"It is all very well to preach, Frank. Bad as I am I could preach to you if there were a matter to preach about. I don't know that there is anything much easier than preaching. But as for practising, you can't do it if you have not got the strength. A man can't walk if you take away his legs. If you break a bird's wing he can't fly, let the bird be ever so full of pluck. All that there was in me she has taken out of me. I could fight him, and would willingly, if I thought there was a chance of his meeting me."
"He would not be such a fool."
"But I could not stand up and look at her."
"She has left Bullhampton, you know."
"It does not matter, Frank. There is the place that I was getting ready for her. And if I were there, you and your wife would always be thinking about it. And every fellow about the estate knows the whole story. It seems to me to be almost inconceivable that a woman should have done such a thing."
"She has not meant to act badly, Harry."
"To tell the truth, when I look back at it all, I blame myself more than her. A man should never be ass enough to ask any woman a second time. But I had got it into my head that it was a disgraceful thing to ask and not to have. It is that which kills me now. I do not think that I will ever again attempt anything, because failure is so hard to me to bear. At any rate, I won't go back to the Privets." This he added after a pause, during which the Vicar had been thinking what new arguments he could bring up to urge his friend's return.
Fenwick learned that Gilmore had sent a cheque to his bailiff by the post of the preceding night. He acknowledged that in sending the cheque he had said no more than to bid the man pay what wages were due. He had not as yet made up his mind as to any further steps. As they walked round the enclosure of St. James's Park together, and as the warmth of their old friendship produced freedom of intercourse, Gilmore acknowledged a dozen wild schemes that had passed through his brain. That to which he was most wedded was a plan for meeting Walter Marrable and cudgelling him pretty well to death. Fenwick pointed out three or four objections to this. In the first place, Marrable had committed no offence whatever against Gilmore. And then, in all probability, Marrable might be as good at cudgelling as the Squire himself. And thirdly, when the cudgelling was over, the man who began the row would certainly be put into prison, and in atonement for that would receive no public sympathy. "You can't throw yourself on the public pity as a woman might," said the Vicar.
"D—— the public pity," said the Squire, who was not often driven to make his language forcible after that fashion.
Another scheme was that he would publish the whole transaction. And here again his friend was obliged to remind him, that a man in his position should be reticent rather than outspoken. "You have already declared," said the Vicar, "that you can't endure failure, and yet you want to make your failure known to all the world." His third proposition was more absurd still. He would write such a letter to Mary Lowther as would cover her head with red hot coals. He would tell her that she had made the world utterly unbearable to him, and that she might have the Privets for herself and go and live there. "I do not doubt but that such a letter would annoy her," said the Vicar.