“My dear Frank,” said his wife to him, “you will get into trouble.”
“What sort of trouble?”
“In the first place, the expense of maintaining this poor girl—for life, as far as we can see—will fall upon you.”
“What if it does? But, as a matter of course, she will earn her bread sooner or later. How am I to throw her over? And what am I to do with her?”
“But that is not the worst of it, Frank.”
“Then what is the worst of it? Let us have it at once.”
“People will say that you, a clergyman and a married man, go to see a pretty young woman at Salisbury.”
“You believe that people will say that?”
“I think you should guard against it, for the sake of the parish.”
“What sort of people will say it?”
“Lord Trowbridge, and his set.”
“On my honour, Janet, I think that you wrong Lord Trowbridge. He is a fool, and to a certain extent a vindictive fool; and I grant you that he has taken it into his silly old head to hate me unmercifully; but I believe him to be a gentleman, and I do not think that he would condescend to spread a damnably malicious report of which he did not believe a word himself.”
“But, my dear, he will believe it.”
“Why? How? On what evidence? He couldn’t believe it. Let a man be ever such a fool, he can’t believe a thing without some reason. I dislike Lord Trowbridge very much; and you might just as well say that because I dislike him I shall believe that he is a hard landlord. He is not a hard landlord; and were he to stick dissenting chapels all about the county, I should be a liar and a slanderer were I to say that he was.”
“But then, you see, you are not a fool, Frank.”
This brought the conversation to an end. The Vicar was willing enough to turn upon his heel and say nothing more on a matter as to which he was by no means sure that he was in the right; and his wife felt a certain amount of reluctance in urging any arguments upon such a subject. Whatever Lord Trowbridge might say or think, her Frank must not be led to suppose that any unworthy suspicion troubled her own mind. Nevertheless, she was sure that he was imprudent.
When the fortnight was near at an end, and nothing had been done, he went again over to Salisbury. It was quite true that he had business there, as a gentleman almost always does have business in the county town where his banker lives, whence tradesmen supply him, and in which he belongs to some club. And our Vicar, too, was a man fond of seeing his bishop, and one who loved to move about in the precincts of the cathedral, to shake hands with the dean, and to have a little subrisive fling at Mr. Chamberlaine, or such another as Mr. Chamberlaine, if the opportunity came in his way. He was by no means indisposed to go into Salisbury in the ordinary course of things; and on this occasion absolutely did see Mr. Chamberlaine, the dean, his saddler, and the clerk at the Fire Insurance Office—as well as Mrs. Stiggs and Carry Brattle. If, therefore, anyone had said that on this day he had gone into Salisbury simply to see Carry Brattle, such person would have maligned him. He reduced the premium on his Fire Insurance by 5s. 6d. a year, and he engaged Mr. Chamberlaine to meet Mr. Quickenham, and he borrowed from the dean an old book about falconry; so that in fact the few minutes which he spent at Mrs. Stiggs’s house were barely squeezed in among the various affairs of business which he had to transact at Salisbury.
All that he could say to Carry Brattle was this—that hitherto he had settled nothing. She must stay in Trotter’s Buildings for another week or so. He had been so busy, in consequence of the time of the year, preparing for Easter and the like, that he had not been able to look about him. He had a plan; but would say nothing about it till he had seen whether it could be carried out. When Carry murmured something about the cost of her living the Vicar boldly declared that she need not fret herself about that, as he had money of hers in hand. He would some day explain all about that, but not now. Then he interrogated Mrs. Stiggs as to Carry’s life. Mrs. Stiggs expressed her belief that Carry wouldn’t stand it much longer. The hours had been inexpressibly long, and she had declared more than once that the best thing she could do was to go out and kill herself. Nevertheless, Mrs. Stiggs’s report as to her conduct was favourable. Of Sam Brattle, the Vicar, though he inquired, could learn nothing. Carry declared that she had not heard from him since he left her all bruised and bleeding after his fight at the Three Honest Men.
The Vicar had told Carry Brattle that he had a plan—but, in truth, he had no plan. He had an idea that he might overcome the miller by taking his daughter straight into his house, and placing the two face to face together; but it was one in which he himself put so little trust, that he could form no plan out of it. In the first place, would he be justified in taking such a step? Mrs. George Brattle had told him that people knew what was good for them without being dictated to by clergymen; and
