The Vicar of Bullhampton

it is. I hopes you mayn’t never know it; nor it ain’t likely. Muster Fenwick, I’d sooner see her dead body stretched afore me⁠—and I loved her a’most as well as any father ever loved his da’ter⁠—I’d sooner a see’d her brought home to the door stiff and stark than know her to be the thing she is.” His hesitation had now given way to emphasis, and he raised his hand as he spoke. The Vicar caught it and held it in his own, and strove to find some word to say as the old man paused in his speech. But to Jacob Brattle it was hard for a clergyman to find any word to say on such an occasion. Of what use could it be to preach of repentance to one who believed nothing; or to tell of the opportunity which forgiveness by an earthly parent might afford to the sinner of obtaining lasting forgiveness elsewhere? But let him have said what he might, the miller would not have listened. He was full of that which lay upon his own heart. “If they only know’d what them as cares for ’em ’d has to bear, maybe they’d think a little. But it ain’t natural they should know, Muster Fenwick, and one’s a’most tempted to say that a man ’d better have no child at all.”

“Think of your son George, Mr. Brattle, and of Mrs. Jay.”

“What’s them to me? He sends the girl a twenty-pun’-note, and I wish he’d a kep’ it. As for t’other, she wouldn’t let the girl inside her door! It’s here she has to come.”

“What comfort would you have, Mr. Brattle, without Fanny?”

“Fanny! I’m not saying nothing against Fanny. Not but what she hadn’t no business to let the girl into the house in the middle of the night without saying a word to me.”

“Would you have had her leave her sister outside in the cold and damp all night?”

“Why didn’t she come and ax? All the same, I ain’t a saying nowt again Fanny. But, Muster Fenwick, if you ever come to have one foot bad o’ the gout, it won’t make you right to know that the other ain’t got it. Y’ll have the pain a gnawing of you from the bad foot till you clean forget all the rest o’ your body. It’s so with me, I knows.”

“What can I say to you, Mr. Brattle? I do feel for you. I do⁠—I do.”

“Not a doubt on it, Muster Fenwick. They all on ’em feels for me. They all on ’em knows as how I’m bruised and mangled a’most as though I’d fallen through into that waterwheel. There ain’t one in all Bull’ompton as don’t know as Jacob Brattle is a broken man along of his da’ter that is a⁠—”

“Silence, Mr. Brattle. You shall not say it. She is not that;⁠—at any rate not now. Have you no knowledge that sin may be left behind and deserted as well as virtue?”

“It ain’t easy to leave disgrace behind, anyways. For ought I knows a girl may be made right arter a while; but as for her father, nothing’ll ever make him right again. It’s in here, Muster Fenwick⁠—in here. There’s things as is hard on us; but when they comes one can’t send ’em away just because they is hardest of all to bear. I’d a put up with aught, only this, and defied all Bull’ompton to say as it broke me;⁠—but I’m about broke now. If I hadn’t more nor a crust at home, nor a decent coat to my back, I’d a looked ’em all square in the face as ever I did. But I can’t look no man square in the face now;⁠—and as for other folk’s girls, I can’t bear ’em near me⁠—no how. They makes me think of my own.” Fenwick had now turned his back to the miller, in order that he might wipe away his tears without showing them. “I’m thinking of her always, Muster Fenwick;⁠—day and night. When the mill’s agoing, it’s all the same. It’s just as though there warn’t nothing else in the whole world as I minded to think on. I’ve been a man all my life, Muster Fenwick; and now I ain’t a man no more.”

Our friend the Vicar never before felt himself so utterly unable to administer comfort in affliction. There was nothing on which he could take hold. He could tell the man, no doubt, that beyond all this there might be everlasting joy, not only for him, but for him and the girl together;⁠—joy which would be sullied by no touch of disgrace. But there was a stubborn strength in the infidelity of this old Pagan which was utterly impervious to any adjuration on that side. That which he saw and knew and felt, he would believe; but he would believe nothing else. He knew now that he was wounded and sore and wretched, and he understood the cause. He knew that he must bear his misery to the last, and he struggled to make his back broad for the load. But even the desire for ease, which is natural to all men, would not make him flinch in his infidelity. As he would not believe when things went well with him, and when the comfort of hope for the future was not imperatively needed for his daily solace⁠—so would he not believe now, when his need for such comfort was so pressing.

The upshot of it all was, that the miller thought that he would take his own daughter into Salisbury, and was desirous of breaking the matter in this way to the friend of his family. The Vicar, of course, applauded him much. Indeed, he applauded too much;⁠—for the miller turned on him and declared that he was by no means certain that he was doing right. And when the Vicar asked him to be gentle with the girl, he turned upon him again.

“Why ain’t she been gentle along