The Perpetual Curate · Chapter 31 (2/2)

“I didn’t mean no harm, sir, I’m sure,” he said; “I don’t seem to see no other way o’ finding out; for I aint like a rich man as can go and come as he pleases; but I won’t say no more, since it’s displeasing to you. If you’d give me the list of names, sir, as you have decided on to be the committee, I wouldn’t trouble you no longer, seeing as you’ve got visitors. Perhaps, if the late Rector aint going away directly, he would take it kind to be put on the committee; and he’s a gentleman as I’ve a great respect for, though he wasn’t not to say the man for Carlingford,” said Elsworthy, with a sidelong look. He began to feel the importance of his own position as the originator of a committee, and at the head of the most exciting movement which had been for a long time in Carlingford, and could not help being sensible, notwithstanding his affliction, that he had a distinction to offer which even the late Rector might be pleased to accept.

“I don’t think Mr. Proctor will stay,” said Mr. Morgan; “and if he does stay, I believe he is a friend of Mr. Wentworth’s.” It was only after he had said this that the Rector perceived the meaning of the words he had uttered; then, in his confusion and vexation, he got up hastily from the table, and upset the inkstand in all the embarrassment of the moment. “Of course that is all the greater reason for having his assistance,” said Mr. Morgan, in his perplexity; “we are all friends of Mr. Wentworth. Will you have the goodness to ring the bell? There are few things more painful than to take steps against a brother clergyman, if one did not hope it would be for his benefit in the end. Oh, never mind the table. Be so good as to ring the bell again⁠—louder, please.”

“There aint nothing equal to blotting-paper, sir,” said Elsworthy, eagerly. “With a bit o’ blotting-paper I’d undertake to rub out ink-stains out o’ the finest carpet⁠—if you’ll permit me. It aint but a small speck, and it’ll be gone afore you could look round. It’s twenty times better nor lemon-juice, or them poisonous salts as you’re always nervous of leaving about. Look you here, sir, if it aint a-sopping up beautiful. There aint no harm done as your respected lady could be put out about; and I’ll take the list with me, if you please, to show to my wife, as is a-breaking her heart at home, and can’t believe as we’ll ever get justice. She says as how the quality always takes a gentleman’s part against us poor folks, but that aint been my experience. Don’t you touch the carpet, Thomas⁠—there aint a speck to be seen when the blotting-paper’s cleared away. I’ll go home, not to detain you no more, sir, and cheer up the poor heart as is a-breaking,” said Elsworthy, getting up from his knees where he had been operating upon the carpet. He had got in his hand the list of names which Mr. Morgan had put down as referees in this painful business, and it dawned faintly upon the Rector for the moment that he himself was taking rather an undignified position as Elsworthy’s partisan.

“I have no objection to your showing it to your wife,” said Mr. Morgan; “but I shall be much displeased if I hear any talk about it, Elsworthy; and I hope it is not revenge you are thinking of, which is a very unchristian sentiment,” said the Rector, severely, “and not likely to afford comfort either to her or to you.”

“No, sir, nothing but justice,” said Elsworthy, hoarsely, as he backed out of the room. Notwithstanding this statement, it was with very unsatisfactory sensations that Mr. Morgan went upstairs. He felt somehow as if the justice which Elsworthy demanded, and which he himself had solemnly declared to be pursuing the Curate of St. Roque’s, was wonderfully like revenge. “All punishment must be more or less vindictive,” he said to himself as he went upstairs; but that fact did not make him more comfortable as he went into his wife’s drawing-room, where he felt more like a conspirator and assassin than an English Rector in broad daylight, without a mystery near him, had any right to feel. This sensation confused Mr. Morgan much, and made him more peremptory in his manner than ever. As for Mr. Proctor, who was only a spectator, and felt himself on a certain critical eminence, the suggestion that occurred to his mind was, that he had come in at the end of a quarrel, and that the conjugal firmament was still in a state of disturbance: which idea acted upon some private projects in the hidden mind of the Fellow of All Souls, and produced a state of feeling little more satisfactory than that of the Rector of Carlingford.

“I hope Mr. Proctor is going to stay with us for a day or two,” said Mrs. Morgan. “I was just saying it must look like coming home to come to the house he used to live in, and which was even furnished to his own taste,” said the Rector’s wife, shooting a little arrow at the late Rector, of which that good man was serenely unconscious. All this time, while they had been talking, Mrs. Morgan had scarcely been able to keep from asking who could possibly have suggested such a carpet. Mr. Proctor’s chair was placed on the top of one of the big bouquets, which expanded its large foliage round him with more than Eastern prodigality⁠—but he was so little conscious of any culpability of his own in the matter, that he had referred his indignant hostess to one of the leaves as an illustration of the kind of diaper introduced into the new window which had lately been put up in the chapel of All Souls. “A naturalistic treatment, you know,” said Mr. Proctor, with the utmost serenity; “and some people objected to it,” added the unsuspicious man.

“I should have objected very strongly,” said Mrs. Morgan, with a little flush. “If you call that naturalistic treatment, I consider it perfectly out of place in decoration⁠—of every kind⁠—” Mr. Proctor happened to be looking at her at the moment, and it suddenly occurred to him that Miss Wodehouse never got red in that uncomfortable way, which was the only conclusion he drew from the circumstance, having long ago forgotten that any connection had ever existed between himself and the carpet on the drawing-room in Carlingford Rectory. He addressed his next observation to Mr. Morgan, who had just come in.

“I saw Mr. Wodehouse’s death in the Times,” said Mr. Proctor, “and I thought the poor young ladies might feel⁠—at least they might think it a respect⁠—or, at all events, it would be a satisfaction to one’s self,” said the late Rector, who had got into a mire of explanation. “Though he was far from being a young man, yet having a young daughter like Miss Lucy⁠—”

“Poor Lucy!” said Mr. Morgan. “I hope that wretched fellow, young Wentworth”⁠—and here the Rector came to a dead stop, and felt that he had brought the subject most to be avoided head and shoulders into the conversation, as was natural to an embarrassed man. The consequence was that he got angry, as might have been expected. “My dear, you must not look at me as you do. I have just been hearing all the evidence. No unbiased mind could possibly come to any other decision,” said Mr. Morgan, with exasperation. Now that he had committed himself, he thought it was much the best thing to go in for it wholly, without half measures, which was certainly the most straightforward way.

“What has happened to Wentworth?” said Mr. Proctor. “He is a young man for whom I have a great regard. Though he is so much younger than I am, he taught me some lessons while I was in Carlingford which I shall never forget. If he is in any trouble that I can help him in, I shall be very glad to do it, both for his sake and for⁠—” Mr. Proctor slurred over the end of his sentence a little, and the others were occupied with their own difficulties, and did not take very much notice⁠—for it was difficult to state fully the nature and extent of Mr. Wentworth’s enormities after such a declaration of friendship. “I met him on my way here,” said the Fellow of All Souls, “not looking quite as he used to do. I supposed it might be Mr. Wodehouse’s death, perhaps.” All Mr. Proctor’s thoughts ran in that channel of Mr. Wodehouse’s death, which, after all, though sad enough, was not so great an event to the community in general as the late Rector seemed to suppose.

It was Mrs. Morgan at length who took heart to explain to Mr. Proctor the real state of affairs. “He has been a very good clergyman for five years,” said Mrs. Morgan; “he might behave foolishly, you know, about Wharfside, but then that was not his fault so much as the fault of the Rector’s predecessors. I am sure I beg your pardon, Mr. Proctor⁠—I did not mean that you were to blame,” said the Rector’s wife; “but, notwithstanding all the work he has done, and the consistent life he has led, there is nobody in Carlingford who is not quite ready to believe that he has run away with Rosa Elsworthy⁠—a common little girl without any education, or a single idea in her head. I suppose she is what you would call pretty,” said the indignant woman. “Everybody is just as ready to believe that he is guilty as if he were a stranger or a bad character.” Mrs. Morgan stopped in an abrupt manner, because her quick eyes perceived a glance exchanged between the two gentlemen. Mr. Proctor had seen a good deal of the world in his day, as he was fond of saying now and then to his intimate friends: and he had learned at the university and other places that a girl who is “what you would call pretty,” counts for a great deal in the history of a young man, whether she has any ideas in her head or not. He did not, any more than the people of Carlingford, pronounce at once on a priori evidence that Mr. Wentworth must be innocent. The Curate’s “consistent life” did not go for much in the opinion of the middle-aged Fellow of All Souls, any more than of the less dignified populace. He said, “Dear me, dear me!” in a most perplexed and distressed tone, while Mrs. Morgan kept looking at him; and looked very much as if he were tempted to break forth into lamentations over human nature, as Mr. Morgan himself had done.

“I wonder what the Miss Wodehouses think of it,” he said at last. “One would do a great deal to keep them from hearing such a thing; but I wonder how they are feeling about it,” said Mr. Proctor⁠—and clearly declined to discuss the matter with Mrs. Morgan, who was counsel for the defence. When the Rector’s wife went to her own room to dress for dinner, it is very true that she had a good cry over her cup of tea. She was not only disappointed, but exasperated, in that impatient feminine nature of hers. Perhaps if she had been less sensitive, she would have had less of that redness in her face which was so great a trouble to Mrs. Morgan. These two slow middle-aged men, without any intuitions, who were coming lumbering after her through all kind of muddles of evidence and argument, exasperated the more rapid woman. To be sure, they understood Greek plays a great deal better than she did; but she was penetrated with the liveliest impatience of their dullness all the same. Mrs. Morgan, however, like most people who are in advance of their age, felt her utter impotence against that blank wall of dull resistance. She could not make them see into the heart of things as she did. She had to wait until they had attacked the question in the orthodox way of siege, and made gradual entrance by dint of hard labour. All she could do to console herself was, to shed certain hot tears of indignation and annoyance over her tea, which, however, was excellent tea, and did her good. Perhaps it was to show her sense of superiority, and that she did not feel herself vanquished, that, after that, she put on her new dress, which was very much too nice to be wasted upon Mr. Proctor. As for Mr. Leeson, who came in as usual just in time for dinner, having heard of Mr. Proctor’s arrival, she treated him with a blandness which alarmed the Curate. “I quite expected you, for we have the All Souls pudding today,” said the Rector’s wife, and she smiled a smile which would have struck awe into the soul of any curate that ever was known in Carlingford.