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.