The Vicar Of Bullhampton Part 26

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 una.s.suming. It was entered by broad stone steps, with iron bal.u.s.trades curving outwards as they descended, and there was an open area round the house, showing that the offices were in the bas.e.m.e.nt.

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 cla.s.s 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 n.o.body 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 Sat.u.r.day, 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."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "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. "G.o.d 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 circ.u.mstances 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 G.o.d 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 Sat.u.r.day.

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 una.s.sisted 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 inc.u.mbent 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 p.r.i.c.k 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 succ.u.mb, 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 a.s.sociated 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 appet.i.te 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 n.o.body 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, n.o.body 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 unenc.u.mbered.

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.