. Now,
+when she was told that she ought to consult Mr. Gilmore, she flatly
+refused to do so.
+
+Mary came up the garden a few minutes afterwards, and as she passed
+towards the house, she begged to be excused from going into lunch
+that day. Lord St. George was coming up to lunch at the vicarage, as
+will be explained in the next chapter.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LX.
+
+LORD ST. GEORGE IS VERY CUNNING.
+
+
+Lord St. George began to throw his oil upon the waters in reference
+to that unfortunate chapel at Bullhampton a day or two after his
+interview with his father in the lawyer's chambers. His father had
+found himself compelled to yield; had been driven, as it were, by the
+Fates, to accord to his son permission to do as his son should think
+best. There came to be so serious a trouble in consequence of that
+terrible mistake of Packer's, that the poor old Marquis was unable to
+defend himself from the necessity of yielding. On that day, before he
+left his son at Westminster, when their roads lay into the different
+council-chambers of the state, he had prayed hard that the oil might
+not be very oily. But his son would not bate him an inch of his
+surrender.
+
+"He is so utterly worthless," the Marquis had said, pleading hard as
+he spoke of his enemy.
+
+"I'm not quite sure, my lord, that you understand the man," St.
+George had said. "You hate him, and no doubt he hates you."
+
+"Horribly!" ejaculated the Marquis.
+
+"You intend to be as good as you know how to be to all those people
+at Bullhampton?"
+
+"Indeed I do, St. George," said the Marquis, almost with tears in his
+eyes.
+
+"And I shouldn't wonder if he did, too."
+
+"But look at his life," said the Marquis.
+
+"It isn't always easy to look at a man's life. We are always looking
+at men's lives, and always making mistakes. The bishop thinks he
+is a good sort of fellow, and the bishop isn't the man to like a
+debauched, unbelieving, reckless parson, who, according to your
+ideas, must be leading a life of open shame and profligacy. I'm
+inclined to think there must be a mistake."
+
+The unfortunate Marquis groaned deeply as he walked away to the
+august chamber of the Lords.
+
+These and such like are the troubles that sit heavy on a man's heart.
+If search for bread, and meat, and raiment, be set aside, then,
+beyond that, our happiness or misery here depends chiefly on success
+or failure in small things. Though a man when he turns into bed may
+be sure that he has unlimited thousands at his command, though
+all society be open to him, though he know himself to be esteemed
+handsome, clever, and fashionable, even though his digestion be good,
+and he have no doctor to deny him tobacco, champagne, or made dishes,
+still, if he be conscious of failure there where he has striven to
+succeed, even though it be in the humbling of an already humble
+adversary, he will stretch, and roll, and pine,--a wretched being.
+How happy is he who can get his fretting done for him by deputy!
+
+Lord St. George wrote to the parson a few days after his interview
+with his father. He and Lord Trowbridge occupied the same house in
+London, and always met at breakfast; but nothing further was said
+between them during the remaining days in town upon the subject. Lord
+St. George wrote to the parson, and his father had left London for
+Turnover before Mr. Fenwick's answer was received.
+
+
+   MY DEAR SIR,--(Lord St. George had said,)--My father
+   has put into my hands your letter about the dissenting
+   chapel at Bullhampton. It seems to me, that he has made a
+   mistake, and that you are very angry. Couldn't we arrange
+   this little matter without fighting? There is not a
+   landlord in England more desirous of doing good to his
+   tenants than my father; and I am quite willing to believe
+   that there is not an incumbent in England more desirous of
+   doing good to his parishioners than you. I leave London
+   for Wiltshire on Saturday the 11th. If you will meet me I
+   will drive over to Bullhampton on Monday the 13th.
+
+   Yours truly,
+
+   ST. GEORGE.
+
+   No doubt you'll agree with me in thinking that internecine
+   fighting in a parish between the landlord and the
+   clergyman cannot be for the good of the people.
+
+
+Thus it was that Lord St. George began to throw his oil upon the
+waters.
+
+It may be a doubt whether it should be ascribed to Mr. Fenwick as a
+weakness or a strength that, though he was very susceptible of anger,
+and though he could maintain his anger at glowing heat as long as
+fighting continued, it would all evaporate and leave him harmless
+as a dove at the first glimpse of an olive-branch. He knew this so
+well of himself, that it would sometimes be a regret to him in the
+culmination of his wrath that he would not be able to maintain it
+till the hour of his revenge should come. On receiving Lord St.
+George's letter, he at once sat down and wrote to that nobleman,
+telling him that he would be happy to see him at lunch on the Monday
+at two o'clock. Then there came a rejoinder from Lord St. George,
+saying that he would be at the vicarage at the hour named.
+
+Mrs. Fenwick was of course there to entertain the nobleman, whom she
+had never seen before, and during the lunch very little was said
+about the chapel, and not a word was said about other causes of
+complaint.
+
+"That is a terrible building, Mrs. Fenwick," Lord St. George had
+remarked.
+
+"We're getting used to it now," Mrs. Fenwick had replied; "and Mr.
+Fenwick thinks it good for purposes of mortification."
+
+"We must see and move the sackcloth and ashes a little further off,"
+said his lordship.
+
+Then they ate their lunch, and talked about the parish, and expressed
+a joint hope that the Grinder would be hung at Salisbury.
+
+"Now let us go and see the corpus delicti," said the Vicar as soon as
+they had drawn their chairs from the table.
+
+The two men went out and walked round the chapel, and, finding it
+open, walked into it. Of course there were remarks made by both of
+them. It was acknowledged that it was ugly, misplaced, uncomfortable,
+detestable to the eye, and ear, and general feeling,--except in so
+far as it might suit the wants of people who were not sufficiently
+educated to enjoy the higher tone, and more elaborate language of
+the Church of England services. It was thus that they spoke to each
+other, quite in an aesthetic manner.
+
+Lord St. George had said as he entered the chapel, that it must come
+down as a matter of course; and the Vicar had suggested that there
+need be no hurry.
+
+"They tell me that it must be removed some day," said the Vicar, "but
+as I am not likely to leave the parish, nobody need start the matter
+for a year or two." Lord St. George was declaring that advantage
+could not be taken of such a concession on Mr. Fenwick's part, when
+a third person entered the building, and walked towards them with a
+quick step.
+
+"Here is Mr. Puddleham, the minister," said Mr. Fenwick; and the
+future lord of Bullhampton was introduced to the present owner of the
+pulpit under which they were standing.
+
+"My lord," said the minister, "I am proud, indeed, to have the honour
+of meeting your lordship in our new chapel, and of expressing to your
+lordship the high sense entertained by me and my congregation of
+your noble father's munificent liberality to us in the matter of the
+land."
+
+In saying this Mr. Puddleham never once turned his face upon the
+Vicar. He presumed himself at the present moment to be at feud with
+the Vicar in most deadly degree. Though the Vicar would occasionally
+accost him in the village, he always answered the Vicar as though
+they two were enemies. He had bowed when he came up the chapel, but
+he had bowed to the stranger. If the Vicar took any of that courtesy
+to himself, that was not his fault.
+
+"I'm afraid we were a little too quick there," said Lord St. George.
+
+"I hope not, my lord; I hope not. I have heard a rumour; but I have
+inquired. I have inquired, and--"
+
+"The truth is, Mr. Puddleham, that we are standing on Mr. Fenwick's
+private ground this moment."
+
+"You are quite welcome to the use of it, Mr. Puddleham," said the
+Vicar. Mr. Puddleham assumed a look of dignity, and frowned. He could
+not even yet believe that his friend the Marquis had made so fatal a
+mistake.
+
+"We must build you another chapel,--that will be about the long and
+short of it, Mr. Puddleham."
+
+"My lord, I should think there must be some--mistake. Some error must
+have crept in somewhere, my lord. I have made inquiry--"
+
+"It has been a very big error," said Lord St. George, "and it has
+crept into Mr. Fenwick's glebe in a very palpable form. There is no
+use in discussing it, Mr. Puddleham."
+
+"And why didn't the reverend gentleman claim the ground when the
+works were commenced?" demanded the indignant minister, turning now
+for the first time to the Vicar, and doing so with a visage full of
+wrath, and a graceful uplifting of his right hand.
+
+"The reverend gentleman was very ignorant of matters with which he
+ought to have been better acquainted," said Mr. Fenwick himself.
+
+"Very ignorant, indeed," said Mr. Puddleham. "My lord, I am inclined
+to think that we can assert our right to this chapel and maintain it.
+My lord, I am of opinion that the whole hierarchy of the Episcopal
+Established Church in England cannot expel us. My lord, who will be
+the man to move the first brick from this sacred edifice?" And Mr.
+Puddleham pointed up to the pulpit as though he knew well where that
+brick was ever to be found when duty required its presence. "My lord,
+I would propose that nothing should be done; and then let us see who
+will attempt to close this chapel door against the lambs of the Lord
+who come here for pasture in their need."
+
+"The lambs shall have pasture and shall have their pastor," said St.
+George, laughing. "We'll move this chapel to ground that is our own,
+and make everything as right as a trivet for you. You don't want to
+intrude, I'm sure."
+
+Mr. Puddleham's eloquence was by no means exhausted; but at last,
+when they had left the chapel, and the ground immediately around the
+chapel which Mr. Puddleham would insist upon regarding as his own,
+they did manage to shake him off.
+
+"And now, Mr. Fenwick," said Lord St. George, in his determined
+purpose to throw oil upon the waters, "what is this unfortunate
+quarrel between you and my father?"
+
+"You had better ask him that, my lord."
+
+"I have asked him, of course,--and of course he has no answer to
+make. No doubt you intended to enrage him when you wrote him that
+letter which he showed me."
+
+"Certainly I did."
+
+"I hardly see how good is to be done by angering an old man who
+stands high in the world's esteem."
+
+"Had he not stood high, my lord, I should probably have passed him
+by."
+
+"I can understand all that,--that one man should be a mark for
+another's scorn because he is a Marquis, and wealthy. But what I
+can't understand is, that such a one as you should think that good
+can come from it."
+
+"Do you know what your father has said of me?"
+
+"I've no doubt you both say very hard things of each other."
+
+"I never said an evil thing of him behind his back that I have
+not said as strongly to his face," said Mr. Fenwick, with much of
+indignation in his tone.
+
+"Do you really think that that mitigates the injury done to my
+father?" said Lord St. George.
+
+"Do you know that he has complained of me to the bishop?"
+
+"Yes,--and the bishop took your part."
+
+"No thanks to your father, Lord St. George. Do you know that he has
+accused me publicly of the grossest vices; that he has,--that he
+has,--that he has--. There is nothing so bad that he hasn't said it
+of me."
+
+"Upon my word, I think you are even with him, Mr. Fenwick, I do
+indeed."
+
+"What I have said, I have said to his face. I have made no accusation
+against him. Come, my lord, I am willing enough to let bygones be
+bygones. If Lord Trowbridge will condescend to say that he will drop
+all animosity to me, I will forgive him the injuries he has done me.
+But I cannot admit myself to have been wrong."
+
+"I never knew any man who would," said Lord St. George.
+
+"If the Marquis will put out his hand to me, I will accept it," said
+the Vicar.
+
+"Allow me to do so on his behalf," said the son.
+
+And thus the quarrel was presumed to be healed. Lord St. George went
+to the inn for his horse, and the Vicar, as he walked across to the
+vicarage, felt that he had been--done. This young lord had been very
+clever,--and had treated the quarrel as though on even terms, as if
+the offences on each side had been equal. And yet the Vicar knew very
+well that he had been right,--right without a single slip,--right
+from the beginning to the end. "He has been clever," he said to
+himself, "and he shall have the advantage of his cleverness." Then he
+resolved that as far as he was concerned the quarrel should in truth
+be over.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXI.
+
+MARY LOWTHER'S TREACHERY.
+
+
+While the Vicar was listening to the eloquence of Mr. Puddleham in
+the chapel, and was being cozened out of his just indignation by Lord
+St. George, a terrible scene was going on in the drawing-room of
+the vicarage. Mary Lowther, as the reader knows, had declared that
+she would wear mourning for her distant cousin, and had declined to
+appear at lunch before Lord St. George. Mrs. Fenwick, putting these
+things together, knew that much was the matter, but she did not know
+how much. She did not as yet anticipate the terrible state of things
+which was to be made known to her that afternoon.
+
+Mary was quite aware that the thing must be settled. In the first
+place she must answer Captain Marrable's letter. And then it was her
+bounden duty to let Mr. Gilmore know her mind as soon as she knew it
+herself. It might be easy enough for her to write to Walter Marrable.
+That which she had to say to him would be pleasant enough in the
+saying. But that could not be said till the other thing should be
+unsaid. And how was that unsaying to be accomplished? Nothing could
+be done without the aid of Mrs. Fenwick; and now she was afraid of
+Mrs. Fenwick,--as the guilty are always afraid of those who will have
+to judge their guilt. While the children were at dinner, and while
+the lord was sitting at lunch, she remained up in her own room. From
+her window she could see the two men walking across the vicarage
+grounds towards the chapel, and she knew that her friend would be
+alone. Her story must be told to Mrs. Fenwick, and to Mrs. Fenwick
+only. It would be impossible for her to speak of her determination
+before the Vicar till he should have received a first notice of it
+from his wife. And there certainly must be no delay. The men were
+hardly out of sight before she had resolved to go down at once. She
+looked at herself in the glass, and spunged the mark of tears from
+her eyes, and smoothed her hair, and then descended. She never before
+had felt so much in fear of her friend; and yet it was her friend
+who was mainly the cause of this mischief which surrounded her, and
+who had persuaded her to evil. At Janet Fenwick's instance she had
+undertaken to marry a man whom she did not love; and yet she feared
+to go to Janet Fenwick with the story of her repentance. Why not
+indignantly demand of her friend assistance in extricating herself
+from the injury which that friend had brought upon her?
+
+She found Mrs. Fenwick with the children in the little breakfast
+parlour to which they had been banished by the coming of Lord St.
+George. "Janet," she said, "come and take a turn with me in the
+garden." It was now the middle of August, and life at the vicarage
+was spent almost as much out of doors as within. The ladies went
+about with parasols, and would carry their hats hanging in their
+hands. There was no delay therefore, and the two were on the
+gravel-path almost as soon as Mary's request was made. "I did not
+show you my letter from Dunripple," she said, putting her hand into
+her pocket; "but I might as well do so now. You will have to read
+it."
+
+She took out the document, but did not at once hand it to her
+companion. "Is there anything wrong, Mary?" said Mrs. Fenwick.
+
+"Wrong. Yes;--very, very wrong. Janet, it is no use your talking to
+me. I have quite made up my mind. I cannot and I will not marry Mr.
+Gilmore."
+
+"Mary, this is insanity."
+
+"You may say what you please, but I am determined. I cannot and I
+will not. Will you help me out of my difficulty?"
+
+"Certainly not in the way you mean;--certainly not. It cannot be
+either for your good or for his. After what has passed, how on earth
+could you bring yourself to make such a proposition to him?"
+
+"I do not know; that is what I feel the most. I do not know how
+I shall tell him. But he must be told. I thought that perhaps Mr.
+Fenwick would do it."
+
+"I am quite sure he will do nothing of the kind. Think of it, Mary.
+How can you bring yourself to be so false to a man?"
+
+"I have not been false to him. I have been false to myself, but never
+to him. I told him how it was. When you drove me on--"
+
+"Drove you on, Mary?"
+
+"I do not mean to be ungrateful, or to say hard things; but when
+you made me feel that if he were satisfied I also might put up with
+it, I told him that I could never love him. I told him that I did
+love, and ever should love, Walter Marrable. I told him that I had
+nothing--nothing--nothing to give him. But he would take no answer
+but the one; and I did--I did give it him. I know I did; and I have
+never had a moment of happiness since. And now has come this letter.
+Janet, do not be cruel to me. Do not speak to me as though everything
+must be stern and hard and cruel." Then she handed up the letter, and
+Mrs. Fenwick read it as they walked.
+
+"And is he to be made a tool, because the other man has changed his
+mind?" said Mrs. Fenwick.
+
+"Walter has never changed his mind."
+
+"His plans, then. It comes to the same thing. Do you know that you
+will have to answer for his life, or for his reason? Have you not
+learned yet to understand the constancy of his nature?"
+
+"Is it my fault that he should be constant? I told him when he
+offered to me that if Walter were to come back to me and ask me
+again, I should go to him in spite of any promise that I had made. I
+said so as plain as I am saying this to you."
+
+"I am quite sure that he did not understand it so."
+
+"Janet, indeed he did."
+
+"No man would have submitted himself to an engagement with such a
+condition. It is quite impossible. What! Mr. Gilmore knew when you
+took him that if this gentleman should choose to change his mind at
+any moment before you were actually married, you would walk off and
+go back to him!"
+
+"I told him so, Janet. He will not deny that I told him so. When
+I told him so, I was sure that he would have declined such an
+engagement. But he did not, and I had no way of escape. Janet, if you
+could know what I have been suffering, you would not be cruel to me.
+Think what it would have been to you to have to marry a man you did
+not love, and to break the heart of one you did love. Of course Mr.
+Gilmore is your friend."
+
+"He is our friend!"
+
+"And, of course, you do not care for Captain Marrable?"
+
+"I never even saw him."
+
+"But you might put yourself in my place, and judge fairly between us.
+There has not been a thought or a feeling in my heart concealed from
+you since first all this began. You have known that I have never
+loved your friend."
+
+"I know that, after full consideration, you have accepted him; and
+I know also, that he is a man who will devote his whole life to make
+you happy."
+
+"It can never be. You may as well believe me. If you will not help
+me, nor Mr. Fenwick, I must tell him myself;--or I must write to him
+and leave the place suddenly. I know that I have behaved badly. I
+have tried to do right, but I have done wrong. When I came here I was
+very unhappy. How could I help being unhappy when I had lost all that
+I cared for in the world? Then you told me that I might at any rate
+be of some use to some one, by marrying your friend. You do not know
+how I strove to make myself fond of him! And then, at last, when
+the time came that I had to answer him, I thought that I would tell
+him everything. I thought that if I told him the truth he would see
+that we had better be apart. But when I told him, leaving him, as
+I imagined, no choice but to reject me,--he chose to take me. Well,
+Janet; at any rate, then, as I was taught to believe, there was no
+one to be ruined by this,--no one to be broken on the wheel,--but
+myself: and I thought that if I struggled, I might so do my duty that
+he might be satisfied. I see that I was wrong, but you should not
+rebuke me for it. I had tried to do as you bade me. But I did tell
+him that if ever this thing happened I should leave him. It has
+happened, and I must leave him." Mrs. Fenwick had let her speak on
+without interrupting her, intending when she had finished, to say
+definitely, that they at the vicarage could not make themselves
+parties to any treason towards Mr. Gilmore; but when Mary had come to
+the end of her story her friend's heart was softened towards her. She
+walked silently along the path, refraining at any rate from those
+bitter arguments with which she had at first thought to confound Mary
+in her treachery. "I do think you love me," said Mary.
+
+"Indeed I love you."
+
+"Then help me; do help me. I will go on my knees to him to beg his
+pardon."
+
+"I do not know what to say to it. Begging his pardon will be of no
+avail. As for myself, I should not dare to tell him. We used to
+think, when he was hopeless before, that dwelling on it all would
+drive him to some absolute madness. And it will be worse now. Of
+course it will be worse."
+
+"What am I to do?" Mary paused a moment, and then added,
+sharply,--"There is one thing I will not do; I will not go to the
+altar and become his wife."
+
+"I suppose I had better tell Frank," said Mrs. Fenwick, after another
+pause.
+
+This was, of course, what Mary Lowther desired, but she begged for
+and obtained permission not to see the Vicar herself that evening.
+She would keep her own room that night, and meet him the next morning
+before prayers as best she might.
+
+When the Vicar came back to the house, his mind was so full of the
+chapel, and Lord St. George, and the admirable manner in which he had
+been cajoled out of his wrath without the slightest admission on the
+part of the lord that his father had ever been wrong,--his thoughts
+were so occupied with all this, and with Mr. Puddleham's oratory,
+that he did not at first give his wife an opportunity of telling Mary
+Lowther's story.
+
+"We shall all of us have to go over to Turnover next week," he said.
+
+"You may go. I won't."
+
+"And I shouldn't wonder if the Marquis were to offer me a better
+living, so that I might be close to him. We are to be the lamb and
+the wolf sitting down together."
+
+"And which is to be the lamb?"
+
+"That does not matter. But the worst of it is, Puddleham won't come
+and be a lamb too. Here am I, who have suffered pretty nearly as
+much as St. Paul, have forgiven all my enemies all round, and shaken
+hands with the Marquis by proxy, while Puddleham has been man enough
+to maintain the dignity of his indignation. The truth is, that the
+possession of a grievance is the one state of human blessedness. As
+long as the chapel was there, malgre moi, I could revel in my wrong.
+It turns out now that I can send poor Puddleham adrift to-morrow,
+and he immediately becomes the hero of the hour. I wish your
+brother-in-law had not been so officious in finding it all out."
+
+Mrs. Fenwick postponed her story till the evening.
+
+"Where is Mary?" Fenwick asked, when dinner was announced.
+
+"She is not quite well, and will not come down. Wait awhile, and you
+shall be told." He did wait; but the moment that they were alone
+again he asked his question. Then Mrs. Fenwick told the whole story,
+hardly expressing an opinion herself as she told it. "I don't think
+she is to be shaken," she said at last.
+
+"She is behaving very badly,--very badly,--very badly."
+
+"I am not quite sure, Frank, whether we have behaved wisely," said
+his wife.
+
+"If it must be told him, it will drive him mad," said Fenwick.
+
+"I think it must be told."
+
+"And I am to tell it?"
+
+"That is what she asks."
+
+"I can't say that I have made up my mind; but, as far as I can see at
+present, I will do nothing of the kind. She has no right to expect
+it."
+
+Before they went to bed, however, he also had been somewhat softened.
+When his wife declared, with tears in her eyes, that she would never
+interfere at match-making again, he began to perceive that he also
+had endeavoured to be a match-maker and had failed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXII.
+
+UP AT THE PRIVETS.
+
+
+The whole of the next day was passed in wretchedness by the party at
+the vicarage. The Vicar, as he greeted Miss Lowther in the morning,
+had not meant to be severe, having been specially cautioned against
+severity by his wife; but he had been unable not to be silent and
+stern. Not a word was spoken about Mr. Gilmore till after breakfast,
+and then it was no more than a word.
+
+"I would think better of this, Mary," said the Vicar.
+
+"I cannot think better of it," she replied.
+
+He refused, however, to go to Mr. Gilmore that day, demanding that
+she should have another day in which to revolve the matter in her
+mind. It was understood, however, that if she persisted he would
+break the matter to her lover. Then this trouble was aggravated by
+the coming of Mr. Gilmore to the vicarage, though it may be that the
+visit was of use by preparing him in some degree for the blow. When
+he came Mary was not to be seen. Fancying that he might call, she
+remained up-stairs all day, and Mrs. Fenwick was obliged to say that
+she was unwell. "Is she really ill?" the poor man had asked. Mrs.
+Fenwick, driven hard by the difficulty of her position, had said
+that she did not believe Mary to be very ill, but that she was so
+discomposed by news from Dunripple that she could not come down. "I
+should have thought that I might have seen her," said Mr. Gilmore,
+with that black frown upon his brow which now they all knew so well.
+Mrs. Fenwick made no reply, and then the unhappy man went away. He
+wanted no further informant to tell him that the woman to whom he was
+pledged regarded her engagement to him with aversion.
+
+"I must see her again before I go," Fenwick said to his wife the next
+morning. And he did see her. But Mary was absolutely firm. When he
+remarked that she was pale and worn and ill, she acknowledged that
+she had not closed her eyes during those two nights.
+
+"And it must be so?" he asked, holding her hand tenderly.
+
+"I am so grieved that you should have such a mission," she replied.
+
+Then he explained to her that he was not thinking of himself, sad as
+the occasion would be to him. But if this great sorrow could have
+been spared to his friend! It could not, however, be spared. Mary was
+quite firm, at any rate as to that. No consideration should induce
+her now to marry Mr. Gilmore. Mr. Fenwick, on her behalf, might
+express his regret for the grief she had caused in any terms that
+he might think fit to use,--might humiliate her to the ground if he
+thought it proper. And yet, had not Mr. Gilmore sinned more against
+her than had she against him? Had not the manner in which he had
+grasped at her hand been unmanly and unworthy? But of this, though
+she thought much of it, she said nothing now to Mr. Fenwick. This
+commission to the Vicar was that he should make her free; and in
+doing this he might use what language, and make what confessions he
+pleased. He must, however, make her free.
+
+After breakfast he started upon his errand with a very heavy heart.
+He loved his friend dearly. Between these two there had grown up now
+during a period of many years, that undemonstrative, unexpressed,
+almost unconscious affection which, with men, will often make the
+greatest charm of their lives, but which is held by women to be quite
+unsatisfactory and almost nugatory. It may be doubted whether either
+of them had ever told the other of his regard. "Yours always," in
+writing, was the warmest term that was ever used. Neither ever
+dreamed of suggesting that the absence of the other would be a cause
+of grief or even of discomfort. They would bicker with each other,
+and not unfrequently abuse each other. Chance threw them much
+together, but they never did anything to assist chance. Women, who
+love each other as well, will always be expressing their love, always
+making plans to be together, always doing little things each for the
+gratification of the other, constantly making presents backwards and
+forwards. These two men had never given any thing, one to the other,
+beyond a worn-out walking-stick, or a cigar. They were rough to each
+other, caustic, and almost ill-mannered. But they thoroughly trusted
+each other; and the happiness, prosperity, and, above all, the honour
+of the one were, to the other, matters of keenest moment. The bigger
+man of the two, the one who felt rather than knew himself to be the
+bigger, had to say that which would go nigh to break his friend's
+heart, and the task which he had in hand made him sick at his own
+heart. He walked slowly across the fields, turning over in his own
+mind the words he would use. His misery for his friend was infinitely
+greater than any that he had suffered on his own account, either in
+regard to Mr. Puddleham's chapel or the calumny of the Marquis.
+
+He found Gilmore sauntering about the stable yard. "Old fellow," he
+said, "come along, I have got something to say to you."
+
+"It is about Mary, I suppose?"
+
+"Well, yes; it is about Mary. You mustn't be a woman, Harry, or let a
+woman make you seriously wretched."
+
+"I know it all. That will do. You need not say anything more." Then
+he put his hands into the pockets of his shooting coat, and walked
+off as though all had been said that was necessary. Fenwick had told
+his message and might now go away. As for himself, in the sharpness
+of his agony he had as yet made no scheme for a future purpose. Only
+this he had determined. He would see that false woman once again, and
+tell her what he thought of her conduct.
+
+But Fenwick knew that his task was not yet done. Gilmore might walk
+off, but he was bound to follow the unhappy man.
+
+"Harry," he said, "you had better let me come with you for awhile.
+You had better hear what I have to say."
+
+"I want to hear nothing more. What good can it be? Like a fool, I
+had set my fortune on one cast of the die, and I have lost it. Why
+she should have added on the misery and disgrace of the last few
+weeks to the rest, I cannot imagine. I suppose it has been her way of
+punishing me for my persistency."
+
+"It has not been that, Harry."
+
+"God knows what it has been. I do not understand it." He had turned
+from the stables towards the house, and had now come to a part of
+the grounds in which workmen were converting a little paddock in
+front of the house into a garden. The gardener was there with four or
+five labourers, and planks, and barrows, and mattocks, and heaps of
+undistributed earth and gravel were spread about. "Give over with
+this," he said to the gardener, angrily. The man touched his hat, and
+stood amazed. "Leave it, I say, and send these men away. Pay them for
+the work, and let them go."
+
+"You don't mean as we are to leave it all like this, sir?"
+
+"I do mean that you are to leave it just as it is." There was a man
+standing with a shovel in his hand levelling some loose earth, and
+the Squire, going up to him, took the shovel from him and threw it
+upon the ground. "When I say a thing, I mean it. Ambrose, take these
+men away. I will not have another stroke of work done here." The
+Vicar came up to him and whispered into his ear a prayer that he
+would not expose himself before the men; but the Squire cared nothing
+for his friend's whisper. He shook off the Vicar's hand from his arm
+and stalked away into the house.
+
+Two rooms, the two drawing-rooms as they were called, on the ground
+floor had been stripped of the old paper, and were now in that state
+of apparent ruin which always comes upon such rooms when workmen
+enter them with their tools. There were tressels with a board across
+them, on which a man was standing at this moment, whose business it
+was to decorate the ceiling.
+
+"That will do," said the Squire. "You may get down, and leave the
+place." The man stood still on his board with his eyes open and his
+brush in his hand. "I have changed my mind, and you may come down,"
+said Mr. Gilmore. "Tell Mr. Cross to send me his bill for what he has
+done, and it shall be paid. Come down, when I tell you. I will have
+nothing further touched in the house." He went from room to room and
+gave the same orders, and, after a while, succeeded in turning the
+paper-hangers and painters out of the house. Fenwick had followed
+him from room to room, making every now and then an attempt at
+remonstrance; but the Squire had paid no attention either to his
+words or to his presence.
+
+At last they were alone together in Gilmore's own study or office,
+and then the Vicar spoke. "Harry," he said, "I am, indeed, surprised
+that such a one as you should not have more manhood at his command."
+
+"Were you ever tried as I am?"
+
+"What matters that? You are responsible for your own conduct, and I
+tell you that your conduct is unmanly."
+
+"Why should I have the rooms done up? I shall never live here.
+What is it to me how they are left? The sooner I stop a useless
+expenditure the better. It was being done for her, not for me."
+
+"Of course you will live here."
+
+"You know nothing about it. You cannot know anything about it. Why
+has she treated me in this way? To send up to a man and simply tell
+him that she has changed her mind! God in heaven!--that you should
+bring me such a message!"
+
+"You have not allowed me to give my message yet."
+
+"Give it me, then, and have done with it. Has she not sent you to
+tell me that she has changed her mind?"
+
+Now that opportunity was given to him, the Vicar did not know how
+to tell his message. "Perhaps it would have been better that Janet
+should have come to you."
+
+"It don't make much difference who comes. She'll never come again. I
+don't suppose, Frank, you can understand the sort of love I have had
+for her. You have never been driven by failure to such longing as
+mine has been. And then I thought it had come at last!"
+
+"Will you be patient while I speak to you, Harry?" said the Vicar,
+again taking him by the arm. They had now left the house, and were
+out alone among the shrubs.
+
+"Patient! yes; I think I am patient. Nothing further can hurt me
+now;--that's one comfort."
+
+"Mary bids me remind you,"--Gilmore shuddered and shook himself when
+Mary Lowther's name was mentioned, but he did not attempt to stop the
+Vicar,--"she bids me remind you that when the other day she consented
+to be your wife, she did so--." He tried to tell it all, but he could
+not. How could he tell the man the story which Mary had told to him?
+
+"I understand," said Gilmore. "It's all of no use, and you are
+troubling yourself for nothing. She told me that she did not care a
+straw for me;--but she accepted me."
+
+"If that was the case, you were both wrong."
+
+"It was the case. I don't say who was wrong, but the punishment has
+come upon me only. Look here, Frank; I will not take this message
+from you. I will not even give her up yet. I have a right, at least,
+to see her, and see her I will. I don't suppose you will try to
+prevent me?"
+
+"She must do as she pleases, Harry, as long as she is in my house."
+
+"She shall see me. She is self-willed enough, but she shall not
+refuse me that. Be so good as to tell her with my compliments, that I
+expect her to see me. A man is not going to be treated like this, and
+then not speak his own mind. Be good enough to tell her that from me.
+I demand an interview." So saying he turned upon his heel, and walked
+quickly away through the shrubbery.
+
+The Vicar stood for awhile to think, and then slowly returned to the
+vicarage by himself. What Gilmore had said to him was true enough. He
+had, indeed, never been tried after that fashion. It did seem to him
+that his friend was in fact broken-hearted. Harry Gilmore might live
+on,--as is the way with men and women who are broken-hearted;--but
+life for the present, life for some years to come, could be to him
+only a burden.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXIII.
+
+THE MILLER TELLS HIS TROUBLES.
+
+
+When the Vicar went on his unhappy mission to the Squire's house
+Carry Brattle had been nearly two months at the mill. During that
+time both Mr. and Mrs. Fenwick had seen her more than once, and at
+last she had been persuaded to go to church with her sister. On the
+previous Sunday she had crept through the village at Fanny's side,
+and had taken a place provided for her in the dark corner of a dark
+pew under the protection of a thick veil. Fanny walked with her
+boldly across the village street, as though she were not in any
+slightest degree ashamed of her companion, and sat by her side, and
+then conveyed her home. On the next Sunday the sacrament would be
+given, and this was done in preparation for that day.
+
+Things had not gone very pleasantly at the mill. Up to this moment
+old Brattle had expressed no forgiveness towards his daughter, had
+uttered no word of affection to her, had made no sign that he had
+again taken her to his bosom as his own child. He had spoken to her,
+because in the narrow confines of their home it was almost impossible
+that he should live in the house with her without doing so. Carry had
+gradually fallen into the way of doing her share of the daily work.
+She cooked, and baked, and strove hard that her presence in the house
+should be found to be a comfort. She was useful, and the very fact of
+her utility brought her father into a certain state of communion with
+her; but he never addressed her specially, never called her by her
+name, and had not yet even acknowledged to his wife or to Fanny that
+he recognised her as one of the family. They had chosen to bring her
+in against his will, and he would not turn their guest from the door.
+It was thus that he seemed to regard his daughter's presence in the
+mill-house.
+
+Under this treatment Carry was becoming restive and impatient. On
+such an occasion as that of going to church and exposing herself to
+the eyes of those who had known her as an innocent, laughing, saucy
+girl, she could not but be humble, quiet, and awestruck; but at home
+she was beginning again gradually to assert her own character. "If
+father won't speak to me, I'd better go," she said to Fanny.
+
+"And where will you go to, Carry?"
+
+"I dun' know;--into the mill-pond would be best for them as belongs
+to me. I suppose there ain't anybody as 'd have me?"
+
+"Nobody can have you as will love you as we do, Carry."
+
+"Why won't father come round and speak to me? You can't tell what
+it is to have him looking at one that way. I sometimes feels like
+getting up and telling him to turn me out if he won't speak a word to
+me." But Fanny had softened her, and encouraged her, bidding her wait
+still again, explaining the sorrow that weighed upon their father's
+heart as well as she could without saying a single cruel word as to
+Carry's past life. Fanny's task was not easy, and it was made the
+harder by their mother's special tenderness towards Carry. "The less
+she says and the more she does, the better for her," said Fanny to
+her mother. "You shouldn't let her talk about father." Mrs. Brattle
+did not attempt to argue the matter with her elder daughter, but she
+found it to be quite out of her power to restrain Carry's talking.
+
+During these two months old Brattle had not even seen either his
+landlord or the Vicar. They had both been at the mill, but the
+miller had kept himself up among his grist, and had not condescended
+to come down to them. Nor had he even, since Carry's return, been
+seen in Bullhampton, or even up on the high road leading to it. He
+held no communion with men other than was absolutely necessary for
+his business, feeling himself to be degraded, not so much by his
+daughter's fall as by his concession to his fallen daughter. He would
+sit out in the porch of an evening, and smoke his pipe; but if he
+heard a footstep on the lane he would retreat, and cross the plank
+and get among the wheels of his mill, or out into the orchard. Of
+Sam nothing had been heard. He was away, it was believed in Durham,
+working at some colliery engine. He gave no sign of himself to his
+mother or sister; but it was understood that he would appear at
+the assizes, towards the end of the present month, as he had been
+summoned there as a witness at the trial of the two men for the
+murder of Mr. Trumbull.
+
+And Carry, also, was to be a witness at the assizes; and, as it was
+believed, a witness much more material than her brother. Indeed, it
+was beginning to be thought that after all Sam would have no evidence
+to give. If, indeed, he had had nothing to do with the murder, it was
+not probable that any of the circumstances of the murder would have
+been confided to him. He had, it seemed, been on intimate terms with
+the man Acorn,--and, through Acorn, had known Burrows and the old
+woman who lived at Pycroft Common, the mother of Burrows. He had been
+in their company when they first visited Bullhampton, and had, as we
+know, invited them into the Vicar's garden,--much to the damage of
+Mr. Burrows' shoulder-blade; but it was believed that beyond this he
+could say nothing as to the murder. But Carry Brattle was presumed
+to have a closer knowledge of at least one of the men. She had now
+confessed to her sister that, after leaving Bullhampton, she had
+consented to become Acorn's wife. She had known then but little of
+his mode of life or past history; but he was young, good-looking,
+fairly well-dressed, and had promised to marry her. By him she was
+taken to the cottage on Pycroft Common, and by him she had certainly
+been visited on the morning after the murder. He had visited her and
+given her money;--and since that, according to her own story, she had
+neither seen him nor heard from him. She had never cared for him,
+she told her sister; but what was that to one such as her as long as
+he would make her an honest woman? All this was repeated by Fanny
+Brattle to Mrs. Fenwick;--and now the assizes were at hand, and how
+was Carry to demean herself there? Who would take her? Who would
+stand near her and support her, and save her from falling into that
+abyss of self-abasement and almost of self-annihilation which would
+be her doom, unless there were some one there to give her strength
+and aid?
+
+"I would not go to Salisbury at all during the assizes, if I were
+you," Mrs. Fenwick had said to her husband. The Vicar understood
+thoroughly what was meant. Because of the evil things which had
+been said of him by that stupid old Marquis whom he had been
+cheated into forgiving, he was not to be allowed to give a helping
+hand to his parishioner! Nevertheless, he acknowledged his wife's
+wisdom,--tacitly, as is fitting when such acknowledgments have to be
+made; and he contented himself with endeavouring to find for her some
+other escort. It had been hoped from day to day that the miller would
+yield, that he would embrace poor Carry, and promise her that she
+should again be to him as a daughter. If this could be brought about,
+then,--so thought the Vicar and Fanny too,--the old man would steel
+himself to bear the eyes of the whole county, and would accompany the
+girl himself. But now the day was coming on, and Brattle seemed to be
+as far from yielding as ever. Fanny had dropped a word or two in his
+hearing about the assizes, but he had only glowered at her, taking no
+other notice whatever of her hints.
+
+When the Vicar left his friend Gilmore, as has been told in the last
+chapter, he did not return to the vicarage across the fields, but
+took the carriage road down to the lodge, and from thence crossed the
+stile that led into the path down to the mill. This was on the 15th
+of August, a Wednesday, and Carry was summoned to be at Salisbury on
+that day week. As the day drew near she became very nervous. At the
+Vicar's instance Fanny had written to her brother George, asking him
+whether he would be good to his poor sister, and take her under his
+charge. He had written back,--or rather his wife had written for
+him,--sending Carry a note for L20 as a present, but declining, on
+the score of his own children, to be seen with her in Salisbury on
+the occasion. "I shall go with her myself, Mr. Fenwick," Fanny had
+said to the Vicar; "it'll just be better than nobody at all to be
+along with her." The Vicar was now going down to the mill to give his
+assent to this. He could see nothing better. Fanny at any rate would
+be firm; would not be prevented by false shame from being a very
+sister to her sister; and would perhaps be admitted where a brother's
+attendance might be refused. He had promised to see the women at the
+mill as early in the week as he could, and now he went thither intent
+on giving them advice as to their proceedings at Salisbury. It would
+doubtless be necessary that they should sleep there, and he hoped
+that they might be accommodated by Mrs. Stiggs.
+
+As he stepped out from the field path on to the lane, almost
+immediately in front of the mill, he came directly upon the miller.
+It was between twelve and one o'clock, and old Brattle was wandering
+about for a minute or two waiting for his dinner. The two men met
+so that it was impossible that they should not speak; and on this
+occasion the miller did not seem to avoid his visitor. "Muster
+Fenwick," said he, as he took the Vicar's hand, "I am bound to say
+as I'm much obliged to ye for all y' have done for that poor lass in
+there."
+
+"Don't say a word about that, Mr. Brattle."
+
+"But I must say a word. There's money owing as I knows. There was ten
+shilling a week for her keep all that time she was at Salsbry
+yonder."
+
+"I will not hear a word as to any money."
+
+"Her brother George has sent her a gift, Muster Fenwick,--twenty
+pound."
+
+"I am very glad to hear it."
+
+"George is a well-to-do man, they tell me," continued the father,
+"and can afford to part with his money. But he won't come forward to
+help the girl any other gait. I'll thank you just to take what's due,
+Muster Fenwick, and you can give her sister the change. Our Fanny has
+got the note as George sent."
+
+Then there was a dispute about the money, as a matter of course.
+Fenwick swore that nothing was due, and the miller protested that as
+the money was there all his daughter's expenses at Salisbury should
+be repaid. And the miller at last got the best of it. Fenwick
+promised that he would look to his book, see how much he had paid,
+and mention the sum to Fanny at some future time. He positively
+refused to take the note at present, protesting that he had no
+change, and that he would not burden himself with the responsibility
+of carrying so much money about with him in his pocket. Then he asked
+whether, if he went into the house, he would be able to say a word or
+two to the women before dinner. He had made up his mind that he would
+make no further attempt at reconciling the father to his daughter. He
+had often declared to his wife that there could be nothing so hateful
+to a man as the constant interference of a self-constituted adviser.
+"I so often feel that I am making myself odious when I am telling
+them to do this or that; and then I ask myself what I should say
+if anybody were to come and advise me how to manage you and the
+bairns." And he had told his wife more than once how very natural and
+reasonable had been the expression of the lady's wrath at Startup,
+when he had taken upon himself to give her advice. "People know what
+is good for them to do, well enough, without being dictated to by a
+clergyman!" He had repeated the words to himself and to his wife a
+dozen times, and talked of having them put up in big red letters over
+the fire-place in his own study. He had therefore quite determined to
+say never another word to old Brattle in reference to his daughter
+Carry. But now the miller himself began upon the subject.
+
+"You can see 'em, Muster Fenwick, in course. It don't make no odds
+about dinner. But I was wanting just to say a word to you about that
+poor young ooman there." This he said in a slow, half-hesitating
+voice, as though he could hardly bring himself to speak of the
+unfortunate one to whom he alluded. The Vicar muttered some word of
+assent, and then the miller went on. "You knows, of course, as how
+she be back here at the mill?"
+
+"Certainly I do. I've seen her more than once."
+
+"Muster Fenwick, I don't suppose as any one as asn't tried it knows
+what it is. I hopes you mayn't never know it; nor it ain't likely.
+Muster Fenwick, I'd sooner see her dead body stretched afore me,--and
+I loved her a'most as well as any father ever loved his da'ter,--I'd
+sooner a see'd her brought home to the door stiff and stark than know
+her to be the thing she is." His hesitation had now given way to
+emphasis, and he raised his hand as he spoke. The Vicar caught it and
+held it in his own, and strove to find some word to say as the old
+man paused in his speech. But to Jacob Brattle it was hard for a
+clergyman to find any word to say on such an occasion. Of what use
+could it be to preach of repentance to one who believed nothing; or
+to tell of the opportunity which forgiveness by an earthly parent
+might afford to the sinner of obtaining lasting forgiveness
+elsewhere? But let him have said what he might, the miller would not
+have listened. He was full of that which lay upon his own heart. "If
+they only know'd what them as cares for 'em 'd has to bear, maybe
+they'd think a little. But it ain't natural they should know, Muster
+Fenwick, and one's a'most tempted to say that a man 'd better have no
+child at all."
+
+"Think of your son George, Mr. Brattle, and of Mrs. Jay."
+
+"What's them to me? He sends the girl a twenty-pun'-note, and I wish
+he'd a kep' it. As for t'other, she wouldn't let the girl inside her
+door! It's here she has to come."
+
+"What comfort would you have, Mr. Brattle, without Fanny?"
+
+"Fanny! I'm not saying nothing against Fanny. Not but what she hadn't
+no business to let the girl into the house in the middle of the night
+without saying a word to me."
+
+"Would you have had her leave her sister outside in the cold and damp
+all night?"
+
+"Why didn't she come and ax? All the same, I ain't a saying nowt
+again Fanny. But, Muster Fenwick, if you ever come to have one foot
+bad o' the gout, it won't make you right to know that the other
+ain't got it. Y'll have the pain a gnawing of you from the bad foot
+till you clean forget all the rest o' your body. It's so with me, I
+knows."
+
+"What can I say to you, Mr. Brattle? I do feel for you. I do,--I do."
+
+"Not a doubt on it, Muster Fenwick. They all on 'em feels for me.
+They all on 'em knows as how I'm bruised and mangled a'most as though
+I'd fallen through into that water-wheel. There ain't one in all
+Bull'ompton as don't know as Jacob Brattle is a broken man along of
+his da'ter that is a--"
+
+"Silence, Mr. Brattle. You shall not say it. She is not that;--at any
+rate not now. Have you no knowledge that sin may be left behind and
+deserted as well as virtue?"
+
+"It ain't easy to leave disgrace behind, any ways. For ought I
+knows a girl may be made right arter a while; but as for her
+father, nothing 'll ever make him right again. It's in here, Muster
+Fenwick,--in here. There's things as is hard on us; but when they
+comes one can't send 'em away just because they is hardest of all to
+bear. I'd a put up with aught, only this, and defied all Bull'ompton
+to say as it broke me;--but I'm about broke now. If I hadn't more nor
+a crust at home, nor a decent coat to my back, I'd a looked 'em all
+square in the face as ever I did. But I can't look no man square
+in the face now;--and as for other folk's girls, I can't bear 'em
+near me,--no how. They makes me think of my own." Fenwick had now
+turned his back to the miller, in order that he might wipe away his
+tears without showing them. "I'm thinking of her always, Muster
+Fenwick;--day and night. When the mill's agoing, it's all the same.
+It's just as though there warn't nothing else in the whole world as I
+minded to think on. I've been a man all my life, Muster Fenwick; and
+now I ain't a man no more."
+
+
+[Illustration: "It's in here, Muster Fenwick,--in here."]
+
+
+Our friend the Vicar never before felt himself so utterly unable to
+administer comfort in affliction. There was nothing on which he could
+take hold. He could tell the man, no doubt, that beyond all this
+there might be everlasting joy, not only for him, but for him and the
+girl together;--joy which would be sullied by no touch of disgrace.
+But there was a stubborn strength in the infidelity of this old Pagan
+which was utterly impervious to any adjuration on that side. That
+which he saw and knew and felt, he would believe; but he would
+believe nothing else. He knew now that he was wounded and sore and
+wretched, and he understood the cause. He knew that he must bear his
+misery to the last, and he struggled to make his back broad for the
+load. But even the desire for ease, which is natural to all men,
+would not make him flinch in his infidelity. As he would not believe
+when things went well with him, and when the comfort of hope for the
+future was not imperatively needed for his daily solace,--so would he
+not believe now, when his need for such comfort was so pressing.
+
+The upshot of it all was, that the miller thought that he would take
+his own daughter into Salisbury, and was desirous of breaking the
+matter in this way to the friend of his family. The Vicar, of course,
+applauded him much. Indeed, he applauded too much;--for the miller
+turned on him and declared that he was by no means certain that he
+was doing right. And when the Vicar asked him to be gentle with the
+girl, he turned upon him again.
+
+"Why ain't she been gentle along of me? I hates such gentility,
+Muster Fenwick. I'll be honest with her, any way." But he thought
+better of it before he let the Vicar go. "I shan't do her no hurt,
+Muster Fenwick. Bad as she's been, she's my own flesh and blood
+still."
+
+After what he had heard, Mr. Fenwick declined going into the
+mill-house, and returned home without seeing Mrs. Brattle and her
+daughters. The miller's determination should be told by himself; and
+the Vicar felt that he could hardly keep the secret were he now to
+see the women.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXIV.
+
+IF I WERE YOUR SISTER!
+
+
+Mr. Gilmore in his last words to his friend Fenwick, declared that he
+would not accept the message which the Vicar delivered to him as the
+sufficient expression of Mary's decision. He would see Mary Lowther
+herself, and force her to confess her own treachery face to face with
+him,--to confess it or else to deny it. So much she could not refuse
+to grant him. Fenwick had indeed said that as long as the young lady
+was his guest she must be allowed to please herself as to whom she
+would see or not see. Gilmore should not be encouraged to force
+himself upon her at the vicarage. But the Squire was quite sure that
+so much as that must be granted to him. It was impossible that even
+Mary Lowther should refuse to see him after what had passed between
+them. And then, as he walked about his own fields, thinking of
+it all, he allowed himself to feel a certain amount of hope that
+after all she might be made to marry him. His love for her had not
+dwindled,--or rather his desire to call her his own, and to make
+her his wife; but it had taken an altered form out of which all its
+native tenderness had been pressed by the usage to which he had been
+subjected. It was his honour rather than his love that he now desired
+to satisfy. All those who knew him best were aware that he had set
+his heart upon this marriage, and it was necessary to him that he
+should show them that he was not to be disappointed. Mary's conduct
+to him from the day on which she had first engaged herself to him had
+been of such a kind as naturally to mar his tenderness and to banish
+from him all those prettinesses of courtship in which he would have
+indulged as pleasantly as any other man. She had told him in so many
+words that she intended to marry him without loving him, and on these
+terms he had accepted her. But in doing so he had unconsciously
+flattered himself that she would be better than her words,--that
+as she submitted herself to him as his affianced bride she would
+gradually become soft and loving in his hands. She had, if possible,
+been harder to him even than her words. She had made him understand
+thoroughly that his presence was not a joy to her, and that her
+engagement to him was a burden on her which she had taken on her
+shoulders simply because the romance of her life had been nipped
+in the bud in reference to the man whom she did love. Still he had
+persevered. He had set his heart sturdily on marrying this girl,
+and marry her he would, if, after any fashion, such marriage should
+come within his power. Mrs. Fenwick, by whose judgment and affection
+he had been swayed through all this matter, had told him again and
+again, that such a girl as Mary Lowther must love her husband,--if
+her husband loved her and treated her with tenderness. "I think I
+can answer for myself," Gilmore had once replied, and his friend
+had thoroughly believed in him. Trusting to the assurance he had
+persevered; he had persevered even when his trust in that assurance
+had been weakened by the girl's hardness. Anything would be better
+than breaking from an engagement on which he had so long rested all
+his hopes of happiness. She was pledged to be his wife; and, that
+being so, he could reform his gardens and decorate his house, and
+employ himself about his place with some amount of satisfaction. He
+had at least a purpose in his life. Then by degrees there grew upon
+him a fear that she still meant to escape from him, and he swore
+to himself,--without any tenderness,--that this should not be
+so. Let her once be his wife and she should be treated with all
+consideration,--with all affection, if she would accept it; but she
+should not make a fool of him now. Then the Vicar had come with his
+message, and he had been simply told that the engagement between them
+was over!
+
+Of course he would see her,--and that at once. As soon as Fenwick had
+left him, he went with rapid steps over his whole place, and set the
+men again upon their work. This took place on a Wednesday, and the
+men should be continued at their work, at any rate, till Saturday. He
+explained this clearly to Ambrose, his gardener, and to the foreman
+in the house.
+
+"It may be," said he to Ambrose, "that I shall change my mind
+altogether about the place;--but as I am still in doubt, let
+everything go on till Saturday."
+
+Of course they all knew why it was that the conduct of the Squire was
+so like the conduct of a madman.
+
+He sent down a note to Mary Lowther that evening.
+
+
+   DEAR MARY,
+
+   I have seen Fenwick, and of course I must see you. Will
+   you name an hour for to-morrow morning?
+
+   Yours, H. G.
+
+
+When Mary read this, which she did as they were sitting on the lawn
+after dinner, she did not hesitate for a moment. Hardly a word had
+been said to her by Fenwick, or his wife, since his return from the
+Privets. They did not wish to show themselves to be angry with her,
+but they found conversation to be almost impossible. "You have told
+him?" Mary had asked. "Yes, I have told him," the Vicar had replied;
+and that had been nearly all. In the course of the afternoon she
+had hinted to Janet Fenwick that she thought she had better leave
+Bullhampton. "Not quite yet, dear," Mrs. Fenwick had said, and Mary
+had been afraid to urge her request.
+
+"Shall I name eleven to-morrow?" she said, as she handed the Squire's
+note to Mrs. Fenwick. Mrs. Fenwick and the Vicar both assented, and
+then she went in and wrote her answer.
+
+
+   I will be at home at the vicarage at eleven.--M. L.
+
+
+She would have given much to escape what was coming, but she had not
+expected to escape it.
+
+The next morning after breakfast Fenwick himself went away. "I've had
+more than enough of it," he said, to his wife, "and I won't be near
+them."
+
+Mrs. Fenwick was with her friend up to the moment at which the bell
+was heard at the front door. There was no coming up across the lawn
+now.
+
+"Dear Janet," Mary said, when they were alone, "how I wish that I had
+never come to trouble you here at the vicarage!"
+
+Mrs. Fenwick was not without a feeling that much of all this
+unhappiness had come from her own persistency on behalf of her
+husband's friend, and thought that some expression was due from her
+to Mary to that effect. "You are not to suppose that we are angry
+with you," she said, putting her arm round Mary's waist.
+
+"Pray,--pray do not be angry with me."
+
+"The fault has been too much ours for that. We should have left this
+alone, and not have pressed it. We have meant it for the best, dear."
+
+"And I have meant to do right;--but, Janet, it is so hard to do
+right."
+
+When the ring at the door was heard, Mrs. Fenwick met Harry
+Gilmore in the hall, and told him that he would find Mary in the
+drawing-room. She pressed his hand warmly as she looked into his
+face, but he spoke no word as he passed on to the room which she had
+just left. Mary was standing in the middle of the floor, half-way
+between the window and the door, to receive him. When she heard
+the door-bell she put her hand to her heart, and there she held it
+till he was approaching; but then she dropped it and stood without
+support, with her face upraised to meet him. He came up to her very
+quickly and took her by the hand. "Mary," he said, "I am not to
+believe this message that has been sent to me. I do not believe
+it. I will not believe it. I will not accept it. It is out of the
+question;--quite out of the question. It shall be withdrawn, and
+nothing more shall be said about it."
+
+"That cannot be, Mr. Gilmore."
+
+"What cannot be? I say that it must be. You cannot deny, Mary,
+that you are betrothed to me as my wife. Are such betrothals to be
+nothing? Are promises to go for nothing because there has been no
+ceremony? You might as well come and tell me that you would leave me
+even though you were my wife."
+
+"But I am not your wife."
+
+"What does it mean? Have I not been patient with you? Have I been
+hard to you, or cruel? Have you heard anything of me that is to my
+discredit?" She shook her head, eagerly. "Then what does it mean? Are
+you aware that you are proposing to yourself to make an utter wreck
+of me--to send me adrift upon the world without a purpose or a hope?
+What have I done to deserve such treatment?"
+
+He pleaded his cause very well,--better than she had ever heard him
+plead a cause before. He held her still by the hand, not with a grasp
+of love, but with a retention which implied his will that she should
+not pass away from out of his power. He looked her full in the face,
+and she did not quail before his eyes. Nevertheless she would have
+given the world to have been elsewhere, and to have been free from
+the necessity of answering him. She had been fortifying herself
+throughout the morning with self-expressed protests that on no
+account would she yield, whether she had been right before or
+wrong;--of this she was convinced, that she must be right now to save
+herself from a marriage that was so distasteful to her.
+
+"You have deserved nothing but good at my hands," she said.
+
+"And is this good that you are doing to me?"
+
+"Yes,--certainly. It is the best that I know how to do now."
+
+"Why is it to be done now? What is it that has changed you?"
+
+She withdrew her hand from him, and waited a while before she
+answered. It was necessary that she should tell him all the tidings
+that had been conveyed to her in the letter which she had received
+from her cousin Walter; but in order that he should perfectly
+understand them and be made to know their force upon herself she must
+remind him of the stipulation which she had made when she consented
+to her engagement. But how could she speak words which would seem
+to him to be spoken only to remind him of the abjectness of his
+submission to her?
+
+"I was broken-hearted when I came here," she said.
+
+"And therefore you would leave me broken-hearted now."
+
+"You should spare me, Mr. Gilmore. You remember what I told you. I
+loved my cousin Walter entirely. I did not hide it from you. I begged
+you to leave me because it was so. I told you that my heart would not
+change. When I said so, I thought that you would--desist."
+
+"I am to be punished, then, for having been too true to you?"
+
+"I will not defend myself for accepting you at last. But you must
+remember that when I did so I said that I should go--back--to him, if
+he could take me."
+
+"And you are going back to him?"
+
+"If he will have me."
+
+"You can stand there and look me in the face and tell me that you
+are false as that! You can confess to me that you will change like a
+weathercock;--be his one day, and then mine, and his again the next!
+You can own that you give yourself about first to one man, and then
+to another, just as may suit you at the moment! I would not have
+believed it of any woman. When you tell it me of yourself, I begin
+to think that I have been wrong all through in my ideas of a woman's
+character."
+
+The time had now come in which she must indeed speak up. And speech
+seemed to be easier with her now that he had allowed himself to
+express his anger. He had expressed more than his anger. He had dared
+to shower his scorn upon her, and the pelting of the storm gave her
+courage. "You are unjust upon me, Mr. Gilmore,--unjust and cruel. You
+know in your heart that I have not changed."
+
+"Were you not betrothed to me?"
+
+"I was;--but in what way? Have I told you any untruth? Have I
+concealed anything? When I accepted you, did I not explain to
+you how and why it was so,--against my own wish, against my own
+judgment,--because then I had ceased to care what became of me. I do
+care now. I care very much."
+
+"And you think that is justice to me?"
+
+"If you will bandy accusations with me, why did you accept me when
+I told you that I could not love you? But, indeed, indeed, I would
+not say a word to displease you, if you would only spare me. We were
+both wrong; but the wrong must now be put right. You would not wish
+to take me for your wife when I tell you that my heart is full of
+affection for another man. Then, when I yielded, I was struggling to
+cure that as a great evil. Now I welcome it as the sweetest blessing
+of my life. If I were your sister, what would you have me do?"
+
+He stood silent for a moment, and then the colour rose to his
+forehead as he answered her. "If you were my sister, my ears would
+tingle with shame when your name was mentioned in my presence."
+
+The blood rushed also over her face, suffusing her whole countenance,
+forehead and all, and fire flashed from her eyes, and her lips were
+parted, and even her nostrils seemed to swell with anger. She looked
+full into his face for a second, and then she turned and walked
+speechless away from him. When the handle of the door was in her
+hand, she turned again to address him. "Mr. Gilmore," she said, "I
+will never willingly speak to you again." Then the door was opened
+and closed behind her before a word had escaped from his lips.
+
+He knew that he had insulted her. He knew that he had uttered words
+so hard, that it might be doubted whether, under any circumstances,
+they could be justified from a gentleman to a lady. And certainly he
+had not intended to insult her as he was coming down to the vicarage.
+As far as any settled purpose had been formed in his mind, he had
+meant to force her back to her engagement with himself, by showing to
+her how manifest would be her injustice, and how great her treachery,
+if she persisted in leaving him. But he knew her character well
+enough to be aware that any word of insult addressed to her as a
+woman, would create offence which she herself would be unable to
+quell. But his anger had got the better of his judgment, and when
+the suggestion was made to him of a sister of his own, he took the
+opportunity which was offered to him of hitting her with all his
+force. She had felt the blow, and had determined that she would never
+encounter another.
+
+He was left alone, and he must retreat. He waited a while, thinking
+that perhaps Mrs. Fenwick or the Vicar would come to him; but nobody
+came. The window of the room was open, and it was easy for him to
+leave the house by the garden. But as he prepared to do so, his eye
+caught the writing materials on a side table, and he sat down and
+addressed a note to Mrs. Fenwick. "Tell Mary," he said, "that in
+a matter which to me is of life and death, I was forced to speak
+plainly. Tell her, also, that if she will be my wife, I know well
+that I shall never have to blush for a deed of hers,--or for a
+word,--or for a thought.--H. G." Then he went out on to the lawn, and
+returned home by the path at the back of the church farm.
+
+He had left the vicarage, making another offer for the girl's hand,
+as it were, with his last gasp. But as he went, he told himself that
+it was impossible that it should be accepted. Every chance had now
+gone from him, and he must look his condition in the face as best
+he could. It had been bad enough with him before, when no hope had
+ever been held out to him; when the answers of the girl he loved had
+always been adverse to him; when no one had been told that she was to
+be his bride. Even then the gnawing sense of disappointment and of
+failure,--just there, when only he cared for success,--had been more
+than he could endure without derangement of the outer tranquillity of
+his life. Even then he had been unable so to live that men should not
+know that his sorrow had disturbed him. When he had gone to Loring,
+travelling with a forlorn hope into the neighbourhood of the girl
+he loved, he had himself been aware that he had lacked strength to
+control himself in his misfortune. But if his state then had been
+grievous, what must it be now? It had been told to all the world
+around him that he had at last won his bride, and he had proceeded,
+as do jolly thriving bridegrooms, to make his house ready for her
+reception. Doubting nothing he had mingled her wishes, her tastes,
+his thoughts of her, with every action of his life. He had prepared
+jewels for her, and decorated chambers, and laid out pleasure
+gardens. He was a man, simple in his own habits, and not given to
+squandering his means; but now, at this one moment of his life, when
+everything was to be done for the delectation of her who was to be
+his life's companion, he could afford to let prudence go by the
+board. True that his pleasure in doing this had been sorely marred by
+her coldness, by her indifference, even by her self-abnegation; but
+he had continued to buoy himself up with the idea that all would come
+right when she should be his wife. Now she had told him that she
+would never willingly speak to him again,--and he believed her.
+
+He went up to his house, and into his bedroom, and then he sat
+thinking of it all. And as he thought he heard the voices and the
+tools of the men at their work; and knew that things were being
+done which, for him, would never be of avail. He remained there
+for a couple of hours without moving. Then he got up and gave the
+housekeeper instructions to pack up his portmanteau, and the groom
+orders to bring his gig to the door. "He was going away," he said,
+and his letters were to be addressed to his club in London. That
+afternoon he drove himself into Salisbury that he might catch the
+evening express train up, and that night he slept at a hotel in
+London.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXV.
+
+MARY LOWTHER LEAVES BULLHAMPTON.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+It was considerably past one o'clock, and the children's dinner was
+upon the table in the dining parlour before anyone in the vicarage
+had seen Mary Lowther since the departure of the Squire. When she
+left Mr. Gilmore, she had gone to her own room, and no one had
+disturbed her. As the children were being seated, Fenwick returned,
+and his wife put into his hand the note which Gilmore had left for
+her.
+
+"What passed between them?" he asked in a whisper.
+
+His wife shook her head. "I have not seen her," she said, "but he
+talks of speaking plainly, and I suppose it was bitter enough."
+
+"He can be very bitter if he's driven hard," said the Vicar; "and he
+has been driven very hard," he added, after a while.
+
+As soon as the children had eaten their dinner, Mrs. Fenwick went up
+to Mary's room with the Squire's note in her hand. She knocked, and
+was at once admitted, and she found Mary sitting at her writing-desk.
+
+"Will you not come to lunch, Mary?"
+
+"Yes,--if I ought. I suppose I might not have a cup of tea brought up
+here?"
+
+"You shall have whatever you like,--here or anywhere else, as far as
+the vicarage goes. What did he say to you this morning?"
+
+"It is of no use that I should tell you, Janet."
+
+"You did not yield to him, then?"
+
+"Certainly, I did not. Certainly I never shall yield to him. Dear
+Janet, pray take that as a certainty. Let me make you sure at any
+rate of that. He must be sure of it himself."
+
+"Here is his note to me, written, I suppose, after you left him."
+Mary took the scrap of paper from her hand and read it. "He is not
+sure, you see," continued Mrs. Fenwick. "He has written to me, and I
+suppose that I must answer him."
+
+"He shall certainly never have to blush for me as his wife," said
+Mary. But she would not tell her friend of the hard words that had
+been said to her. She understood well the allusion in Mr. Gilmore's
+note, but she would not explain it. She had determined, as she
+thought about it in her solitude, that it would be better that she
+should never repeat to anyone the cruel words which her lover had
+spoken to her. Doubtless he had received provocation. All his anger,
+as well as all his suffering, had come from a constancy in his love
+for her, which was unsurpassed, if not unequalled, in all that
+she had read of among men. He had been willing to accept her on
+conditions most humiliating to himself; and had then been told, that,
+even with those conditions, he was not to have her. She was bound
+to forgive him almost any offence that he could bestow upon her. He
+had spoken to her in his wrath words which she thought to be not
+only cruel but unmanly. She had told him that she would never speak
+willingly to him again; and she would keep her word. But she would
+forgive him. She was bound to forgive him any injury, let it be what
+it might. She would forgive him;--and as a sign to herself of her
+pardon she would say no word of his offence to her friends, the
+Fenwicks. "He shall certainly never have to blush for me as his
+wife," she said, as she returned the note to Mrs. Fenwick.
+
+"You mean, that you never will be his wife?"
+
+"Certainly I mean that."
+
+"Have you quarrelled with him, Mary?"
+
+"Quarrelled? How am I to answer that? It will be better that we
+should not meet again. Of course, our interview could not be pleasant
+for either of us. I do not wish him to think that there has been a
+quarrel."
+
+"No man ever did a woman more honour than he has done to you."
+
+"Dearest Janet, let it be dropped;--pray let it be dropped. I am sure
+you believe me now when I say that it can do no good. I am writing to
+my aunt this moment to tell her that I will return. What day shall I
+name?"
+
+"Have you written to your cousin?"
+
+"No I have not written to my cousin. I have not been able to get
+through it all, Janet, quite so easily as that."
+
+"I suppose you had better go now."
+
+"Yes;--I must go now. I should be a thorn in his side if I were to
+remain here."
+
+"He will not remain, Mary."
+
+"He shall have the choice as far as I am concerned. You must let him
+know at once that I am going. I think I will say Saturday,--the day
+after to-morrow. I could hardly get away to-morrow."
+
+"Certainly not. Why should you?"
+
+"Yet I am bound to hurry myself,--to release him. And, Janet, will
+you give him these? They are all here,--the rubies and all. Ah, me!
+he touched me that day."
+
+"How like a gentleman he has behaved always."
+
+"It was not that I cared for the stupid stones. You know that I care
+nothing for anything of the kind. But there was a sort of trust in
+it,--a desire to show me that everything should be mine,--which would
+have made me love him,--if it had been possible."
+
+"I would give one hand that you had never seen your cousin."
+
+"And I will give one hand because I have," said Mary, stretching
+out her right arm. "Nay, I will give both; I will give all, because,
+having seen him, he is what he is to me. But, Janet, when you return
+to him these things say a gentle word from me. I have cost him money,
+I fear."
+
+"He will think but little of that. He would have given you willingly
+the last acre of his land, had you wanted it."
+
+"But I did not want it. That was the thing. And all these have been
+altered, as they would not have been altered, but for me. I do repent
+that I have brought all this trouble upon him. I cannot do more now
+than ask you to say so when you restore to him his property."
+
+"He will probably pitch them into the cart-ruts. Indeed, I will not
+give them to him. I will simply tell him that they are in my hands,
+and Frank shall have them locked up at the banker's. Well;--I suppose
+I had better go down and write him a line."
+
+"And I will name Saturday to my aunt," said Mary.
+
+Mrs. Fenwick immediately went to her desk, and wrote to her friend.
+
+
+   DEAR HARRY,
+
+   I am sure it is of no use. Knowing how persistent is your
+   constancy, I would not say so were I not quite, quite
+   certain. She goes to Loring on Saturday. Will it not be
+   better that you should come to us for awhile after she has
+   left us. You will be less desolate with Frank than you
+   would be alone.
+
+   Ever yours,
+
+   JANET FENWICK.
+
+   She has left your jewels with me. I merely tell you this
+   for your information;--not to trouble you with the things
+   now.
+
+
+And then she added a second postscript.
+
+
+   She regrets deeply what you have suffered on her account,
+   and bids me beg you to forgive her.
+
+
+Thus it was settled that Mary Lowther should leave Bullhampton, again
+returning to Loring, as she had done before, in order that she might
+escape from her suitor. In writing to her aunt she had thought it
+best to say nothing of Walter Marrable. She had not as yet written
+to her cousin, postponing that work for the following day. She would
+have postponed it longer had it been possible; but she felt herself
+to be bound to let him have her reply before he left Dunripple. She
+would have much preferred to return to Loring, to have put miles
+between herself and Bullhampton, before she wrote a letter which
+must contain words of happy joy. It would have gratified her to have
+postponed for awhile all her future happiness, knowing that it was
+there before her, and that it would come to her at last. But it could
+not be postponed. Her cousin's letter was burning her pocket. She
+already felt that she was treating him badly in keeping it by her
+without sending him the reply that would make him happy. She could
+not bring herself to write the letter till the other matter was
+absolutely settled; and yet, all delay was treachery to him; for,--as
+she repeated to herself again and again,--there could be no answer
+but one. She had, however, settled it all now. On the Saturday
+morning she would start for Loring, and she would write her letter
+on the Friday in time for that day's post. Walter would still be at
+Dunripple on the Sunday, and on the Sunday morning her letter would
+reach him. She had studied the course of post between Bullhampton and
+her lover's future residence, and knew to an hour when her letter
+would be in his hands.
+
+On that afternoon she could hardly maintain the tranquillity of her
+usual demeanour when she met the Vicar before dinner. Not a word,
+however, was said about Gilmore. Fenwick partly understood that he
+and his wife were in some degree responsible for the shipwreck that
+had come, and had determined that Mary was to be forgiven,--at any
+rate by him. He and his wife had taken counsel together, and had
+resolved that, unless circumstances should demand it, they would
+never again mention the Squire's name in Mary Lowther's hearing. The
+attempt had been made and had utterly failed, and now there must be
+an end of it. On the next morning he heard that Gilmore had gone up
+to London, and he went up to the Privets to learn what he could from
+the servants there. No one knew more than that the Squire's letters
+were to be directed to him at his Club. The men were still at work
+about the place; but Ambrose told him that they were all at sea as
+to what they should do, and appealed to him for orders. "If we shut
+off on Saturday, sir, the whole place'll be a muck of mud and nothin'
+else all winter," said the gardener. The Vicar suggested that after
+all a muck of mud outside the house wouldn't do much harm. "But
+master ain't the man to put up with that all'ays, and it'll cost
+twice as much to have 'em about the place again arter a bit." This,
+however, was the least trouble. If Ambrose was disconsolate out of
+doors, the man who was looking after the work indoors was twice more
+so. "If we be to work on up to Saturday night," he said, "and then do
+never a stroke more, we be a doing nothing but mischief. Better leave
+it at once nor that, sir." Then Fenwick was obliged to take upon
+himself to give certain orders. The papering of the rooms should be
+finished where the walls had been already disturbed, and the cornices
+completed, and the wood-work painted. But as for the furniture,
+hangings, and such like, they should be left till further orders
+should be received from the owner. As for the mud and muck in the
+garden, his only care was that the place should not be so left as to
+justify the neighbours in saying that Mr. Gilmore was demented. But
+he would be able to get instructions from his friend, or perhaps to
+see him, in time to save danger in that respect.
+
+In the meantime Mary Lowther had gone up to her room, and seated
+herself with her blotting-book and pens and ink. She had now before
+her the pleasure,--or was it a task?--of answering her cousin's
+letter. She had that letter in her hand, and had already read it
+twice this morning. She had thought that she would so well know how
+to answer it; but, now that the pen was in her hand, she found that
+the thing to be done was not so easy. How much must she tell him, and
+how should she tell it? It was not that there was anything which she
+desired to keep back from him. She was willing,--nay, desirous,--that
+he should know all that she had said, and done, and thought; but it
+would have been a blessing if all could have been told to him by
+other agency than her own. He would not condemn her. Nor, as she
+thought of her own conduct back from one scene to another, did she
+condemn herself. Yet there was that of which she could not write
+without a feeling of shame. And then, how could she be happy, when
+she had caused so much misery? And how could she write her letter
+without expressing her happiness? She wished that her own identity
+might be divided, so that she might rejoice over Walter's love with
+the one moiety, and grieve with the other at all the trouble she had
+brought upon the man whose love to her had been so constant. She sat
+with the open letter in her hand, thinking over all this, till she
+told herself at last that no further thinking could avail her. She
+must bend herself over the table, and take the pen in her hand, and
+write the words, let them come as they would.
+
+Her letter, she thought, must be longer than his. He had a knack of
+writing short letters; and then there had been so little for him to
+say. He had merely a single question to ask; and, although he had
+asked it more than once,--as is the manner of people in asking such
+questions,--still, a sheet of note-paper loosely filled had sufficed.
+Then she read it again. "If you bid me, I will be with you early next
+week." What if she told him nothing, but only bade him come to her?
+After all, would it not be best to write no more than that? Then she
+took her pen, and in three minutes her letter was completed.
+
+
+   The Vicarage, Friday.
+
+   DEAREST, DEAREST WALTER,
+
+   Do come to me,--as soon as you can, and I will never send
+   you away again. I go to Loring to-morrow, and, of course,
+   you must come there. I cannot write it all; but I will
+   tell you everything when we meet. I am very sorry for your
+   cousin Gregory, because he was so good.
+
+   Always your own,
+
+   MARY.
+
+   But do not think that I want to hurry you. I have said
+   come at once; but I do not mean that so as to interfere
+   with you. You must have so many things to do; and if I get
+   one line from you to say that you will come, I can be ever
+   so patient. I have not been happy once since we parted.
+   It is easy for people to say that they will conquer their
+   feelings, but it has seemed to me to be quite impossible
+   to do it. I shall never try again.
+
+
+As soon as the body of her letter was written, she could have
+continued her postscript for ever. It seemed to her then as though
+nothing would be more delightful than to let the words flow on with
+full expressions of all her love and happiness. To write to him was
+pleasant enough, as long as there came on her no need to mention Mr.
+Gilmore's name.
+
+That was to be her last evening at Bullhampton; and though no
+allusion was made to the subject, they were all thinking that she
+could never return to Bullhampton again. She had been almost as much
+at home with them as with her aunt at Loring; and now she must leave
+the place for ever. But they said not a word; and the evening passed
+by almost as had passed all other evenings. The remembrance of what
+had taken place since she had been at Bullhampton made it almost
+impossible to speak of her departure.
+
+In the morning she was to be again driven to the railway-station at
+Westbury. Mr. Fenwick had work in his parish which would keep him
+at home, and she was to be trusted to the driving of the groom. "If
+I were to be away to-morrow," he said, as he parted from her that
+evening, "the churchwardens would have me up to the archdeacon, and
+the archdeacon might tell the Marquis, and where should I be then?"
+Of course she begged him not to give it a second thought. "Dear
+Mary," he said, "I should of all things have liked to have seen the
+last of you,--that you might know that I love you as well as ever."
+Then she burst into tears, and kissed him, and told him that she
+would always look to him as to a brother.
+
+She called Mrs. Fenwick into her own room before she undressed.
+"Janet," she said, "dearest Janet, we are not to part for ever?"
+
+"For ever! No, certainly. Why for ever?"
+
+"I shall never see you, unless you will come to me. Promise me that
+if ever I have a house you will come to me."
+
+"Of course you will have a house, Mary."
+
+"And you will come and see me,--will you not? Promise that you will
+come to me. I can never come back to dear, dear Bullhampton."
+
+"No doubt we shall meet, Mary."
+
+"And you must bring the children--my darling Flos! How else ever
+shall I see her? And you must write to me, Janet."
+
+"I will write,--as often as you do, I don't doubt."
+
+"You must tell me how he is, Janet. You must not suppose that I do
+not care for his welfare because I have not loved him. I know that my
+coming here has been a curse to him. But I could not help it. Could I
+have helped it, Janet?"
+
+"Poor fellow! I wish it had not been so."
+
+"But you do not blame me;--not much? Oh, Janet, say that you do not
+condemn me."
+
+"I can say that with most perfect truth. I do not blame you. It has
+been most unfortunate; but I do not blame you. I am sure that you
+have struggled to do the best that you could."
+
+"God bless you, my dearest, dearest friend! If you could only know
+how anxious I have been not to be wrong. But things have been wrong,
+and I could not put them right."
+
+On the next morning they packed her into the little four-wheeled
+phaeton, and so she left Bullhampton. "I believe her to be as good a
+girl as ever lived," said the Vicar; "but all the same, I wish with
+all my heart that she had never come to Bullhampton."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXVI.
+
+AT THE MILL.
+
+
+The presence of Carry Brattle was required in Salisbury for the trial
+of John Burrows and Lawrence Acorn on Wednesday the 22nd of August.
+Our Vicar, who had learned that the judges would come into the city
+only late on the previous evening, and that the day following their
+entrance would doubtless be so fully occupied with other matters as
+to render it very improbable that the affair of the murder would
+then come up, had endeavoured to get permission to postpone Carry's
+journey; but the little men in authority are always stern on such
+points, and witnesses are usually treated as persons who are not
+entitled to have any views as to their own personal comfort or
+welfare. Lawyers, who are paid for their presence, may plead other
+engagements, and their pleas will be considered; and if a witness be
+a lord, it may perhaps be thought very hard that he should be dragged
+away from his amusements. But the ordinary commonplace witness must
+simply listen and obey--at his peril. It was thus decided that Carry
+must be in Salisbury on the Wednesday, and remain there, hanging
+about the Court, till her services should be wanted. Fenwick, who had
+been in Salisbury, had seen that accommodation should be provided for
+her and for the miller at the house of Mrs. Stiggs.
+
+The miller had decided upon going with his daughter. The Vicar did
+not go down to the mill again; but Mrs. Fenwick had seen Brattle, and
+had learned that such was to be the case. The old man said nothing to
+his own people about it till the Monday afternoon, up to which time
+Fanny was prepared to accompany her sister. He was then told, when he
+came in from the mill for his tea, that word had come down from the
+vicarage that there would be two bed-rooms for them at Mrs. Stiggs'
+house. "I don't know why there should be the cost of a second room,"
+said Fanny; "Carry and I won't want two beds."
+
+Up to this time there had been no reconciliation between the miller
+and his younger daughter. Carry would ask her father whether she
+should do this or that, and the miller would answer her as a surly
+master will answer a servant whom he does not like; but the father,
+as a father, had never spoken to the child; nor, up to this moment,
+had he said a word even to his wife of his intended journey to
+Salisbury. But now he was driven to speak. He had placed himself in
+the arm chair, and was sitting with his hands on his knees gazing
+into the empty fire-grate. Carry was standing at the open window,
+pulling the dead leaves off three or four geraniums which her mother
+kept there in pots. Fanny was passing in and out from the back
+kitchen, in which the water for their tea was being boiled, and Mrs.
+Brattle was in her usual place with her spectacles on, and a darning
+needle in her hand. A minute was allowed to pass by before the miller
+answered his eldest daughter.
+
+"There'll be two beds wanted," he said; "I told Muster Fenwick as I'd
+go with the girl myself;--and so I wull."
+
+Carry started so that she broke the flower which she was touching.
+Mrs. Brattle immediately stopped her needle, and withdrew her
+spectacles from her nose. Fanny, who was that instant bringing the
+tea-pot out of the back kitchen, put it down among the tea cups, and
+stood still to consider what she had heard.
+
+"Dear, dear, dear!" said the mother.
+
+"Father," said Fanny, coming up to him, and just touching him with
+her hand; "'twill be best for you to go, much best. I am heartily
+glad on it, and so will Carry be."
+
+"I knows nowt about that," said the miller; "but I mean to go, and
+that's all about it. I ain't a been to Salsbry these fifteen year and
+more, and I shan't be there never again."
+
+"There's no saying that, father," said Fanny.
+
+"And it ain't for no pleasure as I'm agoing now. Nobody 'll s'pect
+that of me. I'd liever let the millstone come on my foot."
+
+There was nothing more said about it that evening, nothing more at
+least in the miller's hearing. Carry and her sister were discussing
+it nearly the whole night. It was very soon plain to Fanny that Carry
+had heard the tidings with dismay. To be alone with her father for
+two, three, or perhaps four days, seemed to her to be so terrible,
+that she hardly knew how to face the misery and gloom of his
+company,--in addition to the fears she had as to what they would say
+and do to her in the Court. Since she had been home, she had learned
+almost to tremble at the sound of her father's foot; and yet she had
+known that he would not harm her, would hardly notice her, would not
+do more than look at her. But now, for three long frightful days to
+come, she would be subject to his wrath during every moment of her
+life.
+
+"Will he speak to me, Fanny, d'ye think?" she asked.
+
+"Of course he'll speak to you, child."
+
+"But he hasn't, you know,--not since I've been home; not once; not as
+he does to you and mother. I know he hates me, and wishes I was dead.
+And, Fanny, I wishes it myself every day of my life."
+
+"He wishes nothing of the kind, Carry."
+
+"Why don't he say one kind word to me, then? I know I've been bad.
+But I ain't a done a single thing since I've been home as 'd a' made
+him angry if he seed it, or said a word as he mightn't a' heard."
+
+"I don't think you have, dear."
+
+"Then why can't he come round, if it was ever so little? I'd sooner
+he'd beat me; that I would."
+
+"He'll never do that, Carry. I don't know as he ever laid a hand upon
+one of us since we was little things."
+
+"It 'd be better than never speaking to a girl. Only for you and
+mother, Fan, I'd be off again."
+
+"You would not. You know you would not. How dare you say that?"
+
+"But why shouldn't he say a word to one, so that one shouldn't go
+about like a dead body in the house?"
+
+"Carry dear, listen to this. If you'll manage well; if you'll be good
+to him, and patient while you are with him; if you'll bear with him,
+and yet be gentle when he--"
+
+"I am gentle,--always,--now."
+
+"You are, dear; but when he speaks, as he'll have to speak when
+you're all alone like, be very gentle. Maybe, Carry, when you've come
+back, he will be gentle with you."
+
+They had ever so much more to discuss. Would Sam be at the trial?
+And, if so, would he and his father speak to each other? They had
+both been told that Sam had been summoned, and that the police would
+enforce his attendance; but they were neither of them sure whether
+he would be there in custody or as a free man. At last they went to
+sleep, but Carry's slumbers were not very sound. As has been told
+before, it was the miller's custom to be up every morning at five.
+The two girls would afterwards rise at six, and then, an hour after
+that, Mrs. Brattle would be instructed that her time had come. On
+the Tuesday morning, however, the miller was not the first of the
+family to leave his bed. Carry crept out of hers by the earliest
+dawn of daylight, without waking her sister, and put on her clothes
+stealthily. Then she made her way silently to the front door, which
+she opened, and stood there outside waiting till her father should
+come. The morning, though it was in August, was chill, and the time
+seemed to be very long. She had managed to look at the old clock as
+she passed, and had seen that it wanted a quarter to five. She knew
+that her father was never later than five. What, if on this special
+morning he should not come, just because she had resolved, after many
+inward struggles, to make one great effort to obtain his pardon.
+
+At last he was coming. She heard his step in the passage, and then
+she was aware that he had stopped when he found the fastenings of
+the door unloosed. She perceived too that he delayed to examine the
+lock,--as it was natural that he should do; and she had forgotten
+that he would be arrested by the open door. Thinking of this in the
+moment of time that was allowed to her, she hurried forward and
+encountered him.
+
+"Father," she said; "it is I."
+
+He was angry that she should have dared to unbolt the door, or to
+withdraw the bars. What was she, that she should be trusted to open
+or to close the house? And there came upon him some idea of wanton
+and improper conduct. Why was she there at that hour? Must it be that
+he should put her again from the shelter of his roof?
+
+Carry was clever enough to perceive in a moment what was passing in
+the old man's mind. "Father," she said, "it was to see you. And I
+thought,--perhaps,--I might say it out here." He believed her at
+once. In whatever spirit he might accept her present effort, that
+other idea had already vanished. She was there that they two might be
+alone together in the fresh morning air, and he knew that it was so.
+"Father," she said, looking up into his face. Then she fell on the
+ground at his feet, and embraced his knees, and lay there sobbing.
+She had intended to ask him for forgiveness, but she was not able to
+say a word. Nor did he speak for awhile; but he stooped and raised
+her up tenderly; and then, when she was again standing by him, he
+stepped on as though he were going to the mill without a word. But he
+had not rebuked her, and his touch had been very gentle. "Father,"
+she said, following him, "if you could forgive me! I know I have been
+bad, but if you could forgive me!"
+
+He went to the very door of the mill before he turned; and she, when
+she saw that he did not come back to her, paused upon the bridge. She
+had used all her eloquence. She knew no other words with which to
+move him. She felt that she had failed, but she could do no more. But
+he stopped again without entering the mill.
+
+"Child," he said at last, "come here, then." She ran at once to meet
+him. "I will forgive thee. There. I will forgive thee, and trust thou
+may'st be a better girl than thou hast been."
+
+She flew to him and threw her arms round his neck and kissed his face
+and breast. "Oh, father," she said, "I will be good. I will try to be
+good. Only you will speak to me."
+
+
+[Illustration: "Oh, father," she said, "I will be good."]
+
+
+"Get thee into the house now. I have forgiven thee." So saying he
+passed on to his morning's work.
+
+Carry, running into the house, at once roused her sister. "Fanny,"
+she exclaimed, "he has forgiven me at last; he has said that he will
+forgive me."
+
+But to the miller's mind, and to his sense of justice, the
+forgiveness thus spoken did not suffice. When he returned to
+breakfast, Mrs. Brattle had, of course, been told of the morning's
+work, and had rejoiced greatly. It was to her as though the greatest
+burden of her life had now been taken from her weary back. Her girl,
+to her loving motherly heart, now that he who had in all things been
+the lord of her life had vouchsafed his pardon to the poor sinner,
+would be as pure as when she had played about the mill in all her
+girlish innocence. The mother had known that her child was still
+under a cloud, but the cloud to her had consisted in the father's
+wrath rather than in the feeling of any public shame. To her a sin
+repented was a sin no more, and her love for her child made her sure
+of the sincerity of that repentance. But there could be no joy over
+the sinner in this world till the head of the house should again have
+taken her to his heart. When the miller came in to his breakfast the
+three women were standing together, not without some outward marks of
+contentment. Mrs. Brattle's cap was clean, and even Fanny, who was
+ever tidy and never smart, had managed in some way to add something
+bright to her appearance. Where is the woman who, when she has been
+pleased, will not show her pleasure by some sign in her outward
+garniture? But still there was anxiety. "Will he call me Carry?" the
+girl had asked. He had not done so when he pronounced her pardon
+at the mill door. Though they were standing together they had not
+decided on any line of action. The pardon had been spoken and they
+were sure that it would not be revoked; but how it would operate at
+first none of them had even guessed.
+
+The miller, when he had entered the room and come among them, stood
+with his two hands resting on the round table, and thus he addressed
+them: "It was a bad time with us when the girl, whom we had all loved
+a'most too well, forgot herself and us, and brought us to shame,--we
+who had never known shame afore,--and became a thing so vile as I
+won't name it. It was well nigh the death o' me, I know."
+
+"Oh, father!" exclaimed Fanny.
+
+"Hold your peace, Fanny, and let me say my say out. It was very
+bad then; and when she come back to us, and was took in, so that
+she might have her bit to eat under an honest roof, it was bad
+still;--for she was a shame to us as had never been shamed afore. For
+myself I felt so, that though she was allays near me, my heart was
+away from her, and she was not one with me, not as her sister is one,
+and her mother, who never know'd a thought in her heart as wasn't fit
+for a woman to have there." By this time Carry was sobbing on her
+mother's bosom, and it would be difficult to say whose affliction was
+the sharpest. "But them as falls may right themselves, unless they be
+chance killed as they falls. If my child be sorry for her sin--"
+
+"Oh, father, I am sorry."
+
+"I will bring myself to forgive her. That it won't stick here," and
+the miller struck his heart violently with his open palm, "I won't be
+such a liar as to say. For there ain't no good in a lie. But there
+shall be never a word about it more out o' my mouth,--and she may
+come to me again as my child."
+
+There was a solemnity about the old man's speech which struck them
+all with so much awe that none of them for a while knew how to move
+or to speak. Fanny was the first to stir, and she came to him and put
+her arm through his and leaned her head upon his shoulder.
+
+"Get me my breakfast, girl," he said to her. But before he had moved
+Carry had thrown herself weeping on his bosom. "That will do," he
+said. "That will do. Sit down and eat thy victuals." Then there was
+not another word said, and the breakfast passed off in silence.
+
+Though the women talked of what had occurred throughout the day, not
+a word more dropped from the miller's mouth upon the subject. When
+he came in to dinner he took his food from Carry's hand and thanked
+her,--as he would have thanked his elder daughter,--but he did not
+call her by her name. Much had to be done in preparing for the
+morrow's journey, and for the days through which they two might be
+detained at the assizes. The miller had borrowed a cart in which
+he was to drive himself and his daughter to the Bullhampton road
+station, and, when he went to bed, he expressed his determination of
+starting at nine, so as to catch a certain train into Salisbury. They
+had been told that it would be sufficient if they were in the city
+that day at one o'clock.
+
+On the next morning the miller was in his mill as usual in the
+morning. He said nothing about the work, but the women knew that it
+must in the main stand still. Everything could not be trusted to one
+man, and that man a hireling. But nothing was said of this. He went
+into his mill, and the women prepared his breakfast, and the clean
+shirt and the tidy Sunday coat in which he was to travel. And Carry
+was ready dressed for the journey;--so pretty, with her bright curls
+and sweet dimpled cheeks, but still with that look of fear and sorrow
+which the coming ordeal could not but produce. The miller returned,
+dressed himself as he was desired, and took his place at the table in
+the kitchen; when the front door was again opened,--and Sam Brattle
+stood among them!
+
+"Father," said he, "I've turned up just in time."
+
+Of course the consternation among them was great; but no reference
+was made to the quarrel which had divided the father and son when
+last they had parted. Sam explained that he had come across the
+country from the north, travelling chiefly by railway, but that he
+had walked from the Swindon station to Marlborough on the preceding
+evening, and from thence to Bullhampton that morning. He had come by
+Birmingham and Gloucester, and thence to Swindon.
+
+"And now, mother, if you'll give me a mouthful of some'at to eat, you
+won't find that I'm above eating of it."
+
+He had been summoned to Salisbury, he said, for that day, but nothing
+should induce him to go there till the Friday. He surmised that he
+knew a thing or two, and as the trial wouldn't come off before Friday
+at the earliest, he wouldn't show his face in Salisbury before that
+day. He strongly urged Carry to be equally sagacious, and used some
+energetic arguments to the same effect on his father, when he found
+that his father was also to be at the assizes; but the miller did not
+like to be taught by his son, and declared that as the legal document
+said Wednesday, on the Wednesday his daughter should be there.
+
+"And what about the mill?" asked Sam. The miller only shook his head.
+"Then there's only so much more call for me to stay them two days,"
+said Sam. "I'll be at it hammer and tongs, father, till it's time for
+me to start o' Friday. You tell 'em as how I'm coming. I'll be there
+afore they want me. And when they've got me they won't get much out
+of me, I guess."
+
+To all this the miller made no reply, not forbidding his son to work
+the mill, nor thanking him for the offer. But Mrs. Brattle and Fanny,
+who could read every line in his face, knew that he was well-pleased.
+
+And then there was the confusion of the start. Fanny, in her
+solicitude for her father, brought out a little cushion for his
+seat. "I don't want no cushion to sit on," said he; "give it here to
+Carry." It was the first time that he had called her by her name, and
+it was not lost on the poor girl.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXVII.
+
+SIR GREGORY MARRABLE HAS A HEADACHE.
+
+
+Mary Lowther, in her letter to her aunt, had in one line told the
+story of her rupture with Mr. Gilmore. This line had formed a
+postscript, and the writer had hesitated much before she added it.
+She had not intended to write to her aunt on this subject; but she
+had remembered at the last moment how much easier it would be to tell
+the remainder of her story on her arrival at Loring, if so much had
+already been told beforehand. Therefore it was that she had added
+these words. "Everything has been broken off between me and Mr.
+Gilmore--for ever."
+
+This was a terrible blow upon poor Miss Marrable, who, up to the
+moment of her receiving that letter, thought that her niece was
+disposed of in the manner that had seemed most desirable to all her
+friends. Aunt Sarah loved her niece dearly, and by no means looked
+forward to improved happiness in her own old age when she should be
+left alone in the house at Uphill; but she entertained the view about
+young women which is usual with old women who have young women under
+their charge, and she thought it much best that this special young
+woman should get herself married. The old women are right in their
+views on this matter; and the young women, who on this point are not
+often refractory, are right also. Miss Marrable, who entertained a
+very strong opinion on the subject above-mentioned, was very unhappy
+when she was thus abruptly told by her own peculiar young woman that
+this second engagement had been broken off and sent to the winds. It
+had become a theory on the part of Mary's friends that the Gilmore
+match was the proper thing for her. At last, after many difficulties,
+the Gilmore match had been arranged. The anxiety as to Mary's future
+life was at an end, and the theory of the elders concerned with
+her welfare was to be carried out. Then there came a short note,
+proclaiming her return home, and simply telling as a fact almost
+indifferent,--in a single line,--that all the trouble hitherto taken
+as to her own disposition had entirely been thrown away. "Everything
+has been broken off between me and Mr. Gilmore." It was a cruel and a
+heartrending postscript!
+
+Poor Miss Marrable knew very well that she was armed with no parental
+authority. She could hold her theory, and could advise; but she could
+do no more. She could not even scold. And there had been some qualm
+of conscience on her part as to Walter Marrable, now that Walter
+Marrable had been taken in hand and made much of by the baronet,--and
+now, also, that poor Gregory had been removed from the path. No doubt
+she, Aunt Sarah, had done all in her power to aid the difficulties
+which had separated the two cousins;--and while she thought that the
+Gilmore match had been the consequence of such aiding on her part,
+she was happy enough in reflecting upon what she had done. Old Sir
+Gregory would not have taken Walter by the hand unless Walter had
+been free to marry Edith Brownlow; and though she could not quite
+resolve that the death of the younger Gregory had been part of the
+family arrangement due to the happy policy of the elder Marrables
+generally, still she was quite sure that Walter's present position
+at Dunripple had come entirely from the favour with which he had
+regarded the baronet's wishes as to Edith. Mary was provided for with
+the Squire, who was in immediate possession; and Walter with his
+bride would become as it were the eldest son of Dunripple. It was
+all as comfortable as could be till there came this unfortunate
+postscript.
+
+The letter reached her on Friday, and on Saturday Mary arrived. Miss
+Marrable determined that she would not complain. As regarded her own
+comfort it was doubtless all for the best. But old women are never
+selfish in regard to the marriage of young women. That the young
+women belonging to them should be settled,--and thus got rid of,--is
+no doubt the great desire; but, whether the old woman be herself
+married or a spinster, the desire is founded on an adamantine
+confidence that marriage is the most proper and the happiest thing
+for the young woman. The belief is so thorough that the woman would
+cease to be a woman, would already have become a brute, who would
+desire to keep any girl belonging to her out of matrimony for the
+sake of companionship to herself. But no woman does so desire in
+regard to those who are dear and near to her. A dependant, distant
+in blood, or a paid assistant, may find here and there a want of the
+true feminine sympathy; but in regard to a daughter, or one held as
+a daughter, it is never wanting. "As the pelican loveth her young do
+I love thee; and therefore will I give thee away in marriage to some
+one strong enough to hold thee, even though my heartstrings be torn
+asunder by the parting." Such is always the heart's declaration of
+the mother respecting her daughter. The match-making of mothers is
+the natural result of mother's love; for the ambition of one woman
+for another is never other than this,--that the one loved by her
+shall be given to a man to be loved more worthily. Poor Aunt Sarah,
+considering of these things during those two lonely days, came to the
+conclusion that if ever Mary were to be so loved again that she might
+be given away, a long time might first elapse; and then she was aware
+that such gifts given late lose much of their value, and have to be
+given cheaply.
+
+Mary herself, as she was driven slowly up the hill to her aunt's
+door, did not share her aunt's melancholy. To be returned as a bad
+shilling, which has been presented over the counter and found to be
+bad, must be very disagreeable to a young woman's feelings. That was
+not the case with Mary Lowther. She had, no doubt, a great sorrow
+at heart. She had created a shipwreck which she did regret most
+bitterly. But the sorrow and the regret were not humiliating, as they
+would have been had they been caused by failure on her own part. And
+then she had behind her the strong comfort of her own rock, of which
+nothing should now rob her,--which should be a rock for rest and
+safety, and not a rock for shipwreck, and as to the disposition of
+which Aunt Sarah's present ideas were so very erroneous!
+
+It was impossible that the first evening should pass without a word
+or two about poor Gilmore. Mary knew well enough that she had told
+her aunt nothing of her renewed engagement with her cousin; but
+she could not bring herself at once to utter a song of triumph, as
+she would have done had she blurted out all her story. Not a word
+was said about either lover till they were seated together in the
+evening. "What you tell me about Mr. Gilmore has made me so unhappy,"
+said Miss Marrable, sadly.
+
+"It could not be helped, Aunt Sarah. I tried my best, but it could
+not be helped. Of course I have been very, very unhappy myself."
+
+"I don't pretend to understand it."
+
+"And yet it is so easily understood!" said Mary, pleading hard for
+herself. "I did not love him, and--"
+
+"But you had accepted him, Mary."
+
+"I know I had. It is so natural that you should think that I have
+behaved badly."
+
+"I have not said so, my dear."
+
+"I know that, Aunt Sarah; but if you think so,--and of course you
+do,--write and ask Janet Fenwick. She will tell you everything. You
+know how devoted she is to Mr. Gilmore. She would have done anything
+for him. But even she will tell you that at last I could not help
+it. When I was so very wretched I thought that I would do my best
+to comply with other people's wishes. I got a feeling that nothing
+signified for myself. If they had told me to go into a convent or to
+be a nurse in a hospital I would have gone. I had nothing to care
+for, and if I could do what I was told perhaps it might be best."
+
+"But why did you not go on with it, my dear?"
+
+"It was impossible--after Walter had written to me."
+
+"But Walter is to marry Edith Brownlow."
+
+"No, dear aunt; no. Walter is to marry me. Don't look like that, Aunt
+Sarah. It is true;--it is, indeed." She had now dragged her chair
+close to her aunt's seat upon the sofa, so that she could put her
+hands upon her aunt's knees. "All that about Miss Brownlow has been a
+fable."
+
+"Parson John told me that it was fixed."
+
+"It is not fixed. The other thing is fixed. Parson John tells many
+fables. He is to come here."
+
+"Who is to come here?"
+
+"Walter,--of course. He is to be here,--I don't know how soon; but I
+shall hear from him. Dear aunt, you must be good to him;--indeed you
+must. He is your cousin just as much as mine."
+
+"I'm not in love with him, Mary."
+
+"But I am, Aunt Sarah. Oh dear, how much I am in love with him! It
+never changed in the least, though I struggled, and struggled not to
+think of him. I broke his picture and burned it;--and I would not
+have a scrap of his handwriting;--I would not have near me anything
+that he had even spoken of. But it was no good. I could not get away
+from him for an hour. Now I shall never want to get away from him
+again. As for Mr. Gilmore, it would have come to the same thing at
+last, had I never heard another word from Walter Marrable. I could
+not have done it."
+
+"I suppose we must submit to it," said Aunt Sarah, after a pause.
+This certainly was not the most exhilarating view which might have
+been taken of the matter as far as Mary was concerned; but as it did
+not suggest any open opposition to her scheme, and as there was no
+refusal to see Walter when he should again appear at Uphill as her
+lover, she made no complaint. Miss Marrable went on to inquire how
+Sir Gregory would like these plans, which were so diametrically
+opposed to his own. As to that, Mary could say nothing. No doubt
+Walter would make a clean breast of it to Sir Gregory before he left
+Dunripple, and would be able to tell them what had passed when he
+came to Loring. Mary, however, did not forget to argue that the
+ground on which Walter Marrable stood was his own ground. After the
+death of two men, the youngest of whom was over seventy, the property
+would be his property, and could not be taken from him. If Sir
+Gregory chose to quarrel with him,--as to the probability of which,
+Mary and her aunt professed very different opinions,--they must wait.
+Waiting now would be very different from what it had been when their
+prospects in life had not seemed to depend in any degree upon the
+succession to the family property. "And I know myself better now
+than I did then," said Mary. "Though it were to be for all my life,
+I would wait."
+
+On the Monday she got a letter from her cousin. It was very short,
+and there was not a word in it about Sir Gregory or Edith Brownlow.
+It only said that he was the happiest man in the world, and that he
+would be at Loring on the following Saturday. He must return at once
+to Birmingham, but would certainly be at Loring on Saturday. He had
+written to his uncle to ask for hospitality. He did not suppose that
+Parson John would refuse; but should this be the case, he would put
+up at The Dragon. Mary might be quite sure that she would see him on
+Saturday.
+
+And on the Saturday he came. The parson had consented to receive him;
+but, not thinking highly of the wisdom of the proposed visit, had
+worded his letter rather coldly. But of that Walter in his present
+circumstances thought but little. He was hardly within the house
+before he had told his story. "You haven't heard, I suppose," he
+said, "that Mary and I have made it up?"
+
+"How made it up?"
+
+"Well,--I mean that you shall make us man and wife some day."
+
+"But I thought you were to marry Edith Brownlow."
+
+"Who told you that, sir? I am sure Edith did not, nor yet her mother.
+But I believe these sort of things are often settled without
+consulting the principals."
+
+"And what does my brother say?"
+
+"Sir Gregory, you mean?"
+
+"Of course I mean Sir Gregory. I don't suppose you'd ask your
+father."
+
+"I never had the slightest intention, sir, of asking either one or
+the other. I don't suppose that I am to ask his leave to be married,
+like a young girl; and it isn't likely that any objection on family
+grounds could be made to such a woman as Mary Lowther."
+
+"You needn't ask leave of any one, most noble Hector. That is a
+matter of course. You can marry the cook-maid to-morrow, if you
+please. But I thought you meant to live at Dunripple?"
+
+"So I shall,--part of the year; if Sir Gregory likes it."
+
+"And that you were to have an allowance and all that sort of thing.
+Now, if you do marry the cook-maid--"
+
+"I am not going to marry the cook-maid,--as you know very well."
+
+"Or if you marry any one else in opposition to my brother's wishes,
+I don't suppose it likely that he'll bestow that which he intended to
+give as a reward to you for following his wishes."
+
+"He can do as he pleases. The moment that it was settled I told him."
+
+"And what did he say?"
+
+"He complained of headache. Sir Gregory very often does complain of
+headache. When I took leave of him, he said I should hear from him."
+
+"Then it's all up with Dunripple for you,--as long as he lives. I've
+no doubt that since poor Gregory's death your father's interest
+in the property has been disposed of among the Jews to the last
+farthing."
+
+"I shouldn't wonder."
+
+"And you are,--just where you were, my boy."
+
+"That depends entirely upon Sir Gregory. You may be sure of this,
+sir,--that I shall ask him for nothing. If the worst comes to the
+worst, I can go to the Jews as well as my father. I won't, unless I
+am driven."
+
+He was with Mary, of course, that evening, walking again along the
+banks of the Lurwell, as they had first done now nearly twelve months
+since. Then the autumn had begun, and now the last of the summer
+months was near its close. How very much had happened to her, or had
+seemed to happen, during the interval. At that time she had thrice
+declined Harry Gilmore's suit; but she had done so without any weight
+on her own conscience. Her friends had wished her to marry the man,
+and therefore she had been troubled; but the trouble had lain light
+upon her, and as she looked back at it all, she felt that at that
+time there had been something of triumph at her heart. A girl when
+she is courted knows at any rate that she is thought worthy of
+courtship, and in this instance she had been at least courted
+worthily. Since then a whole world of trouble had come upon her
+from that source. She had been driven hither and thither, first by
+love, and then by a false idea of duty, till she had come almost to
+shipwreck. And in her tossing she had gone against another barque
+which, for aught she knew, might even yet go down from the effects of
+the collision. She could not be all happy, even though she were again
+leaning on Walter Marrable's arm, or again sitting with it round her
+waist, beneath the shade of the trees on the banks of the Lurwell.
+
+"Then we must wait, and this time we must be patient," she said, when
+he told her of poor Sir Gregory's headache.
+
+"I cannot ask him for anything," said Walter.
+
+"Of course not. Do not ask anybody for anything,--but just wait. I
+have quite made up my mind that forty-five for the gentleman, and
+thirty-five for the lady, is quite time enough for marrying."
+
+"The grapes are sour," said Walter.
+
+"They are not sour at all, sir," said Mary.
+
+"I was speaking of my own grapes, as I look at them when I use that
+argument for my own comfort. The worst of it is that when we know
+that the grapes are not sour,--that they are the sweetest grapes in
+the world,--the argument is of no use. I won't tell any lies about
+it, to myself or anybody else. I want my grapes at once."
+
+"And so do I," said Mary, eagerly; "of course I do. I am not going to
+make any pretence with you. Of course I want them at once. But I have
+learned to know that they are precious enough to be worth the waiting
+for. I made a fool of myself once; but I shall not do it again, let
+Sir Gregory make himself ever so disagreeable."
+
+This was all very pleasant for Captain Marrable. Ah, yes! what other
+moment in a man's life is at all equal to that in which he is being
+flattered to the top of his bent by the love of the woman he loves.
+To be flattered by the love of a woman whom he does not love is
+almost equally unpleasant,--if the man be anything of a man. But at
+the present moment our Captain was supremely happy. His Thais was
+telling him that he was indeed her king, and should he not take the
+goods with which the gods provided him? To have been robbed of his
+all by a father, and to have an uncle who would have a headache
+instead of making settlements,--these indeed were drawbacks; but the
+pleasure was so sweet that even such drawbacks as these could hardly
+sully his bliss. "If you knew what your letter was to me!" she said,
+as she leaned against his shoulder. His father and his uncle and all
+the Marrables on the earth might do their worst, they could not rob
+the present hour of its joy.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXVIII.
+
+THE SQUIRE IS VERY OBSTINATE.
+
+
+Mr. Gilmore left his own home on a Thursday afternoon, and on the
+Monday when the Vicar again visited the Privets nothing had been
+heard of him. Money had been left with the bailiff for the Saturday
+wages of the men working about the place, but no provision for
+anything had been made beyond that. The Sunday had been wet from
+morning to night, and nothing could possibly be more disconsolate
+than the aspect of things round the house, or more disreputable if
+they were to be left in their present condition. The barrows, and the
+planks, and the pickaxes had been taken away, which things, though
+they are not in themselves beautiful, are safeguards against the
+ill-effects of ugliness, as they inform the eyes why it is that such
+disorder lies around. There was the disorder at the Privets now
+without any such instruction to the eye. Pits were full of muddy
+water, and half-formed paths had become the beds of stagnant pools.
+The Vicar then went into the house, and though there was still a
+workman and a boy who were listlessly pulling about some rolls of
+paper, there were ample signs that misfortune had come and that
+neglect was the consequence. "And all this," said Fenwick to himself,
+"because the man cannot get the idea of a certain woman out of his
+head!" Then he thought of himself and his own character, and asked
+himself whether, in any position of life, he could have been thus
+overruled to misery by circumstances altogether outside himself.
+Misfortunes might come which would be very heavy; his wife or
+children might die; or he might become a pauper; or subject to some
+crushing disease. But Gilmore's trouble had not fallen upon him from
+the hands of Providence. He had set his heart upon the gaining of a
+thing, and was now absolutely broken-hearted because he could not
+have it. And the thing was a woman. Fenwick admitted to himself that
+the thing itself was the most worthy for which a man can struggle;
+but would not admit that even in his search for that a man should
+allow his heart to give way, or his strength to be broken down.
+
+He went up to the house again on the Wednesday, and again on the
+Thursday,--but nothing had been heard from the Squire. The bailiff
+was very unhappy. Even though there might come a cheque on the
+Saturday morning, which both Fenwick and the bailiff thought to be
+probable, still there would be grave difficulties.
+
+"Here'll be the first of September on us afore we know where we are,"
+said the bailiff, "and is we to go on with the horses?"
+
+For the Squire was of all men the most regular, and began to get
+his horses into condition on the first of September as regularly as
+he began to shoot partridges. The Vicar went home and then made up
+his mind that he would go up to London after his friend. He must
+provide for his next Sunday's duty, but he could do that out of a
+neighbouring parish, and he would start on the morrow. He arranged
+the matter with his wife and with his friend's curate, and on the
+Friday he started.
+
+He drove himself into Salisbury instead of to the Bullhampton Road
+station in order that he might travel by the express train. That at
+least was the reason which he gave to himself and to his wife. But
+there was present to his mind the idea that he might look into the
+court and see how the trial was going on. Poor Carry Brattle would
+have a bad time of it beneath a lawyer's claws. Such a one as Carry,
+of the evil of whose past life there was no doubt, and who would
+appear as a witness against a man whom she had once been engaged to
+marry, would certainly meet with no mercy from a cross-examining
+barrister. The broad landmarks between the respectable and the
+disreputable may guide the tone of a lawyer somewhat, when he has a
+witness in his power; but the finer lines which separate that which
+is at the moment good and true from that which is false and bad
+cannot be discerned amidst the turmoil of a trial, unless the eyes,
+and the ears, and the inner touch of him who has the handling of the
+victim be of a quality more than ordinarily high.
+
+The Vicar drove himself over to Salisbury and had an hour there for
+strolling into the court. He had heard on the previous day that the
+case would be brought on the first thing on the Friday, and it was
+half-past eleven when he made his way in through the crowd. The train
+by which he was to be taken on to London did not start till half-past
+twelve. At that moment the court was occupied in deciding whether
+a certain tradesman, living at Devizes, should or should not be on
+the jury. The man himself objected that, being a butcher, he was, by
+reason of the second nature acquired in his business, too cruel, and
+bloody-minded to be entrusted with an affair of life and death. To a
+proposition in itself so reasonable no direct answer was made; but it
+was argued with great power on behalf of the crown, which seemed to
+think at the time that the whole case depended on getting this one
+particular man into the jury box, that the recalcitrant juryman
+was not in truth a butcher, that he was only a dealer in meat, and
+that though the stain of the blood descended the cruelty did not.
+Fenwick remained there till he heard the case given against the
+pseudo-butcher, and then retired from the court. He had, however,
+just seen Carry Brattle and her father seated side by side on a bench
+in a little outside room appropriated to the witnesses, and there
+had been a constable there seeming to stand on guard over them. The
+miller was sitting, leaning on his stick, with his eyes fixed upon
+the ground, and Carry was pale, wretched, and draggled. Sam had not
+yet made his appearance.
+
+"I'm afeard, sir, he'll be in trouble," said Carry to the Vicar.
+
+"Let 'un alone," said the miller; "when they wants 'im he'll be here.
+He know'd more about it nor I did."
+
+That afternoon Fenwick went to the club of which he and Gilmore were
+both members, and found that his friend was in London. He had been
+so, at least, that morning at nine o'clock. According to the porter
+at the club door, Mr. Gilmore called there every morning for his
+letters as soon as the club was open. He did not eat his breakfast
+in the house, nor, as far as the porter's memory went, did he even
+enter the club. Fenwick had lodged himself at an hotel in the
+immediate neighbourhood of Pall-Mall, and he made up his mind that
+his only chance of catching his friend was to be at the steps of
+the club door when it was opened at nine o'clock. So he eat his
+dinner,--very much in solitude, for on the 28th of August it is not
+often that the coffee rooms of clubs are full,--and in the evening
+took himself to one of the theatres which was still open. His club
+had been deserted, and it had seemed to him that the streets also
+were empty. One old gentleman, who, together with himself, had
+employed the forces of the establishment that evening, had told him
+that there wasn't a single soul left in London. He had gone to his
+tailor's and had found that both the tailor and the foreman were out
+of town. His publisher,--for our Vicar did a little in the way of
+light literature on social subjects, and had brought out a pretty
+volume in green and gold on the half-profit system, intending to give
+his share to a certain county hospital,--his publisher had been in
+the north since the 12th, and would not be back for three weeks. He
+found, however, a confidential young man who was able to tell him
+that the hospital need not increase the number of its wards on this
+occasion. He had dropped down to Dean's Yard to see a clerical
+friend,--but the house was shut up and he could not even get an
+answer. He sauntered into the Abbey, and found them mending the
+organ. He got into a cab and was driven hither and thither because
+all the streets were pulled up. He called at the War-Office to
+see a young clerk, and found one old messenger fast asleep in
+his arm-chair. "Gone for his holiday, sir," said the man in the
+arm-chair, speaking amidst his dreams, without waiting to hear the
+particular name of the young clerk who was wanted. And yet, when he
+got to the theatre, it was so full that he could hardly find a seat
+on which to sit. In all the world around us there is nothing more
+singular than the emptiness and the fullness of London.
+
+He was up early the next morning and breakfasted before he went out,
+thinking that even should he succeed in catching the Squire, he would
+not be able to persuade the unhappy man to come and breakfast with
+him. At a little before nine he was in Pall-Mall, walking up and down
+before the club, and as the clocks struck the hour he began to be
+impatient. The porter had said that Gilmore always came exactly at
+nine, and within two minutes after that hour the Vicar began to feel
+that his friend was breaking an engagement and behaving badly to him.
+By ten minutes past, the idea had got into his head that all the
+people in Pall-Mall were watching him, and at the quarter he was
+angry and unhappy. He had just counted the seconds up to twenty
+minutes, and had begun to consider that it would be absurd for him to
+walk there all the day, when he saw the Squire coming slowly along
+the street. He had been afraid to make himself comfortable within the
+club, and there to wait for his friend's coming, lest Gilmore should
+have escaped him, not choosing to be thus caught by any one;--and
+even now he had his fear lest his quarry should slip through his
+fingers. He waited till the Squire had gone up to the porter and
+returned to the street, and then he crossed over and seized him
+by the arm. "Harry," he said, "you didn't expect to see me in
+London;--did you?"
+
+"Certainly not," said the other, implying very plainly by his looks
+that the meeting had given him no special pleasure.
+
+"I came up yesterday afternoon, and I was at Cutcote's the tailor's,
+and at Messrs. Bringemout and Neversell's. Bringemout has retired,
+but it's Neversell that does the business. And then I went down to
+see old Drybird, and I called on young Dozey at his office. But
+everybody is out of town. I never saw anything like it. I vote that
+we take to having holidays in the country, and all come to London,
+and live in the empty houses."
+
+"I suppose you came up to look after me?" said Gilmore, with a brow
+as black as a thunder-cloud.
+
+Fenwick perceived that he need not carry on any further his lame
+pretences. "Well, I did. Come, old fellow, this won't do, you know.
+Everything is not to be thrown overboard because a girl doesn't know
+her own mind. Aren't your anchors better than that?"
+
+"I haven't an anchor left," said Gilmore.
+
+"How can you be so weak and so wicked as to say so? Come, Harry, take
+a turn with me in the park. You may be quite sure I shan't let you go
+now I've got you."
+
+"You'll have to let me go," said the other.
+
+"Not till I've told you my mind. Everybody is out of town, so I
+suppose even a parson may light a cigar down here. Harry, you must
+come back with me."
+
+"No;--I cannot."
+
+"Do you mean to say that you will yield up all your strength, all
+your duty, all your life, and throw over every purpose of your
+existence because you have been ill-used by a wench? Is that your
+idea of manhood,--of that manhood you have so often preached?"
+
+"After what I have suffered there I cannot bear the place."
+
+"You must force yourself to bear it. Do you mean to say that because
+you are unhappy you will not pay your debts?"
+
+"I owe no man a shilling;--or, if I do, I will pay it to-morrow."
+
+"There are debts you can only settle by daily payments. To every man
+living on your land you owe such a debt. To every friend connected
+with you by name, or blood, or love, you owe such a debt. Do you
+suppose that you can cast yourself adrift, and make yourself a
+by-word, and hurt no one but yourself? Why is it that we hate a
+suicide?"
+
+"Because he sins."
+
+"Because he is a coward, and runs away from the burden which he ought
+to bear gallantly. He throws his load down on the roadside, and does
+not care who may bear it, or who may suffer because he is too poor
+a creature to struggle on! Have you no feeling that, though it may
+be hard with you here,"--and the Vicar, as he spoke, struck his
+breast,--"you should so carry your outer self, that the eyes of those
+around you should see nothing of the sorrow within? That is my idea
+of manliness, and I have ever taken you to be a man."
+
+"We work for the esteem of others while we desire it. I desire
+nothing now. She has so knocked me about that I should be a liar if
+I were to say that there is enough manhood left in me to bear it. I
+shan't kill myself."
+
+"No, Harry, you won't do that."
+
+"But I shall give up the place, and go abroad."
+
+"Whom will you serve by that?"
+
+"It is all very well to preach, Frank. Bad as I am I could preach to
+you if there were a matter to preach about. I don't know that there
+is anything much easier than preaching. But as for practising, you
+can't do it if you have not got the strength. A man can't walk if you
+take away his legs. If you break a bird's wing he can't fly, let the
+bird be ever so full of pluck. All that there was in me she has taken
+out of me. I could fight him, and would willingly, if I thought there
+was a chance of his meeting me."
+
+"He would not be such a fool."
+
+"But I could not stand up and look at her."
+
+"She has left Bullhampton, you know."
+
+"It does not matter, Frank. There is the place that I was getting
+ready for her. And if I were there, you and your wife would always be
+thinking about it. And every fellow about the estate knows the whole
+story. It seems to me to be almost inconceivable that a woman should
+have done such a thing."
+
+"She has not meant to act badly, Harry."
+
+"To tell the truth, when I look back at it all, I blame myself more
+than her. A man should never be ass enough to ask any woman a second
+time. But I had got it into my head that it was a disgraceful thing
+to ask and not to have. It is that which kills me now. I do not think
+that I will ever again attempt anything, because failure is so hard
+to me to bear. At any rate, I won't go back to the Privets." This he
+added after a pause, during which the Vicar had been thinking what
+new arguments he could bring up to urge his friend's return.
+
+Fenwick learned that Gilmore had sent a cheque to his bailiff by the
+post of the preceding night. He acknowledged that in sending the
+cheque he had said no more than to bid the man pay what wages were
+due. He had not as yet made up his mind as to any further steps. As
+they walked round the enclosure of St. James's Park together, and as
+the warmth of their old friendship produced freedom of intercourse,
+Gilmore acknowledged a dozen wild schemes that had passed through his
+brain. That to which he was most wedded was a plan for meeting Walter
+Marrable and cudgelling him pretty well to death. Fenwick pointed
+out three or four objections to this. In the first place, Marrable
+had committed no offence whatever against Gilmore. And then, in all
+probability, Marrable might be as good at cudgelling as the Squire
+himself. And thirdly, when the cudgelling was over, the man who began
+the row would certainly be put into prison, and in atonement for that
+would receive no public sympathy. "You can't throw yourself on the
+public pity as a woman might," said the Vicar.
+
+"D---- the public pity," said the Squire, who was not often driven to
+make his language forcible after that fashion.
+
+Another scheme was that he would publish the whole transaction. And
+here again his friend was obliged to remind him, that a man in his
+position should be reticent rather than outspoken. "You have already
+declared," said the Vicar, "that you can't endure failure, and yet
+you want to make your failure known to all the world." His third
+proposition was more absurd still. He would write such a letter to
+Mary Lowther as would cover her head with red hot coals. He would
+tell her that she had made the world utterly unbearable to him, and
+that she might have the Privets for herself and go and live there. "I
+do not doubt but that such a letter would annoy her," said the Vicar.
+
+"Why should I care how much she is annoyed?"
+
+"Just so;--but everyone who saw the letter would know that it was
+pretence and bombast. Of course you will do nothing of the kind."
+
+They were together pretty nearly the whole day. Gilmore, no doubt,
+would have avoided the Vicar in the morning had it been possible;
+but now that he had been caught, and had been made to undergo
+his friend's lectures, he was rather grateful than otherwise for
+something in the shape of society. It was Fenwick's desire to induce
+him to return to Bullhampton. If this could not be done, it would no
+doubt be well that some authority should be obtained from him as to
+the management of the place. But this subject had not been mooted
+as yet, because Fenwick felt that if he once acknowledged that the
+runaway might continue to be a runaway, his chance of bringing the
+man back to his own home would be much lessened. As yet, however, he
+had made no impression in that direction. At last they parted on an
+understanding that they were to breakfast together the next morning
+at Fenwick's hotel, and then go to the eleven o'clock Sunday service
+at a certain noted metropolitan church. At breakfast, and during
+the walk to church, Fenwick said not a word to his friend about
+Bullhampton. He talked of church services, of ritual, of the
+quietness of a Sunday in London, and of the Sunday occupations of
+three millions of people not a fourth of whom attend divine service.
+He chose any subject other than that of which Gilmore was thinking.
+But as soon as they were out of church he made another attack upon
+him. "After that, Harry, don't you feel like trying to do your duty?"
+
+"I feel that I can't fly because my wing is broken," said the Squire.
+
+They spent the whole of the afternoon and evening together, but no
+good was done. Gilmore, as far as he had a plan, intended to go
+abroad, travel to the East, or to the West,--or to the South, if so
+it came about. The Privets might be let if any would choose to take
+the place. As far as he was concerned his income from his tenants
+would be more than he wanted. "As for doing them any good, I never
+did them any good," he said, as he parted from the Vicar for the
+night. "If they can't live on the land without my being at home, I am
+sure they won't if I stay there."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXIX.
+
+THE TRIAL.
+
+
+The miller, as he was starting from his house door, had called
+his daughter by her own name for the first time since her return
+home,--and Carry had been comforted. But no further comfort came
+to her during her journey to Salisbury from her father's speech.
+He hardly spoke the whole morning, and when he did say a word as
+to any matter on the work they had in hand, his voice was low and
+melancholy. Carry knew well, as did every one at Bullhampton, that
+her father was a man not much given to conversation, and she had not
+expected him to talk to her; but the silence, together with the load
+at her heart as to the ordeal of her examination, was very heavy on
+her. If she could have asked questions, and received encouragement,
+she could have borne her position comparatively with ease.
+
+The instructions with which the miller was furnished required that
+Carry Brattle should present herself at a certain office in Salisbury
+at a certain hour on that Wednesday. Exactly at that hour she and
+her father were at the place indicated, already having visited their
+lodgings at Mrs. Stiggs'. They were then told that they would not be
+again wanted on that day, but that they must infallibly be in the
+Court the next morning at half-past nine. The attorney's clerk whom
+they saw, when he learned that Sam Brattle was not yet in Salisbury,
+expressed an opinion as to that young man's iniquity which led Carry
+to think that he was certainly in more danger than either of the
+prisoners. As they left the office, she suggested to her father that
+a message should be immediately sent to Bullhampton after Sam. "Let
+'un be," said the miller; and it was all that he did say. On that
+evening they retired to the interior of one of the bedrooms at
+Trotter's Buildings, at four o'clock in the afternoon, and did not
+leave the house again. Anything more dreary than those hours could
+not be imagined. The miller, who was accustomed to work hard all
+day and then to rest, did not know what to do with his limbs.
+Carry, seeing his misery, and thinking rather of that than her own,
+suggested to him that they should go out and walk round the town.
+"Bide as thee be," said the miller; "it ain't no time now for showing
+theeself." Carry took the rebuke without a word, but turned her head
+to hide her tears.
+
+And the next day was worse, because it was longer. Exactly at
+half-past nine they were down at the court; and there they hung about
+till half-past ten. Then they were told that their affair would not
+be brought on till the Friday, but that at half-past nine on that
+day, it would undoubtedly be commenced; and that if Sam was not there
+then, it would go very hard with Sam. The miller, who was beginning
+to lose his respect for the young man from whom he received these
+communications, muttered something about Sam being all right. "You'll
+find he won't be all right if he isn't here at half-past nine
+to-morrow," said the young man. "There is them as their bark is worse
+than their bite," said the miller. Then they went back to Trotter's
+Buildings, and did not stir outside of Mrs. Stiggs' house throughout
+the whole day.
+
+On the Friday, which was in truth to be the day of the trial, they
+were again in court at half-past nine; and there, as we have seen,
+they were found, two hours later, by Mr. Fenwick, waiting patiently
+while the great preliminary affair of the dealer in meat was being
+settled. At that hour Sam had not made his appearance; but between
+twelve and one he sauntered into the comfortless room in which Carry
+was still sitting with her father. The sight of him was a joy to poor
+Carry, as he would speak to her, and tell her something of what was
+going on. "I'm about in time for the play, father," he said, coming
+up to them. The miller picked up his hat, and scratched his head, and
+muttered something. But there had been a sparkle in his eye when he
+saw Sam. In truth, the sight in all the world most agreeable to the
+old man's eyes was the figure of his youngest son. To the miller no
+Apollo could have been more perfect in beauty, and no Hercules more
+useful in strength. Carry's sweet woman's brightness had once been as
+dear to him,--but all that had now passed away.
+
+"Is it a'going all through?" asked the miller, referring to the mill.
+
+"Running as pretty as a coach-and-four when I left at seven this
+morning," said Sam.
+
+"And how did thee come?"
+
+"By the marrow-bone stage, as don't pay no tolls; how else?" The
+miller did not express a single word of approbation, but he looked
+up and down at his son's legs and limbs, delighted to think that
+the young man was at work in the mill this morning, had since that
+walked seventeen miles, and now stood before them showing no sign of
+fatigue.
+
+"What are they a'doing on now, Sam?" asked Carry, in a whisper. Sam
+had already been into the court, and was able to inform them that
+the "big swell of all was making a speech, in which he was telling
+everybody every 'varsal thing about it. And what do you think,
+father?"
+
+"I don't think nothing," said the miller.
+
+"They've been and found Trumbull's money-box buried in old mother
+Burrows's garden at Pycroft." Carry uttered the slightest possible
+scream as she heard this, thinking of the place which she had known
+so well. "Dash my buttons if they ain't," continued Sam. "It's about
+up with 'em now."
+
+"They'll be hung--of course," said the miller.
+
+"What asses men is," said Sam; "--to go to bury the box there! Why
+didn't they smash it into atoms?"
+
+"Them as goes crooked in big things is like to go crooked in little,"
+said the miller.
+
+At about two Sam and Carry were told to go into Court, and way
+was made for the old man to accompany them. At that moment the
+cross-examination was being continued of the man who, early on the
+Sunday morning, had seen the Grinder with his companion in the cart
+on the road leading towards Pycroft Common. A big burly barrister,
+with a broad forehead and grey eyes, was questioning this witness as
+to the identity of the men in the cart; and at every answer that he
+received he turned round to the jury as though he would say "There,
+then, what do you think of the case now, when such a man as that is
+brought before you to give evidence?" "You will swear, then, that
+these two men who are here in the dock were the two men you saw that
+morning in that cart?" The witness said that he would so swear. "You
+knew them both before, of course?" The witness declared that he had
+never seen either of them before in his life. "And you expect the
+jury to believe, now that the lives of these men depend on their
+believing it, that after the lapse of a year you can identify these
+two men, whom you had never seen before, and who were at that time
+being carried along the road at the rate of eight or ten miles an
+hour?" The witness, who had already encountered a good many of these
+questions, and who was inclined to be rough rather than timid, said
+that he didn't care twopence what the jury believed. It was simply
+his business to tell what he knew. Then the judge looked at that
+wicked witness,--who had talked in this wretched, jeering way about
+twopence!--looked at him over his spectacles, and shaking his head as
+though with pity at that witness's wickedness, cautioned him as to
+the peril of his body, making, too, a marked reference to the peril
+of his soul by that melancholy wagging of the head. Then the burly
+barrister with the broad forehead looked up beseechingly to the jury.
+Was it right that any man should be hung for any offence against whom
+such a witness as this was brought up to give testimony? It was the
+manifest feeling of the crowd in the court that the witness himself
+ought to be hung immediately. "You may go down, sir," said the burly
+barrister, giving an impression to those who looked on, but did not
+understand, that the case was over as far as it depended on that
+man's evidence. The burly barrister himself was not so sanguine.
+He knew very well that the judge who had wagged his head in so
+melancholy a way at the iniquity of a witness who had dared to
+say that he didn't care twopence, would, when he was summing up,
+refer to the presence of the two prisoners in the cart as a thing
+fairly supported by evidence. The amount of the burly barrister's
+achievement was simply this,--that for the moment a sort of sympathy
+was excited on behalf of the prisoners by the disapprobation which
+was aroused against the wicked man who hadn't cared twopence.
+Sympathy, like electricity, will run so quick that no man may stop
+it. If sympathy might be made to run through the jury-box there might
+perchance be a man or two there weak enough to entertain it to the
+prejudice of his duty on that day. The hopes of the burly barrister
+in this matter did not go further than that.
+
+Then there was another man put forward who had seen neither of the
+prisoners, but had seen the cart and pony at Pycroft Common, and had
+known that the cart and pony were for the time in the possession of
+the Grinder. He was questioned by the burly barrister about himself
+rather than about his evidence; and when he had been made to own that
+he had been five times in prison, the burly barrister was almost
+justified in the look he gave to the jury, and he shook his head as
+though in sorrow that his learned friend on the other side should
+have dared to bring such a man as that before them as a witness.
+
+Various others were brought up and examined before poor Carry's turn
+had come; and on each occasion, as one after another was dismissed
+from the hands of the burly barrister, here one crushed and
+confounded, there another loud and triumphant, her heart was almost
+in her throat. And yet though she so dreaded the moment when it
+should come, there was a sense of wretched disappointment in that
+she was kept waiting. It was now between four and five, and whispers
+began to be rife that the Crown would not finish their case that day.
+There was much trouble and more amusement with the old woman who
+had been Trumbull's housekeeper. She was very deaf; but it had been
+discovered that there was an old friendship between her and the
+Grinder's mother, and that she had at one time whispered the fact of
+the farmer's money into the ears of Mrs. Burrows of Pycroft Common.
+Deaf as she was, she was made to admit this. Mrs. Burrows was also
+examined, but she would admit nothing. She had never heard of the
+money, or of Farmer Trumbull, or of the murder,--not till the world
+heard of it, and she knew nothing about her son's doings or comings
+or goings. No doubt she had given shelter to a young woman at the
+request of a friend of her son, the young woman paying her ten
+shillings a week for her board and lodging. That young woman was
+Carry Brattle. Her son and that young man had certainly been at her
+house together; but she could not at all say whether they had been
+there on that Sunday morning. Perhaps, of all who had been examined
+Mrs. Burrows was the most capable witness, for the lawyer who
+examined her on behalf of the Crown was able to extract absolutely
+nothing from her. When she turned herself round with an air of
+satisfaction, to face the questions of the burly barrister, she was
+told that he had no question to ask her. "It's all as one to me,
+sir," said Mrs. Burrows, as she smoothed her apron and went down.
+
+And then it was poor Carry's turn. When the name of Caroline Brattle
+was called she turned her eyes beseechingly to her father, as though
+hoping that he would accompany her in this the dreaded moment of her
+punishment. She caught him convulsively by the sleeve of the coat, as
+she was partly dragged and partly shoved on towards the little box
+in which she was to take her stand. He accompanied her to the foot
+of the two or three steps which she was called on to ascend, but of
+course he could go no further with her.
+
+"I'll bide nigh thee, Carry," he said; and it was the only word which
+he had spoken to comfort her that day. It did, however, serve to
+lessen her present misery, and added something to her poor stock of
+courage. "Your name is Caroline Brattle?" "And you were living on the
+thirty-first of last August with Mrs. Burrows at Pycroft Common?" "Do
+you remember Sunday the thirty-first of August?" These, and two or
+three other questions like them were asked by a young barrister in
+the mildest tone he could assume. "Speak out, Miss Brattle," he said,
+"and then there will be nothing to trouble you." "Yes, sir," she
+said, in answer to each of the questions, still almost in a whisper.
+
+Nothing to trouble her, and all the eyes of that cruel world around
+fixed upon her! Nothing to trouble her, and every ear on the alert
+to hear her,--young and pretty as she was,--confess her own shame
+in that public court! Nothing to trouble her, when she would so
+willingly have died to escape the agony that was coming on her! For
+she knew that it would come. Though she had never been in a court of
+law before, and had had no one tell her what would happen, she knew
+that the question would be asked. She was sure that she would be made
+to say what she had been before all that crowd of men.
+
+The evidence which she could give, though it was material, was very
+short. John Burrows and Lawrence Acorn had come to the cottage on
+Pycroft Common on that Sunday morning, and there she had seen both
+of them. It was daylight when they came, but still it was very early.
+She had not observed the clock, but she thought that it may have
+been about five. The men were in and out of the house, but they had
+some breakfast. She had risen from bed to help to get them their
+breakfast. If anything had been buried by them in the garden, she
+had known nothing of it. She had then received three sovereigns from
+Acorn, whom she was engaged to marry. From that day to the present
+she had never seen either of the men. As soon as she heard of the
+suspicion against Acorn, and that he had fled, she conceived her
+engagement to be at an end. All this she testified, with infinite
+difficulty, in so low a voice that a man was sworn to stand by her
+and repeat her answers aloud to the jury;--and then she was handed
+over to the burly barrister.
+
+She had been long enough in the court to perceive, and had been
+clever enough to learn, that this man would be her enemy. Though
+she had been unable to speak aloud in answering the counsel for
+the prosecution, she had quite understood that the man was her
+friend,--that he was only putting to her those questions which
+must be asked,--and questions which she could answer without much
+difficulty. But when she was told to attend to what the other
+gentleman would say to her, then, indeed, her poor heart failed her.
+
+It came at once. "My dear, I believe you have been indiscreet?"
+The words, perhaps, had been chosen with some idea of mercy, but
+certainly there was no mercy in the tone. The man's voice was loud,
+and there was something in it almost of a jeer,--something which
+seemed to leave an impression on the hearer that there had been
+pleasure in the asking it. She struggled to make an answer, and the
+monosyllable, yes, was formed by her lips. The man who was acting as
+her mouthpiece stooped down his ears to her lips, and then shook his
+head. Assuredly no sound had come from them that could have reached
+his sense, had he been ever so close. The burly barrister waited in
+patience, looking now at her, and now round at the court. "I must
+have an answer. I say that I believe you have been indiscreet. You
+know, I dare say, what I mean. Yes or no will do; but I must have
+an answer." She glanced round for an instant, trying to catch her
+father's eye; but she could see nothing; everything seemed to swim
+before her except the broad face of that burly barrister. "Has she
+given any answer?" he asked of the mouthpiece; and the mouthpiece
+again shook his head. The heart of the mouthpiece was tender, and he
+was beginning to hate the burly barrister. "My dear," said the burly
+barrister, "the jury must have the information from you."
+
+Then gradually there was heard through the court the gurgling sounds
+of irrepressible sobs,--and with them there came a moan from the old
+man, who was only divided from his daughter by the few steps,--which
+was understood by the whole crowd. The story of the poor girl, in
+reference to the trial, had been so noised about that it was known
+to all the listeners. That spark of sympathy, of which we have said
+that its course cannot be arrested when it once finds its way into
+a crowd, had been created, and there was hardly present then one,
+either man or woman, who would not have prayed that Carry Brattle
+might be spared if it were possible. There was a juryman there, a
+father with many daughters, who thought that it might not misbecome
+him to put forward such a prayer himself.
+
+"Perhaps it mayn't be necessary," said the soft-hearted juryman.
+
+But the burly barrister was not a man who liked to be taught his duty
+by any one in court,--not even by a juryman,--and his quick intellect
+immediately told him that he must seize the spark of sympathy in
+its flight. It could not be stopped, but it might be turned to his
+own purpose. It would not suffice for him now that he should simply
+defend the question he had asked. The court was showing its aptitude
+for pathos, and he also must be pathetic on his own side. He knew
+well enough that he could not arrest public opinion which was going
+against him, by shewing that his question was a proper question; but
+he might do so by proving at once how tender was his own heart.
+
+"It is a pain and grief to me," said he, "to bring sorrow upon
+any one. But look at those prisoners at the bar, whose lives are
+committed to my charge, and know that I, as their advocate, love them
+while they are my clients as well as any father can love his child. I
+will spend myself for them, even though it may be at the risk of the
+harsh judgment of those around me. It is my duty to prove to the jury
+on their behalf that the life of this young woman has been such as
+to invalidate her testimony against them;--and that duty I shall do,
+fearless of the remarks of any one. Now I ask you again, Caroline
+Brattle, whether you are not one of the unfortunates?"
+
+This attempt of the burly barrister was to a certain extent
+successful. The juryman who had daughters of his own had been put
+down, and the barrister had given, at any rate, an answer to the
+attack that had been silently made on him by the feeling of the
+court. Let a man be ready with a reply, be it ever so bad a reply,
+and any attack is parried. But Carry had given no answer to the
+question, and those who looked at her thought it very improbable that
+she would be able to do so. She had clutched the arm of the man who
+stood by her, and in the midst of her sobs was looking round with
+snatched, quick, half-completed glances for protection to the spot on
+which her father and brother were standing. The old man had moaned
+once; but after that he uttered no sound. He stood leaning on his
+stick with his eyes fixed upon the ground, quite motionless. Sam was
+standing with his hands grasping the woodwork before him and his bold
+gaze fastened on the barrister's face, as though he were about to fly
+at him. The burly barrister saw it all and perceived that more was to
+be gained by sparing than by persecuting his witness, and resolved to
+let her go.
+
+"I believe that will do," he said. "Your silence tells all that I
+wish the jury to know. You may go down." Then the man who had acted
+as mouthpiece led Carry away, delivered her up to her father, and
+guided them both out of court.
+
+They went back to the room in which they had before been seated, and
+there they waited for Sam, who was called into the witness-box as
+they left the court.
+
+"Oh, father," said Carry, as soon as the old man was again placed
+upon the bench. And she stood over him, and put her hand upon his
+neck.
+
+"We've won through it, girl, and let that be enough," said the
+miller. Then she sat down close by his side, and not another word was
+spoken by them till Sam returned.
+
+Sam's evidence was, in fact, but of little use. He had had dealings
+with Acorn, who had introduced him to Burrows, and had known the two
+men at the old woman's cottage on the Common. When he was asked, what
+these dealings had been, he said they were honest dealings.
+
+"About your sister's marriage?" suggested the crown lawyer.
+
+"Well,--yes," said Sam. And then he stated that the men had come over
+to Bullhampton and that he had accompanied them as they walked round
+Farmer Trumbull's house. He had taken them into the Vicar's garden;
+and then he gave an account of the meeting there with Mr. Fenwick.
+After that he had known and seen nothing of the men. When he
+testified so far he was handed over to the burly barrister.
+
+The burly barrister tried all he knew, but he could make nothing of
+this witness. A question was asked him, the true answer to which
+would have implied that his sister's life had been disreputable. When
+this was asked Sam declared that he would not say a word about his
+sister one way or the other. His sister had told them all she knew
+about the murder, and now he had told them all he knew. He protested
+that he was willing to answer any questions they might ask him about
+himself; but about his sister he would answer none. When told that
+the information desired might be got in a more injurious way from
+other sources, he became rather impudent.
+
+"Then you may go to--other sources," he said.
+
+He was threatened with all manner of pains and penalties; but he made
+nothing of these threats, and was at last allowed to leave the box.
+When his evidence was completed the trial was adjourned for another
+day.
+
+Though it was then late in the afternoon the three Brattles returned
+home that night. There was a train which took them to the Bullhampton
+Road station, and from thence they walked to the mill. It was a weary
+journey both for the poor girl and for the old man; but anything was
+better than delay for another night in Trotter's Buildings. And then
+the miller was unwilling to be absent from his mill one hour longer
+than was necessary. When there came to be a question whether he could
+walk, he laughed the difficulty to scorn in his quiet way. "Why
+shouldn't I walk it? Ain't I got to 'arn my bread every day?"
+
+It was ten o'clock when they reached the mill, and Mrs. Brattle, not
+expecting them at that hour, was in bed. But Fanny was up, and did
+what she could to comfort them. But no one could ever comfort old
+Brattle. He was not susceptible to soft influences. It may almost
+be said that he condemned himself because he gave way to the daily
+luxury of a pipe. He believed in plenty of food, because food for the
+workman is as coals to the steam-engine, as oats to the horse,--the
+raw material out of which the motive power of labour must be made.
+Beyond eating and working a man had little to do, but just to wait
+till he died. That was his theory of life in these his latter days;
+and yet he was a man with keen feelings and a loving heart.
+
+But Carry was comforted when her sister's arms were around her. "They
+asked me if I was bad," she said, "and I thought I should a' died,
+and I never answered them a word,--and at last they let me go."
+When Fanny inquired whether their father had been kind to her, she
+declared that he had been "main kind." "But, oh, Fanny! if he'd only
+say a word, it would warm one's heart; wouldn't it?"
+
+On the following evening news reached Bullhampton that the Grinder
+had been convicted and sentenced to death, but that Lawrence Acorn
+had been acquitted. The judge, in his summing up, had shown that
+certain evidence which applied to the Grinder had not applied to his
+comrade in the dock, and the jury had been willing to take any excuse
+for saving one man from the halter.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXX.
+
+THE FATE OF THE PUDDLEHAMITES.
+
+
+Fenwick and Gilmore breakfasted together on the morning that the
+former left London for Bullhampton; and by that time the Vicar had
+assured himself that it would be quite impossible to induce his
+friend to go back to his home. "I shall turn up after some years if
+I live," said the Squire; "and I suppose I shan't think so much about
+it then; but for the present I will not go to the place."
+
+He authorised Fenwick to do what he pleased about the house and
+the gardens, and promised to give instructions as to the sale of
+his horses. If the whole place were not let, the bailiff might, he
+suggested, carry on the farm himself. When he was urged as to his
+duty, he again answered by his illustration of the man without a leg.
+"It may be all very true," he said, "that a man ought to walk, but if
+you cut off his leg he can't walk." Fenwick at last found that there
+was nothing more to be said, and he was constrained to take his
+leave.
+
+"May I tell her that you forgive her?" the Vicar asked, as they were
+walking together up and down the station in the Waterloo Road.
+
+"She will not care a brass farthing for my forgiveness," said
+Gilmore.
+
+"You wrong her there. I am sure that nothing would give her so much
+comfort as such a message."
+
+Gilmore walked half the length of the platform before he replied.
+"What is the good of telling a lie about it?"--he said, at last.
+
+"I certainly would not tell a lie."
+
+"Then I can't say that I forgive her. How is a man to forgive such
+treatment? If I said that I did, you wouldn't believe me. I will keep
+out of her way, and that will be better for her than forgiving her."
+
+"Some of your wrath, I fear, falls to my lot?" said the Vicar.
+
+"No, Frank. You and your wife have done the best for me all
+through,--as far as you thought was best."
+
+"We have meant to do so."
+
+"And if she has been false to me as no woman was ever false before,
+that is not your fault. As for the jewels, tell your wife to lock
+them up,--or to throw them away if she likes that better. My
+brother's wife will have them some day, I suppose." Now his brother
+was in India, and his brother's wife he had never seen. Then there
+was a pledge given that Gilmore would inform his friend by letter of
+his future destination, and so they parted.
+
+This was on the Tuesday, and Fenwick had desired that his gig might
+meet him at the Bullhampton Road station. He had learned by this time
+of the condemnation of one man for the murder, and the acquittal of
+the other, and was full of the subject when his groom was seated
+beside him. Had the Brattles come back to the mill? And what of
+Sam? And what did the people say about Acorn's escape? These, and
+many other questions he asked, but he found that his servant was
+so burdened with a matter of separate and of infinitely greater
+interest, that he could not be got to give his mind to the late
+trial. He believed the Brattles were back; he had seen nothing of
+Sam; he didn't know anything about Acorn; but the new chapel was
+going to be pulled down.
+
+"What!" exclaimed the Vicar;--"not at once?"
+
+"So they was saying, sir, when I come away. And the men was at
+it,--that is, standing all about. And there is to be no more
+preaching, sir. And missus was out in the front looking at 'em as I
+drove out of the yard."
+
+Fenwick asked twenty questions, but could obtain no other information
+than was given in the first announcement of these astounding news.
+And as he entered the vicarage he was still asking questions, and the
+man was still endeavouring to express his own conviction that that
+horrible, damnable, and most heart-breaking red brick building would
+be demolished, and carted clean away before the end of the week.
+For the servants and dependents of the vicarage were staunch to the
+interests of the church establishment, with a degree of fervour
+of which the Vicar himself knew nothing. They hated Puddleham and
+dissent. This groom would have liked nothing better than a commission
+to punch the head of Mr. Puddleham's eldest son, a young man who had
+been employed in a banker's office at Warminster, but had lately come
+home because he had been found to have a taste for late hours and
+public-house parlours; and had made himself busy on the question of
+the chapel. The maid servants at the vicarage looked down as from a
+mighty great height on the young women of Bullhampton who attended
+the chapel, and the vicarage gardener, since he had found out that
+the chapel stood on glebe land, and ought therefore, to be placed
+under his hands, had hardly been able to keep himself off the ground.
+His proposed cure for the evil that had been done,--as an immediate
+remedy before erection and demolition could be carried out, was to
+form the vicarage manure pit close against the chapel door,--"and
+then let anybody touch our property who dares!" He had, however, been
+too cautious to carry out any such strategy as this, without direct
+authority from the Commander-in-Chief. "Master thinks a deal too much
+on 'em," he had said to the groom, almost in disgust at the Vicar's
+pusillanimity.
+
+When Fenwick reached his own gate there was a crowd of men loitering
+around the chapel, and he got out from his gig and joined them. His
+eye first fell upon Mr. Puddleham, who was standing directly in front
+of the door, with his back to the building, wearing on his face
+an expression of infinite displeasure. The Vicar was desirous of
+assuring the minister that no steps need be taken, at any rate,
+for the present, towards removing the chapel from its present
+situation. But before he could speak to Mr. Puddleham he perceived
+the builder from Salisbury, who appeared to be very busy,--Grimes,
+the Bullhampton tradesman, so lately discomfited, but now
+triumphant,--Bolt, the elder, close at Mr. Puddleham's elbow,--his
+own churchwarden, with one or two other farmers,--and lastly, Lord
+St. George himself, walking in company with Mr. Packer, the agent.
+Many others from the village were there, so that there was quite
+a public meeting on the bit of ground which had been appropriated
+to Mr. Puddleham's preachings. Fenwick, as soon as he saw Lord St.
+George, accosted him before he spoke to the others.
+
+"My friend Mr. Puddleham," said he, "seems to have the benefit of a
+distinguished congregation this morning."
+
+"The last, I fear, he will ever have on this spot," said the lord, as
+he shook hands with the Vicar.
+
+"I am very sorry to hear you say so, my lord. Of course, I don't know
+what you are doing, and I can't make Mr. Puddleham preach here, if he
+be not willing."
+
+Mr. Puddleham had now joined them. "I am ready and willing," said he,
+"to do my duty in that sphere of life to which it has pleased God to
+call me." And it was evident that he thought that the sphere to which
+he had been called was that special chapel opposite to the vicarage
+entrance.
+
+"As I was saying," continued the Vicar, "I have neither the wish nor
+the power to control my neighbour; but, as far as I am concerned, no
+step need be taken to displace him. I did not like this site for the
+chapel at first; but I have got quit of all that feeling, and Mr.
+Puddleham may preach to his heart's content,--as he will, no doubt,
+to his hearers' welfare, and will not annoy me in the least." On
+hearing this, Mr. Puddleham pushed his hat off his forehead and
+looked up and frowned, as though the levity of expression in which
+his rival indulged, was altogether unbecoming the solemnity of the
+occasion.
+
+"Mr. Fenwick," said the lord, "we have taken advice, and we find the
+thing ought to be done,--and to be done instantly. The leading men of
+the congregation are quite of that view."
+
+"They are of course unwilling to oppose your noble father, my lord,"
+said the minister.
+
+"And to tell you the truth, Mr. Fenwick," continued Lord St. George,
+"you might be put, most unjustly, into a peck of troubles if we did
+not do this. You have no right to let the glebe on a building lease,
+even if you were willing, and high ecclesiastical authority would
+call upon you at once to have the nuisance removed."
+
+"Nuisance, my lord!" said Mr. Puddleham, who had seen with half an
+eye that the son was by no means worthy of the father.
+
+"Well, yes,--placed in the middle of the Vicar's ground! What would
+you say if Mr. Fenwick demanded leave to use your parlour for his
+vestry room, and to lock up his surplice in your cupboard?"
+
+"I'm sure he'd try it on before he'd had it a day," said the Vicar,
+"and very well he'd look in it," whereupon the minister again raised
+his hat, and again frowned.
+
+"The long and the short of it is," continued the lord, "that we've,
+among us, made a most absurd mistake, and the sooner we put it right
+the better. My father, feeling that our mistake has led to all the
+others, and that we have caused all this confusion, thinks it to be
+his duty to pull the chapel down and build it up on the site before
+proposed near the cross roads. We'll begin at once, and hope to get
+it done by Christmas. In the mean time, Mr. Puddleham has consented
+to go back to the old chapel."
+
+"Why not let him stay here till the other is finished?" asked the
+Vicar.
+
+"My dear sir," replied the lord, "we are going to transfer the chapel
+body and bones. If we were Yankees we should know how to do it
+without pulling it in pieces. As it is, we've got to do it piecemeal.
+So now, Mr. Hickbody," he continued, turning round to the builder
+from Salisbury, "you may go to work at once. The Marquis will be much
+obliged to you if you will press it on."
+
+"Certainly, my lord," said Mr. Hickbody, taking off his hat. "We'll
+put on quite a body of men, my lord, and his lordship's commands
+shall be obeyed."
+
+After which Lord St. George and Mr. Fenwick withdrew together from
+the chapel and walked into the vicarage.
+
+"If all that be absolutely necessary--" began the Vicar.
+
+"It is, Mr. Fenwick; we've made a mistake." Lord St. George always
+spoke of his father as "we," when there came upon him the necessity
+of retrieving his father's errors. "And our only way out of it is
+to take the bull by the horns at once and put the thing right. It
+will cost us about L700, and then there is the bore of having to own
+ourselves to be wrong. But that is much better than a fight."
+
+"I should not have fought."
+
+"You would have been driven to fight. And then there is the one
+absolute fact;--the chapel ought not to be there. And now I've one
+other word to say. Don't you think this quarrelling between clergyman
+and landlord is bad for the parish?"
+
+"Very bad indeed, Lord St. George."
+
+"Now I'm not going to measure out censure, or to say that we have
+been wrong, or that you have been wrong."
+
+"If you do I shall defend myself," said the Vicar.
+
+"Exactly so. But if bygones can be bygones there need be neither
+offence nor defence."
+
+"What can a clergyman think, Lord St. George, when the landlord of
+his parish writes letters against him to his bishop, maligning his
+private character, and spreading reports for which there is not the
+slightest foundation?"
+
+"Mr. Fenwick, is that the way in which you let bygones be bygones?"
+
+"It is very hard to say that I can forget such an injury."
+
+"My father, at any rate, is willing to forget,--and, as he hopes,
+to forgive. In all disputes each party of course thinks that he has
+been right. If you, for the sake of the parish, and for the sake of
+Christian charity and goodwill, are ready to meet him half way, all
+this ill-will may be buried in the ground."
+
+What could the Vicar do? He felt that he was being cunningly cheated
+out of his grievance. He would have had not a minute's hesitation as
+to forgiving the Marquis, had the Marquis owned himself to be wrong.
+But he was now invited to bury the hatchet on even terms, and he knew
+that the terms should not be even. And he resented all this the more
+in his heart because he understood very well how clever and cunning
+was the son of his enemy. He did not like to be cheated out of his
+forgiveness. But after all, what did it matter? Would it not be
+enough for him to know, himself, that he had been right? Was it
+not much to feel himself free from all pricks of conscience in the
+matter?
+
+"If Lord Trowbridge is willing to let it all pass," said he, "so am
+I."
+
+"I am delighted," said Lord St. George, with spirit; "I will not come
+in now, because I have already overstayed my time, but I hope you may
+hear from my father before long in a spirit of kindness."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXI.
+
+THE END OF MARY LOWTHER'S STORY.
+
+
+Sir Gregory Marrable's headache was not of long duration. Allusion
+is here made to that especial headache under the acute effects of
+which he had taken so very unpromising a farewell of his nephew and
+heir. It lasted, however, for two or three days, during which he had
+frequent consultations with Mrs. Brownlow, and had one conversation
+with Edith. He was disappointed, sorry, and sore at heart because the
+desire on which he had set his mind could not be fulfilled; but he
+was too weak to cling either to his hope or to his anger. His own son
+had gone from him, and this young man must be his heir and the owner
+of Dunripple. No doubt he might punish the young man by excluding
+him from any share of ownership for the present; but there would be
+neither comfort nor advantage in that. It is true that he might save
+any money that Walter would cost him, and give it to Edith,--but such
+a scheme of saving for such a purpose was contrary to the old man's
+nature. He wanted to have his heir near him at Dunripple. He hated
+the feeling of desolation which was presented to him by the idea of
+Dunripple without some young male Marrable at hand to help him. He
+desired, unconsciously, to fill up the void made by the death of his
+son with as little trouble as might be. And therefore he consulted
+Mrs. Brownlow.
+
+Mrs. Brownlow was clearly of opinion that he had better take his
+nephew, with the encumbrance of Mary Lowther, and make them both
+welcome to the house. "We have all heard so much good of Miss
+Lowther, you know," said Mrs. Brownlow, "and she is not at all the
+same as a stranger."
+
+"That is true," said Sir Gregory, willing to be talked over.
+
+"And then, you know, who can say whether Edith would ever have liked
+him or not. You never can tell what way a young woman's feelings will
+go."
+
+On hearing this Sir Gregory uttered some sound intended to express
+mildly a divergence of opinion. He did not doubt but what Edith would
+have been quite willing to fall in love with Walter, had all things
+been conformable to her doing so. Mrs. Brownlow did not notice this
+as she continued,--"At any rate the poor girl would suffer dreadfully
+now if she were allowed to think that you should be divided from
+your nephew by your regard for her. Indeed, she could hardly stay at
+Dunripple if that were so."
+
+Mrs. Brownlow in a mild way suggested that nothing should be said to
+Edith, and Sir Gregory gave half a promise that he would be silent.
+But it was against his nature not to speak. When the moment came the
+temptation to say something that could be easily said, and which
+would produce some mild excitement, was always too strong for him.
+"My dear," he said, one evening, when Edith was hovering round his
+chair, "you remember what I once said to you about your cousin
+Walter?"
+
+"About Captain Marrable, uncle?"
+
+"Well,--he is just the same as a cousin;--it turns out that he is
+engaged to marry another cousin,--Mary Lowther."
+
+"She is his real cousin, Uncle Gregory."
+
+"I never saw the young lady,--that I know of."
+
+"Nor have I,--but I've heard so much about her! And everybody says
+she is nice. I hope they'll come and live here."
+
+"I don't know yet, my dear."
+
+"He told me all about it when he was here."
+
+"Told you he was going to be married?"
+
+"No, uncle, he did not tell me that exactly;--but he said
+that--that--. He told me how much he loved Mary Lowther, and a great
+deal about her, and I felt sure it would come so."
+
+"Then you are aware that what I had hinted about you and Walter--"
+
+"Don't talk about that, Uncle Gregory. I knew that it was ever so
+unlikely, and I didn't think about it. You are so good to me that of
+course I couldn't say anything. But you may be sure he is ever so
+much in love with Miss Lowther; and I do hope we shall be so fond of
+her!"
+
+Sir Gregory was pacified and his headache for the time was cured. He
+had had his little scheme, and it had failed. Edith was very good,
+and she should still be his pet and his favourite,--but Walter
+Marrable should be told that he might marry and bring his bride to
+Dunripple, and that if he would sell out of his regiment, the family
+lawyer should be instructed to make such arrangements for him as
+would have been made had he actually been a son. There would be some
+little difficulty about the colonel's rights; but the colonel had
+already seized upon so much that it could not but be easy to deal
+with him. On the next morning the letter was written to Walter by
+Mrs. Brownlow herself.
+
+About a week after this Mary Lowther, who was waiting at Loring with
+an outward show of patience, but with much inward anxiety for further
+tidings from her lover, received two letters, one from Walter, and
+the other from her friend, Janet Fenwick. The reader shall see those,
+and the replies which Mary made to them, and then our whole story
+will have been told as far as the loves, and hopes, and cares, and
+troubles of Mary Lowther are concerned.
+
+
+   Bullhampton, 1st September.
+
+   DEAREST MARY,
+
+   I write a line just because I said I would. Frank went
+   up to London last week and was away one Sunday. He found
+   his poor friend in town and was with him for two or three
+   days. He has made up his mind to let the Privets, and go
+   abroad, and nothing that Frank could say would move him.
+   I do not know whether it may not be for the best. We shall
+   lose such a neighbour as we never shall have again. He
+   was the same as a brother to both of us; and I can only
+   say, that loving him like a brother, I endeavoured to
+   do the best for him that I could. This I do know;--that
+   nothing on earth shall ever tempt me to set my hand at
+   match-making again. But it was alluring,--the idea of
+   bringing my two dearest friends near me together.
+
+   If you have anything to tell me of your happiness, I shall
+   be delighted to hear it; I will not set my heart against
+   this other man;--but you can hardly expect me to say that
+   he will be as much to me as might have been that other.
+   God bless you,
+
+   Your most affectionate friend,
+
+   JANET FENWICK.
+
+   I must tell you the fate of the chapel. They are already
+   pulling it down, and carting away the things to the other
+   place. They are doing it so quick, that it will all be
+   gone before we know where we are. I own I am glad. As
+   for Frank, I really believe he'd rather let it remain.
+   But this is not all. The Marquis has promised that we
+   shall hear from him "in a spirit of kindness." I wonder
+   what this will come to? It certainly was not a spirit of
+   kindness that made him write to the bishop and call Frank
+   an infidel.
+
+
+And this was the other letter.
+
+
+   Barracks, 1st September, 186--.
+
+   DEAREST LOVE,
+
+   I hope this will be one of the last letters I shall write
+   from this abominable place, for I am going to sell out at
+   once. It is all settled, and I'm to be a sort of deputy
+   Squire at Dunripple, under my uncle. As that is to be my
+   fate in life, I may as well begin it at once. But that's
+   not the whole of my fate, nor the best of it. You are to
+   be admitted as deputy Squiress,--or rather as Squiress
+   in chief, seeing that you will be mistress of the house.
+   Dearest Mary, may I hope that you won't object to the
+   promotion?
+
+   I have had a long letter from Mrs. Brownlow; and I ran
+   over yesterday and saw my uncle. I was so hurried that
+   I could not write from Dunripple. I would send you Mrs.
+   Brownlow's letter, only perhaps it would not be quite
+   fair. I dare say you will see it some day. She says ever
+   so much about you, and as complimentary as possible.
+   And then she declares her purpose to resign all rights,
+   honours, pains, privileges, and duties of mistress
+   of Dunripple into your hands as soon as you are Mrs.
+   Marrable. And this she repeated yesterday with some
+   stateliness, and a great deal of high-minded resignation.
+   But I don't mean to laugh at her, because I know she means
+   to do what is right.
+
+   My own, own, Mary, write me a line instantly to say that
+   it is right,--and to say also that you agree with me that
+   as it is to be done, 'twere well it were done quickly.
+
+   Yours always, with all my heart,
+
+   W. M.
+
+
+It was of course necessary that Mary should consult with her aunt
+before she answered the second letter. Of that which she received
+from Mrs. Fenwick she determined to say nothing. Why should she ever
+mention to her aunt again a name so painful to her as that of Mr.
+Gilmore? The thinking of him could not be avoided. In this, the great
+struggle of her life, she had endeavoured to do right, and yet she
+could not acquit herself of evil. But the pain, though it existed,
+might at least be kept out of sight.
+
+"And so you are to go and live at Dunripple at once," said Miss
+Marrable.
+
+"I suppose we shall."
+
+"Ah, well! It's all right, I'm sure. Of course there is not a word to
+be said against it. I hope Sir Gregory won't die before the Colonel.
+That's all."
+
+"The Colonel is his father, you know."
+
+"I hope there may not come to be trouble about it, that's all. I
+shall be very lonely, but of course I had to expect that."
+
+"You'll come to us, Aunt Sarah? You'll be as much there as here."
+
+"Thank you, dear. I don't quite know about that. Sir Gregory is all
+very well; but one does like one's own house."
+
+From all which Mary understood that her dear aunt still wished that
+she might have had her own way in disposing of her niece's hand,--as
+her dear friends at Bullhampton had wished to have theirs.
+
+The following were the answers from Mary to the two letters given
+above;--
+
+
+   Loring, 3rd September, 186--.
+
+   DEAR JANET,
+
+   I am very, very, very sorry. I do not know what more I can
+   say. I meant to do well all through. When I first told Mr.
+   Gilmore that it could not be as he wished it, I was right.
+   When I made up my mind that it must be so at last, I was
+   right also. I fear I cannot say so much of myself as to
+   that middle step which I took, thinking it was best to do
+   as I was bidden. I meant to be right, but of course I was
+   wrong, and I am very, very sorry. Nevertheless, I am much
+   obliged to you for writing to me. Of course I cannot but
+   desire to know what he does. If he writes and seems to be
+   happy on his travels, pray tell me.
+
+   I have much to tell you of my own happiness,--though, in
+   truth, I feel a remorse at being happy when I have caused
+   so much unhappiness. Walter is to sell out and to live
+   at Dunripple, and I also am to live there when we are
+   married. I suppose it will not be long now. I am writing
+   to him to-day, though I do not yet know what I shall say
+   to him. Sir Gregory has assented, and arrangements are to
+   be made, and lawyers are to be consulted, and we are to be
+   what Walter calls deputy Squire and Squiress at Dunripple.
+   Mrs. Brownlow and Edith Brownlow are still to live there,
+   but I am to have the honour of ordering the dinner, and
+   looking wise at the housekeeper. Of course I shall feel
+   very strange at going into such a house. To you I may
+   say how much nicer it would be to go to some place that
+   Walter and I could have to ourselves,--as you did when you
+   married. But I am not such a simpleton as to repine at
+   that. So much has gone as I would have it that I only feel
+   myself to be happier than I deserve. What I shall chiefly
+   look forward to will be your first visit to Dunripple.
+
+   Your most affectionate friend,
+
+   MARY LOWTHER.
+
+
+The other letter, as to which Mary had declared that she had not as
+yet made up her own mind when she wrote to Mrs. Fenwick, was more
+difficult in composition.
+
+
+   Loring, 2nd September, 186--.
+
+   DEAREST WALTER,
+
+   So it is all settled, and I am to be a deputy Squiress! I
+   have no objection to urge. As long as you are the deputy
+   Squire, I will be the deputy Squiress. For your sake,
+   my dearest, I do most heartily rejoice that the affair
+   is settled. I think you will be happier as a county
+   gentleman than you would have been in the army; and as
+   Dunripple must ultimately be your home,--I will say our
+   home,--perhaps it is as well that you, and I also, should
+   know it as soon as possible. Of course I am very nervous
+   about Mrs. Brownlow and her daughter; but though nervous I
+   am not fearful; and I shall prepare myself to like them.
+
+   As to that other matter, I hardly know what answer to make
+   on so very quick a questioning. It was only the other
+   day that it was decided that it was to be;--and there
+   ought to be breathing time before one also decides when.
+   But, dear Walter, I will do nothing to interfere with
+   your prospects. Let me know what you think yourself; but
+   remember, in thinking, that a little interval for purposes
+   of sentiment and of stitching is always desired by the
+   weaker vessel on such an occasion.
+
+   God bless you, my own one,
+
+   Yours always and always, M. L.
+
+   In real truth, I will do whatever you bid me.
+
+
+Of course, after that, the marriage was not very long postponed.
+Walter Marrable allowed that some grace should be given for
+sentiment, and some also for stitching, but as to neither did he
+feel that any long delay was needed. A week for sentiment, and two
+more for the preparation of bridal adornments, he thought would be
+sufficient. There was a compromise at last, as is usual in such
+cases, and the marriage took place about the middle of October. No
+doubt, at that time of year they went to Italy,--but of that the
+present narrator is not able to speak with any certainty. This,
+however, is certain,--that if they did travel abroad, Mary Marrable
+travelled in daily fear lest her unlucky fate should bring her
+face to face with Mr. Gilmore. Wherever they went, their tour, in
+accordance with a contract made by the baronet, was terminated within
+two months. For on Christmas Day Mrs. Walter Marrable was to take her
+place as mistress of the house at the dinner table.
+
+The reader may, perhaps, desire to know whether things were made
+altogether smooth with the Colonel. On this matter Messrs. Block and
+Curling, the family lawyers, encountered very much trouble indeed.
+The Colonel, when application was made to him, was as sweet as honey.
+He would do anything for the interests of his dearest son. There did
+not breathe a father on earth who cared less for himself or his own
+position. But still he must live. He submitted to Messrs. Block and
+Curling whether it was not necessary that he should live. Messrs.
+Block and Curling explained to him very clearly that his brother,
+the baronet, had nothing to do with his living or dying,--and that
+towards his living he had already robbed his son of a large property.
+At last, however, he would not make over his life interest in the
+property, as it would come to him in the event of his brother dying
+before him, except on payment of an annuity on and from that date
+of L200 a year. He began by asking L500, and was then told that the
+Captain would run the chance and would sue his father for the L20,000
+in the event of Sir Gregory dying before the Colonel.
+
+Now the narrator will bid adieu to Mary Lowther, to Loring, and to
+Dunripple. The conduct of his heroine, as depicted in these pages,
+will, he fears, meet with the disapprobation of many close and good
+judges of female character. He has endeavoured to describe a young
+woman, prompted in all her doings by a conscience wide awake, guided
+by principle, willing, if need be, to sacrifice herself, struggling
+always to keep herself from doing wrong, but yet causing infinite
+grief to others, and nearly bringing herself to utter shipwreck,
+because, for a while, she allowed herself to believe that it would be
+right for her to marry a man whom she did not love.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXII.
+
+AT TURNOVER CASTLE.
+
+
+Mrs. Fenwick had many quips and quirks with her husband as to those
+tidings to be made in a pleasant spirit which were expected from
+Turnover Castle. From the very moment that Lord St. George had given
+the order,--upon the authority chiefly of the unfortunate Mr. Bolt,
+who on this occasion found it to be impossible to refuse to give an
+authority which a lord demanded from him,--the demolition of the
+building had been commenced. Before the first Sunday came any use of
+the new chapel for divine service was already impossible. On that
+day Mr. Puddleham preached a stirring sermon about tabernacles in
+general. "It did not matter where the people of the Lord met," he
+said, "so long as they did meet to worship the Lord in a proper
+spirit of independent resistance to any authority that had not come
+to them from revelation. Any hedge-side was a sufficient tabernacle
+for a devout Christian. But--," and then, without naming any name, he
+described the Church of England as a Upas tree which, by its poison,
+destroyed those beautiful flowers which strove to spring up amidst
+the rank grass beneath it and to make the air sweet within its
+neighbourhood. Something he said, too, of a weak sister tottering to
+its base, only to be followed in its ruin by the speedy prostration
+of its elder brother. All this was of course told in detail to the
+Vicar; but the Vicar refused even to be interested by it. "Of course
+he did," said the Vicar. "If a man is to preach, what can he preach
+but his own views?"
+
+The tidings to be made in a pleasant spirit were not long waited
+for,--or, at any rate, the first instalment of them. On the 2nd of
+September there arrived a large hamper full of partridges, addressed
+to Mrs. Fenwick in the Earl's own handwriting. "The very first
+fruits," said the Vicar, as he went down to inspect the plentiful
+provision thus made for the vicarage larder. Well;--it was certainly
+better to have partridges from Turnover than accusations of
+immorality and infidelity. The Vicar so declared at once, but his
+wife would not at first agree with him. "I really should have such
+pleasure in packing them up and sending them back," said she.
+
+"Indeed, you shall do nothing of the kind."
+
+"The idea of a basket of birds to atone for such insults and calumny
+as that man has heaped on you!"
+
+"The birds will be only a first instalment," said the Vicar,--and
+then there were more quips and quirks about that. It was presumed by
+Mr. Fenwick that the second instalment would be the first pheasants
+shot in October. But the second instalment came before September was
+over in the shape of the following note:--
+
+
+   Turnover Park, 20th September, 186--.
+
+   The Marquis of Trowbridge and the Ladies Sophie and
+   Carolina Stowte request that Mr. and Mrs. Fenwick will do
+   them the honour of coming to Turnover Park on Monday the
+   6th October, and staying till Saturday the 11th.
+
+
+"That's an instalment indeed," said Mrs. Fenwick. "And now what on
+earth are we to do?" The Vicar admitted that it had become very
+serious. "We must either go, and endure a terrible time of it,"
+continued Mrs. Fenwick, "or we must show him very plainly that we
+will have nothing more to do with him. I don't see why we are to be
+annoyed, merely because he is a Marquis."
+
+"It won't be because he is a Marquis."
+
+"Why then? You can't say that you love the old man, or that the
+Ladies Sophie and Carolina Stowte are the women you'd have me choose
+for companions, or that that soapy, silky, humbugging Lord St. George
+is to your taste."
+
+"I am not sure about St. George. He can be everything to everybody,
+and would make an excellent bishop."
+
+"You know you don't like him, and you know also that you will have a
+very bad time of it at Turnover."
+
+"I could shoot pheasants all the week."
+
+"Yes,--with a conviction at the time that the Ladies Sophie and
+Carolina were calling you an infidel behind your back for doing so.
+As for myself I feel perfectly certain that I should spar with them."
+
+"It isn't because he's a Marquis," said the Vicar, carrying on his
+argument after a long pause. "If I know myself, I think I may say
+that that has no allurement for me. And, to tell the truth, had he
+been simply a Marquis, and had I been at liberty to indulge my own
+wishes, I would never have allowed myself to be talked out of my
+righteous anger by that soft-tongued son of his. But to us he is a
+man of the very greatest importance, because he owns the land on
+which the people live with whom we are concerned. It is for their
+welfare that he and I should be on good terms together; and therefore
+if you don't mind the sacrifice, I think we'll go."
+
+"What;--for the whole week, Frank?"
+
+The Vicar was of opinion that the week might be judiciously
+curtailed by two days; and, consequently, Mrs. Fenwick presented her
+compliments to the Ladies Sophie and Carolina Stowte, and expressed
+the great pleasure which she and Mr. Fenwick would have in going to
+Turnover Park on the Tuesday, and staying till the Friday.
+
+"So that I shall only be shooting two days," said the Vicar, "which
+will modify the aspect of my infidelity considerably."
+
+They went to Turnover Castle. The poor old Marquis had rather a bad
+time of it for the hour or two previous to their arrival. It had
+become an acknowledged fact now in the county that Sam Brattle had
+had nothing to do with the murder of Farmer Trumbull, and that his
+acquaintance with the murderers had sprung from his desire to see his
+unfortunate sister settled in marriage with a man whom he at the time
+did not know to be disreputable. There had therefore been a reaction
+in favour of Sam Brattle, whom the county now began to regard as
+something of a hero. The Marquis, understanding all that, had come to
+be aware that he had wronged the Vicar in that matter of the murder.
+And then, though he had been told upon very good authority,--no less
+than that of his daughters, who had been so informed by the sisters
+of a most exemplary neighbouring curate,--that Mr. Fenwick was a man
+who believed "just next to nothing," and would just as soon associate
+with a downright Pagan like old Brattle, as with any professing
+Christian,--still there was the fact of the Bishop's good opinion;
+and, though the Marquis was a self-willed man, to him a bishop was
+always a bishop. It was also clear to him that he had been misled in
+those charges which he had made against the Vicar in that matter of
+poor Carry Brattle's residence at Salisbury. Something of the truth
+of the girl's history had come to the ears of the Marquis, and he
+had been made to believe that he had been wrong. Then there was the
+affair of the chapel, in which, under his son's advice, he was at
+this moment expending L700 in rectifying the mistake which he had
+made. In giving the Marquis his due we must acknowledge that he cared
+but little about the money. Marquises, though they may have large
+properties, are not always in possession of any number of loose
+hundreds which they can throw away without feeling the loss. Nor was
+the Marquis of Trowbridge so circumstanced now. But that trouble did
+not gall him nearly so severely as the necessity which was on him to
+rectify an error made by himself. He had done a foolish thing. Under
+no circumstances should the chapel have been built on that spot. He
+knew it now, and he knew that he must apologise. Noblesse oblige.
+The old lord was very stupid, very wrong-headed, and sometimes very
+arrogant; but he would not do a wrong if he knew it, and nothing on
+earth would make him tell a wilful lie. The epithet indeed might have
+been omitted; for a lie is not a lie unless it be wilful.
+
+Lord Trowbridge passed the hours of this Tuesday morning under
+the frightful sense of the necessity for apologising;--and yet he
+remembered well the impudence of the man, how he had ventured to
+allude to the Ladies Stowte, likening them to--to--to--! It was
+terrible to be thought of. And his lordship remembered, too, how
+this man had written about the principal entrance to his own mansion
+as though it had been no more than the entrance to any other man's
+house! Though the thorns still rankled in his own flesh, he had to
+own that he himself had been wrong.
+
+And he did it,--with an honesty that was beyond the reach of his much
+more clever son. When the Fenwicks arrived, they were taken into the
+drawing-room, in which were sitting the Ladies Sophie and Carolina
+with various guests already assembled at the Castle. In a minute or
+two the Marquis shuffled in and shook hands with the two new comers.
+Then he shuffled about the room for another minute or two, and at
+last got his arm through that of the Vicar, and led him away into his
+own sanctum. "Mr. Fenwick," he said, "I think it best to express my
+regret at once for two things that have occurred."
+
+
+[Illustration: The drawing-room at Turnover Castle.]
+
+
+"It does not signify, my lord."
+
+"But it does signify to me, and if you will listen to me for a moment
+I shall take your doing so as a favour added to that which you have
+conferred upon me in coming here." The Vicar could only bow and
+listen. "I am sorry, Mr. Fenwick, that I should have written to the
+bishop of this diocese in reference to your conduct." Fenwick found
+it very difficult to hold his tongue when this was said. He imagined
+that the Marquis was going to excuse himself about the chapel,--and
+about the chapel he cared nothing at all. But as to that letter to
+the bishop, he did feel that the less said about it the better. He
+restrained himself, however, and the Marquis went on. "Things had
+been told me, Mr. Fenwick;--and I thought that I was doing my duty."
+
+"It did me no harm, my lord."
+
+"I believe not. I had been misinformed,--and I apologise." The
+Marquis paused, and the Vicar bowed. It is probable that the Vicar
+did not at all know how deep at that moment were the sufferings of
+the Marquis. "And now as to the chapel," continued the Marquis.
+
+"My lord, that is such a trifle that you must let me say that it is
+not and has not been of the slightest consequence."
+
+"I was misled as to that bit of ground."
+
+"I only wish, my lord, that the chapel could stand there."
+
+"That is impossible. The land has been appropriated to other
+purposes, and though we have all been a little in the dark about
+our own rights, right must be done. I will only add that I have the
+greatest satisfaction in seeing you and Mrs. Fenwick at Turnover, and
+that I hope the satisfaction may often be repeated." Then he led the
+way back into the drawing-room, and the evil hour had passed over his
+head.
+
+Upon the whole, things went very well with both the Vicar and his
+wife during their visit. He did go out shooting one day, and was
+treated very civilly by the Turnover gamekeeper, though he was
+prepared with no five-pound note at the end of his day's amusement.
+When he returned to the house, his host congratulated him on his
+performance just as cordially as though he had been one of the laity.
+On the next day he rode over with Lord St. George to see the County
+Hunt kennels, which were then at Charleycoats, and nobody seemed to
+think him very wicked because he ventured to have an opinion about
+hounds. Mrs. Fenwick's amusements were, perhaps, less exciting, but
+she went through them with equanimity. She was taken to see the
+parish schools, and was walked into the parish church,--in which the
+Stowte family were possessed of an enormous recess called a pew,
+but which was in truth a room, with a fireplace in it. Mrs. Fenwick
+thought it did not look very much like a church; but as the Ladies
+Stowte were clearly very proud of it she held her peace as to that
+idea. And so the visit to Turnover Park was made, and the Fenwicks
+were driven home.
+
+"After all, there's nothing like burying the hatchet," said he.
+
+"But who sharpened the hatchet?" asked Mrs. Fenwick.
+
+"Never mind who sharpened it. We've buried it."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXIII.
+
+CONCLUSION.
+
+
+There is nothing further left to be told of this story of the village
+of Bullhampton and its Vicar beyond what may be necessary to satisfy
+the reader as to the condition and future prospects of the Brattle
+family. The writer of these pages ventures to hope that whatever may
+have been the fate in the readers' mind of that couple which are
+about to settle themselves peaceably at Dunripple, and to wait there
+in comfort till their own time for reigning shall have come, some
+sympathy may have been felt with those humbler personages who have
+lived with orderly industry at the mill,--as, also, with those who,
+led away by disorderly passions, have strayed away from it, and have
+come back again to the old home.
+
+For a couple of days after the return of the miller with his daughter
+and son, very little was said about the past;--very little, at
+least, in which either the father or Sam took any part. Between the
+two sisters there were no doubt questions and answers by the hour
+together as to every smallest detail of the occurrences at Salisbury.
+And the mother almost sang hymns of joy over her child, in that the
+hour which she had so much dreaded had passed by. But the miller said
+not a word;--and Sam was almost equally silent. "But it be all over,
+Sam?" asked his mother, anxiously one day. "For certain sure it be
+all over now?"
+
+"There's one, mother, for whom it ain't all over yet;--poor devil."
+
+"But he was the--murderer, Sam."
+
+"So was t'other fellow. There weren't no difference. If one was more
+spry to kill t'old chap than t'other, Acorn was the spryest. That's
+what I think. But it's done now, and there ain't been much justice in
+it. As far as I sees, there never ain't much justice. They was nigh
+a-hanging o' me; and if those chaps had thought o' bringing t'old
+man's box nigh the mill, instead of over by t'old woman's cottage,
+they would a hung me;--outright. And then they was twelve months
+about it! I don't think much on 'em." When his mother tried to
+continue the conversation,--which she would have loved to do with
+that morbid interest which we always take in a matter which has been
+nearly fatal to us, but from which we have escaped,--Sam turned into
+the mill, saying that he had had enough of it, and wouldn't have any
+more.
+
+Then, on the third day, a report of the trial in a county newspaper
+reached them. This the miller read all through, painfully, from the
+beginning to the end, omitting no detail of the official occurrences.
+At last, when he came to the account of Sam's evidence, he got up
+from the chair on which he was sitting close to the window, and
+striking his fist upon the table, made his first and last comment
+upon the trial. "It was well said, Sam. Yes; though thou be'est my
+own, it was well said." Then he put the paper down and walked out of
+doors, and they could see that his eyes were full of tears.
+
+But from that time forth there came a great change in his manner to
+his youngest daughter. "Well, Carry," he would say to her in the
+morning, with as much outward sign of affection as he ever showed to
+any one; and at night, when she came and stood over him before he
+lifted his weary limbs out of his chair to take himself away to his
+bed, he turned his forehead to her to be kissed, as he did to that
+better daughter who had needed no forgiveness from him. Nevertheless,
+they who knew him,--and there were none who knew him better than
+Fanny did,--were aware that he never for a moment forgot the disgrace
+which had fallen upon his household. He had forgiven the sinner, but
+the shame of the sin was always on him; and he carried himself as a
+man who was bound to hide himself from the eyes of his neighbours
+because there had come upon him a misfortune which made it fit that
+he should live in retirement.
+
+Sam took up his abode in the house, and worked daily in the mill,
+and for weeks nothing was said either of his going away or of his
+return. He would talk to his sisters of the manner in which he had
+worked among the machinery of the Durham mine at which he had found
+employment; but he said nothing for awhile of the cause which had
+taken him north, or of his purpose of remaining where he was. He ate
+and drank in the house, and from time to time his father paid him
+small sums as wages. At last, sitting one evening after the work of
+the day was done, he spoke out his mind. "Father," said he, "I'm
+about minded to get me a wife." His mother and sisters were all there
+and heard the proposition made.
+
+"And who is the girl as is to have thee, Sam?" asked his mother.
+
+As Sam did not answer at once, Carry replied for him. "Who should it
+be, mother;--but only Agnes Pope?"
+
+"It ain't that 'un?" said the miller, surlily.
+
+"And why shouldn't it be that 'un, father? It is that 'un, and no
+other. If she be not liked here, why, we'll just go further, and
+perhaps not fare worse."
+
+There was nothing to be said against poor Agnes Pope,--only this,
+that she had been in Trumbull's house on the night of the murder, and
+had for awhile been suspected by the police of having communicated
+to her lover the tidings of the farmer's box of money. Evil things
+had of course been said of her then, but the words spoken of her had
+been proved to be untrue. She had been taken from the farmer's house
+into that of the Vicar,--who had, indeed, been somewhat abused by
+the Puddlehamites for harbouring her; but as the belief in Sam's
+guilt had gradually been abandoned, so, of course, had the ground
+disappeared for supposing that poor Agnes had had ought to do in
+bringing about the murder of her late master. For two days the miller
+was very gloomy, and made no reply when Sam declared his purpose of
+leaving the mill before Christmas unless Agnes should be received
+there as his wife;--but at last he gave way. "As the old 'uns go into
+their graves," he said, "it's no more than nature that the young 'uns
+should become masters." And so Sam was married, and was taken, with
+his wife, to live with the other Brattles at the mill. It was well
+for the miller that it should be so, for Sam was a man who would
+surely earn money when he put his shoulder in earnest to the wheel.
+
+As for Carry, she lived still with them, doomed by her beauty, as was
+her elder sister by the want of it, to expect that no lover should
+come and ask her to establish with him a homestead of their own.
+
+Our friend the Vicar married Sam and his sweetheart, and is still
+often at the mill. From time to time he has made efforts to convert
+the unbelieving old man whose grave is now so near to his feet; but
+he has never prevailed to make the miller own even the need of any
+change. "I've struv' to be honest," he said, when last he was thus
+attacked, "and I've wrought for my wife and bairns. I ain't been a
+drunkard, nor yet, as I knows on, neither a tale-bearer, nor yet a
+liar. I've been harsh-tempered and dour enough I know, and maybe it's
+fitting as they shall be hard and dour to me where I'm going. I don't
+say again it, Muster Fenwick;--but nothing as I can do now 'll change
+it." This, at any rate, was clear to the Vicar,--that Death, when it
+came, would come without making the old man tremble.
+
+Mr. Gilmore has been some years away from Bullhampton; but when I
+last heard from my friends in that village I was told that at last he
+was expected home.
+
+
+Bradbury, Evans, and Co., Printers, Whitefriars.
+
+
+      *      *      *      *      *      *
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's note:
+
+   Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
+
+   Chapter I, paragraph 10. The reader should note that the
+   town of Haylesbury named in this paragraph is henceforth
+   called Haytesbury.
+
+   Chapter IV, paragraph 1. The gardener is here called
+   "Jem;" in the rest of the text he is called "Jim". We
+   do not know whether this is a typographical error or
+   an example of Trollope's inconsistency with the names
+   of minor characters.
+
+   Chapter XL, paragraph 28. The astute reader of Trollope
+   will recognize the "Dragon of Wantley" as the name of
+   the hostelry inherited by Mr. Harding's daughter Eleanor
+   in the "Barsetshire" novels.
+
+   Specific changes in wording of the text are listed below.
+
+      Chapter I, next-to-last paragraph. The name "Chamerblaine"
+      was changed to "Chamberlaine" in the sentence: His mother
+      had been the sister of the Rev. Henry Fitzackerly
+      Chamberlaine; and as Mr. CHAMBERLAINE had never married,
+      much of his solicitude was bestowed upon his nephew.
+
+      Chapter III, paragraph 7. Full stop after "bugglary"
+      was changed to a question mark in the sentence: Not
+      bugglary?"
+
+      Chapter IX, paragraph 6. The word "could't" was changed
+      to "couldn't" in the sentence: She drank two glasses of
+      Marsala every day, and let it be clearly understood that
+      she COULDN'T afford sherry.
+
+      Chapter XXII, paragraph 1. "Bullhampton" was changed to
+      "Lavington" in the sentence: He, being an energetic man,
+      carried on a long and angry correspondence with the
+      authorities aforesaid; but the old man from LAVINGTON
+      continued to toddle into the village just at eleven
+      o'clock.
+
+      Chapter XXVIII, paragraph 9. The word "shoudn't" was
+      changed to "shouldn't" in the sentence: "I suppose
+      not, Mr. Fenwick. I SHOULDN'T ought;--ought I, now?
+
+      Chapter XXXII, paragraph 26. The word "friend's" was
+      changed to the plural "friends'" in the sentence:
+      Had not this dangerous captain come up, Mary, no
+      doubt,--so thought Miss Marrable,--would at last have
+      complied with her FRIENDS' advice, and have accepted
+      a marriage which was in all respects advantageous.
+
+      Chapter XXXV, paragraph 3. The word "began" was
+      changed to "begun" in the sentence: . . . and had
+      long since BEGUN to feel that a few cabbages and
+      peaches did not repay him for the loss of those
+      pleasant and bitter things, . . .
+
+      Chapter XXXIX, paragraph 13. "Gay" was changed to "Jay"
+      in the sentence: Mrs. JAY, no doubt, is a religious
+      woman. We do not know whether this was a typographical
+      error or another example of Trollope's inconsistency
+      with names of minor characters.
+
+      Chapter XLII, paragraph 5. A hyphen was removed from
+      "any-rate" in the sentence: His gown was of silk, and
+      his income almost greater than his desires; but he
+      would fain sit upon the Bench, and have at ANY RATE
+      his evenings for his own enjoyment.
+
+      Chapter XLII, paragraph 6. The word "that" was
+      removed from the sentence: Mr. Quickenham was a tall,
+      thin man, with eager gray eyes, and a long projecting
+      nose, on which, his enemies in the courts of law were
+      wont to say, [THAT] his wife would hang a kettle, in
+      order that the unnecessary heat coming from his mouth
+      might not be wasted.
+
+      Chapter XLVIII, paragraph 2. The word "injustice" was
+      changed to "justice" in the sentence: He reminded
+      himself, too, of the murderer's present escape from
+      JUSTICE by aid of this pestilent clergyman; . . .
+
+      Chapter XLVIII, paragraph 4. "St." was added to the
+      sentence: He had already told St. George of Fenwick's
+      letter to him and of his letter to the bishop, and
+      ST. George had whistled.
+
+      Chapter XLIX, paragraph 21. The words "much as" were
+      added to the sentence: I believe I owe as much to
+      you,--almost as MUCH AS a woman can owe to a man;
+      but still, were my cousin so placed that he could
+      afford to marry a poor wife, I should leave you and
+      go to him at once.
+
+
+
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