“The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away—blessed be the name of the Lord.” Yes, blessed be the name of the Lord for that love that outlives the separation of death—that saddens and glorifies memory with its melancholy light, and illuminates far futurity with a lamp whose trembling ray is the thread that draws us toward heaven. Blessed in giving and in taking—blessed for the yearning remembrances, and for the agony of hope.
The little baby—the relic—the treasure was there. Poor little forlorn baby! And with this little mute companion to look at and sit by, his sorrow was stealing away into a wonderful love; and in this love a consolation and a living fountain of sympathy with his darling who was gone.
A trouble of a new kind had come. Squire Fairfield, who wanted money, raised a claim for rent for the vicarage and its little garden. The Vicar hated law and feared it, and would no doubt have submitted; but this was a battle in which the Bishop took command, and insisted on fighting it out. It was a tedious business.
It had lasted two years nearly, and was still alive and angry, when the Reverend William Maybell took a cold, which no one thought would signify. A brother clergyman from Willowford kindly undertook his duty for one Sunday, and on the next he had died.
The Wyvern doctor said the vis-vitæ was wanting—he had lived quite too low, and had not stamina, and so sank like a child.
But there was more. When on Sundays, as the sweet bell of Wyvern trembled in the air, the Vicar had walked alone up to the old gray porch, and saw the two trees near the ivied nook of the churchyard-wall, a home-sickness yearned at his heart, and when the hour came his spirit acquiesced in death.
Old Squire Fairfield knew that it was the Bishop who really, and, as I believe, rightly opposed him, for to this day the vicarage pays no rent; but the proud and violent man chose to make the Vicar feel his resentment. He beheld him with a gloomy and thunderous aspect, never a word more would he exchange with him; he turned his back upon him; he forbid him the footpath across the fields of Wyvern, that made the way to church shorter. He walked out of church grimly when his sermon began. He turned the Vicar’s cow off the common, and made him every way feel the weight of his displeasure.
Well, now the Vicar was dead. He had borne it all very gently and sadly, and it was over, a page in the past, no line erasable, no line addible for ever.
“So Parson’s dead and buried; serve him right,” said the Squire of Wyvern. “Thankless rascal. You go down and tell them I must have the house up on the 24th, and if they don’t go, you bundle ’em out, Thomas Rooke.”
“There’ll be the Vicar’s little child there; who’s to take it in, Squire?” asked Tom Rooke, after a hesitation.