The Perpetual Curate · Chapter 30 (1/2)

XXX

“I don’t know what is the exact connection between tea and reformation,” said Jack Wentworth, with a wonderful yawn. “When I consider that this is all on account of that stupid beast Wodehouse, I feel disposed to eat him. By the way, they have got a capital cook; I did not think such a cuisine was the sort of thing to be found in the bosom of one’s family, which has meant boiled mutton up to this moment, to my uninstructed imagination. But the old ladies are in a state of excitement which, I presume, is unusual to them. It appears you have been getting into scrapes like other people, though you are a parson. As your elder brother, my dear Frank⁠—”

“Look here,” said the Perpetual Curate; “you want to ask about Wodehouse. I will answer your questions, since you seem to have some interest in him; but I don’t speak of my private affairs to any but my intimate friends,” said Mr. Wentworth, who was not in a humour to be trifled with.

The elder brother shrugged his shoulders. “It is curious to remark the progress of the younger members of one’s family,” he said, reflectively. “When you were a little boy, you took your drubbings dutifully; but never mind, we’ve another subject in hand. I take an interest in Wodehouse, and so do you⁠—I can’t tell for what reason. Perhaps he is one of the intimate friends with whom you discuss your private affairs? but that is a matter quite apart from the subject. The thing is that he has to be taken care of⁠—not for his own sake, as I don’t need to explain to you,” said Jack. “I hear the old fellow died today, which was the best thing he could have done, upon the whole. Perhaps you can tell me how much he had, and how he has left it? We may have to take different sides, and the fellow himself is a snob; but I should like to understand exactly the state of affairs between you and me as gentlemen,” said the heir of the Wentworths. Either a passing spasm of compunction passed over him as he said the word, or it was the moon, which had just flung aside the last fold of cloud and burst out upon them as they turned back facing her. “When we know how the affair stands, we can either negotiate or fight,” he added, puffing a volume of smoke from his cigar. “Really a very fine effect⁠—that little church of yours comes well against that bit of sky. It looks like a Constable, or rather it would look like a Constable, thrusting up that bit of spire into the blue, if it happened to be daylight,” said Jack, making a tube of his hand, and regarding the picture with great interest. Miss Dora at her window beheld the movement with secret horror and apprehension, and took it for some mysterious sign.

“I know nothing about Mr. Wodehouse’s property,” said the Curate: “I wish I knew enough law to understand it. He has left no will, I believe;” and Mr. Wentworth watched his brother’s face with no small interest as he spoke.

“Very like a Constable,” said Jack, still with his hands to his eyes. “These clouds to the right are not a bad imitation of some effects of his. I beg your pardon, but Constable is my passion. And so old Wodehouse has left no will? What has he left? some daughters? Excuse my curiosity,” said the elder brother. “I am a man of the world, you know. If you like this other girl well enough to compromise yourself on her account (which, mind you, I think a great mistake), you can’t mean to go in at the same time for that pretty sister, eh? It’s a sort of sport I don’t attempt myself⁠—though it may be the correct thing for a clergyman, for anything I can tell to the contrary,” said the tolerant critic.

Mr. Wentworth had swallowed down the interruptions that rushed to his lips, and heard his brother out with unusual patience. After all, perhaps Jack was the only man in the world whom he could ask to advise him in such an emergency. “I take it for granted that you don’t mean to insult either me or my profession,” he said, gravely; “and, to tell the truth, here is one point upon which I should be glad of your help. I am convinced that it is Wodehouse who has carried away this unfortunate girl. She is a little fool, and he has imposed upon her. If you can get him to confess this, and to restore her to her friends, you will lay me under the deepest obligation,” said the Perpetual Curate, with unusual energy. “I don’t mind telling you that such a slander disables me, and goes to my heart.” When he had once begun to speak on the subject, he could not help expressing himself fully; and Jack, who had grown out of acquaintance with the nobler sentiments, woke up with a slight start through all his moral being to recognise the thrill of subdued passion and scorn and grief which was in his brother’s voice. Innocent Miss Dora, who knew no evil, had scarcely a doubt in her mind that Frank was guilty; but Jack, who scarcely knew what goodness was, acquitted his brother instantaneously, and required no other proof. Perhaps if he had been capable of any impression beyond an intellectual one, this little incident might, in Miss Dora’s own language, have “done him good.”

“So you have nothing to do with it?” he said, with a smile. “Wodehouse! but then the fellow hasn’t a penny. I see someone skulking along under the walls that looks like him. Hist! Smith⁠—Tom⁠—what do they call you? We want you here,” said Jack, upon whom the moon was shining full. When he stood in his evening coat and spotless breadth of linen, the heir of the Wentworths was ready to meet the eye of all the world. His shabby subordinate stopped short, with a kind of sullen admiration, to look at him. Wodehouse knew the nature of Jack Wentworth’s pursuits a great deal better than his brother did, and that some of them would not bear much investigation; but when he saw him stand triumphant in gorgeous apparel, fearing no man, the poor rascal, whom everybody kicked at, rose superior to his own misfortunes. He had not made much of it in his own person, but that life was not altogether a failure which had produced Jack Wentworth. He obeyed his superior’s call with instinctive fidelity, proud, in spite of himself, to be living the same life and sharing the same perils. When he emerged into the moonlight, his shaggy countenance looked excited and haggard. Notwithstanding all his experiences, he was not of a constitution which could deny nature. He had inflicted every kind of torture upon his father while living; but, notwithstanding, the fact of the death affected him. His eyes looked wilder than usual, and his face older and more worn, and he looked round him with a kind of clandestine skulking instinct as he came out of the shadow into the light.

This was the terrible conjunction which Miss Dora saw from her window. The anxious woman did not wait long enough to be aware that the Curate left the other two to such consultations as were inevitable between them, and went away very hastily to his own house, and to the work which still awaited him⁠—“When the wicked man turneth away from the evil of his ways, and doeth that which is lawful and right.” Mr. Wentworth, when he came back to it, sat for about an hour over his text before he wrote a single syllable. His heart had been wrung that day by the sharpest pangs which can be inflicted upon a proud and generous spirit. He was disposed to be bitter against all the world⁠—against the dull eyes that would not see, the dull ears that could shut themselves against all suggestions either of gratitude or justice. It appeared to him, on the whole, that the wicked man was every way the best off in this world, besides being wooed and besought to accept the blessings of the other. And the Curate was conscious of an irrepressible inclination to exterminate the human vermin who made the earth such an imbroglio of distress and misery; and was sore and wounded in his heart to feel how his own toils and honest purposes availed him nothing, and how all the interest and sympathy of bystanders went to the pretender. These sentiments naturally complicated his thoughts, and made composition difficult; not to say that they added a thrill of human feeling warmer than usual to the short and succinct sermon. It was not an emotional sermon, in the ordinary sense of the word; but it was so for Mr. Wentworth, who carried to an extreme point the Anglican dislike for pulpit exaggeration in all forms. The Perpetual Curate was not a natural orator. He had very little of the eloquence which gave Mr. Vincent so much success in the Dissenting connection during his short stay in Carlingford, which was a kind of popularity not much to the taste of the Churchman. But Mr. Wentworth had a certain faculty of concentrating his thoughts into the tersest expression, and of uttering in a very few words, as if they did not mean anything particular, ideas which were always individual, and often of distinct originality⁠—a kind of utterance which is very dear to the English mind. As was natural, there were but a limited amount of people able to find him out; but those who did so were rather fond of talking about the “restrained power” of the Curate of St. Roque’s.

Next morning was a glorious summer Sunday⁠—one of those days of peace on which this tired old earth takes back her look of innocence, and deludes herself with thoughts of Eden. To be sure, there were tumults enough going on over her surface⁠—vulgar merry-makings and noises, French drums beating, all kinds of discordant sounds going on here and there, by land and sea, under that tranquil impartial sun. But the air was very still in Carlingford, where you could hear the bees in the lime-blossoms as you went to church in the sunshine. All that world of soft air in which the embowered houses of Grange Lane lay beatified, was breathing sweet of the limes; but notwithstanding the radiance of the day, people were talking of other subjects as they came down under the shadow of the garden-walls to St. Roque’s. There was a great stream of people⁠—greater than usual; for Carlingford was naturally anxious to see how Mr. Wentworth would conduct himself in such an emergency. On one side of the way Mr. Wodehouse’s hospitable house, shut up closely, and turning all its shuttered windows to the light, which shone serenely indifferent upon the blank frames, stood silent, dumbly contributing its great moral to the human holiday; and on the other, Elsworthy’s closed shop, with the blinds drawn over the cheerful windows above, where little Rosa once amused herself watching the passengers, interposed a still more dreadful discordance. The Carlingford people talked of both occurrences with composure as they went to St. Roque’s. They were sorry, and shocked, and very curious; but that wonderful moral atmosphere of human indifference and self-regard which surrounds every individual soul, kept their feelings quite within bounds. Most people wondered much what Mr. Wentworth would say; whether he would really venture to face the Carlingford world; whether he would take refuge in a funeral sermon for Mr. Wodehouse; or how it was possible for him to conduct himself under such circumstances. When the greater part of the congregation was seated, Miss Leonora Wentworth, all by herself, in her iron-grey silk, which rustled like a breeze along the narrow passage, although she wore no crinoline, went up to a seat immediately in front, close to Mr. Wentworth’s choristers, who just then came trooping in in their white surplices, looking like angels of unequal height and equivocal reputation. Miss Leonora placed herself in the front row of a little group of benches arranged at the side, just where the Curate’s wife would have been placed, had he possessed such an appendage. She looked down blandly upon the many lines of faces turned towards her, accepting their inspection with perfect composure. Though her principles were Evangelical, Miss Leonora was still a Wentworth, and a woman. She had not shown any sympathy for her nephew on the previous night; but she had made up her mind to stand by him, without saying anything about her determination. This incident made a great impression on the mind of Carlingford. Most likely it interfered with the private devotions, from which a few heads popped up abruptly as she passed; but she was very devout and exemplary in her own person, and set a good example, as became the clergyman’s aunt.

Excitement rose very high in St. Roque’s when Mr. Wentworth came into the reading-desk, and Elsworthy, black as a cloud, became visible underneath. The clerk had not ventured to absent himself, nor to send a substitute in his place. Never, in the days when he was most devoted to Mr. Wentworth, had Elsworthy been more determined to accompany him through every particular of the service. They had stood together in the little vestry, going through all the usual preliminaries, the Curate trying hard to talk as if nothing had happened, the clerk going through all his duties in total silence. Perhaps there never was a church service in Carlingford which was followed with such intense interest by all the eyes and ears of the congregation. When the sermon came, it took Mr. Wentworth’s admirers by surprise, though they could not at the moment make out what it was that puzzled them. Somehow the perverse manner in which for once the Curate treated that wicked man who is generally made so much of in sermons, made his hearers slightly ashamed of themselves. As for Miss Leonora, though she could not approve of his sentiments, the thought occurred to her that Frank was not nearly so like his mother’s family as she had supposed him to be. When the service was over, she kept her place, steadily watching all the worshippers out, who thronged out a great deal more hastily than usual to compare notes, and ask each other what they thought. “I can’t fancy he looks guilty,” an eager voice here and there kept saying over and over. But on the whole, after they had got over the momentary impression made by his presence and aspect, the opinion of Carlingford remained unchanged; which was⁠—that, notwithstanding all the evidence of his previous life, it was quite believable that Mr. Wentworth was a seducer and a villain, and ought to be brought to condign punishment; but that in the meantime it was very interesting to watch the progress of this startling little drama; and that he himself, instead of merely being the Curate of St. Roque’s, had become a most captivating enigma, and had made churchgoing itself half as good as a play.