"You had better go home, Vicar," said the Doctor; "you will make yourself ill staying here. I do not expect another lucid interval."
"No," said the Vicar, "I feel it my duty to stay longer. For my own sake too. What he has let out bears fearfully on my happiness, Doctor."
"Yes, I can understand that, my friend, from what I have heard of the relations that exist between your daughter and that young man. You have been saved from a terrible misfortune, though at the cost, perhaps, of a few tears, and a little temporary uneasiness."
"I hope it may be as you say," said the Vicar. "Strange, only to-day Major Buckley was urging me to stop that acquaintance."
"I should have ventured to do so too, Vicar, had I been as old a friend of yours as Major Buckley."
"He is not such a very old friend," said the Vicar; "only of two years'
standing, yet I seem to have known him ten."
At daybreak the man died, and made no sign. So as soon as they had satisfied themselves of the fact, they departed, and came out together into the clear morning air. The rain-clouds had broken, though when they had scrambled up out of the narrow little valley where the cottage stood, they found that the wind was still high and fierce, and that the sun was rising dimly through a yellow haze of driving scud.
They stepped out briskly, revived by the freshness of all around, and had made about half the distance home, when they descried a horseman coming slowly towards them. It seemed an early time for any one to be abroad, and their surprise was increased at seeing that it was George Hawker returning home.
"Where can he have been so early?" said the Doctor.
"So late, you mean," said the Vicar; "he has not been home all night.
Now I shall brace up my nerves and speak to him."
"My good wishes go with you, Vicar," said the Doctor, and walked on, while the other stopped to speak with George Hawker.
"Good morning, Mr. Thornton. You are early a-foot, sir."
"Yes, I have been sitting up all night with old Jewel. He is dead."
"Is he indeed, sir," said Hawker. "He won't be much loss, sir, to the parish. A sort of happy release, one may say, for every one but himself."
"Can I have the pleasure of a few words with you, Mr. Hawker?"
"Surely, sir," said he, dismounting. "Allow me to walk a little on the way back with you?"
"What I have to say, Mr. Hawker," said the Vicar, "is very short, and, I fear, also very disagreeable to all parties. I am going to request you to discontinue your visits to my house altogether, and, in fact, drop our acquaintance."
"This is very sudden, sir," said Hawker. "Am I to understand, sir, that you cannot be induced by any conduct of mine to reconsider this decision?"
"You are to understand that such is the case, sir."
"And this is final, Mr. Thornton?"
"Quite final, I assure you," said the Vicar; "nothing on earth should make me flinch from my decision."
"This is very unfortunate, sir," said George. "For I had reason to believe that you rather encouraged my visits than otherwise."
"I never encouraged them. It is true I permitted them. But since then circumstances have come to my ears which render it imperative that you should drop all communication with the members of my family, more especially, to speak plainly, with my daughter."
"At least, sir," said George, "let me know what charge you bring against me."
"I make no charges of any sort," replied the Vicar. "All I say is, that I wish the intercourse between you and my daughter to cease; and I consider, sir, that when I say that, it ought to be sufficient. I conceive that I have the right to say so much without question."
"I think you are unjust, sir; I do, indeed," said George.
"I may have been unjust, and I may have been weak, in allowing an intimacy (which I do not deny, mind you) to spring up between my daughter and yourself. But I am not unjust now, when I require that it should cease. I begin to be just."
"Do you forbid me your house, sir?"
"I forbid you my house, sir. Most distinctly. And I wish you good-day."
There was no more to be said on either side. George stood beside his horse, after the Vicar had left him, till he was fairly out of earshot.
And then, with a fierce oath, he said,--
"You puritanical old humbug, I'll do you yet. You've heard about Nell and her cursed brat. But the daughter ain't always the same way of thinking with the father, old man."
The Vicar walked on, glad enough to have got the interview over, till he overtook the Doctor, who was walking slowly till he came up. He felt as though the battle was gained already, though he still rather dreaded a scene with Mary.
"How have you sped, friend?" asked the Doctor. "Have you given the young gentleman his CONGEE?"
"I have," he replied. "Doctor, now half the work is done, I feel what a culpable coward I have been not to do it before. I have been deeply to blame. I never should have allowed him to come near us. Surely, the girl will not be such a fool as to regret the loss of such a man. I shall tell her all I know about him, and after that I can do no more.
No more? I never had her confidence. She has always had a life apart from mine. The people in the village, all so far below us in every way, have been to me acquaintances, and only that; but they have been her world, and she has seen no other. She is a kind, affectionate daughter, but she would be as good a daughter to any of the farmers round as she is to me. She is not a lady. That is the truth. God help the man who brings up a daughter without a wife."
"You do her injustice, my friend," said the Doctor. "I understand what you mean, but you do her injustice. All the female society she has ever seen, before Mrs. Buckley and your sister came here, was of a rank inferior to herself, and she has taken her impressions from that society to a great extent. But still she is a lady; compare her to any of the other girls in the parish, and you will see the difference."
"Yes, yes, that is true," said the Vicar. "You must think me a strange man to speak so plainly about my own daughter, Doctor, and to you, too, whom I have known so short a time. But one must confide in somebody, and I have seen your discretion manifested so often that I trust you."
They had arrived opposite the Vicar's gate, but the Doctor, resisting all the Vicar's offers of breakfast, declined to go in. He walked homeward toward his cottage-lodgings, and as he went he mused to himself somewhat in this style,--
"What a good old man that is. And yet how weak. I used to say to myself when I first knew him, what a pity that a man with such a noble intellect should be buried in a country village, a pastor to a lot of ignorant hinds. And yet he is fit for nothing else, with all his intelligence, and all his learning. He has no go in him,--no back to his head. Contrast him with Buckley, and see the difference. Now Buckley, without being a particularly clever man, sees the right thing, and goes at it through fire and water. But our old Vicar sees the right, and leaves it to take care of itself. He can't manage his own family even. That girl is a fine girl, a very fine girl. A good deal of character about her. But her animal passions are so strong that she would be a Tartar for anyone to manage. She will be too much for the Vicar. She will marry that man in the end. And if he don't use her properly, she'll hate him as much as she loves him now. She is more like an Italian than an English girl. Hi! there's a noble Rhamnea!"
The Vicar went into his house, and found no one up but the maids, who were keeping that saturnalia among the household gods, which, I am given to understand, goes on in every well-regulated household before the lords of the creation rise from their downy beds. I have never seen this process myself, but I am informed, by the friend of my heart, who looked on it once for five minutes, and then fled, horror struck, that the first act consists in turning all the furniture upside down, and beating it with brooms. Further than this, I have no information. If any male eye has penetrated these awful secrets beyond that, let the owner of that eye preserve a decent silence. There are some things that it is better not to know. Only let us hope, brother, that you and I may always find ourselves in a position to lie in bed till it is all over.
In Australia, it may be worth while to remark, this custom, with many other religious observances, has fallen into entire desuetude.
The Vicar was very cross this morning. He had been sitting up all night, which was bad, and he had been thinking these last few minutes that he had made a fool of himself, by talking so freely to the Doctor about his private affairs, which was worse. Nothing irritated the Vicar's temper more than the feeling of having been too free and communicative with people who did not care about him, a thing he was very apt to do. And, on this occasion, he could not disguise from himself that he had been led into talking about his daughter to the Doctor, in a way which he characterised in his own mind as being "indecent."
As I said, he was cross. And anything in the way of clearing up or disturbance always irritated him, though he generally concealed it. But there was a point at which his vexation always took the form of a protest, more or less violent. And that point was determined by anyone meddling with his manuscript sermons.
So, on this unlucky morning, in spite of fresh-lit fires smoking in his face, and fenders in dark passages throwing him headlong into lurking coalscuttles, he kept his temper like a man, until coming into his study, he found his favourite discourse on the sixth seal lying on the floor by the window, his lectures on the 119th Psalm on the hearthrug, and the maid fanning the fire with his CHEF D'OEUVRE, the Waterloo thanksgiving.
Then, I am sorry to say, he lost his temper. Instead of calling the girl by her proper name, he addressed her as a distinguished Jewish lady, a near relation of King Ahab, and, snatching the sermon from her hand, told her to go and call Miss Mary, or he'd lay his stick about her back.
The girl was frightened--she had never seen her master in this state of mind before. So she ran out of the room, and, having fetched Mary, ensconced herself outside the door to hear what was the matter.
Mary tripped into the room looking pretty and fresh. "Why, father," she said, "you have been up all night. I have ordered you a cup of coffee.
How is old Jewel?"
"Dead," said the Vicar. "Never mind him. Mary, I want to speak to you, seriously, about something that concerns the happiness of your whole life."
"Father," she said, "you frighten me. Let me get you your coffee before you begin, at all events."