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."