The Vicar of Wrexhill

by Frances Milton Trollope

"Oh, certainly! And you can bring Henrietta back with you."

"True, dear,—she will certainly want the carriage: I will go, and send her and her bandboxes back in it—and then, perhaps, drive myself back in the cab. It is at the Vicarage, you know."

"Is it? I did not remember that. Then how are they gone this morning?—those undutiful children, I mean, who have chosen to set off this morning without even leaving a message for us. I imagined that Charles had packed them both into the cab, as he has often done his sisters."

"Do not waste a thought on them, my beloved Clara! It is evident that they have neither of them ever felt the slightest affection for you; and would it not be worse than folly for you, beloved and adored as you are, to let any thought of them come to blight our happiness?"

After this and many more tender and affectionate passages had passed between them, Mr. Cartwright set off for the Vicarage in his own coach, as he told himself more than once as he drove along; and having informed his son and daughter, not greatly to the surprise of either, that Mowbray Park was to be their future home, he left them to prepare for their removal, telling Henrietta that he would send his carriage back from Mr. Corbold's, where it should set him down, and that she might fill it, if she chose, with her own luggage, as he should drive Jacob home in his cab.

At Mr. Corbold's the conversation was rather religious, and moreover extremely satisfactory to both parties. One or two of his most prayerful parishioners among the tradespeople were next called upon, and permitted to offer their congratulations and thanksgivings, and then told to send their bills to the Park. After this, the reverend bridegroom walked down the village street to the common, returning the humble bowings and curtsyings that crossed his path with a benignant sweetness of countenance that spoke much of the placid contentment that dwelt within.

It was not, however, solely to enjoy this pleasing interchange of heavenly-minded civility that he directed his steps along this well-frequented path—though that was something,—but for the purpose also of transacting a little business with Freeman, the prosperous landlord of the Mowbray Arms.

This good man and his family, it may be observed, had been great favourites with the family of Mr. Wallace, the late vicar, but stood not so high by many degrees in the estimation of the present. They were honest, industrious, regular church-going people, who had never, during the twenty years they had kept the village inn, been accused or even suspected of having neglected a Sabbath, or of having ever permitted any indecorum either on that or any other day, to be practised under their roof. But they had steadily refused to attend Mr. Cartwright's Tuesday evening's expounding, and his Thursday evening's lecture; the good woman, who was no bad scholar, alleging as the reason for this, that they knew of no such religious service being enjoined by the church of which they were members, and that not considering themselves in any way called upon to amend the ordinances of the religion in which they were born and bred, they thought it more according to their condition to remain at home and endeavour to do their duty in that state of life to which it had pleased God to call them.

This explanation having been very clearly and distinctly given to the vicar in the presence of several witnesses, before whom he had intended to make a rather marked display of pastoral piety and eloquence, though uttered with very becoming modesty and respect, had produced an impression against the pains-taking Dorothy and all her household never to be forgotten or forgiven.

Mr. Cartwright had even taken the trouble of waiting upon the magistrates of the neighbourhood, requesting them to refuse to continue Freeman's licence, assuring them that he was a man whose character was likely to produce a very demoralising influence on his parish. But as these gentlemen had happened to know the good man for many years, they begged to consider of it; and the Vicar of Wrexhill was thus left to discover other ways and means by which to dislodge his obnoxious parishioner.