POINTS ONCE MORE TO THE MORAL OF THE POET'S SAYING,--"SWEET ARE THE USES
OF ADVERSITY."
When Wanless crept out a minute or two later, still feeling heart-sore
at the Vicar's treatment, he caught sight of that poor wretch through
the adjoining door of the private bar, which opened to let some one out
as he passed by. Codling was standing, and with trembling hand stirring
a large tumbler of hot brandy and water.
Wanless stopped involuntarily, and then turning back to the bar he had
just left, asked for a glass of ale. It would give him a pretext for
waiting to see what became of the poor parson. In a very short time he
heard Codling's voice beyond the partition ordering another double
glass, and the sound shocked him so much that he put down his glass of
ale half consumed, and, acting on the impulse of the moment, burst in
upon the Vicar through the swing door of the compartment, crying, as he
did so--
"For God's sake, don't, Mr. Codling. Leave that, and come away with me.
It's a shame to see a minister of the Gospel drowning his grief in
liquor. Come away at once." And he again laid hold of Codling's arm.
The drink he had already swallowed had raised the Vicar's courage, and
he turned on Wanless with a look of scornful bitterness that boded a
storm. But Wanless was also wrought to a high pitch, and there was a
commanding sternness in his eye that served to cow the drunkard, whose
wrath seemed to die within him. He looked hesitatingly around, and at
sight of some bystanders grinning, a flush of shame spread over his
face.
"For shame, I say," Wanless continued in a low tone, paying as little
heed to the angry looks as he had done to the former taunts. "Will you
stand here besotting yourself, and allow your child to be flung into a
pauper's grave?"
"What business is that of yours?" the Vicar replied sullenly, but in a
low voice. "Mind your own paupers, and let me and my affairs alone."
"That I will not--cannot do--Mr. Codling," Wanless answered. "Consider,
sir, she was your child. You fondled her on your knee but the other day,
and were proud to hear her lisp the name of father. Come away, sir, for
God's sake, the body may be gone if we waste more time here;" and giving
the Vicar no further chance to remonstrate, Thomas seized his arm, and
dragged him out of the place away to the deadhouse.
They were indeed barely in time. Some men were about to nail up the
remains of Adelaide in the rough shell where it lay, whether preparatory
to burial, or in order to convey it to some hospital dissecting room, I
would not venture to say. At any rate, a small bribe made them desist,
and one of them even directed the Vicar to find an undertaker if he
wished to give his child Christian burial in other than a pauper's
trench.
The sight of his daughter's body, when the lid of the case was removed,
and the Vicar saw it again, moved him more than it had done at first.
The men withdrew, and Thomas and he were left alone with it. Adelaide's
features had settled down to the calm stillness of death, and wore a
faint semblance of a smile. Sweet and pure she looked, in spite of the
soiled garments and tangled hair; but the figure indicated only too
clearly what had sent her to a watery grave. She had been about to
become a mother.
As he looked old memories rose in the Vicar's imagination, and tears
gathered in his dull, sodden eyes. He stooped tremulously and kissed the
cold brow. "Poor Addy, poor Addy," he murmured, "to think that you
should have come to this," and he sobbed outright--weeping like a child.
Like a child too, when the passion was over, he surrendered himself to
the guidance of Wanless, without further resistance, who hurried him off
to the undertaker. He would like, he said, to have _her_ buried that
evening; but that the people said they could not manage; so it was at
last arranged to take her to Highgate Cemetery next morning. Thomas had
then to find a place where the Vicar could pass the night, for the old
man had intended to go home that evening, and ultimately he deposited
him at the Tavistock Hotel.
"Will you have something to drink before you go?" said the Vicar, when
he had arranged for his bedroom, evidently wanting a pretext for
drinking himself, but Thomas said "No," and went away to eat a frugal
supper in a humble coffee-shop in Drury Lane.
They buried Adelaide next morning, Thomas again, though with difficulty,
obtaining leave of absence. As soon as he saw Codling, Thomas knew that
he had been drinking hard the previous night. The poor man's hands shook
as with the palsy, his step was unsteady, his eye dull and bloodshot. A
low fever seemed to consume him; yet he obviously felt keenly that
morning the errand he and the labourer were upon, and though he hardly
spoke a word all the way to the grave, he no longer looked at his
companion with sullen anger. Rather he seemed to cling to Thomas as a
woman clings to her natural protector. And when the earth fell on the
coffin lid as the last words of the solemn burial service of the Church
of England were uttered--solemn even when gabbled over by the unhappy
creatures who have to repeat it every day, and all day long--he broke
down again, sobbing and weeping like a child. They waited till the last
sod had been placed over the lost Adelaide, and ere he went away the
Vicar knelt on the damp earth, praying and weeping bitterly. Then he
rose and stretched out his hand to Wanless, whose cheeks were also wet
with tears, as if seeking one to lead him. Thomas grasped it, and
pressed it, with "God bless and have mercy on you, sir, and on her as
lies here."
"Ah! Thomas"--it was the first time the Vicar had called him kindly as
of old by his Christian name--"ah! Thomas, my friend, and may God bless
you for what you have done this day. But for you I would have deserted
my child in death, as I did in life. God forgive me for it."
These words seemed to open his heart, so that he talked to Wanless, all
the way back to town, in an eager way, like one who had a confession to
make, and could taste no peace till it was done. A sad history enough it
was of domestic bitterness, of an enfeebled will, knowing what was
right, and doing it not. His impulse was to seek his daughter, just as
Thomas's had been, but Mrs. Codling would not hear of it. Her pride did
not even allow her to admit that the girl had gone away after her
betrayer. She talked of a visit to a relative at a distance, who was her
own step-sister, and of Adelaide herself being ill in Kent, poor
thing--not in any danger, but not strong enough to return yet--with many
lies of a like kind, which the Vicar was weak enough to endorse by his
silence.
Wanless also spoke of his quest and his sorrow, and the Vicar listened
with sympathy; but when the peasant ventured to urge that it was his
duty to denounce, and expose the ravenous wolf, who had destroyed the
peace of so many families, Codling shook his head and answered--"No, no,
Thomas, I cannot; I dare not. It is too late."
"Why too late, sir? Are you not a minister of Christ, and bound by the
office you hold to denounce the sinner and his sin?"
The Vicar shuddered, and sat still for more than a minute without
answering. Then he bent forward and took Thomas's hand--they sat on
opposite sides of the cab.
"Thomas," he said sadly, "you remember that day of the row in my garden,
between you and--and that fiend in human shape. You called me a poor
tippling creature that day, and it was true."
"No, no, and I was very sorry," Wanless began--
"Yes, but it was," the Vicar interrupted, "I hated you for exposing me
thus; but I felt and knew it was true. I am not a drunkard, Thomas, as
the world measures drunkenness, but I tipple. I keep myself alive by
stimulants, and bury thus my hopes and aspirations of other days. And I
feel that I can do nothing. Who would listen to me or heed my words? Men
would say I spoke from spite, and perhaps some even might aver that I
was myself the cause of my daughter's ruin. Which also," he added, in a
reflective kind of way, "which also might be true. No, no, Thomas, I
must bear my burden. My--oh, my daughter, my child, my pet, when I think
of you and the past, I have no hope--I can do nothing but tipple."
"Heaven forbid!" exclaimed Wanless; but the Vicar relapsed into silence.
All the rest of the way to Paddington, to which he had ordered himself
to be driven, he lay back in the corner of the cab, silent, with his
eyes closed; but Thomas could see him ever and anon furtively wipe away
the tears from his cheeks.
At Paddington, the two men, now friends again, after so many years of
divergent ways and worldly fortunes, bade each other a sad farewell.
Thomas went back to his coals, and the Vicar went home to his wife and
his gin and water. Yet he was not quite as he had been before. More
than he himself thought the death of his once loved child stirred the
human soul in him, and he was not able again to fall back into
sottishness. Though he bore his domestic woes silently, and still drank
to dull the gnawing at his heart, he became more tender towards the poor
among his flock, more attentive to their wants, more accessible, and
softer in manner towards all men. He even preached with sad pathos that
woke responsive sympathy in the hearts of his flock, though he did not
denounce the ravisher.
But the best proof of all that he had changed much for the better, is
found in his conduct to Mrs. Wanless. The memory of the help and
sympathy he had received from the old, despised labourer in London, lay
warm in his heart, and found frequent expression in visits to the
labourer's wife while she was alone, or to both husband and wife, when
Wanless came back. The very day after he returned from London, he called
and told Mrs. Wanless that he had seen her husband, and that he was
well. He made no allusion to other matters, but he patted the head of
Sally's child, and sighed as he went away. Perhaps the kindly warmth
with which these simple people always greeted him, helped to soothe his
later years. In giving he received more than he gave.
In the village the end of his daughter was never rightly known. Wiseman
naturally never breathed a word. Rarely was his face seen in Ashbrook,
and never in the church while the old Vicar lived. Mrs. Codling gave out
that the poor child had been suddenly cut off by fever, and went the
length of donning mourning, bemoaning the loss to her friends, braving
the scorn of all true hearts, and vainly imagining she was believed, But
the people guessed that Adelaide had not died so, and they suspected
that Wiseman was at the bottom of her disappearance, though the story of
her having committed suicide never got general credence in the
village--was only a faint rumour there. So all pitied the poor Vicar,
despised his uppish, false-hearted wife, and most hated the young
squire. Riches and high station cannot shut men out from the moral
results of their deeds, any more than they can ward off death. Nay, Mrs.
Codling herself, high as she held her head, well as she acted the part
of a sorrowing mother who had been heart-broken by the unexpected news
of her dear daughter's sudden death, so prostrated as to be unable to go
and see her laid in her grave--even Mrs. Codling felt in some sense that
this was true. She grew harder in her ways, and more and more haggard in
her looks, like one even at war with herself, and ever losing in the
fight--till within three years God took her, and she knew her folly.