The Perpetual Curate Part 5

"Oh, Frank," said Miss Dora, with a long breath of fright and horror, "_what_ are you saying? Oh, my dear, don't say it over again, I don't want to hear it! I hope when we are dying we shall all feel what great great sinners we are," said the poor lady, who, between vexation and mortification, was ready to cry, "and not think that one is better than another. Oh, my dear, there is that man again! Do you think it is safe to meet him in such a lonely road? If he comes across and speaks to me any more I shall faint," cried poor Miss Dora, whose opinions were not quite in accordance with her feelings. Mr Wentworth did not say anything to soothe her, but with his unoccupied hand he made an involuntary movement towards Lucy's cloak, and plucked at it to bring her nearer, as the bearded stranger loomed dimly past, looking at the group. Lucy felt the touch, and wondered and looked up at him in the darkness. She could not comprehend the Curate's face.

"Are _you_ afraid of him?" she said, with a slight smile; "if it is only his beard I am not alarmed; and here is papa coming to meet me. I thought you would have come for me sooner, papa. Has anything happened?" said Lucy, taking Mr Wodehouse's arm, who had suddenly appeared from underneath the lamp, still unlighted, at Dr Marjoribanks's door. She clung to her father with unusual eagerness, willing enough to escape from the darkness and the Curate's side, and all the tremulous sensations of the hour.

"What could happen?" said Mr Wodehouse, who still looked "limp" from his recent illness, "though I hear there are doubtful people about; so they tell me--but you ought to know best, Wentworth. Who is that fellow in the beard that went by on the other side? Not little Lake the drawing-master? Fancied I had seen the build of the man before--eh?--a stranger? Well, it's a mistake, perhaps. Can't be sure of anything nowadays;--memory failing. Well, that's what the doctor says. Come in and rest and see Molly; as for me, I'm not good for much, but you won't get better company than the girls, or else that's what folks tell me. Who did you say that fellow was?" said the churchwarden, leaning across his daughter to see Mr Wentworth's face.

"I don't know anything about him," said the Curate of St Roque's.

And curiously enough silence fell upon the little party, n.o.body could tell how;--for two minutes, which looked like twenty, no one spoke.

Then Lucy roused herself, apparently with a little effort. "We seem to talk of nothing but the man with the beard to-night," she said. "Mary knows everything that goes on in Carlingford--she will tell us about him; and if Miss Wentworth thinks it too late to come in, we will say good-night," she continued, with a little decision of tone, which was not incomprehensible to the Perpetual Curate. Perhaps she was a little provoked and troubled in her own person. To say so much in looks and so little in words, was a mode of procedure which puzzled Lucy. It fretted her, because it looked unworthy of her hero. She withdrew within the green door, holding her father's arm fast, and talking to him, while Mr Wentworth strained his ears after the voice, which he thought he could have singled out from a thousand voices. Perhaps Lucy talked to drown her thoughts; and the Curate went away dumb and abstracted, with his aunt leaning on his arm on the other side of the wall. He could not be interested, as Miss Dora expected him to be, in the Miss Wentworths' plans. He conducted her to the Blue Boar languidly, with an evident indifference to the fact that his aunt Leonora was about to become a permanent resident in Carlingford. He said "Good-night" kindly to little Rosa Elsworthy, looking out with bright eyes into the darkness at the door of her uncle's shop; but he said little to Miss Dora, who could not tell what to make of him, and swallowed her tears as quietly as possible under her veil. When he had deposited his aunt safely at the inn, the Perpetual Curate hastened down Grange Lane at a great pace. The first sound he heard on entering Mrs Hadwin's garden was the clear notes of the stranger's whistle among the trees; and with an impatient exclamation Mr Wentworth sought his fellow-lodger, who was smoking as usual, pacing up and down a shaded walk, where, even in daylight, he was pretty well concealed from observation. The Curate looked as if he had a little discontent and repugnance to get over before he could address the anonymous individual who whistled so cheerily under the trees. When he did speak it was an embarra.s.sed and not very intelligible call.

"I say--are you there? I want to speak to you," said Mr Wentworth.

"Yes," said the stranger, turning sharply round. "I am here, a dog without a name. What have you got to say?"

"Only that you must be more careful," said Mr Wentworth again, with a little stiffness. "You will be recognised if you don't mind. I have just been asked who you were by--somebody who thought he had seen you before."

"By whom?"

"Well, by Mr Wodehouse," said the Curate. "I may as well tell you; if you mean to keep up this concealment you must take care."

"By Jove!" said the stranger, and then he whistled a few bars of the air which Mr Wentworth's arrival had interrupted. "What is a fellow to do?" he said, after an interjection. "I sometimes think I had better risk it all--eh! don't you think so? I can't shut myself up for ever here."

"That must be as you think best," said the Perpetual Curate, in whom there appeared no movement of sympathy; and he said no more, though the doubtful individual by his side lifted an undecided look to his face, and once more murmured in perplexed tones a troubled exclamation: "A man must have a little amus.e.m.e.nt somehow," the stranger said, with an aggrieved voice; and then abruptly left his unsociable companion, and went off to his room, where he summoned Sarah to bring lights, and tried to talk to her a little in utter dearth of society. Mr Wentworth stayed behind, pacing up and down the darkening walk. The Curate's thoughts were far from satisfactory. There was not much comfort anywhere, let him look where he pleased. When a man has no spot in all his horizon on which his eye can rest with comfort, there is something more discouraging in the prospect than a positive calamity. He could not take refuge even in the imaginations of his love, for it was clear enough that already a sentiment of surprise had risen in Lucy's mind, and her tranquillity was shaken. And perhaps he had done rashly to plunge into other people's troubles--he upon whom a curious committee of aunts were now to sit _en permanence_. He went in to write his sermon, far from being so a.s.sured of things in general as that discourse was when it was written, though it was a little relief to his mind to fall back upon an authority somewhere, and to refer, in terms which were perhaps too absolute to be altogether free of doubt, to the Church, which had arranged everything for her children in one department of their concerns at least. If it were only as easy to know what ought to be done in one's personal affairs as to decide what was the due state of mind expected by the Church on the second Sunday after Easter! But being under that guidance, at least he could not go wrong in his sermon, which was one point of ease amid the many tribulations of the Curate of St Roque's.

CHAPTER IX.

"If they are going to stay in Carlingford, perhaps we could be of use to them? Yes, Lucy; and I am sure anything we could do for Mr Wentworth--" said Miss Wodehouse. "I wonder what house they will get.

I am going to Elsworthy's about some paper, and we can ask him if he knows where they are going. That poor little Rosa should have some one to take care of her. I often wonder whether it would be kind to speak to Mrs Elsworthy about it, Lucy; she is a sensible woman. The little thing stands at the door in the evening, and talks to people who are pa.s.sing, and I am afraid there are some people who are unprincipled, and tell her she is pretty, and say things to her," said Miss Wodehouse, shaking her head; "it is a great pity. Even Mr Wentworth is a great deal more civil to that little thing than he would be if she had not such a pretty face."

"I said you knew everything that went on in Carlingford," said Lucy, as they went out together from the green door, not in their grey cloaks this time; "but I forgot to ask you about one thing that puzzled us last night--who is the man in the beard who lives at Mrs Hadwin's? Mr Wentworth will not tell anybody about him, and I think he knows."

"Who is the man in the beard?" said Miss Wodehouse, with a gasp. She grew very pale, and turned away her head and shivered visibly. "How very cold it is!" she said, with her teeth chattering; "did you think it was so cold? I--I don't know any men with beards; and it is so strange of you to say I know everything that goes on in Carlingford.

Don't stop to speak to that little girl just now. Did you say she came from p.r.i.c.kett's Lane? No. 10? It is very right to go to see the sick, but, indeed, I don't approve of your attendance upon that poor woman, Lucy. When I was a girl I dared not have gone away by myself as you do, and she might not be a proper person. There is a carriage that I don't know standing before Elsworthy's shop."

"But you have not told me yet about the man with the beard," said Lucy, whose curiosity was excited. She looked at her sister keenly with an investigating look, and poor Miss Wodehouse was fain to draw her shawl close round her, and complain again of the cold.

"I told you I did not know," she said, with a complaining tone in her voice. "It is strange you should think I knew; it looks as if you thought me a gossip, Lucy. I wonder who those people can be coming out of the carriage? My dear," said the elder sister, feeling within herself that an attack upon the enemy's country was the best means of meeting any sally--"I don't think you should go down to p.r.i.c.kett's Lane just now. I saw Mr Wentworth pa.s.s a little while ago, and people might say you went to meet each other. I can't keep people from talking, Lucy, and you are both so young; and you know I spoke to you before about your meeting so often. It will be a great deal better for you to come with me to call on his aunts."

"Only that my poor patient wants me," said Lucy. "Must I not do my duty to a poor woman who is dying, because Mr Wentworth is in p.r.i.c.kett's Lane? There is no reason why I should be afraid of meeting Mr Wentworth," said the young district-visitor, severely; and the elder sister saw that Lucy spoke in a different tone from that in which she had answered her before. She did not extinguish Miss Wodehouse by a reference to the great work. She treated the matter more as a personal one to-day; and a shadow--a very ghost of irritation--was in Lucy's voice. The two crossed the street silently after that to Elsworthy's, where a group of ladies were visible, who had come out of the strange carriage. One of them was seated in a chair by the counter, another was reading a list which Mr Elsworthy had just presented to her, and the third, who was not so tall as her sister, was pressing up to it on tiptoe, trying to read it too. "That is Miss Dora Wentworth," said Lucy, "and the other, I suppose, is Miss Leonora, who is so very Low-Church. I think I can see the Miss Hemmings coming down George Street. If I were to go in I should be in a dreadful minority; but you are Low-Church in your heart too."

"No, dear; only reasonable," said Miss Wodehouse, apologetically. "I don't go as far as you and Mr Wentworth do, but I like the service to be nicely done, and the--the authority of the Church respected too. As I have never met Miss Wentworth, you had better come in and introduce me. There is Rosa looking out of the front window, Lucy. I really must speak to Mrs Elsworthy about that child. What a lovely old lady that is sitting by the counter! Say I am your sister, and then if you are resolved upon p.r.i.c.kett's Lane, you can go away."

"They are the two who wear the grey cloaks," said Miss Leonora Wentworth to herself, as the introduction was effected. "I am glad to make your acquaintance, Miss Wodehouse. We are going to stay in Carlingford for a time, and to know a few pious families will be a great advantage. We don't go much into society, in the usual sense of the word--but, I am sure, to make the acquaintance of ladies who help my nephew so much in his work, is sure to be an advantage. I should like so much to hear from you how he gets on, for he does not say a great deal about it himself."

"He is so good and so nice," said kind Miss Wodehouse, "he never makes a fuss about anything he does. I am sure, to see such young creatures so pious and so devoted, always goes to my heart. When we were young it used to be so different--we took our own pleasure, and never thought of our fellow-creatures. And the young people are so good nowadays," said the gentle woman, falling instinctively into her favourite sentiment. Miss Leonora looked at her with critical eyes.

"We are none of us good," said that iron-grey woman, whose neutral tints were so different from the soft dove-colour of her new acquaintance; "it does not become such sinful creatures to talk of anybody being good. Good works may only be beautiful sins, if they are not done in a true spirit," said Miss Leonora, turning to her list of furnished houses with a little contempt. But the Miss Hemmings had come in while she was speaking, and it was seldom that such edifying talk was heard in Carlingford.

"That is such a beautiful sentiment--oh, if we only bore it always in mind!" murmured the eldest Miss Hemmings. "Mr Elsworthy, I hope you have got the tracts I ordered. They are so much wanted here. Poor dear Mr Bury would not believe his eyes if he could see Carlingford now, given up to Puseyism and Ritualism--but good men are taken away from the evil to come. I will pay for them now, please."

"If you wish it, ma'am," said Mr Elsworthy. "The town _is_ changed; I don't say nothing different; but being in the ritual line as you say, you won't find no church as it's better done than in St Roque's. Mr Wentworth never spares no pains, ma'am, on anything as he takes up.

I've heard a deal of clergymen in my day, but _his_ reading is beautiful; I can't say as I ever heard reading as could equal it;--and them choristers, though they're hawful to manage, is trained as I never see boys trained in _my_ life afore. There's one of them houses, ma'am," continued the optimist, turning to Miss Wentworth, "as is a beauty. Miss Wodehouse can tell you what it is; no lady in the land could desire a handsomer drawing-room; and as for the kitchings,--I don't pretend to be a judge up-stairs, but being brought up a blacksmith, I know what's what in a kitching-range. If you had all Grange Lane to dinner, there's a range as is equal to it," said Mr Elsworthy with enthusiasm--"and my wife will show you the 'ouse."

"I knew Mr Bury," said Miss Leonora; "he was a precious man. Perhaps you have heard him mention the Miss Wentworths? I am very sorry to hear that there is no real work going on in the town. It is very sad that there should be n.o.body able to enter into the labours of such a saint."

"Indeed," said Miss Wodehouse, who was excited, in spite of herself, by this conversation, "I think the Carlingford people go quite as much to church as in Mr Bury's days. I don't think there is less religion than there used to be: there are not so many prayer meetings, perhaps; but--"

"There is nothing the carnal mind dislikes so much as prayer meetings,"

said Miss Hemmings. "There is a house in Grove Street, if Miss Wentworth is looking for a house. I don't know much about the kitchen-range, but I know it belongs to a very pious family, and they wish so much to let it. My sister and I would be so glad to take you there. It is not in the gay world, like Grange Lane."

"But you might want to ask people to dinner; and then we should be so near Frank," said Miss Dora, whispering at her sister's elbow. As for the second Miss Hemmings, she was dull of comprehension, and did not quite make out who the strangers were.

"It is so sad to a feeling mind to see the mummeries that go on at St Roque's," said this obtuse sister; "and I am afraid poor Mr Wentworth must be in a bad way. They say there is the strangest man in his house--some relation of his--and he daren't be seen in the daylight; and people begin to think there must be something wrong, and that Mr Wentworth himself is involved; but what can you expect when there is no true Christian principle?" asked Miss Hemmings, triumphantly. It was a dreadful moment for the bystanders; for Miss Leonora turned round upon this new intelligence with keen eyes and attention; and Miss Dora interposed, weeping; and Miss Wodehouse grew so pale, that Mr Elsworthy rushed for cold water, and thought she was going to faint. "Tell me all about this," said Miss Leonora, with peremptory and commanding tones. "Oh, Leonora, I am sure my dear Frank has nothing to do with it, if there is anything wrong," cried Miss Dora.

Even Miss Wentworth herself was moved out of her habitual smile. She said, "He is my nephew"--an observation which she had never been heard to make before, and which covered the second Miss Hemmings with confusion. As for Miss Wodehouse, she retreated very fast to a seat behind Miss Cecilia, and said nothing. The two who had arrived last slunk back upon each other with fiery glances of mutual reproach. The former three stood together in this emergency, full of curiosity, and perhaps a little anxiety. In this position of affairs, Mr Elsworthy, being the only impartial person present, took the management of matters into his own hands.

"Miss Hemmings and ladies, if you'll allow _me_," said Mr Elsworthy, "it aint no more than a mistake. The new gentleman as is staying at Mrs Hadwin's may be an unfortunate gentleman for anything I can tell; but he aint no relation of our clergyman. There aint n.o.body belonging to Mr Wentworth," said the clerk of St Roque's, "but is a credit both to him and to Carlingford. There's his brother, the Rev. Mr Wentworth, as is the finest-spoken man, to be a clergyman, as I ever set eyes on; and there's respected ladies as needn't be named more particular. But the gentleman as is the subject of conversation is no more like Mr Wentworth than--asking pardon for the liberty--I am. I may say as I have opportunities for knowing more than most," said Mr Elsworthy, modestly, "me and Rosa; for if there's a thing Mr Wentworth is particular about, it's having his papers the first moment; and ladies as knows me knows I am one that never says more nor the truth. Not saying a word against the gentleman--as is a most respectable gentleman, for anything I know against him--he aint no connection of Mr Wentworth. He's Mrs Hadwin's lodger; and I wouldn't say as he isn't a relation there; but our clergyman has got no more to do with him than the babe unborn."

Mr Elsworthy wiped his forehead after he had made this speech, and looked round for the approbation which he was aware he had deserved; and Miss Leonora Wentworth threw a glance of disdainful observation upon the unhappy lady who had caused this disturbance. "If your wife will come with us, we will go and look at the house," she said, graciously. "I daresay if it is in Grange Lane it will suit us very well. My nephew is a very young man, Miss Wodehouse," said Miss Leonora, who had not pa.s.sed over the agitation of that gentle woman without some secret comments; "he does not take advice in his work, though it might be of great a.s.sistance to him; but I hope he'll grow older and wiser, as indeed he cannot help doing if he lives. I hope you and your pretty sister will come to see us when we're settled;--I don't see any sense, you know, in your grey cloaks--I'm old, and you won't mind me saying so; but I know what Frank Wentworth is," said the indignant aunt, making a severe curtsy, accompanied by lightning glances at the shrinking background of female figures, as she went out of the shop.

"Oh, Leonora! I always said you were fond of him, though you never would show it," cried poor Miss Dora. "She is a great deal more affectionate than she will let anybody believe; and my dear Frank means nothing but good," cried the too zealous champion. Miss Leonora turned back upon the threshold of the shop.

"You will please to let me know what Dissenting chapels there are in the town, and what are the hours of the services," she said. "There must surely be a Bethesda, or Zion, or something--Salem? yes, to be sure;--perhaps there's somebody there that preaches the gospel. Send me word," said the peremptory woman; and poor Miss Dora relapsed into her usual melancholy condition, and stole into the carriage in a broken-hearted manner, weeping under her veil.

After which Miss Wodehouse went home, not having much heart for further visits. That is to say, she went all the way down Grange Lane, somewhat tremulous and uncertain in her steps, and went as far as Mrs Hadwin's, and hesitated at the door as if she meant to call there; but, thinking better of it, went on a little farther with very lingering steps, as if she did not know what she wanted. When she came back again, the door of Mrs Hadwin's garden was open, and the butcher's boy stood blocking up the way, listening with all his ears to the notes of the whistle, soft and high and clear like the notes of a bird which come audibly from among the trees. Miss Wodehouse gave a little start when she heard it: again she hesitated, and looked in with such a wistful face that Sarah, the housemaid, who had been about to slam the door hastily upon the too tender butcher, involuntarily held it wide open for the expected visitor. "No, not to-day thank you," said Miss Wodehouse. "I hope your mistress is quite well; give her my love, and say I meant to come in, but I have a bad headache.

No, thank you; not to-day." She went away after that with a wonderful expression of face, and reached home long before Lucy had come back from p.r.i.c.kett's Lane. Miss Wodehouse was not good for much in the house. She went to the little boudoir up-stairs, and lay down on the sofa, and had some tea brought her by an anxious maid. She was very nervous, trembling she could not say why, and took up a novel which was lying on the sofa, and read the most affecting scene, and cried over it; and then her sweet old face cleared, and she felt better.

When Lucy came in she kissed her sister, and drew down the blinds, and brought her the third volume, and then went away herself to arrange the dessert, and see that everything was in order for one of Mr Wodehouse's little parties. These were their respective parts in the house; and surely a more peaceful, and orderly, and affectionate house, was not to be found that spring evening, either in England or Grange Lane.

CHAPTER X.

It may be easily supposed after this that Mr Wentworth and his proceedings were sufficiently overlooked and commented upon in Carlingford. The Miss Wentworths took old Major Brown's house for six months, which, as everybody knows, is next door to Dr Marjoribanks. It was just after Letty Brown's marriage, and the poor old Major was very glad to go away and pay a round of visits, and try to forget that his last daughter had gone the way of all the rest. There was a summer-house built in the corner of the garden, with a window in the outer wall looking on to Grange Lane, from which everything that happened could be inspected; and there was always somebody at that window when the Perpetual Curate pa.s.sed by. Then he began to have a strange painful feeling that Lucy watched too, and was observing all his looks and ways, and what he did and said in these changed times.

It was a strange difference from the sweet half-conscious bond between them which existed of old, when they walked home together from Wharfside, talking of the district and the people, in the tender union of unspoken love and fellowship. Not that they were altogether parted now; but Lucy contrived to leave the schoolroom most days before the young priest could manage to disrobe himself, and was seldom to be seen on the road lingering on her errands of kindness as she used to do. But still she knew all he was about, and watched, standing in doubt and wonder of him, which was at least a great deal better than indifference. On the whole, however, it was a cloudy world through which the Perpetual Curate pa.s.sed as he went from his lodgings, where the whistle of the new lodger had become a great nuisance to him, past the long range of garden-walls, the sentinel window where Miss Dora looked out watching for him, and Mr Wodehouse's green door which he no longer entered every day. Over the young man's mind, as he went out to his labours, there used to come that sensation of having n.o.body to fall back upon, which is of all feelings the most desolate. Amid all those people who were watching him, there was no one upon whom he could rest, secure of understanding and sympathy. They were all critical--examining, with more or less comprehension, what he did; and he could not think of anybody in the world just then who would be content with knowing that _he_ did it, and take that as warranty for the act, unless, perhaps, his poor aunt Dora, whose opinion was not important to the young man. It was not a pleasant state of mind into which these feelings threw him; and the natural result was, that he grew more and more careful about the rubric, and confined his sermons, with increasing precision, to the beautiful arrangements of the Church. They were very clever little sermons, even within these limitations, and an indifferent spectator would probably have been surprised to find how much he could make out of them; but still it is undeniable that a man has less scope, not only for oratory, but for all that is worthy of regard in human speech, when, instead of the ever-lasting reciprocations between heaven and earth, he occupies himself only with a set of ecclesiastical arrangements, however perfect. The people who went to St Roque's found this out, and so did Mr Wentworth; but it did not alter the system pursued by the troubled Curate. Perhaps he gave himself some half-conscious credit for it, as being against his own interests; for there was no mistaking the countenance of Miss Leonora, when now and then, on rare occasions, she came to hear her nephew preach.

All this, however, was confined to St Roque's, where there was a somewhat select audience, people who agreed in Mr Wentworth's views; but things were entirely different at Wharfside, where the Perpetual Curate was not thinking about himself, but simply about his work, and how to do it best. The bargemen and their wives did not know much about the Christian year; but they understood the greater matters which lay beneath: and the women said to each other, sometimes with tears in their eyes, that there was nothing that the clergyman didn't make plain; and that if the men didn't do what was right, it was none o' Mr Wentworth's fault. The young priest indemnified himself in "the district" for much that vexed him elsewhere. There was no question of Skelmersdale, or of any moot point there, but only a quant.i.ty of primitive people under the original conditions of humanity, whose lives might be amended, and consoled, and elevated. That was a matter about which Mr Wentworth had no doubt. He put on his surplice with the conviction that in that white ephod the truest embodiment of Christian purity was brought within sight of the darkened world. He was not himself, but a Christian priest, with power to deliver and to bless, when he went to Wharfside.

Easter had been early that year, and Ascension Day was in the beginning of May, one of those sweet days of early summer which still occur now and then to prove that the poets were right in all they say of the tenderest month of the year. Mr Wentworth had done duty at St Roque's, and afterwards at Wharfside. The sweet day and the sweet season had moved his heart. He was young, and it was hard to live shut up within himself without any sympathy either from man or woman. He had watched the grey cloak gliding out as his rude congregation dispersed, and went away quicker than was his wont, with a stronger longing than usual to overtake Lucy, and recover his place beside her.

But she was not to be seen when he got into p.r.i.c.kett's Lane. He looked up the weary length of the street, and saw nothing but the children playing on the pavement, and some slovenly mothers at the doors. It was a very disenchanting prospect. He went on again in a kind of gloomy discontent, displeased with everything. What was the good of it all? he said to himself--weariness, and toil, and trouble, and nothing ever to come of it. As for the little good he was doing in Wharfside, G.o.d did not need his poor exertions; and, to tell the truth, going on at St Roque's, however perfect the rubric and pretty the church, was, without any personal stimulant of happiness, no great prospect for the Perpetual Curate. Such was the tenor of his thoughts, when he saw a black figure suddenly emerge out of one of the houses, and stand at the door, throwing a long shadow over the pavement. It was the Rector who was standing there in Mr Wentworth's favourite district, talking to a shopkeeper who had always been on the opposition side. The young Anglican raised his drooping head instantly, and recovered his interest in the general world.

"Glad to see you, Mr Wentworth," said the Rector. "I have been speaking to this worthy man about the necessities of the district. The statistics are far from being satisfactory. Five thousand souls, and no provision for their spiritual wants; it is a very sad state of affairs. I mean to take steps immediately to remedy all that."

"A bit of a Methody chapel, that's all," said the opposition shopkeeper; "and the schoolroom, as Mr Wentworth--"