The Perpetual Curate

Alla padrona mia;
ed a te, sorella carissima!
Consolatrici gentillissime
della desolata.

I

Carlingford is, as is well known, essentially a quiet place. There is no trade in the town, properly so called. To be sure, there are two or three small countinghouses at the other end of George Street, in that ambitious pile called Gresham Chambers; but the owners of these places of business live, as a general rule, in villas, either detached or semidetached, in the North-end, the new quarter, which, as everybody knows, is a region totally unrepresented in society. In Carlingford proper there is no trade, no manufactures, no anything in particular, except very pleasant parties and a superior class of people—a very superior class of people, indeed, to anything one expects to meet with in a country town, which is not even a county town, nor the seat of any particular interest. It is the boast of the place that it has no particular interest—not even a public school: for no reason in the world but because they like it, have so many nice people collected together in those pretty houses in Grange Lane—which is, of course, a very much higher tribute to the town than if any special inducement had led them there. But in every community some centre of life is necessary. This point, round which everything circles, is, in Carlingford, found in the clergy. They are the administrators of the commonwealth, the only people who have defined and compulsory duties to give a sharp outline to life. Somehow this touch of necessity and business seems needful even in the most refined society: a man who is obliged to be somewhere at a certain hour, to do something at a certain time, and whose public duties are not volunteer proceedings, but indispensable work, has a certain position of command among a leisurely and unoccupied community, not to say that it is a public boon to have someone whom everybody knows and can talk of. The minister in Salem Chapel was everything in his little world. That respectable connection would not have hung together half so closely but for this perpetual subject of discussion, criticism, and patronage; and, to compare great things with small, society in Carlingford recognised in some degree the same human want. An enterprising or non-enterprising rector made all the difference in the world in Grange Lane; and in the absence of a rector that counted for anything (and poor Mr. Proctor was of no earthly use, as everybody knows), it followed, as a natural consequence, that a great deal of the interest and influence of the position fell into the hands of the Curate of St. Roque’s.

But that position was one full of difficulties, as anyone acquainted with the real state of affairs must see in a moment. Mr. Wentworth’s circumstances were, on the whole, as delicate and critical as can be imagined, both as respected his standing in Carlingford and the place he held in his own family—not to speak of certain other personal matters which were still more troublesome and vexatious. These last of course were of his own bringing on; for if a young man chooses to fall in love when he has next to nothing to live upon, trouble is sure to follow. He had quite enough on his hands otherwise without that crowning complication. When Mr. Wentworth first came to Carlingford, it was in the days of Mr. Bury, the Evangelical rector—his last days, when he had no longer his old vigour, and was very glad of “assistance,” as he said, in his public and parish work. Mr. Bury had a friendship of old standing with the Miss Wentworths of Skelmersdale, Mr. Francis Wentworth’s aunts; and it was a long time before the old Rector’s eyes were opened to the astounding fact, that the nephew of these precious and chosen women held “views” of the most dangerous complexion, and indeed was as near Rome as a strong and lofty conviction of the really superior catholicity of the Anglican Church would permit him to be. Before he found this out, Mr. Bury, who had unlimited confidence in preaching and improving talk, had done all he could to get the young man to “work,” as the good Rector called it, and had voluntarily placed all that difficult district about the canal under the charge of the Curate of St. Roque’s. It is said that the horror with which, after having just written to Miss Leonora Wentworth to inform her what “a great work” his young friend was doing among the bargemen, Mr. Bury was seized upon entering St. Roque’s itself for the first time after the consecration, when the young priest had arranged everything his own way, had a very bad effect on his health, and hastened his end. And it is indeed a fact that he died soon after, before he had time to issue the interdict he intended against Mr. Wentworth’s further exertions in the parish of Carlingford. Then came Mr. Proctor, who came into the town as if he had dropped from the skies, and knew no more about managing a parish than a baby; and under his exceptional incumbency Mr. Wentworth became more than ever necessary to the peace of the community. Now a new regime had been inaugurated. Mr. Morgan, a man whom Miss Wodehouse described as “in the prime of life,” newly married, with a wife also in the prime of life, who had waited for him ten years, and all that time had been under training for her future duties—two fresh, new, active, clergymanly intellects, entirely open to the affairs of the town, and intent upon general reformation and sound management—had just come into possession. The new Rector was making a great stir all about him, as was natural to a new man; and it seemed, on the whole, a highly doubtful business whether he and Mr. Wentworth would find Carlingford big enough to hold them both.

“We could not have expected to begin quite without difficulties,” said Mrs. Morgan, as she and her husband discussed the question in the drawing-room of the Rectory. It was a pretty drawing-room, though Mr. Proctor’s taste was not quite in accordance with the principles of the new incumbent’s wife: however, as the furniture was all new, and as the former rector had no further need for it, it was of course, much the best and most economical arrangement to take it as it stood—though the bouquets on the carpet were a grievance which nothing but her high Christian principles could have carried Mrs. Morgan through. She looked round as she spoke, and gave an almost imperceptible shake of her head: she, too, had her share of disagreeables. “It would not look like Christ’s work, dear,” said the clergyman’s wife, “if we had it all our own way.”

“My dear, I hope I am actuated by higher motives than a desire to have it all my own way,” said the Rector. “I always felt sure that Proctor would make a mess of any parish he took in hand, but I did not imagine he would have left it to anybody who pleased to work it. You may imagine what my feelings were today, when I came upon a kind of impromptu chapel in that wretched district near the canal. I thought it a Little Bethel, you know, of course; but instead of that, I find young Wentworth goes there Wednesdays and Fridays to do duty, and that there is service on Sunday evening, and I can’t tell what besides. It may be done from a good motive—but such a disregard of all constituted authority,” said the Rector, with involuntary vehemence, “can never, in my opinion, be attended by good results.”

“Mr. Wentworth, did you say?” said Mrs. Morgan, upon whose female soul the Perpetual Curate’s good looks and good manners had not been without a certain softening effect. “I am so sorry. I don’t wonder you are vexed; but don’t you think there must be some mistake, William? Mr. Wentworth is so gentlemanly and nice—and of very good family, too. I don’t think he would choose to set himself in opposition to the Rector. I think there must be some mistake.”

“It’s a very aggravating mistake, at all events,” said Mr. Morgan, rising and going to the window. It was, as we have said, a very pretty drawing-room, and the windows opened upon as pretty a bit of lawn as you could see, with one handsome cedar sweeping its dark branches majestically over delicious greensward; but some people did think it was too near George Street and the railway. Just at that moment a puff of delicate white vapour appeared over the wall, and a sudden express-train, just released from the cover of the station, sprang with a snort and bound across the Rector’s view, very imperfectly veiled by the lime-trees, which were thin in their foliage as yet. Mr. Morgan groaned and retreated—out of his first exaltation he had descended all at once, as people will do after building all their hopes upon one grand event, into great depression and vexation, when he found that, after all, this event did not change the face of existence, but indeed brought new proofs of mortality in the shape of special annoyances belonging to itself in its train. “On the whole,” said the Rector, who was subject to fits of disgust with things in general, “I am tempted to think it was a mistake coming to Carlingford; the drawbacks quite overbalance the advantages. I did hesitate, I remember—it must have been my better angel: that is, my dear,” he continued, recollecting himself, “I would have hesitated had it not been for you.”

Here there ensued a little pause. Mrs. Morgan was not so young as she had been ten years ago, all which time she had waited patiently for the Fellow of All Souls, and naturally these ten years and the patience had not improved her looks. There was a redness on her countenance nowadays which was not exactly bloom; and it stretched across her cheeks, and over the point of her nose, as she was painfully aware, poor lady. She was silent when she heard this, wondering with a passing pang whether he was sorry? But being a thoroughly sensible woman, and above indulging in those little appeals by which foolish ones confuse the calm of matrimonial friendship, she did not express the momentary feeling. “Yes, William,” she said, sympathetically, casting her eyes again on the objectionable carpet, and feeling that there were drawbacks even to her happiness as the wife of the Rector of Carlingford; “but I suppose every place has its disadvantages; and then there is such good society; and a town like this is the very place for your talents; and when affairs are in your own hands—”

“It is very easy talking,” said the vexed Rector. “Society and everybody would turn upon me if I interfered with Wentworth—there’s the vexation. The fellow goes about it as if he had a right. Why, there’s a Provident Society and all sorts of things going on, exactly as if it were his own parish. What led me to the place was seeing some ladies in grey cloaks—exactly such frights as you used to make yourself, my dear—flickering about. He has got up a sisterhood, I have no doubt; and to find all this in full operation in one’s own parish, without so much as being informed of it! and you know I don’t approve of sisterhoods—never did; they are founded on a mistake.”

“Yes, dear. I know I gave up as soon as I knew your views on that subject,” said Mrs. Morgan. “I daresay so will the ladies here. Who were they? Did you speak to them? or perhaps they belonged to St. Roque’s.”

“Nobody belongs to St. Roque’s,” said the Rector, contemptuously—“it has not even a district. They were the two Miss Wodehouses.”

Mrs. Morgan was moved to utter a little cry. “And their father is churchwarden!” said the indignant woman. “Really, William, this is too much—without even consulting you! But it is easy to see how that comes about. Lucy Wodehouse and young Wentworth are—; well, I don’t know if they are engaged—but they are always together, walking and talking, and consulting with each other, and so forth—a great deal more than I could approve of; but that poor elder sister, you know, has no authority—nor indeed any experience, poor thing,” said the Rector’s wife; “that’s how it is, no doubt.”

“Engaged!” said the Rector. He gave a kindly glance at his wife, and melted a little. “Engaged, are they? Poor little thing! I hope she’ll be as good as you have been, my dear; but a young man may be in love without interfering with another man’s parish. I can’t forgive that,” said Mr. Morgan, recovering himself; “he must be taught to know better; and it is very hard upon a clergyman,” continued the spiritual ruler of Carlingford, “that he cannot move in a matter like this without incurring a storm of godless criticism. If I were sending Wentworth out of my parish, I shouldn’t wonder if the Times had an article upon it, denouncing me as an indolent priest and bigot, that would neither work myself nor let my betters work; that’s how these fellows talk.”

“But nobody could say such things of you,” said Mrs. Morgan, firing up.

“Of me! they’d say them of St. Paul, if he had ever been in the circumstances,” said the Rector; “and I should just like to know what he would have done in a parish like this, with the Dissenters on one side, and a Perpetual Curate without a district meddling on the other. Ah, my dear,” continued Mr. Morgan, “I daresay they had their troubles in those days; but facing a governor or so now and then, or even passing a night in the stocks, is a very different thing from a showing-up in the Times, not to speak of the complications of duty. Let us go out and call at Folgate’s, and see whether he thinks anything can be done to the church.”

“Dear, you wouldn’t mind the Times if it were your duty?” said the Rector’s wife, getting up promptly to prepare for the walk.

“No, I suppose not,” said Mr. Morgan, not without a thrill of importance; “nor the stake,” he added, with a little laugh, for he was not without a sense of humour; and the two went out to the architect’s to ascertain the result of his cogitations over the church. They passed that sacred edifice in their way, and went in to gaze at it with a disgust which only an unhappy priest of high culture and aesthetic tastes, doomed to officiate in a building of the eighteenth century, of the churchwarden period of architecture, could fully enter into. “Eugh!” said Mr. Morgan, looking round upon the high pews and stifling galleries with an expressive contraction of his features—his wife looked on sympathetic; and it was at this unlucky moment that the subject of their late conference made his appearance cheerfully from behind the ugly pulpit, in close conference with Mr. Folgate. The pulpit was a three-storeyed mass, with the reading-desk and the clerk’s desk beneath—a terrible eyesore to the Rector and his wife.

“I can fancy the expediency of keeping the place in repair,” said the Curate of St. Roque’s, happy in the consciousness of possessing a church which, though not old, had been built by Gilbert Scott, and cheerfully unconscious of the presence of his listeners; “but to beautify a wretched old barn like this is beyond the imagination of man. Money can’t do everything,” said the heedless young man as he came lounging down the middle aisle, tapping contemptuously with his cane upon the high pew-doors. “I wonder where the people expected to go to who built Carlingford Church? Curious,” continued the young Anglican, stopping in mid career, “to think of bestowing consecration upon anything so hideous. What a pass the world must have come to, Folgate, when this erection was counted worthy to be the house of God! After all, perhaps it is wrong to feel so strongly about it. The walls are consecrated, though they are ugly; we can’t revoke the blessing. But no wonder it was an unchristian age.”

“We have our treasure in earthen vessels,” said Mr. Morgan, somewhat sternly, from where he stood, under shelter of the heavy gallery. Mr. Wentworth was shortsighted, like most people nowadays. He put up his glass hastily, and then hurried forward, perhaps just a little abashed. When he had made his salutations, however, he returned undismayed to the charge.

“It’s a great pity you have not something better to work upon,” said the dauntless Curate; “but it is difficult to conceive what can be done with such an unhallowed type of construction. I was just saying to Folgate—”

“There is a great deal of cant abroad on this subject,” said Mr. Morgan, interrupting the young oracle. “I like good architecture, but I don’t relish attributing moral qualities to bricks and mortar. The hallowing influence ought to be within. Mr. Folgate, we were going to call at your office. Have you thought of the little suggestions I ventured to make? Oh, the drawings are here. Mr. Wentworth does not approve of them, I suppose?” said the Rector, turning sternly round upon the unlucky Curate of St. Roque’s.

“I can only say I sympathise with you profoundly,” said young Wentworth, with great seriousness. “Such a terrible church must be a great trial. I wish I had any advice worth offering; but it is my hour for a short service down at the canal, and I can’t keep my poor bargees waiting. Good morning. I hope you’ll come and give us your countenance, Mrs. Morgan. There’s no end of want and trouble at Wharfside.”

“Is Mr. Wentworth aware, I wonder, that Wharfside is in the parish of Carlingford?” said the Rector, with involuntary severity, as the young priest withdrew calmly to go to his “duty.” Mr. Folgate, who supposed himself to be addressed, smiled, and said, “Oh yes, of course,” and unfolded his drawings, to which the clerical pair before him lent a disturbed attention. They were both in a high state of indignation by this time. It seemed indispensable that something should be done to bring to his senses an intruder so perfectly composed and at his ease.

II

Meanwhile Mr. Wentworth, without much thought of his sins, went down George Street, meaning to turn off at the first narrow turning which led down behind the shops and traffic, behind the comfort and beauty of the little town, to that inevitable land of shadow which always dogs the sunshine. Carlingford proper knew little about it, except that it increased the poor-rates, and now and then produced a fever. The minister of Salem Chapel was in a state of complete ignorance on the subject. The late Rector had been equally uninformed. Mr. Bury, who was Evangelical, had the credit of disinterring the buried creatures there about thirty years ago. It was an office to be expected of that much-preaching man; but what was a great deal more extraordinary, was to find that the only people now in Carlingford who knew anything about Wharfside, except overseers of the poor and guardians of the public peace, were the Perpetual Curate of St. Roque’s—who had nothing particular to do with it, and who was regarded by many sober-minded persons with suspicion as a dilettante Anglican, given over to floral ornaments and ecclesiastical upholstery—and some half-dozen people of the very élite of society, principally ladies residing in Grange Lane.

Mr. Wentworth came to a hesitating pause at the head of the turning which would have led him to Wharfside. He looked at his watch and saw there was half an hour to spare. He gave a wistful lingering look down the long line of garden-walls, pausing upon one point where the blossomed boughs of an apple-tree overlooked that enclosure.

There was quite time to call and ask if the Miss Wodehouses were going down to the service this afternoon; but was it duty? or, indeed, putting that question aside, was it quite right to compound matters with his own heart’s desire and the work he was engaged in, in this undeniable fashion? The young priest crossed the street very slowly, swinging his cane and knitting his brows as he debated the question. If it had been one of the bargemen bringing his sweetheart, walking with her along the side of the canal to which Spring and sweet Easter coming on, and Love, perhaps, always helpful of illusions, might convey a certain greenness and sentiment of nature—and echoing her soft responses to the afternoon prayers—perhaps the Curate might have felt that such devotion was not entirely pure and simple. But somehow, before he was aware of it, his slow footstep had crossed the line, and he found himself in Grange Lane, bending his steps towards Mr. Wodehouse’s door. For one thing, to be sure, the Canticles in the evening service could always be sung when Lucy’s sweet clear voice was there to lead the uncertain melody; and it was good to see her singing the “Magnificat” with that serious sweet face, “full of grace,” like Mary’s own. Thinking of that, Mr. Wentworth made his way without any further hesitation to the green door over which hung the apple-blossoms, totally untroubled in his mind as to what the reverend pair were thinking whom he had left behind him in the ugly church; and unconscious that his impromptu chapel at Wharfside, with its little carved reading-desk, and the table behind, contrived so as to look suspiciously like an altar, was a thorn in anybody’s side. Had his mind been in a fit condition at that moment to cogitate trouble, his thoughts would have travelled in a totally different direction, but in the meantime Mr. Wentworth was very well able to put aside his perplexities. The green door opened just as he reached it, and Lucy and her elder sister came out in those grey cloaks which the Rector had slandered. They were just going to Wharfside to the service, and of course they were surprised to see Mr. Wentworth, who did not knock at that green door more than a dozen times in a week, on the average. The Curate walked between the sisters on their way towards their favourite “district.” Such a position would scarcely have been otherwise than agreeable to any young man. Dear old Miss Wodehouse was the gentlest of chaperones. Old Miss Wodehouse people called her, not knowing why—perhaps because that adjective was sweeter than the harsh one of middle age which belonged to her; and then there was such a difference between her and Lucy. Lucy was twenty, and in her sweetest bloom. Many people thought with Mr. Wentworth that there were not other two such eyes in Carlingford. Not that they were brilliant or penetrating, but as blue as heaven, and as serene and pure. So many persons thought, and the Perpetual Curate among them. The grey cloak fell in pretty folds around that light elastic figure; and there was not an old woman in the town so tender, so helpful, so handy as Lucy where trouble was, as all the poor people knew. So the three went down Prickett’s Lane, which leads from George Street towards the canal—not a pleasant part of the town by any means; and if Mr. Wentworth was conscious of a certain haze of sunshine all round and about him, gliding over the poor pavement, and here and there transfiguring some baby bystander gazing open-mouthed at the pretty lady, could any reasonable man be surprised?

“I hope your aunts were quite well, Mr. Wentworth, when you heard from them last,” said Miss Wodehouse, “and all your people at home. In such a small family as ours, we should go out of our wits if we did not hear every day; but I suppose it is different where there are so many. Lucy, when she goes from home,” said the tender elder sister, glancing at her with a half-maternal admiration—“and she might always be visiting about if she liked—writes to me every day.”

“I have nobody who cares for me enough to write every week,” said the Curate, with a look which was for Lucy’s benefit. “I am not so lucky as you. My aunts are quite well, Miss Wodehouse, and they think I had better go up to town in May for the meetings,” added Mr. Wentworth, with a passing laugh; “and the rest of my people are very indignant that I am not of their way of thinking. There is Tom Burrows on the other side of the street; he is trying to catch your eye,” said the Curate, turning round upon Lucy; for the young man had come to such a pass that he could not address her in an ordinary and proper way like other people, but, because he dared not yet call her by her Christian name as if she belonged to him, had a strange rude way of indicating when he was speaking to her, by emphasis and action. It was singularly different from his usual good-breeding; but Lucy somehow rather liked it than otherwise. “He is not going to church for the sake of the service. He is going to please you. He has never forgotten what you did for that little boy of his; and, indeed, if you continue to go on so,” said Mr. Wentworth, lowering his voice, and more than ever bending his tall head to one side, “I shall have to put a stop to it somehow, for I am not prepared, whatever people say, to go in at once for public worship of the saints.”

“I am going in here to call,” said Lucy. She looked up very innocently in the Curate’s face. “I promised the poor sick woman in the back room to see her every day, and I could not get out any sooner. I daresay I shall be at the schoolroom before you begin. Goodbye just now,” said the young Sister of Mercy. She went off all at once on this provoking but unexceptionable errand, looking with calm eyes upon the dismay which overspread the expressive countenance of her spiritual guide. Mr. Wentworth stood looking after her for a moment, stunned by the unexpected movement. When he went on, truth compels us to own that a thrill of disgust had taken the place of that vague general sense of beatitude which threw beauty even upon Prickett’s Lane. The Curate gave but a sulky nod to the salutation of Tom Burrows, and walked on in a savage mood by the side of Miss Wodehouse, around whom no nimbus of ideal glory hovered.

“I am always afraid of its being too much for her, Mr. Wentworth,” said the anxious elder sister; “it upsets me directly; but then I never was like Lucy—I can’t tell where all you young people have learned it; we never used to be taught so in my day; and though I am twice as old as she is, I know I am not half so much good in the world,” said the kind soul, with a gentle sigh. “I should like to see you in a parish of your own, where you would have it all your own way. I hope Mr. Morgan won’t be meddling when he comes to have time for everything. I should almost think he would—though it seems unkind to say it—by his face.”

“I am doing nothing more than my duty,” said the Perpetual Curate, in morose tones. “This district was given into my hands by the late Rector. Mr. Morgan’s face does not matter to me.”

“But I should like to see you in a parish of your own,” said Miss Wodehouse, meaning to please him. “You know papa always says so. St. Roque’s is very nice, but—”

“If you wish me out of the way, Miss Wodehouse, I am sorry to say you are not likely to be gratified,” said the Curate, “for I have no more expectation of any preferment than you have. Such chances don’t come in everybody’s way.”

“But I thought your aunts, Mr. Wentworth—” said poor Miss Wodehouse, who unluckily did not always know when to stop.

“My aunts don’t approve of my principles,” answered Mr. Wentworth, who had his own reasons for speaking with a little asperity. “They are more likely to have me denounced at Exeter Hall. I will join you immediately. I must speak to these men across the street;” and the Curate accordingly walked into a knot of loungers opposite, with a decision of manner which Lucy’s desertion had helped him to. Miss Wodehouse, thus left alone, went on with lingering and somewhat doubtful steps. She was not used to being in “the district” by herself. It disturbed her mild, middle-aged habits to be left straying about here alone among all these poor people, whom she looked at half wistfully, half alarmed, feeling for them in her kind heart, but not at all knowing how to get at them as the young people did. The unruly children and gossiping mothers at the poor doors discomposed her sadly, and she was not near so sure that her grey cloak defended her from all rudeness as she pretended to be when assenting to the enthusiasm of Mr. Wentworth and Lucy. She made tremulous haste to get out of this scene, which she was not adapted for, to the shelter of the schoolroom, where, at least, she would be safe. “We never were taught so in my day,” she said to herself, with an unexpressed wonder which was right; but when she had reached that haven of shelter, was seized with a little panic for Lucy, and went out again and watched for her at the corner of the street, feeling very uncomfortable. It was a great relief to see her young sister coming down alert and bright even before she was joined by Mr. Wentworth, who had carried his point with the men he had been talking to. To see them coming down together, smiling to all those people at the doors who disturbed the gentle mind of Miss Wodehouse with mingled sentiments of sympathy and repulsion, bestowing nods of greeting here and there, pausing even to say a word to a few favoured clients, was a wonderful sight to the timid maiden lady at the corner of the street. Twenty years ago some such companion might have been by Miss Wodehouse’s side, but never among the poor people in Prickett’s Lane. Even with Lucy before her she did not understand it. As the two came towards her, other thoughts united with these in her kind soul. “I wonder whether anything will ever come of it?” she said to herself, and with that wandered into anxious reflections what this difference could be between Mr. Wentworth and his aunts: which cogitations, indeed, occupied her till the service began, and perhaps disturbed her due appreciation of it; for if Lucy and Mr. Wentworth got attached, as seemed likely, and Mr. Wentworth did not get a living, what was to come of it? The thought made this tenderhearted spectator sigh: perhaps she had some experience of her own to enlighten her on such a point. At least it troubled, with sympathetic human cares, the gentle soul which had lost the confidence of youth.

As for the two most immediately concerned, they thought nothing at all about aunts or livings. Whether it is the divine influence of youth, or whether the vague unacknowledged love which makes two people happy in each other’s presence carries with it a certain inspiration, this at least is certain, that there is an absolute warmth of devotion arrived at in such moments, which many a soul, no longer happy, would give all the world to reach. Such crowds and heaps of blessings fall to these young souls! They said their prayers with all their hearts, not aware of deriving anything of that profound sweet trust and happiness from each other, but expanding over all the rude but reverend worshippers around them, with an unlimited faith in their improvement, almost in their perfection. This was what the wondering looker-on, scarcely able to keep her anxieties out of her prayers, could not understand, having forgotten, though she did not think so, the exaltation of that time of youth, as people do. She thought it all their goodness that they were able to put away their own thoughts; she did not know it was in the very nature of those unexpressed emotions to add the confidence of happiness to their prayers.

And after a while they all separated and went away back into the world and the everyday hours. Young Wentworth and Lucy had not said a syllable to each other, except about the people in “the district,” and the Provident Society; and how that sober and laudable conversation could be called lovemaking, it would be difficult for the most ardent imagination to conceive. He was to dine with them that evening; so it was for but a very brief time that they parted when the Perpetual Curate left the ladies at the green door, and went away to his room, to attend to some other duties, before he arrayed himself for the evening. As for the sisters, they went in quite comfortably, and had their cup of tea before they dressed for dinner. Lucy was manager indoors as well as out. She was good for a great deal more than Miss Wodehouse in every practical matter. It was she who was responsible for the dinner, and had all the cares of the house upon her head. Notwithstanding, the elder sister took up her prerogative as they sat together in two very cosy easy-chairs, in a little room which communicated with both their bedchambers upstairs—a very cosy little odd room, not a dressing-room nor a boudoir, but something between the two, where the sisters had their private talks upon occasion, and which was consecrated by many a libation of fragrant tea.

“Lucy, my dear,” said Miss Wodehouse, whose gentle forehead was puckered with care, “I want to speak to you. I have not been able to get you out of my mind since ever we met Mr. Wentworth at the green door.”

“Was there any need for getting me out of your mind?” said smiling Lucy. “I was a safe enough inmate, surely. I wonder how often I am out of your mind, Mary dear, night or day.”

“That is true enough,” said Miss Wodehouse, “but you know that is not what I meant either. Lucy, are you quite sure you’re going on just as you ought—”

Here she made a troubled pause, and looked in the laughing face opposite, intent upon her with its startled eyes. “What have I done?” cried the younger sister. Miss Wodehouse shook her head with a great deal of seriousness.

“It always begins with laughing,” said the experienced woman; “but if it ends without tears it will be something new to me. It’s about Mr. Wentworth, Lucy. You’re always together, day after day; and, my dear, such things can’t go on without coming to something—what is to come of it? I have looked at it from every point of view, and I am sure I don’t know.”

Lucy flushed intensely red, of course, at the Curate’s name; perhaps she had not expected it just at that moment; but she kept her composure like a sensible girl as she was.

“I thought it was the other side that were questioned about their intentions,” she said. “Am I doing anything amiss? Mr. Wentworth is the Curate of St. Roque’s, and I am one of the district-visitors, and we can’t help seeing a great deal of each other so long as this work goes on at Wharfside. You wouldn’t like to stop a great work because we are obliged to see a good deal of—of one particular person?” said Lucy, with youthful virtue, looking at her sister’s face; at which tone and look Miss Wodehouse immediately faltered, as the culprit knew she must.

“No—oh no, no—to be sure not,” said the disturbed monitor. “When you say that, I don’t know how to answer you. It must be right, I suppose. I am quite sure it is wonderful to see such young creatures as you, and how you can tell the right way to set about it. But things did not use to be so in my young days. Girls dare not have done such things twenty years ago—not in Carlingford, Lucy,” said Miss Wodehouse; “and, dear, I think you ought to be a little careful, for poor Mr. Wentworth’s sake.”

“I don’t think Mr. Wentworth is in any particular danger,” said Lucy, putting down her cup, with a slight curve at the corners of her pretty mouth—“and it is quite time for you to begin dressing. You know you don’t like to be hurried, dear;” with which speech the young housekeeper got up from her easy-chair, gave her sister a kiss as she passed, and went away, singing softly, to her toilette. Perhaps there was a little flutter in Lucy’s heart as she bound it round with her favourite blue ribbons. Perhaps it was this that gave a certain startled gleam to her blue eyes, and made even her father remark them when she went downstairs—“It seems to me as if this child were growing rather pretty, Molly, eh? I don’t know what other people think,” said Mr. Wodehouse—and perhaps Mr. Wentworth, who was just being ushered into the drawing-room at the moment, heard the speech, for he, too, looked as if he had never found it out before. Luckily there was a party, and no opportunity for sentiment. The party was in honour of the Rector and his wife; and Mr. Wentworth could not but be conscious before the evening was over that he had done something to lose the favour of his clerical brother. There was a good deal of Church talk, as was natural, at the churchwarden’s table, where three clergymen were dining—for Mr. Morgan’s curate was there as well; and the Curate of St. Roque’s, who was slightly hot-tempered, could not help feeling himself disapproved of. It was not, on the whole, a satisfactory evening. Mr. Morgan talked rather big, when the ladies went away, of his plans for the reformation of Carlingford. He went into statistics about the poor, and the number of people who attended no church, without taking any notice of that “great work” which Mr. Wentworth knew to be going on at Wharfside. The Rector even talked of Wharfside, and of the necessity of exertion on behalf of that wretched district, with a studious unconsciousness of Mr. Wentworth; and all but declined to receive better information when Mr. Wodehouse proffered it. Matters were scarcely better in the drawing-room, where Lucy was entertaining everybody, and had no leisure for the Perpetual Curate. He took his hat with a gloomy sentiment of satisfaction when it was time to go away; but when the green door was closed behind him, Mr. Wentworth, with his first step into the dewy darkness, plunged headlong into a sea of thought. He had to walk down the whole length of Grange Lane to his lodging, which was in the last house of the row, a small house in a small garden, where Mrs. Hadwin, the widow of a whilom curate, was permitted by public opinion, on the score of her own unexceptionable propriety,1 to receive a lodger without loss of position thereby. It was moonlight, or rather it ought to have been moonlight, and no lamps were lighted in Grange Lane, according to the economical regulations of Carlingford; and as Mr. Wentworth pursued his way down the dark line of garden-walls, in the face of a sudden April shower which happened to be falling, he had full scope and opportunity for his thoughts.

These thoughts were not the most agreeable in the world. In the first place it must be remembered that for nearly a year past Mr. Wentworth had had things his own way in Carlingford. He had been more than rector, he had been archdeacon, or rather bishop, in Mr. Proctor’s time; for that good man was humble, and thankful for the advice and assistance of his young brother, who knew so much better than he did. Now, to be looked upon as an unauthorised workman, a kind of meddling, Dissenterish, missionising individual, was rather hard upon the young man. And then he thought of his aunts. The connection, imperceptible to an ignorant observer, which existed between the Miss Wentworths and Mr. Morgan, and Lucy, and many other matters interesting to their nephew, was a sufficiently real connection when you came to know it. That parish of his own which Miss Wodehouse had wished him—which would free the young clergyman from all trammels so far as his work was concerned; and would enable him to marry, and do everything for him—it was in the power of the Miss Wentworths to bestow; but they were Evangelical women, very public-spirited, and thinking nothing of their nephew in comparison with their duty; and he was at that time of life, and of that disposition, which, for fear of being supposed to wish to deceive them, would rather exaggerate and make a display of the difference of his own views. Not for freedom, not for Lucy, would the Perpetual Curate temporise and manage the matter; so the fact was that he stood at the present moment in a very perilous predicament. But for this family living, which was, with their mother’s property, in the hands of her co-heiresses, the three Miss Wentworths, young Frank Wentworth had not a chance of preferment in the world; for the respectable Squire his father had indulged in three wives and three families, and such a regiment of sons that all his influence had been fully taxed to provide for them. Gerald, the clergyman of the first lot, held the family living—not a very large one—which belonged to the Wentworths; and Frank, who was of the second, had been educated expressly with an eye to Skelmersdale, which belonged to his aunts. How he came at the end to differ so completely from these excellent ladies in his religious views is not our business just at present; but in the meantime matters were in a very critical position. The old incumbent of Skelmersdale was eighty, and had been ill all winter; and if the Miss Wentworths were not satisfied somehow, it was all over with their nephew’s hopes.

Such were the thoughts that occupied his mind as he walked down Grange Lane in the dark, past the tedious, unsympathetic line of garden-walls, with the rain in his face. The evening’s entertainment had stirred up a great many dormant sentiments. His influence in Carlingford had been ignored by this newcomer, who evidently thought he could do what he liked without paying any attention to the Curate of St. Roque’s; and, what was a great deal worse, he had found Lucy unapproachable, and had realised, if not for the first time, still with more distinctness than ever before, that she did not belong to him, and that he had no more right than any other acquaintance to monopolise her society. This last discovery was bitter to the young man—it was this that made him set his face to the rain, and his teeth, as if that could do any good. He had been happy in her mere society today, without entering into any of the terrible preliminaries of a closer connection. But now that was over. She did not belong to him, and he could not bear the thought. And how was she ever to belong to him? Not, certainly, if he was to be a Perpetual Curate of St. Roque’s, or anywhere else. He felt, in the misery of the moment, as if he could never go to that green door again, or walk by her sweet side to that service in which they had joined so lately. He wondered whether she cared, with a despairing pang of anxiety, through which for an instant a celestial gleam of consciousness leaped, making the darkness all the greater afterwards. And to think that three old ladies, of whom it was not in the nature of things that the young man could be profoundly reverent, should hold in their hands the absolute power of his life, and could determine whether it was to be sweet with hope and love, or stern, constrained, and impoverished, without Lucy or any other immediate light! What a strange anomaly this was which met him full in the face as he pursued his thoughts! If it had been his bishop, or his college, or any fitting tribunal—but his aunts! Mr. Wentworth’s ring at his own door was so much more hasty than usual that Mrs. Hadwin paused in the hall, when she had lighted her candle, to see if anything was the matter. The little neat old lady held up her candle to look at him as he came in, glistening all over with raindrops.

“I hope you are not wet, Mr. Wentworth,” she said. “It is only an April shower, and we want it so much in the gardens. And I hope you have had a nice party and a pleasant evening.”

“Thank you—pretty well,” said the Perpetual Curate, with less suavity than usual, and a sigh that nearly blew Mrs. Hadwin’s candle out. She saw he was discomposed, and therefore, with a feminine instinct, found more to say than usual before she made her peaceful way to bed. She waited while Mr. Wentworth lighted his candle too.

“Mr. Wodehouse’s parties are always pleasant,” she said. “I never go out, you know; but I like to hear of people enjoying themselves. I insist upon you going upstairs before me, Mr. Wentworth. I have so little breath to spare, and I take such a long time going up, that you would be tired to death waiting for me. Now, don’t be polite. I insist upon you going up first. Thank you. Now I can take my time.”

And she took her time accordingly, keeping Mr. Wentworth waiting on the landing to say good night to her, much to his silent exasperation. When he got into the shelter of his own sitting-room, he threw himself upon a sofa, and continued his thoughts with many a troubled addition. A young man, feeling in a great measure the world before him, conscious of considerable powers, standing on the very threshold of so much possible good and happiness—it was hideous to look up, in his excited imagination, and see the figures of these three old ladies, worse than Fates, standing across the prospect and barring the way.

And Lucy, meantime, was undoing her blue ribbons with a thrill of sweet agitation in her untroubled bosom. Perhaps Mary was right, and it was about coming to the time when this half-feared, half-hoped revelation could not be postponed much longer. For it will be perceived that Lucy was not in much doubt of young Wentworth’s sentiments. And then she paused in the dark, after she had said her prayers, to give one timid thought to the sweet life that seemed to lie before her so close at hand—in which, perhaps, he and she were to go out together, she did not know where, for the help of the world and the comfort of the sorrowful; and not trusting herself to look much at that ideal, said another prayer, and went to sleep like one of God’s beloved, with a tear too exquisite to be shed brimming under her long eyelashes. At this crisis of existence, perhaps for once in her life, the woman has the best of it; for very different from Lucy’s were the thoughts with which the Curate sought his restless pillow, hearing the rain drip all the night, and trickle into Mrs. Hadwin’s reservoirs. The old lady had a passion for rainwater, and it was a gusty night.