The Vicar of Bullhampton

old man had never once entered his church. Brattle himself would bear with him more kindly than he would with his own landlord, who might at any day have turned him out of his holding. But even Fenwick had been so answered more than once as to have been forced to retreat with that feeling of having his tail, like a cur, between his legs. “He can’t eat me,” he said to himself, as the low willows round the mill came in sight. When a man is reduced to that consolation, as many a man often is, he may be nearly sure that he will be eaten.

When he got over the stile into the lane close to the mill-door, he found that the mill was going. Gilmore had told him that it might probably be so, as he had heard that the repairs were nearly finished. Fenwick was sure that after so long a period of enforced idleness Brattle would be in the mill, but he went at first into the house and there found Mrs. Brattle and Fanny. Even with them he hardly felt himself to be at home, but after a while managed to ask a few questions about Sam. Sam had come back, and was now at work, but he had had some terribly hard words with his father. The old man had desired to know where his son had been. Sam had declined to tell, and had declared that if he was to be cross-questioned about his comings and goings he would leave the mill altogether. His father had told him that he had better go. Sam had not gone, but the two had been working on together since without interchanging a word. “I want to see him especially,” said Mr. Fenwick.

“You mean Sam, sir?” asked the mother.

“No; his father. I will go out into the lane, and perhaps Fanny will ask him to come to me.” Mrs. Brattle immediately became dismayed by a troop of fears, and looked up into his face with soft, supplicating, tearful eyes. So much of sorrow had come to her of late! “There is nothing wrong, Mrs. Brattle,” he said.

“I thought perhaps you had heard something of Sam.”

“Nothing but what has made me surer than ever that he had no part in what was done at Mr. Trumbull’s farm.”

“Thank God for that!” said the mother, taking him by the hand. Then Fanny went into the mill, and the Vicar followed her out of the house, on to the lane. He stood leaning against a tree till the old man came to him. He then shook the miller’s hand, and made some remark about the mill. They had begun again that morning, the miller said. Sam had been off again, or they might have been at work on yesterday forenoon.

“Do not be angry with him; he has been on a good work,” said the Vicar.

“Good or bad, I know nowt of it,” said the miller.

“I know, and if you wish I will tell you; but there is another thing I must say first. Come a little way down the lane with me, Mr. Brattle.”

The Vicar had assumed a tone which was almost one of rebuke⁠—not intending it, but falling into it from want of histrionic power in his attempt to be bold and solemn at the same time. The miller at once resented it. “Why should I come down the lane?” said he. “You’re axing me to come out at a very busy moment, Muster Fenwick.”

“Nothing can be so important as that which I have to say. For the love of God, Mr. Brattle⁠—for the love you bear your wife and children, endure with me for ten minutes.” Then he paused, and walked on, and Mr. Brattle was still at his elbow. “My friend, I have seen your daughter.”

“Which daughter?” said the miller, arresting his step.

“Your daughter Carry, Mr. Brattle.” Then the old man turned round and would have hurried back to the mill without a word; but the Vicar held him by his coat. “If I have ever been a friend to you or yours listen to me now one minute.”

“Do I come to your house and tell you of your sorrows and your shame? Let me go!”

“Mr. Brattle, if you will stretch forth your hand, you may save her. She is your own child⁠—your flesh and blood. Think how easy it is for a poor girl to fall⁠—how great is the temptation and how quick, and how it comes without knowledge of the evil that is to follow! How small is the sin, and how terrible the punishment! Your friends, Mr. Brattle, have forgiven you worse sins than ever she has committed.”

“I never shamed none of them,” said he, struggling on his way back to the mill.

“It is that, then;⁠—your own misfortune and not the girl’s sin that would harden your heart against your own child? You will let her perish in the streets, not because she has fallen, but because she has hurt you in her fall! Is that to be a father? Is that to be a man? Mr. Brattle, think better of yourself, and dare to obey the instincts of your heart.”

But by this time the miller had escaped, and was striding off in furious silence to the mill. The Vicar, oppressed by a sense of utter failure, feeling that his interference had been absolutely valueless, that the man’s wrath and constancy were things altogether beyond his reach, stood where he had been left, hardly daring to return to the mill and say a word or two to the women there. But at last he did go back. He knew well that Brattle himself would not be seen in the house till his present mood was over. After any encounter of words he would go and work in silence for half a day, and would seldom or never refer again to what had taken place; he would never, so thought the Vicar, refer to the encounter