The Vicar of Wrexhill

by Frances Milton Trollope

"But what was the business, the painful business, my poor friend, upon which you wished to consult me, before that vision of light had drawn all our attention upon herself? What was it, my dear Mrs. Mowbray, you wished to say to me?"

"I am hardly justified, I fear, Mr. Cartwright, thus early in our acquaintance, in taking up your valuable time in listening to my sorrows and my wrongs; but in truth I have both to bear; and I have at this moment no friend near me to whom I can apply for advice how to proceed with business that puzzles almost as much as it distresses me. May I, then, my dear sir, intrude on your kindness for half an hour, while I state to you the singular predicament in which I am placed?"

"Were it not, as most assuredly it is—were it not, dearest Mrs. Mowbray, a true and deep-felt pleasure to me to believe that I might possibly be useful to you, it would be my especial and bounden duty to strive to be so. For what are the ministers of the Most High placed amidst the people? wherefore are their voices raised, so that all should hear them? Is it not, my friend, because their lives, their souls, their bodies, are devoted to the service of those committed by Providence to their care? And, trust me, the minister who would shrink from this is unworthy—utterly unworthy the post to which he has been called. Speak, then, dearest Mrs. Mowbray, as to one bound alike by duty and the most fervent good-will to aid and assist you to the utmost extent of his power."

The great natural gift of Mr. Cartwright was the power of making his voice, his eye, and the flexible muscles of his handsome mouth, echo, and, as it were reverberate and reiterate every word he spoke, giving to his language a power beyond its own. What he now said was uttered rapidly, but with an apparent depth and intensity of feeling that brought tears of mingled gratitude and admiration to the eyes of Mrs. Mowbray. After a moment given to this not unpleasing emotion, she said,

"It was from you, Mr. Cartwright, if I remember rightly, that I first heard the enactments of my husband's will. When I give you my word, as I now most solemnly do, that I had never during his life the slightest knowledge of what that will was to be, I think you will believe me."

"Believe you!" exclaimed Mr. Cartwright. "Is there on earth a being sufficiently depraved to doubt an assertion so vouched by you?"

"Oh, Mr. Cartwright! if all men had your generous, and, I will say, just confidence in me, I should not now be in the position I am! But Sir Gilbert Harrington, the person most unhappily chosen by Mr. Mowbray as joint executor with myself, is persuaded that this generous will was made in my favour solely in consequence of my artful influence over him; and so deeply does he resent this imputed crime, that instead of standing forward, as he ought to do, as the protector and agent of his friend's widow, he loads the memory of that friend with insult, and oppresses me with scorn and revilings, the more bitter because conveyed to me by my own child."

Mrs. Mowbray wept.—Mr. Cartwright hid his face with his hands, and for some moments seemed fearful of betraying all he felt. At length he fixed his eyes upon her—eyes moistened by a tear, and in a low, deep voice that seemed to indicate an inward struggle, he uttered, "Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord!"

He closed his eyes, and sat for a moment silent,—then added, "Perhaps of all the trials to which we are exposed in this world of temptation, the obeying this mandate is the most difficult! But, like all uttered by its Divine Author, it is blessed alike by its authority and its use. Without it!—my friend! without it, would not my hand be grappling the throat of your malignant enemy?—Without it, should I not even now be seeking to violate the laws of God and man, to bring the wretch who can thus stab an angel woman's breast to the dust before her? But, thanks to the faith that is in me, I know that his suspicious heart and cruel soul shall meet a vengeance as much greater than any I could inflict, as the hand that wields it is more powerful than mine! I humbly thank Heaven for this, and remembering it, turn with chastened spirit from the forbidden task of punishing him, to the far more Christian one of offering aid to the gentle being he would crush.—Was it indeed from the lips of your child, my poor friend, that these base aspersions reached you?"

"It was indeed, Mr. Cartwright; and it was this which made them cut so deeply. Poor Helen knew not what she was about when she secretly left her mother's roof to visit this man, in the hope of restoring the families to their former habits of intimacy!"