The Perpetual Curate
The Miss Wentworths were in the very best sitting-room which the Blue Boar contained – the style in which they travelled, with a man and two maids, was enough to secure that; and the kitchen of that respectable establishment was doing its very best to send up a dinner worthy of "a party as had their own man to wait." The three ladies greeted their nephew with varying degrees of enthusiasm. The eldest, Miss Wentworth, from whom he took his second name Cecil, did not rise from her chair, but nevertheless kissed him in an affectionate dignified way when he was brought to her. As for aunt Dora, she ran into her dear Frank's arms, and in the very moment of that embrace whispered in his ear the expression of her anxiety, and the panic which always followed those rash steps which she was in the habit of taking. "Oh, my dear, I hope you don't think I'm to blame," she said, with her lips at his ear, and gained but cold comfort from the Curate's face. The alarming member of the party was Miss Leonora. She rose and made two steps forward to meet the unfortunate young man. She shook both his hands cordially, and said she was very glad to see him, and hoped he was well. She was the sensible sister of the three, and no doubt required all the sense she had to manage her companions. Miss Wentworth, who had been very pretty in her youth, was now a beautiful old lady, with snow-white hair and the most charming smile; and Miss Dora, who was only fifty, retained the natural colour of her own scanty light-brown locks, which wavered in weak-minded ringlets over her cheeks; but Miss Leonora was iron-grey, without any complexion in particular, and altogether a harder type of woman. It was she who held in her hands the fate of Skelmersdale and of Frank Wentworth. Her terrible glance it was which he had imagined gleaming fierce upon his lilies – Lucy's lilies, his Easter decorations. It was by her side the alarmed Curate was made to sit down. It was she who took the foot of the table, and was the gentleman of the house. Her voice was of that class of voice which may be politely called a powerful contralto. Every way she was as alarming a critic as ever was encountered by a Perpetual Curate, or any other young man in trouble. Mr Wentworth said feebly that this was a very unexpected pleasure, as he met his aunt Leonora's eye.
"I hope it is a pleasure," said that penetrating observer. "To tell the truth, I did not expect it would be; but your aunt Dora thought so, and you know, when she sets her heart on anything, nobody can get any peace. Not that your aunt Cecilia and I would have come on that account, if we had not wished, for many reasons, to have some conversation with you, and see how you are getting on."
"Quite so, Leonora," said Miss Wentworth, smiling upon her nephew, and leaning back in her chair.
Then there was a little pause; for, after such a terrible address, it was not to be expected that the poor man, who understood every word of it, could repeat his commonplace about the unlooked-for pleasure. Miss Dora of course seized the opportunity to rush in.
"We have been hearing such delightful things about you, my dear, from the people of the house. Leonora is so pleased to hear how you are labouring among the people, and doing your Master's work. We take all the happiness to ourselves, because, you know, you are our boy, Frank," said the anxious aunt, all her thin ringlets, poor lady, trembling with her eagerness to make everything comfortable for her favourite; "and we have come, you know, specially to hear you on Easter Sunday in your own church. I am looking forward to a great treat: to think I should never have heard you, though it is so long since you were ordained! None of us have ever heard you – not even Leonora; but it is such a pleasure to us all to know you are so much liked in Carlingford," cried the troubled woman, growing nervous at sight of the unresponsive quiet around her. Miss Leonora by no means replied to the covert appeals thus made to her. She left her nephew and her sister to keep up the conversation unassisted; and as for Miss Wentworth, conversation was not her forte.
"I'm afraid, aunt, you will not hear anything worth such a long journey," said Mr Wentworth, moved, like a rash young man as he was, to display his colours at once, and cry no surrender. "I don't think an Easter Sunday is a time for much preaching; and the Church has made such ample provision for the expression of our sentiments. I am more of a humble priest than an ambitious preacher," said the young man, with characteristic youthful pretence of the most transparent kind. He looked in Miss Leonora's face as he spoke. He knew the very name of priest was an offence in its way to that highly Evangelical woman; and if they were to come to single combat, better immediately than after intolerable suspense and delay.
"Perhaps, Dora, you will postpone your raptures about Frank's sermon – which may be a very indifferent sermon, as he says, for anything we can tell – till after dinner," said Miss Leonora. "We're all very glad to see him; and he need not think any little ill-tempered speeches he may make will disturb me. I daresay the poor boy would be glad to hear of some of the people belonging to him instead of all that nonsense. Come to dinner, Frank. Take the other side of the table, opposite Dora; and now that you've said grace, I give you full leave to forget that you're a clergyman for an hour at least. We were down at the old Hall a week ago, and saw your father and the rest. They are all well; and the last boy is rather like you, if you will think that any compliment. Mrs Wentworth is pleased, because you are one of the handsome ones, you know. Not much fear of the Wentworths dying out of the country yet awhile. Your father is getting at his wit's end, and does not know what to do with Cuthbert and Guy. Three sons are enough in the army, and two at sea; and I rather think it's as much as we can stand," continued Miss Leonora, not without a gleam of humour in her iron-grey eyes, "to have two in the Church."
"That is as it may happen," said the Perpetual Curate, with a little spirit. "If the boys are of my way of thinking, they will consider the Church the highest of professions; but Guy and Cuthbert must go to Australia, I suppose, like most other people, and take their chance – no harm in that."
"Not a bit of harm," said the rich aunt; "they're good boys enough, and I daresay they'll get on. As for Gerald, if you have any influence with your brother, I think he's in a bad way. I think he has a bad attack of Romishness coming on. If you are not in that way yourself," said Miss Leonora, with a sharp glance, "I think you should go and see after Gerald. He is the sort of man who would do anything foolish, you know. He doesn't understand what prudence means. Remember, I believe he is a good Christian all the same. It's very incomprehensible; but the fact is, a man may be a very good Christian, and have the least quality of sense that is compatible with existence. I've seen it over and over again. Gerald's notions are idiocy to me," said the sensible but candid woman, shrugging her shoulders; "but I can't deny that he's a good man, for all that."
"He is the best man I ever knew," said young Wentworth, with enthusiasm.
"Quite so, Frank," echoed aunt Cecilia, with her sweet smile: it was almost the only conversational effort Miss Wentworth ever made.
"But it is so sad to see how he's led away," said Miss Dora; "it is all owing to the bad advisers young men meet with at the universities; and how can it be otherwise as long as tutors and professors are chosen just for their learning, without any regard to their principles? What is Greek and Latin in comparison with a pious guide for the young? We would not have to feel frightened, as we do so often, about young men's principles," continued aunt Dora, fixing her eyes with warning significance on her nephew, and trying hard to open telegraphic communications with him, "if more attention was paid at the universities to give them sound guidance in their studies. So long as you are sound in your principles, there is no fear of you," said the timid diplomatist, trying to aid the warning look of her eyes by emphasis and inflection. Poor Miss Dora! it was her unlucky fate, by dint of her very exertions in smoothing matters, always to make things worse.
"He would be a bold man who would call those principles unsound which have made my brother Gerald what he is," said, with an affectionate admiration that became him, the Curate of St Roque's.
"It's a slavish system, notwithstanding Gerald," said Miss Leonora, with some heat; "and a false system, and leads to Antichrist at the end and nothing less. Eat your dinner, Frank – we are not going to argue just now. We expected to hear that another of the girls was engaged before we came away, but it has not occurred yet. I don't approve of young men dancing about a house for ever and ever, unless they mean something. Do you?"
Mr Wentworth faltered at this question; it disturbed his composure more than anything that had preceded it. "I – really I don't know," he said, after a pause, with a sickly smile – of which all three of his aunts took private notes, forming their own conclusions. It was, as may well be supposed, a very severe ordeal which the poor young man had to go through. When he was permitted to say good-night, he went away with a sensation of fatigue more overpowering than if he had visited all the houses in Wharfside. When he passed the green door, over which the apple-tree rustled in the dark, it was a pang to his heart. How was he to continue to live – to come and go through that familiar road – to go through all the meetings and partings, when this last hopeless trial was over, and Lucy and he were swept apart as if by an earthquake? If his lips were sealed henceforward, and he never was at liberty to say what was in his heart, what would she think of him? He could not fly from his work because he lost Skelmersdale; and how was he to bear it? He went home with a dull bitterness in his mind, trying, when he thought of it, to quiet the aching pulses which throbbed all over him, with what ought to have been the hallowed associations of the last Lenten vigil. But it was difficult, throbbing as he was with wild life and trouble to the very finger-points, to get himself into the shadow of that rock-hewn grave, by which, according to his own theory, the Church should be watching on this Easter Eve. It was hard just then to be bound to that special remembrance. What he wanted at this moment was no memory of one hour, however memorable or glorious, not even though it contained the Redeemer's grave, but the sense of a living Friend standing by him in the great struggle, which is the essential and unfailing comfort of a Christian's life.
Next morning he went to church with a half-conscious, youthful sense of martyrdom, of which in his heart he was half ashamed. St Roque's was very fair to see that Easter morning. Above the communion-table, with all its sacred vessels, the carved oaken cross of the reredos was wreathed tenderly with white fragrant festoons of spring lilies, sweet Narcissus of the poets; and Mr Wentworth's choristers made another white line, two deep, down each side of the chancel. The young Anglican took in all the details of the scene on his way to the reading-desk as the white procession ranged itself in the oaken stalls. At that moment – the worst moment for such a thought – it suddenly flashed over him that, after all, a wreath of spring flowers or a chorister's surplice was scarcely worth suffering martyrdom for. This horrible suggestion, true essence of an unheroic age, which will not suffer a man to be absolutely sure of anything, disturbed his prayer as he knelt down in silence to ask God's blessing. Easter, to be sure, was lovely enough of itself without the garland, and Mr Wentworth knew well enough that his white-robed singers were no immaculate angel-band. It was Satan himself, surely, and no inferior imp, who shot that sudden arrow into the young man's heart as he tried to say his private prayer; for the Curate of St Roque's was not only a fervent Anglican, but also a young Englishman sans reproche, with all the sensitive, almost fantastic, delicacy of honour which belongs to that development of humanity; and not for a dozen worlds would he have sacrificed a lily or a surplice on this particular Easter, when all his worldly hopes hung in the balance. But to think at this crowning moment that a villanous doubt of the benefit of these surplices and lilies should seize his troubled heart! for just then the strains of the organ died away in lengthened whispers, and Miss Leonora Wentworth, severe and awful, swept up through the middle aisle. It was under these terrible circumstances that the Perpetual Curate, with his heart throbbing and his head aching, began to intone the morning service on that Easter Sunday, ever after a day so memorable in the records of St Roque's.
CHAPTER IV
Mr Wentworth's sermon on Easter Sunday was one which he himself long remembered, though it is doubtful whether any of his congregation had memories as faithful. To tell the truth, the young man put a black cross upon it with his blackest ink, a memorial of meaning unknown to anybody but himself. It was a curious little sermon, such as may still be heard in some Anglican pulpits. Though he had heart and mind enough to conceive something of those natural depths of divine significance and human interest, which are the very essence of the Easter festival, it was not into these that Mr Wentworth entered in his sermon. He spoke, in very choice little sentences, of the beneficence of the Church in appointing such a feast, and of all the beautiful arrangements she had made for the keeping of it. But even in the speaking, in the excited state of mind he was in, it occurred to the young man to see, by a sudden flash of illumination, how much higher, how much more catholic, after all, his teaching would have been, could he but have once ignored the Church, and gone direct, as Nature bade, to that empty grave in which all the hopes of humanity had been entombed. He saw it by gleams of that perverse light which seemed more Satanic than heavenly in the moments it chose for shining, while he was preaching his little sermon about the Church and her beautiful institution of Easter, just as he had seen the non-importance of his lily-wreath and surplices as he was about to suffer martyrdom for them. All these circumstances were hard upon the young man. Looking down straight into the severe iron-grey eyes of his aunt Leonora, he could not of course so much as modify a single sentence of the discourse he was uttering, no more than he could permit himself to slur over a single monotone of the service; but that sudden bewildering perception that he could have done so much better – that the loftiest High-Churchism of all might have been consistent enough with Skelmersdale, had he but gone into the heart of the matter – gave a bitterness to the deeper, unseen current of the Curate's thoughts.
Besides, it was terrible to feel that he could not abstract himself from personal concerns even in the most sacred duties. He was conscious that the two elder sisters went away, and that only poor aunt Dora, her weak-minded ringlets limp with tears, came tremulous to the altar rails. When the service was over, and the young priest was disrobing himself, she came to him and gave a spasmodic, sympathetic, half-reproachful pressure to his hand. "Oh, Frank, my dear, I did it for the best," said Miss Dora, with a doleful countenance; and the Perpetual Curate knew that his doom was sealed. He put the best face he could upon the matter, having sufficient doubts of his own wisdom to subdue the high temper of the Wentworths for that moment at least.
"What was it you did for the best?" said the Curate of St Roque's. "I suppose, after all, it was no such great matter hearing me as you thought; but I told you I was not an ambitious preacher. This is a day for worship, not for talk."
"Ah! yes," said Miss Dora; "but oh, Frank, my dear, it is hard upon me, after all my expectations. It would have been so nice to have had you at Skelmersdale. I hoped you would marry Julia Trench, and we should all have been so happy; and perhaps if I had not begged Leonora to come just now, thinking it would be so nice to take you just in your usual way – but she must have known sooner or later," said poor aunt Dora, looking wistfully in his face. "Oh, Frank, I hope you don't think I'm to blame."
"I never should have married Julia Trench," said the Curate, gloomily. He did not enter into the question of Miss Dora's guilt or innocence – he gave a glance at the lilies on the altar, and a sigh. The chances were he would never marry anybody, but loyalty to Lucy demanded instant repudiation of any other possible bride. "Where are you going, aunt Dora; back to the Blue Boar? or will you come with me?" he said, as they stood together at the door of St Roque's. Mr Wentworth felt as if he had caught the beginning threads of a good many different lines of thought, which he would be glad to be alone to work out.
"You'll come back with me to the inn to lunch?" said Miss Dora. "Oh, Frank, my dear, remember your Christian feelings, and don't make a breach in the family. It will be bad enough to face your poor dear father, after he knows what Leonora means to do; and I do so want to talk to you," said the poor woman, eagerly clinging to his arm. "You always were fond of your poor aunt Dora, Frank; when you were quite a little trot you used always to like me best; and in the holiday times, when you came down from Harrow, I used always to hear all your troubles. If you would only have confidence in me now!"
"But what if I have no troubles to confide?" said Mr Wentworth; "a man and a boy are very different things. Come, aunt Dora, I'll see you safe to your inn. What should I have to grumble about? I have plenty to do, and it is Easter; and few men can have everything their own way."
"You won't acknowledge that you're vexed," said aunt Dora, almost crying under her veil, "but I can see it all the same. You always were such a true Wentworth; but if you only would give in and say that you are disappointed and angry with us all, I could bear it better, Frank. I would not feel then that you thought it my fault! And oh, Frank, dear, you don't consider how disappointed your poor dear aunt Leonora was! It's just as hard upon us," she continued, pressing his arm in her eagerness, "as it is upon you. We had all so set our hearts on having you at Skelmersdale. Don't you think, if you were giving your mind to it, you might see things in a different light?" with another pressure of his arm. "Oh, Frank, what does it matter, after all, if the heart is right, whether you read the service in your natural voice, or give that little quaver at the end? I am sure, for my part – "
"My dear aunt," said Mr Wentworth, naturally incensed by this manner of description, "I must be allowed to say that my convictions are fixed, and not likely to be altered. I am a priest, and you are – a woman." He stopped short, with perhaps a little bitterness. It was very true she was a woman, unqualified to teach, but yet she and her sisters were absolute in Skelmersdale. He made a little gulp of his momentary irritation, and walked on in silence, with Miss Dora's kind wistful hand clinging to his arm.
"But, dear Frank among us Protestants, you know, there is no sacerdotal caste," said Miss Dora, opportunely recollecting some scrap of an Exeter Hall speech. "We are all kings and priests to God. Oh, Frank, it is Gerald's example that has led you away. I am sure, before you went to Oxford you were never at all a ritualist – even Leonora thought you such a pious boy; and I am sure your good sense must teach you – " faltered aunt Dora, trying her sister's grand tone.
"Hush, hush; I can't have you begin to argue with me; you are not my aunt Leonora," said the Curate, half amused in spite of himself. This encouraged the anxious woman, and, clasping his arm closer than ever, she poured out all her heart.
"Oh, Frank, if you could only modify your views a little! It is not that there is any difference between your views and ours, except just in words, my dear. Flowers are very pretty decorations, and I know you look very nice in your surplice; and I am sure, for my part, I should not mind – but then that is not carrying the Word of God to the people, as Leonora says. If the heart is right, what does it matter about the altar?" said aunt Dora, unconsciously falling upon the very argument that had occurred to her nephew's perplexed mind in the pulpit. "Even though I was in such trouble, I can't tell you what a happiness it was to take the sacrament from your hands, my dear, dear boy; and but for these flowers and things that could do nobody any good, poor dear Leonora, who is very fond of you, though perhaps you don't think it, could have had that happiness too. Oh, Frank, don't you think you could give up these things that don't matter? If you were just to tell Leonora you have been thinking it over, and that you see you've made a mistake, and that in future – "
"You don't mean to insult me?" said the young man. "Hush – hush; you don't know what you are saying. Not to be made Archbishop of Canterbury, instead of Vicar of Skelmersdale. I don't understand how you could suggest such a thing to me."
Miss Dora's veil, which she had partly lifted, here fell over her face, as it had kept doing all the time she was speaking – but this time she did not put it back. She was no longer able to contain herself, but wept hot tears of distress and vexation, under the flimsy covering of lace. "No, of course, you will not do it – you will far rather be haughty, and say it is my fault," said poor Miss Dora. "We have all so much pride, we Wentworths – and you never think of our disappointment, and how we all calculated upon having you at Skelmersdale, and how happy we were to be, and that you were to marry Julia Trench – "
It was just at this moment that the two reached the corner of Prickett's Lane. Lucy Wodehouse had been down there seeing the sick woman. She had, indeed, been carrying her dinner to that poor creature, and was just turning into Grange Lane, with her blue ribbons hidden under the grey cloak, and a little basket in her hand. They met full in the face at this corner, and Miss Dora's words reached Lucy's ears, and went through and through her with a little nervous thrill. She had not time to think whether it was pain or only surprise that moved her, and was not even self-possessed enough to observe the tremulous pressure of the Curate's hand, as he shook hands with her, and introduced his aunt. "I have just been to see the poor woman at No. 10," said Lucy. "She is very ill to-day. If you had time, it would be kind of you to see her. I think she has something on her mind."
"I will go there before I go to Wharfside," said Mr Wentworth. "Are you coming down to the service this afternoon? I am afraid it will be a long service, for there are all these little Burrowses, you know – "
"Yes, I am godmother," said Lucy, and smiled and gave him her hand again as she passed him while aunt Dora looked on with curious eyes. The poor Curate heaved a mighty sigh as he looked after the grey cloak. Not his the privilege now, to walk with her to the green door, to take her basket from the soft hand of the merciful Sister. On the contrary, he had to turn his back upon Lucy, and walk on with aunt Dora to the inn – at this moment a symbolical action which seemed to embody his fate.
"Where is Wharfside? and who are the little Burrowses? and what does the young lady mean by being godmother?" said aunt Dora. "She looks very sweet and nice; but what is the meaning of that grey cloak? Oh, Frank, I hope you don't approve of nunneries, and that sort of thing. It is such foolishness. My dear, the Christian life is very hard, as your aunt Leonora always says. She says she can't bear to see people playing at Christianity – "
"People should not speak of things they don't understand," said the Perpetual Curate. "Your Exeter-Hall men, aunt Dora, are like the old ascetics – they try to make a merit of Christianity by calling it hard and terrible; but there are some sweet souls in the world, to whom it comes natural as sunshine in May." And the young Anglican, with a glance behind him from the corner of his eye, followed the fair figure, which he believed he was never, with a clear conscience, to accompany any more. "Now, here is your inn," he said, after a little pause. "Wharfside is a district, where I am going presently to conduct service, and the little Burrowses are a set of little heathens, to whom I am to administer holy baptism this Easter Sunday. Good-bye just now."