When Mr. Fenwick entered the kitchen, Mrs. Brattle was sitting there alone. Her daughter was away, disposing of the remnants and utensils of the dinner-table. The old lady, with her spectacles on her nose, was sitting as usual with a stocking over her left arm. On the round table was a great open Bible, and, lying on the Bible, were sundry large worsted hose, which always seemed to Mr. Fenwick as though they must have undarned themselves as quickly as they were darned. Her Bible and her stockings furnished the whole of Mrs. Brattle’s occupation from her dinner to her bed. In the morning, she would still occupy herself in matters of cookery, would peel potatoes, and prepare apples for puddings, and would look into the pot in which the cabbage was being boiled. But her stockings and her Bible shared together the afternoons of her week-days. On the Sundays there would only be the Bible, and then she would pass many hours of the day asleep. On every other Sunday morning she still walked to church and back,—going there always alone. There was no one now to accompany her. Her husband never went,—never had gone,—to church, and her son now had broken away from his good practices. On alternate mornings Fanny went, and also on every Sunday afternoon. Wet or dry, storm or sunshine, she always went; and her father, who was an old Pagan, loved her for her zeal. Mrs. Brattle was a slight-made old woman, with hair almost white peering out modestly from under her clean cap, dressed always in a brown stuff gown that never came down below her ankle. Her features were still pretty, small, and débonnaire, and there was a sweetness in her eyes that no observer could overlook. She was a modest, pure, high-minded woman,—whom we will not call a lady, because of her position in life, and because she darned stockings in a kitchen. In all other respects she deserved the name.
“I heard your voice outside with the master,” she said, rising from her chair to answer the parson’s salutation, and putting down her stockings first, and then her spectacles upon the book, so that the Bible was completely hidden; “and I knew you would not go without saying a word to the old woman.”
“I believe I came mostly to see you to-day, Mrs. Brattle.”
“Did you then? It’s kind of you, I’m sure, Mr. Fenwick, this hot weather,—and you with so many folk to mind too. Will you take an apple, Mr. Fenwick? I don’t know that we’ve anything else to offer, but the quarantines are rare this year, they say;—though, no doubt, you have them better at the Vicarage?”
Fenwick took a large, red apple from the dresser, and began to munch, it, declaring that they had none such in their orchard. And then, when the apple was finished, he had to begin his story.
“Mrs. Brattle, I’m sorry that I have something to say that will vex you.”
“Eh, Mr. Fenwick! Bad news? ‘Deed and I think there’s but little good news left to us now,—little that comes from the tongues of men. It’s bad news that is always coming here. Mr. Fenwick,—what is it, sir?”
Then he repeated the question he had before put to the miller about Sam. Where was Sam last night?—She only shook her head. Did he sleep at home?—She shook her head again. Had he breakfasted at home?
“‘Deed no, sir. I haven’t set eyes on him since before yesterday.”
“But how does he live? His father does not give him money, I suppose?”
“There’s little enough to give him, Mr. Fenwick. When he is at the mill his father do pay him a some’at over and above his keep. It isn’t much, sir. Young men must have a some’at in their pockets at times.”
“He has too much in his pockets, I fear. I wish he had nothing, so that he needs must come home for his meals. He works at the mill, doesn’t he?”
“At times, sir; and there isn’t a lad in all Bullumpton,”—for so the name was ordinarily pronounced,—“who can do a turn of work to beat him.”
“Do he and his father agree pretty well?”
“At times, sir. Times again his father don’t say much to him. The master ain’t given to much talking in the mill, and Sam, when he’s there, works with a will. There’s times when his father softens down to him, and then to see ’em, you’d think they was all in all to each other. There’s a stroke of the master about Sam hisself, at times, Mr. Fenwick, and the old man’s eyes gladden to see it. There’s none so near his heart now as poor Sam.”
“If he were as honest a man as his father, I could forgive all the rest,” said Mr. Fenwick slowly, meaning to imply that he was not there now to complain of church observances neglected, or of small irregularities of life. The paganism of the old miller had often been the subject of converse between the parson and Mrs. Brattle, it being a matter on which she had many an unhappy thought. He, groping darkly among subjects which he hardly dared to touch in her presence lest he should seem to unteach that in private which he taught in public, had subtlely striven to make her believe that though she, through her faith, would be saved, he, the husband, might yet escape that doom of everlasting fire, which to her was so stern a reality that she thought of its fury with a shudder whenever she heard of the world’s wickedness. When Parson Fenwick had first made himself intimate at the mill Mrs. Brattle had thought that her husband’s habits of life would have been to him as wormwood and gall,—that he would be unable not to chide, and well she knew that her husband would bear no chiding. By degrees she had come to understand that this new parson was one who talked more of life with its sorrows, and vices, and chances of happiness, and possibilities of goodness, than he did of the requirements of his religion. For herself inwardly she had grieved at this, and, possibly, also for him; but, doubtless, there had come to her some comfort, which she did not care to analyse, from the manner in which “the master,” as she called him, Pagan as he was, had been treated by her clergyman. She wondered that it should be so, but yet it was a relief to her to know that God’s messenger should come to her, and yet say never a word of his message to that hard lord, whom she so feared and so loved, and who was, as she well knew, too stubborn to receive it. And Fenwick had spoken,—still spoke to her, so tenderly of her erring, fallen child, never calling her a castaway, talking of her as Carry, who might yet be worthy of happiness here and of all joy hereafter; that when she thought of him as............