Then were let loose against the unfortunate clergyman the floodgates of a drunken woman's angry tongue. It was not only that the landlady of the Three Honest Men was very drunk, but also that she was very angry. Sam Brattle and his sister had been there, but they had been turned out of the house. There had manifestly been some great row, and Carry Brattle was spoken of with all the worst terms of reproach which one woman can heap upon the name of another. The mistress of the Three Honest Men was a married woman,—and, as far as that went, respectable; whereas poor Carry was not married, and certainly not respectable. Something of her past history had been known. She had been called names which she could not repudiate, and the truth of which even her brother on her behalf could not deny; and then she had been turned into the street. So much Mr. Fenwick learned from the drunken woman, and nothing more he could learn. When he asked after Carry's present address the woman jeered at him, and accused him of base purposes in coming after such a one. She stood with arms akimbo in the passage, and said she would raise the neighbourhood on him. She was drunk, and dirty, as foul a thing as the eye could look upon; every other word was an oath, and no phrase used by the lowest of men in their lowest moments was too hot or too bad for her woman's tongue; and yet there was the indignation of outraged virtue in her demeanour and in her language, because this stranger had come to her door asking after a girl who had been led astray. Our Vicar cared nothing for the neighbourhood, and, indeed, cared very little for the woman at all,—except in so far as she disgusted him; but he did care much at finding that he could obtain no clue to her whom he was seeking. The woman would not even tell him when the girl had left her house, or give him any assistance towards finding her. He had at first endeavoured to mollify the virago by offering to pay the amount of any expenses which might have been left unsettled; but even on this score he could obtain no consideration. She continued to revile him, and he was obliged to leave her,—which he did, at last, with a hurried step to avoid a quart pot which the woman had taken up to hurl at his head, upon some comparison which he most indiscreetly made between herself and poor Carry Brattle.
What should he do now? The only chance of finding the girl was, as he thought, to go to the police-office. He was still in the lane, making his way back to the street which would take him into the city, when he was accosted by a little child. "You be the parson," said the child. Mr. Fenwick owned that he was a parson. "Parson from Bull'umpton?" said the child, inquiringly. Mr. Fenwick acknowledged the fact. "Then you be to come with me." Whereupon Mr. Fenwick followed the child, and was led into a miserable little court in which population was squalid, thick, and juvenile. "She be here, at Mrs. Stiggs's," said the child. Then the Vicar understood that he had been watched, and that he was being taken to the place where she whom he was seeking had found shelter.
CHAPTER XL.
TROTTER'S BUILDINGS.
In the back room up-stairs of Mr. Stiggs's house in Trotter's Buildings the Vicar did find Carry Brattle, and he found also that since her coming thither on the preceding evening,—for only on the preceding evening had she been turned away from the Three Honest Men,—one of Mrs. Stiggs's children had been on the look-out in the lane.
"I thought that you would come to me, sir," said Carry Brattle.
"Of course I should come. Did I not promise that I would come? And where is your brother?"
But Sam had left her as soon as he had placed her in Mrs. Stiggs's house, and Carry could not say whither he had gone. He had brought her to Salisbury, and had remained with her two days at the Three Honest Men, during which time the remainder of their four pounds had been spent; and then there had been a row. Some visitors to the house recognised poor Carry, or knew something of her tale, and evil words were spoken. There had been a fight and Sam had thrashed some man,—or some half-dozen men, if all that Carry said was true. She had fled from the house in sad tears, and after a while her brother had joined her,—bloody, with his lip cut and a black eye. It seemed that he had had some previous knowledge of this woman who lived in Trotter's Buildings,—had known her or her husband,—and there he had found shelter for his sister, having explained that a clergyman would call for her and pay for her modest wants, and then take her away. She supposed that Sam had gone back to London; but he had been so bruised and mauled in the fight that he had determined that Mr. Fenwick should not see him. This was the story as Carry told it; and Mr. Fenwick did not for a moment doubt its truth.
"And now, Carry," said he, "what is it that you would do?"