The Perpetual Curate

"There's a deal of people in church this morning," said the clerk; and then he came closer still, and spoke in a kind of whisper. "About that little matter as we was speaking of, Mr Wentworth – that's all straight, sir, and there aint no occasion to be vexed. She came back this morning," said Elsworthy, under his breath.

"Who came back this morning?" asked the Curate, with a little surprise. His thoughts had been so much with Lucy that no one else occurred to him at the moment; and even while he asked the question, his busy fancy began to wonder where she could have been, and what motive could have taken her away?

"I couldn't mean nobody but Rosa, as I talked to you about last night," said Elsworthy. "She's come back, sir, as you wished; and I have heard as she was in Carlingford last night just afore you come, Mr Wentworth, when I thought as she was far enough off; which you'll allow, sir, whoever it was she come to see, it wasn't the right thing, nor what her aunt and me had reason to expect."

The Curate of St Roque's said "Pshaw!" carelessly to himself. He was not at all interested in Rosa Elsworthy. Instead of making any answer, he drew on the scarlet band of his hood, and marched away gravely into the reading-desk, leaving the vestry-door open behind him for the clerk to follow. The little dangers that harassed his personal footsteps had not yet awakened so much as an anxiety in his mind. Things much more serious preoccupied his thoughts. He opened his prayer-book with a consciousness of the good of it which comes to men only now and then. At Oxford, in his day, Mr Wentworth had entertained his doubts like others, and like most people was aware that there were a great many things in heaven and earth totally unexplainable by any philosophy. But he had always been more of a man than a thinker, even before he became a high Anglican; and being still much in earnest about most things he had to do with, he found great comfort just at this moment, amid all his perplexities, in the litany he was saying. He was so absorbed in it, and so full of that appeal out of all troubles and miseries to the God who cannot be indifferent to His creatures, that he was almost at the last Amen before he distinguished that voice, which of all voices was most dear to him. The heart of the young man swelled, when he heard it, with a mingled thrill of sympathy and wounded feeling. She had not left her father's sick-bed to see him, but she had found time to run down the sunny road to St Roque's to pray for the sick and the poor. When he knelt down in the reading-desk at the end of the service, was it wrong, instead of more abstract supplications, that the young priest said over and over, "God bless her," in an outburst of pity and tenderness? And he did not try to overtake her on the road, as he might have done had his heart been less deeply touched, but went off with abstracted looks to Wharfside, where all the poor people were very glad to see him, and where his absence was spoken of as if he had been three months instead of three days away. It was like going back a century or two into primitive life, to go into "the district," where civilisation did not prevail to any very distressing extent, and where people in general spoke their minds freely. But even when he came out of No. 10, where the poor woman still kept on living, Mr Wentworth was made aware of his private troubles; for on the opposite side of the way, where there was a little bit of vacant ground, the Rector was standing with some of the schismatics of Wharfside, planning how to place the iron church which, it was said, he meant to establish in the very heart of the "district." Mr Morgan took off his hat very stiffly to the Perpetual Curate, who returned up Prickett's Lane with a heightened colour and quickened pulse. A man must be an angel indeed who can see his work taken out of his hands and betray no human emotion. Mr Wentworth went into Elsworthy's, as he went back, to write a forcible little note to the Rector on the subject before he returned home. It was Rosa who handed him the paper he wanted, and he gave her a little nod without looking at her. But when he had closed his note, and laid it on the counter to be delivered, the Curate found her still standing near, and looked at the little blushing creature with some natural admiration. "So you have come back," he said; "but mind you don't go into Grange Lane any more after dark, little Rosa." When he had left the shop and finished this little matter, he bethought himself of his aunts, whom he had not seen since he returned. Aunt Dora was not at her usual sentinel window when he crossed Grange Lane towards their garden-door; and the door itself was open, and some one from the Blue Boar was carrying in a large portmanteau. Mr Wentworth's curiosity was strangely excited by the sight. He said, "Who has come, Lewis?" to Miss Wentworth's man, who stood in the hall superintending the arrival, but ran up-stairs without waiting for any answer. He felt by instinct that the visitor was some one likely to increase the confusion of affairs, and perplex matters more and more to himself.

But even this presentiment did not prepare him for the astonishing sight which met his eyes when he entered the drawing-room. There the three ladies were all assembled, regarding with different developments of interest the new-comer, who had thrown himself, half-reclining, on a sofa. Aunt Dora was sitting by him with a bottle of eau-de-Cologne in her hand, for this meeting had evidently gone to the heart of the returned prodigal. Aunt Dora was ready to have sacrificed all the veal in the country in honour of Jack's repentance; and the Curate stood outside upon the threshold, looking at the scene with the strangest half-angry, half-comical realisation of the state of mind of the elder brother in the parable. He had himself been rather found fault with, excused, and tolerated, among his relations; but Jack had at once become master of the position, and taken possession of all their sympathies. Mr Wentworth stood gazing at them, half-amused, and yet more angry than amused – feeling, with a little indignation, as was natural, that the pretended penitence of the clever sinner was far more effective and interesting than his own spotless loyalty and truth. To be sure, they were only three old ladies – three old aunts – and he smiled at the sight; but though he smiled, he did not like it, and perhaps was more abrupt than usual in his salutations. Miss Leonora was seated at her writing-table, busy with her correspondence. The question of the new gin-palace was not yet decided, and she had been in the middle of a letter of encouragement to her agents on the subject, reminding them that, even though the licence was granted, the world would still go on all the same, and that the worst possibilities must be encountered, when Jack the prodigal made his appearance, with all the tokens of reformation and repentance about him, to throw himself upon the Christian charity of his relations. A penitent sinner was too tempting a bait for even Miss Leonora's good sense to withstand, and she had postponed her letter-writing to hear his explanations. But Jack had told his story by this time, and had explained how much he wanted to withdraw out of the world in which he had been led astray, and how sick he was of all its whirl of temptations and disappointment; and Miss Leonora had returned to her letter when her younger nephew arrived. As for Miss Wentworth, she was seated placidly in her usual easy-chair, smiling with equable smiles upon both the young men, and lifting her beautiful old cheek for Frank to kiss, just as she had lifted it to Jack. It was Miss Dora who was most shaken out of her allegiance; she who had always made Frank her special charge. Though she had wept herself into a day's headache on his behalf so short a time ago, aunt Dora for a moment had allowed the more effusive prodigal to supersede Frank. Instead of taking him into her arms as usual, and clinging to him, she only put the hand that held the eau-de-Cologne over his shoulder as she kissed him. Jack, who had been so dreadfully, inexpressibly wicked, and who had come back to his aunts to be converted and restored to his right mind, was more interesting than many curates. She sat down again by her penitent as soon as she had saluted his brother; and even Miss Leonora, when she paused in her letter, turned her eyes towards Jack.

"So Gerald is actually going over to Rome," said the strong-minded aunt. "I never expected anything else. I had a letter from Louisa yesterday, asking me to use my influence: as if I had any influence over your brother! If a silly wife was any justification for a man making an idiot of himself, Gerald might be excused; but I suppose the next thing we shall hear of will be that you have followed him, Frank. Did you hear anything further about Janet and that lover of hers? In a large family like ours there is always something troublesome going on," said Miss Leonora. "I am not surprised to hear of your father's attack. My father had a great many attacks, and lived to eighty; but he had few difficulties with the female part of his household," she continued, with a grim little smile – for Miss Leonora rather piqued herself upon her exemption from any known sentimental episode, even in her youth.

"Dear Jack's return will make up for a great deal," said aunt Dora. "Oh, Frank, my dear, your brother has made us all so happy. He has just been telling us that he means to give up all his racing and betting and wickedness; and when he has been with us a little, and learned to appreciate a domestic circle – " said poor Miss Dora, putting her handkerchief to her eyes. She was so much overcome that she could not finish the sentence. But she put her disengaged hand upon Jack's arm and patted it, and in her heart concluded that as soon as the blanket was done for Louisa's bassinet, she would work him a pair of slippers, which should endear more and more to him the domestic circle, and stimulate the new-born virtue in his repentant heart.

"I don't know what Jack's return may do," said Mr Wentworth, "but I hope you don't imagine it was Gerald who caused my father's illness. You know better, at least," said the indignant Curate, looking at the hero on the sofa. That interesting reprobate lifted his eyes with a covert gleam of humour to the unresponsive countenance of his brother, and then he stroked his silky beard and sighed.

"My dear aunt, Frank is right," said Jack, with a melancholy voice. "I have not concealed from you that my father has great reason to be offended with me. I have done very much the reverse of what I ought to have done. I see even Frank can't forgive me; and I don't wonder at it," said the prodigal, "though I have done him no harm that I know of;" and again the heir of the Wentworths sighed, and covered his face for a moment with his hand.

"Oh, Frank," cried Miss Dora, with streaming eyes – "oh, my dear boy! – isn't there joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth? You're not going to be the wicked elder brother that grudged the prodigal his welcome – you're not going to give way to jealousy, Frank?"

"Hold your tongue, Dora," said the iron-grey sister; "I daresay Frank knows a great deal better than you do; but I want to know about Gerald, and what is to be done. If he goes to Rome, of course you will take Wentworth Rectory; so it will not be an unmingled evil," said Miss Leonora, biting her pen, and throwing a keen glance at the Curate of St Roque's, "especially as you and we differ so entirely in our views. I could not consent to appoint anybody to Skelmersdale, even if poor Mr Shirley were to die, who did not preach the Gospel; and it would be sad for you to spend all your life in a Perpetual Curacy, where you could have no income, nor ever hope to be able to marry," she continued steadily, with her eyes fixed upon her nephew. "Of course, if you had entered the Church for the love of the work, it would be a different matter," said the strong-minded aunt. "But that sort of thing seems to have gone out of fashion. I am sorry about Gerald – very sorry; but after what I saw of him, I am not surprised; and it is a comfort to one's mind to think that you will be provided for, Frank." Miss Leonora wrote a few words of the letter as she finished this speech. What she was saying in that epistle was (in reference to the gin-palace) that all discouragements were sent by God, and that, no doubt, His meaning was, that we should work all the harder to make way against them. After putting down which encouraging sentiment, she raised her eyes again, and planted her spear in her nephew's bosom with the greatest composure in the world.

"My Perpetual Curacy suits me very well," said Mr Wentworth, with a little pride; "and there is a good deal to do in Carlingford. However, I did not come here to talk about that. The Rector is going to put up an iron church in my district," said the young man, who was rather glad of a subject which permitted a little of his indignation to escape. "It is very easy to interfere with other people's work." And then he paused, not choosing to grumble to an unsympathetic audience. To feel that nobody cares about your feelings, is better than all the rules of self-control. The Perpetual Curate stopped instinctively with a dignified restraint, which would have been impossible to him under other circumstances. It was no merit of his, but he reaped the advantage of it all the same.

"But oh, my dear," said Miss Dora, "what a comfort to think of what St Paul says – 'Whether it be for the right motive or not, Christ is still preached.' And one never knows what chance word may touch a heart," said the poor little woman, shaking her limp curls away from her cheeks. "It was you being offended with him that made dear Jack think of coming to us; and what a happiness it is to think that he sees the error of his ways!" cried poor Miss Dora, drying her tears. "And oh, Frank, my dear boy, I trust you will take warning by your brother, and not run into temptation," continued the anxious aunt, remembering all her troubles. "If you were to go wrong, it would take away all the pleasure of life."

"That is just what I was thinking," said aunt Cecilia from her easy-chair.

"For, oh, Frank, my dear," said Miss Dora, much emboldened by this support, "you must consider that you are a clergyman, and there are a great many things that are wrong in a clergyman that would not matter in another man. Oh, Leonora, if you would speak to him, he would mind you," cried the poor lady; "for you know a clergyman is quite different;" and Miss Dora again stopped short, and the three aunts looked at the bewildered Curate, who, for his part, sat gazing at them without an idea what they could mean.

"What have I been doing that would be right in another man?" he said, with a smile which was slightly forced; and then he turned to Jack, who was laughing softly under his breath, and stroking his silky beard. The elder brother was highly amused by the situation altogether, but Frank, as was natural, did not see it in the same light. "What have you been saying?" said the indignant Curate; and his eyes gave forth a sudden light which frightened Miss Dora, and brought her in to the rescue.

"Oh, Frank, he has not been saying anything," cried that troubled woman; "it is only what we have heard everywhere. Oh, my dear boy, it is only for your good I ever thought of speaking. There is nobody in the world to whom your welfare is so precious," said poor Miss Dora. "Oh, Frank, if you and your brother were to have any difference, I should think it all my fault – and I always said you did not mean anything," she said, putting herself and her eau-de-Cologne between the two, and looking as if she were about to throw herself into the Curate's arms. "Oh, Frank, dear, don't blame any one else – it is my fault!" cried aunt Dora, with tears; and the tender-hearted foolish creature kept between them, ready to rush in if any conflict should occur, which was a supposition much resented by the Curate of St Roque's.

"Jack and I have no intention of fighting, I daresay," he said, drawing his chair away with some impatience; and Jack lay back on the sofa and stroked his beard, and looked on with the greatest composure while poor Miss Dora exhausted her alarm. "It is all my fault," sobbed aunt Dora; "but, oh, my dear boy, it was only for your good; and I always said you did not mean anything," said the discomfited peacemaker. All this, though it was highly amusing to the prodigal, was gall and bitterness to the Perpetual Curate. It moved him far more deeply than he could have imagined it possible for anything spoken by his aunt Dora to move him. Perhaps there is something in human nature which demands to be comprehended, even where it is aware that comprehension is impossible; and it wounded him in the most unreasonable way to have it supposed that he was likely to get into any quarrel with his brother, and to see Jack thus preferred to himself.

"Don't be a fool," said Miss Leonora, sharply: "I wish you would confine yourself to Louisa's bassinet, and talk of things you can understand. I hope Frank knows what he is doing better than a set of old women. At the same time, Frank," said Miss Leonora, rising and leading the way to the door, "I want to say a word to you. Don't think you are above misconception. Most people believe a lie more readily than the truth. Dora is a fool," said the elder sister, pausing, when she had led her nephew outside the drawing-room door, "but so are most people; and I advise you to be careful, and not to give occasion for any gossip; otherwise, I don't say I disapprove of your conduct." She had her pen in one hand, and held out the other to him, dismissing him; and even this added to the painful feeling in the Curate's heart.

"I should hope not," he said, somewhat stiffly; "good-bye – my conduct is not likely to be affected by any gossip, and I don't see any need for taking precautions against imaginary danger." Miss Leonora thought her nephew looked very ungracious as he went away. She said to herself that Frank had a great deal of temper, and resembled his mother's family more than the Wentworths, as she went back to her writing-table; and though she could not disapprove of him, she felt vexed somehow at his rectitude and his impatience of advice; whereas, Jack, poor fellow! who had been a great sinner, was, according to all appearance, a great penitent also, and a true Wentworth, with all the family features. Such were Miss Leonora's thoughts as she went back to finish her letters, and to encourage her agents in her London district to carry on the good work.

"God moves in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform," she wrote apropos of the gin-palace, and set very distinctly before her spiritual retainers all that Providence might intend by this unexpected hindrance; and so quite contented herself about her nephew, whose views on this and many other subjects were so different from her own.

Meanwhile Mr Wentworth went about the rest of the day's work in a not unusual, but far from pleasant, frame of mind. When one suddenly feels that the sympathy upon which one calculated most surely has been withdrawn, the shock is naturally considerable. It might not be anything very great while it lasted, but still one feels the difference when it is taken away. Lucy had fallen off from him; and even aunt Dora had ceased to feel his concerns the first in the world. He smiled at himself for the wound he felt; but that did not remove the sting of it. After the occupations of the day were over, when at last he was going home, and when his work and the sense of fatigue which accompanied it had dulled his mind a little, the Curate felt himself still dwelling on the same matter, contemplating it in a half-comic point of view, as proud men are not unapt to contemplate anything that mortifies them. He began to realise, in a humorous way, his own sensations as he stood at the drawing-room door and recognised the prodigal on the sofa; and then a smile dawned upon his lip as he thought once more of the prodigal's elder brother, who regarded that business with unsympathetic eyes and grudged the supper. And from that he went into a half-professional line of thought, and imagined to himself, half smiling, how, if he had been Dr Cumming or the minister of Salem Chapel, he might have written a series of sermons on the unappreciated characters of Scripture, beginning with that virtuous uninteresting elder brother; from which suggestion, though he was not the minister of Salem nor Dr Cumming, it occurred to the Perpetual Curate to follow out the idea, and to think of such generous careless souls as Esau, and such noble unfortunates as the peasant-king, the mournful magnificent Saul – people not generally approved of, or enrolled among the martyrs or saints. He was pursuing this kind of half-reverie, half-thought, when he reached his own house. It was again late and dark, for he had dined in the mean time, and was going home now to write his sermon, in which, no doubt, some of these very ideas were destined to reappear. He opened the garden-gate with his latch-key, and paused, with an involuntary sense of the beauty and freshness of the night, as soon as he got within the sheltering walls. The stars were shining faint and sweet in the summer blue, and all the shrubs and the grass breathing forth that subdued breath of fragrance and conscious invisible life which gives so much sweetness to the night. He thought he heard whispering voices, as he paused glancing up at the sky; and then from the side-walk he saw a little figure run, and heard a light little footstep fluttering towards the door which he had just closed. Mr Wentworth started and went after this little flying figure with some anxiety. Two or three of his long strides brought him up with the escaping visitor, as she fumbled in her agitation over the handle of the door. "You have come again, notwithstanding what I said to you? but you must not repeat it, Rosa," said the Curate; "no good can come of these meetings. I will tell your uncle, if I ever find you here again."

"Oh no, no, please don't," cried the girl; "but, after all, I don't mind," she said, with more confidence: "he would think it was something very different;" and Rosa raised her eyes to the Curate's face with a coquettish inquiry. She could not divest herself of the thought that Mr Wentworth was jealous, and did not like to have her come there for anybody but himself.

"If you were not such a child, I should be very angry," said the Curate; "as it is, I am very angry with the person who deludes you into coming. Go home, child," he said, opening the door to her, "and remember I will not allow you on any pretext to come here again."

His words were low, and perhaps Rosa did not care much to listen; but there was quite light enough to show them both very plainly, as he stood at the door and she went out. Just then the Miss Hemmings were going up Grange Lane from a little tea-party with their favourite maid, and all their eyes about them. They looked very full in Mr Wentworth's face, and said How d'ye do? as they passed the door; and when they had passed it, they looked at each other with eyes which spoke volumes. Mr Wentworth shut the door violently with irrepressible vexation and annoyance when he encountered that glance. He made no farewells, nor did he think of taking care of Rosa on the way home as he had done before. He was intensely annoyed and vexed, he could not tell how. And this was how it happened that the last time she was seen in Carlingford, Rosa Elsworthy was left standing by herself in the dark at Mr Wentworth's door.