Mr. Fenwick had intended to have come home round by Market Lavington, after having deposited Miss Lowther at the Westbury Station, with the view of making some inquiry respecting the gentleman with the hurt shoulder; but he had found the distance to be too great, and had abandoned the idea. After that there was not a day to spare till the middle of the next week; so that it was nearly a fortnight after the little scene at the corner of the Vicarage garden wall before he called upon the Lavington constable and the Lavington doctor. From the latter he could learn nothing. No such patient had been to him. But the constable, though he had not seen the two men, had heard of them. One was a man who in former days had frequented Lavington, Burrows by name, generally known as Jack the Grinder, who had been in every prison in Wiltshire and Somersetshire, but who had not,—so said the constable,—honoured Lavington for the last two years, till this his last appearance. He had, however, been seen there in company with another man, and had evidently been in a condition very unfit for work. He had slept one night at a low public-house, and had then moved on. The man had complained of a fall from the cart, and had declared that he was black and blue all over; but it seemed to be clear that he had no broken bones. Mr. Fenwick therefore was all but convinced that Jack the Grinder was the gentleman with whom he had had the encounter, and that the grinder’s back had withstood that swinging blow from the life-preserver. Of the Grinder’s companions nothing could be learned. The two men had taken the Devizes road out of Lavington, and beyond that nothing was known of them. When the parson mentioned Sam Brattle’s name in a whisper, the Lavington constable shook his head. He knew all about old Jacob Brattle. A very respectable party was old Mr. Brattle in the constable’s opinion. Nevertheless the constable shook his head when Sam Brattle’s name was mentioned. Having learned so much, the parson rode home.
Two days after this, on a Friday, Fenwick was sitting after breakfast in his study, at work on his sermon for next Sunday, when he was told that old Mrs. Brattle was waiting to see him. He immediately got up, and found his own wife and the miller’s seated in the hall. It was not often that Mrs. Brattle made her way to the Vicarage, but when she did so she was treated with great consideration. It was still August, and the weather was very hot, and she had walked up across the water mead, and was tired. A glass of wine and a biscuit were pressed upon her, and she was encouraged to sit and say a few indifferent words, before she was taken into the study and told to commence the story which had brought her so far. And there was a most inviting topic for conversation. The mill and the mill premises were to be put in order by the landlord. Mrs. Brattle affected to be rather dismayed than otherwise by the coming operations. The mill would have lasted their time, she thought, “and as for them as were to come after them,—well! she didn’t know. As things was now, perhaps, it might be that after all Sam would have the mill.” But the trouble occasioned by the workmen would be infinite. How were they to live in the mean time, and where were they to go? It soon appeared, however, that all this had been already arranged. Milling must of course be stopped for a month or six weeks. “Indeed, sir, feyther says that there won’t be no more grinding much before winter.” But the mill was to be repaired first, and then, when it became absolutely necessary to dismantle the house, they were to endeavour to make shift, and live in the big room of the mill itself, till their furniture should be put back again. Mrs. Fenwick, with ready good nature, offered to accommodate Mrs. Brattle and Fanny at the Vicarage; but the old woman declined with many protestations of gratitude. She had never left her old man yet, and would not do so now. The weather would be mild for awhile, and she thought that they could get through. By this time the glass of wine had been sipped to the bottom, and the parson, mindful of his sermon, had led the visitor into his study. She had come to tell that Sam at last had returned home.
“Why didn’t you bring him up with you, Mrs. Brattle?” Here was a question to ask of an old lady, whose dominion over her son was absolutely none! Sam had become so frightfully independent that he hardly regarded the word of his father, who was a man pre-eminently capable of maintaining authority, and would no more do a thing because his mother told him than because the wind whistled.
“I axed him to come up, not just with me, but of hisself, Mr. Fenwick; but he said as how you would know where to find him if you wanted him.”
“That’s just what I don’t know. However, if he’s there now I’ll go to him. It would have been better far that he should have come to me.”
“I told ’un so, Mr. Fenwick, I did, indeed.”
“It does not signify. I will go to him; only it cannot be to-day, as I have promised to take my wife over to Charlicoats. But I’ll come down immediately after breakfast to-morrow. You think he’ll be still there?”
“I be sure he will, Mr. Fenwick. He and feyther have taken on again, till it’s beautiful to see. There was none of ’em feyther ever loved like he,—only one.” Thereupon the poor woman burst out into tears, and covered her face with her handkerchief. “He never makes half so much account of my Fan, that never had a fault belonging to her.”
“If Sam will stick to that it will be well for him.”
“He’s taken up extraordinary with the repairs, Mr. Fenwick. He’s in and about and over the place, looking to everything; and feyther says he knows so much about it, he b’lieves the boy could do it all out o’ his own head. There’s nothing feyther ever liked so much as folks to be strong and clever.”
“Perhaps th............