Farmer Brattle, who was a stout man about thirty-eight years of age but looking as though he were nearly ten years older, came up to the Vicar, touching his hat, and then putting his hand out in greeting.
“This be a pleasure something like, Muster Fenwick, to see thee here at Startup. This be my wife. Molly, thou has never seen Muster Fenwick from Bull’umpton. This be our Vicar, as mother and Fanny says is the pick of all the parsons in Wiltshire.”
Then Mr. Fenwick got down, and walked into the spacious kitchen, where he was cordially welcomed by the stout mistress of Startup Farm.
He was very anxious to begin his story to the brother alone. Indeed, as to that, his mind was quite made up; but Mrs. Brattle, who within the doors of that house held a position at any rate equal to that of her husband, did not seem disposed to give him the opportunity. She understood well enough that Mr. Fenwick had not come over from Bullhampton to shake hands with her husband, and to say a few civil words. He must have business, and that business must be about the Brattle family. Old Brattle was supposed to be in money difficulties, and was not this an embassy in search of money? Now Mrs. George Brattle, who had been born a Huggins, was very desirous that none of the Huggins money should be sent into the parish of Bullhampton. When, therefore, Mr. Fenwick asked the farmer to step out with him for a moment, Mrs. George Brattle looked very grave, and took her husband apart and whispered a word of caution into his ear.
“It’s about the mill, George; and don’t you do nothing till you’ve spoke to me.”
Then there came a solid look, almost of grief, upon George’s face. There had been a word or two before this between him and the wife of his bosom as to the affairs of the mill.
“I’ve just been seeing somebody at Salisbury,” began the Vicar, abruptly, as soon as they had crossed from the yard behind the house into the enclosure around the ricks.
“Some one at Salisbury, Muster Fenwick? Is it any one as I knows?”
“One that you did know well, Mr. Brattle. I’ve seen your sister Carry.” Again there came upon the farmer’s face that heavy look, which was almost a look of grief; but he did not at once utter a word. “Poor young thing!” continued the Vicar. “Poor, dear, unfortunate girl!”
“She brought it on herself, and on all of us,” said the farmer.
“Yes, indeed, my friend. The light, unguarded folly of a moment has ruined her, and brought dreadful sorrow upon you all. But something should be done for her;—eh?”
Still the brother said nothing.
“You will help, I’m sure, to rescue her from the infamy into which she must fall if none help her?”
“If there’s money wanted to get her into any of them places—,” begun the farmer.
“It isn’t that;—it isn’t that, at any rate, as yet.”
“What be it, then?”
“The personal countenance and friendship of some friend that loves her. You love your sister, Mr. Brattle?”
“I don’t know as I does, Muster Fenwick.”
“You used to, and you must still pity her.”
“She’s been and well-nigh broke the hearts of all on us. There wasn’t one of us as wasn’t respectable, till she come up;—and now there’s Sam. But a boy as is bad ain’t never so bad as a girl.”
It must be understood that in the expression of this opinion Mr. Brattle was alluding, not to the personal wickedness of the wicked of the two sexes, but to the effect of their wickedness on those belonging to them.
“And therefore more should be done to help a girl.”
“I’ll stand the money, Muster Fenwick,—if it ain’t much.”
“What is wanted is a home in your own house.”
“Here—at Startup?”
“Yes; here, at Startup. Your father will not take her.”
“Neither won’t I. But it ain’t me in such a matter as this. You ask my missus, and see what she’ll say. Besides, Muster Fenwick, it’s clean out of all reason.”
“Out of all reason to help a sister?”
“So it be. Sister, indeed! Why did she go and make—. I won’t say what she’s made of herself. Ain’t she brought trouble and sorrow enough upon us? Have her here! Why, I’m that angry with her, I shouldn’t be keeping my hands off her. Why didn’t she keep herself to herself, and not disgrace the whole family?”
Nevertheless, in spite of these strong expressions of opinion, Mr. Fenwick, by the dint of the bitter words which he spoke in reference to the brother’s duty as a Christian, did get leave from the farmer to make the proposition to Mrs. George Brattle,—such permission as would have bound the brother to accept Carry, providing that Mrs. George would also consent to accept her. But even this permission was accompanied by an assurance that it would not have been given had he not felt perfectly convinced that his wife would not listen for a moment to the scheme. He spoke of his wife almost with awe, when Mr. Fenwick left him to make this second attack. “She has never had nothing to say to none sich as that,” said the farmer, shaking his head, as he alluded both to his wife and to his sister; “and I ain’t sure as she’ll be first-rate civil to any one as mentions sich in her hearing.”
But Mr. Fenwick persevered, in spite even of this caution. When the Vicar re-entered the house, Mrs. George Brattle had retired to her parlour, and the kitchen was in the hands of the maid-servant. He followed the lady, however, and found that she had been at the trouble, since he had seen her last, of putting on a clean cap on his behalf. He began at once, jumping again into the middle of things by a reference to her husband.
“Mrs. Brattle,” he said, “your husband and I have been talking about his poor sister Carry.”
“The least said the soonest mended about that one, I’m afeared,” said the dame.
“Indeed, I agree with you. Were she once placed in safe and kind hands, the less then said the better. She has left the life she was leading—”
“They never leaves it,” said the dame.
“It is so seldom that an opportunity is given them. Poor Carry is at the present moment most anxious to be placed somewhere out of danger.”
“Mr. Fenwick, if you ask me, I’d rather not talk about her;—I would indeed. She’s been and brought a slur upon us all, the vile thing! If you ask me, Mr. Fenwick, there ain’t nothing too bad for her.”
Fenwick, who, on the other hand, thought that there could be hardly anything too good for his poor penitent, was beginning to be angry with the woman. Of course, he made in his own mind those comparisons which are common to us all on such occasions. What was the great virtue of this fat, well-fed, selfish, ignorant woman before him, that she should turn up her nose at a sister who had been unfortunate? Was it not an abominable case of the Pharisee thanking the Lord that he was not such a one as the Publican;—whereas the Publican was in a fair way to heaven?
“Surely you would have her saved, if it be possible to save her?” said the Vicar.
“I don’t know about saving. If such as them is to be made all’s one as others as have always been decent, I’m sure I don’t know who it is as isn’t to be saved.”
“Have you never read of Mary Magdalen, Mrs. Brattle?”
“Yes, I have, Mr. Fenwick. Perhaps she hadn’t got no father, nor brothers, and sisters, and sisters-in-law, as would be pretty well broken-hearted when her vileness would be cast up again’ ’em. Perhaps she hadn’t got no decent house over her head afore she begun. I don’t know how that was.”
“Our Saviour’s tender mercy, then, would not have been wide enough for such sin as that.” This the Vicar said with intended irony; but irony was thrown away on Mrs. George Brattle.
“Them days and ours isn’t the same, Mr. Fenwick, and you can’t make ’em the same. And Our Saviour isn’t here now to say who is to be a Mary Magdalen and who isn’t. As for Carry Brattle, she has made her bed and she must lie upon it. We shan’t interfere.”
Fenwick was determined, however, that he would make his proposition. It was almost certain now that he could do no good to Carry by making it; but he felt that it would be a pleasure to him to make this self-righteous woman know what he conceived to be her duty in the matter. “My idea was this—that you should take her in here, and endeavour to preserve her from future evil courses.”
“Take her in here?” shrieked the woman.
“Yes; here. Who is nearer to her than a brother?”
“Not if I know it, Mr. Fenwick; and if that is what you have been saying to Brattle, I must tell you that you’ve come on a very bad errand. People, Mr. Fenwick, knows how to manage things such as that for themselves in their own houses. Strangers don’t usually talk about such things, Mr. Fenwick. Perhaps, Mr. Fenwick, you didn’t know as how we have got girls of our own coming up. Have her in here—at Startup? I think I see her here!”
“But, Mrs. Brattle—”
“Don’t Mrs. Brattle me, Mr. Fenwick, for I won’t be so treated. And I must tell you that I don’t think it over decent of you,—a clergyman, and a young man, too, in a way,—to come talking of such a one in a house like this.”
“Would you have her starve, or die in a ditch?”
“There ain’t no question of starving. Such as her don’t starve. As long as it lasts, they’ve the best of eating and drinking,—only too much of it. There’s prisons; let ’em go there if they means repentance. But they never does,—never, till there ain’t nobody to notice ’em any longer; and by that time they’re mostly thieves and pickpockets.”
“And you would do nothing to save your own husband’s sister from such a fate?”
“What business had she to be sister to any honest man? Think of what she’s been and done to my children, who wouldn’t else have had nobody to be ashamed of. There never wasn’t one of the Hugginses who didn’t behave herself;—that is of the women,” added Mrs. George, remembering the misdeeds of a certain drunken uncle of her own, who had come to great trouble in a matter of horseflesh. “And now, Mr. Fenwick, let me beg that there mayn’t be another word about her. I don’t know nothing of such women, nor what is their ways, and I don’t want. I never didn’t speak a word to such a one in my life, and I certainly won’t begin under my own roof. People knows well enough what’s good for them to do and what isn’t without being dictated to by a clergyman. You’ll excuse me, Mr. Fenwick; but I’ll just make bold to say as much as that. Good morning, Mr. Fenwick.”
In the yard, standing close by the gig, he met the farmer again.
“You didn’t find she’d be of your way of thinking, Muster Fenwick?”
“Not exactly, Mr. Brattle.”
“I know’d she wouldn’t. The truth is, Muster Fenwick, that young women as goes astray after that fashion is just like any sick animal, as all the animals as ain’t comes and sets upon immediately. It’s just as well, too. They knows it beforehand, and it keeps ’em straight.”
“It didn’t keep poor Carry straight.”
“And, by the same token, she must suffer, and so must we all. But, Muster Fenwick, as far as ten or fifteen pounds goes, if it can be of use—”
But the Vicar, in his indignation, repudiated the offer of money, and drove himself back to Salisbury with his heart full of sorrow at the hardness of the world. What this woman had been saying to him was only what the world had said to her,—the world that knows so much better how to treat an erring sinner than did Our Saviour when on earth.
He went with his sad news to Mrs. Stiggs’s house, and then made terms for Carry’s board and lodging, at any rate, for a fortnight. And he said much to the girl as to the disposition of her time. He would send her books, and she was to be diligent in needle-work on behalf of the Stiggs family. And then he begged her to go to the daily service in the cathedral,—not so much because he thought that the public worship was necessary for her, as that thus she would be provided with a salutary employment for a portion of her day. Carry, as she bade him farewell, said very little. Yes; she would stay with Mrs. Stiggs. That was all that she did say.