Read the book: «The Vicar of Bullhampton», page 34
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.
