Mr. Quickenham arrived an hour or two before dinner, and was immediately taken out to see the obnoxious building; while Mrs.
Fenwick, who never would go to see it, described all its horrors to her sister within the guarded precincts of her own drawing-room.
"It used to be a bit of common land, didn't it?" said Mr. Quickenham.
"I hardly know what is common land," replied the Vicar. "The children used to play here, and when there was a bit of grass on it some of the neighbours' cows would get it."
"It was never advertised--to be let on building lease?"
"Oh dear no! Lord Trowbridge never did anything of that sort."
"I dare say not," said the lawyer. "I dare say not." Then he walked round the plot of ground, pacing it, as though something might be learned in that way. Then he looked up at the building with his hands in his pockets, and his head on one side. "Has there been a deed of gift,--perhaps a peppercorn rent, or something of that kind?" The Vicar declared that he was altogether ignorant of what had been done between the agent for the Marquis and the trustees to whom had been committed the building of the chapel. "I dare say nothing," said Mr.
Quickenham. "They've been in such a hurry to punish you, that they've gone on a mere verbal permission. What's the extent of the glebe?"
"They call it forty-two acres."
"Did you ever have it measured?"
"Never. It would make no difference to me whether it is forty-one or forty-three."
"That's as may be," said the lawyer. "It's as nasty a thing as I've looked at for many a day, but it wouldn't do to call it a nuisance."
"Of course not. Janet is very hot about it; but, as for me, I've made up my mind to swallow it. After all, what harm will it do me?"
"It's an insult,--that's all."
"But if I can show that I don't take it as an insult, the insult will be nothing. Of course the people know that their landlord is trying to spite me."
"That's just it."
"And for awhile they'll spite me too, because he does. Of course it's a bore. It cripples one's influence, and to a certain degree spreads dissent at the cost of the Church. Men and women will go to that place merely because Lord Trowbridge favours the building. I know all that, and it irks me; but still it will be better to swallow it."
"Who's the oldest man in the parish?" asked Mr. Quickenham; "the oldest with his senses still about him." The parson reflected for awhile, and then said that he thought Brattle, the miller, was as old a man as there was there, with the capability left to him of remembering and of stating what he remembered. "And what's his age,--about?" Fenwick said that the miller was between sixty and seventy, and had lived in Bullhampton all his life. "A church-going man?" asked the lawyer. To this the Vicar was obliged to reply that, to his very great regret, old Brattle never entered a church. "Then I'll step over and see him during morning service to-morrow," said the lawyer. The Vicar raised his eyebrows, but said nothing as to the propriety of Mr. Quickenham's personal attendance at a place of worship on Good Friday.
"Can anything be done, Richard?" said Mrs. Fenwick, appealing to her brother-in-law.
"Yes;--undoubtedly something can be done."
"Can there, indeed? I am so glad. What can be done?"
"You can make the best of it."
"That's just what I'm determined I won't do. It's mean-spirited, and so I tell Frank. I never would have hurt them as long as they treated us well; but now they are enemies, and as enemies I will regard them.
I should think myself disgraced if I were to sit down in the presence of the Marquis of Trowbridge; I should, indeed."
"You can easily manage that by standing up when you meet him," said Mr. Quickenham. Mr. Quickenham could be very funny at times, but those who knew him would remark that whenever he was funny he had something to hide. His wife as she heard his wit was quite sure that he had some plan in his head about the chapel.
At half-past six there came Mr. Chamberlaine and his nephew. The conversation about the chapel was still continued, and the canon from Salisbury was very eloquent, and learned also, upon the subject. His eloquence was brightest while the ladies were still in the room, but his learning was brought forth most manifestly after they had retired. He was very clear in his opinion that the Marquis had the law on his side in giving the land for the purpose in question, even if it could be shown that he was simply the lord of the manor, and not so possessed of the spot as to do what he liked in it for his own purposes. Mr. Chamberlaine expressed his opinion that, although he himself might think otherwise, it would be held to be for the benefit of the community that the chapel should be built, and in no court could an injunction against the building be obtained.
"But he couldn't give leave to have it put on another man's ground,"
said the Queen's Counsel.
"There is no question of another man's ground here," said the member of the Chapter.
"I'm not so sure of that," continued Mr. Quickenham. "It may not be the ground of any one man, but if it's the ground of any ten or twenty it's the same thing."
"But then there would be a lawsuit," said the Vicar.
"It might come to that," said the Queen's Counsel.
"I'm sure you wouldn't have a leg to stand upon," said the member of the Chapter.
"I don't see that at all," said Gilmore. "If the land is common to the parish, the Marquis of Trowbridge cannot give it to a part of the parishioners because he is Lord of the Manor."
"For such a purpose I should think he can," said Mr. Chamberlaine.
"And I'm quite sure he can't," said Mr. Quickenham. "All the same, it may be very difficult to prove that he hasn't the right; and in the meantime there stands the chapel, a fact accomplished. If the ground had been bought and the purchasers had wanted a title, I think it probable the Marquis would never have got his money."
"There can be no doubt that it is very ungentlemanlike," said Mr.
Chamberlaine.
"There I'm afraid I can't help you," said Mr. Quickenham. "Good law is not defined very clearly here in England; but good manners have never been defined at all."
"I don't want anyone to help me on such a matter as that," said Mr.
Chamberlaine, who did not altogether like Mr. Quickenham.
"I dare say not," said Mr. Quickenham; "and yet the question may be open to argument. A man may do what he likes with his own, and can hardly be called ungentlemanlike because he gives it away to a person you don't happen to like."
[Illustration: "I dare say not," said Mr. Quickenham.]
"I know what we all think about it in Salisbury," said Mr.
Chamberlaine.
"It's just possible that you may be a little hypercritical in Salisbury," said Quickenham.
There was nothing else discussed and nothing else thought of in the Vicarage. The first of June had been the day now fixed for the opening of the new chapel, and here they were already in April. Mr.
Fenwick was quite of opinion that if the services of Mr. Puddleham's congregation were once commenced in the building they must be continued there. As long as the thing was a thing not yet accomplished it might be practicable to stop it; but there could be no stopping it when the full tide of Methodist eloquence should have begun to pour itself from the new pulpit. It would then have been made the House of God,--even though not consecrated,--and as such it must remain. And now he was becoming sick of the grievance, and wished that it was over. As to going to law with the Marquis on a question of Common-right, it was a thing that he would not think of doing. The living had come to him from his college, and he had thought it right to let the Bursar of Saint John's know what was being done; but it was quite clear that the college could not interfere or spend their money on a matter which, though it was parochial, had no reference to their property in the parish. It was not for the college, as patron of the living, to inquire whether certain lands belonged to the Marquis of Trowbridge or to the parish at large, though the Vicar no doubt, as one of the inhabitants of the place, might raise the question at law if he chose to find the money and could find the ground on which to raise it. His old friend the Bursar wrote him back a joking letter, recommending him to put more fire into his sermons and thus to preach his enemy down.
"I have become so sick of this chapel," the Vicar said to his wife that night, "that I wish the subject might never be mentioned again in the house."
"You can't be more sick of it than I am," said his wife.
"What I mean is, that I'm sick of it as a subject of conversation.
There it is, and let us make the best of it, as Quickenham says."
"You can't expect anything like sympathy from Richard, you know."