The Vicar Of Bullhampton Part 71

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 a.s.sist 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."

"G.o.d 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! G.o.d 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 f.a.n.n.y'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. f.a.n.n.y 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 f.a.n.n.y 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 a.s.sert her own character. "If father won't speak to me, I'd better go," she said to f.a.n.n.y.

"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?"

"n.o.body 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 f.a.n.n.y 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. f.a.n.n.y'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 f.a.n.n.y 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 a.s.sizes, 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 a.s.sizes; 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 circ.u.mstances 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 f.a.n.n.y Brattle to Mrs. Fenwick;--and now the a.s.sizes 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-abas.e.m.e.nt 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 a.s.sizes, 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 f.a.n.n.y 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. f.a.n.n.y had dropped a word or two in his hearing about the a.s.sizes, but he had only glowered at her, taking no other notice whatever of her hints.