The Vicar of Bullhampton I

THE VICAR OF BULLHAMPTON

fered 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 tomorrow.” 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.”

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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

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THE VICAR OF BULLHAMPTON

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, feel-

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ing 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.”

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“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 nonretaliation, 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 lift-

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ed 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.”

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“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

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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

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