The Vicar of Bullhampton II
.pdf
THE VICAR OF BULLHAMPTON
“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 some-
thing 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.”
61
ANTHONY TROLLOPE
“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, —un-
62
THE VICAR OF BULLHAMPTON
less 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
63
ANTHONY TROLLOPE
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?”
64
THE VICAR OF BULLHAMPTON
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.”
65
ANTHONY TROLLOPE
“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.
66
THE VICAR OF BULLHAMPTON
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 daugh-
68
THE VICAR OF BULLHAMPTON
ters, 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—ex- cepting 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 uncomfort-
69
ANTHONY TROLLOPE
able, 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.
70