The Perpetual Curate · Chapter 33 (1/2)

XXXIII

Mr. Wentworth had to go into Carlingford on some business when he left Miss Wodehouse; and as he went home again, having his head full of so many matters, he forgot for the moment what most immediately concerned himself, and was close upon Elsworthy’s shop, looking into the window, before he thought of it. Elsworthy himself was standing behind the counter, with a paper in his hand, from which he was expounding something to various people in the shop. It was getting late, and the gas was lighted, which threw the interior into very bright relief to Mr. Wentworth outside. The Curate was still only a young man, though he was a clergyman, and his movements were not always guided by reason or sound sense. He walked into the shop, almost before he was aware what he was doing. The people were inconsiderable people enough⁠—cronies of Elsworthy⁠—but they were people who had been accustomed to look up very reverentially to the Curate of St. Roque’s and Mr. Wentworth was far from being superior to their disapproval. There was a very visible stir among them as he entered, and Elsworthy came to an abrupt stop in his elucidations, and thrust the paper he had been reading into a drawer. Dead and sudden silence followed the entrance of the Curate. Peter Hayles, the druggist, who was one of the auditors, stole to the door with intentions of escape, and the women, of whom there were two or three, looked alarmed, not knowing what might come of it. As for Mr. Wentworth, there was only one thing possible for him to say. “Have you heard anything of Rosa, Elsworthy?” he asked, with great gravity, fixing his eyes upon the man’s face. The question seemed to ring into all the corners. Whether it was innocence or utter abandonment nobody could tell, and the spectators held their breath for the answer. Elsworthy, for his part, was as much taken by surprise as his neighbours. He grew very pale and livid in his sudden excitement, and lost his voice, and stood staring at the Curate like a man struck dumb. Perhaps Mr. Wentworth got bolder when he saw the effect he had produced. He repeated the question, looking towards poor Mrs. Elsworthy, who had jumped from her husband’s side when he came in. The whole party looked like startled conspirators to Mr. Wentworth’s eyes, though he had not the least idea what they had been doing. “Have you heard anything of Rosa?” he asked again; and everybody looked at Elsworthy, as if he were the guilty man, and had suborned the rest; which, indeed, in one sense, was not far from being the case.

When Elsworthy came to himself, he gave Mr. Wentworth a sidelong dangerous look. “No, sir⁠—nothing,” said Rosa’s uncle. “Them as has hidden her has hidden her well. I didn’t expect to hear not yet,” said Elsworthy. Though Mr. Wentworth did not know what he meant, his little audience in the shop did, and showed, by the slightest murmur in the world, their conviction that the arrow had gone home, which naturally acted like a spur upon the Curate, who was not the wisest man in the world.

“I am very sorry to see you in so much distress,” said the young man, looking at Mrs. Elsworthy’s red eyes, “but I trust things will turn out much better than you imagine. If I can do anything to help you, let me know,” said Mr. Wentworth. Perhaps it was foolish to say so much, knowing what he did, but unfortunately prudence was not the ruling principle at that moment in the Curate’s soul.

“I was a-thinking of letting you know, sir,” said the clerk of St. Roque’s, with deadly meaning; “leastways not me, but them as has taken me by the hand. There’s every prospect as it’ll all be known afore long,” said Elsworthy, pushing his wife aside and following Mr. Wentworth, with a ghastly caricature of his old obsequiousness, to the door. “There’s inquiries a-being made as was never known to fail. For one thing, I’ve written to them as knows a deal about the movements of a party as is suspected⁠—not to say as I’ve got good friends,” said Rosa’s guardian, standing upon the step of his own door, and watching the Curate out into the darkness. Mr. Wentworth could not altogether restrain a slight thrill of unpleasant emotion, for Elsworthy, standing at his door with the light gleaming over him from behind, and his face invisible, had an unpleasant resemblance to a wild beast waiting for his prey.

“I am glad to think you are likely to be so successful. Send me word as soon as you know,” said the Curate, and he pursued his way home afterwards, with feelings far from pleasant. He saw something was about to come of this more than he had thought likely, and the crisis was approaching. As he walked rapidly home, he concluded within himself to have a conversation with the Rector next day after Mr. Wodehouse’s funeral, and to ask for an investigation into the whole matter. When he had come to this conclusion, he dismissed the subject from his mind as far as was possible, and took to thinking of the other matters which disturbed his repose, in which, indeed, it was very easy to get perplexed and bewildered to his heart’s content. Anyhow, one way and another, the day of poor Mr. Wodehouse’s funeral must necessarily be an exciting and momentous day.

Mr. Wentworth had, however, no idea that its interest was to begin so early. When he was seated at breakfast reading his letters, a note was brought to him, which, coming in the midst of a lively chronicle of home news from his sister Letty, almost stopped for the moment the beating of the Curate’s heart. It took him so utterly by surprise, that more violent sentiments were lost for the moment in mere wonder. He read it over twice before he could make it out. It was from the Rector, and notwithstanding his wife’s remonstrances, and his own qualms of doubt and uncertainty, this was what Mr. Morgan said:⁠—

Dear Sir⁠—It is my painful duty to let you know that certain rumours have reached my ears very prejudicial to your character as a clergyman, and which I understand to be very generally current in Carlingford. Such a scandal, if not properly dealt with, is certain to have an unfavourable effect upon the popular mind, and injure the clergy in the general estimation⁠—while it is, as I need not point out to you, quite destructive of your own usefulness. Under the circumstances, I have thought it my duty, as Rector of the parish, to take steps for investigating these reports. Of course I do not pretend to any authority over you, nor can I enforce in any way your participation in the inquiry or consent to it; but I beg to urge upon you strongly, as a friend, the advantage of assenting freely, that your innocence (if possible) may be made apparent, and your character cleared. I enclose the names of the gentlemen whose assistance I intend to request for this painful duty, in case you should object to any of them; and would again urge you, for your own sake, the expediency of concurrence. I regret to say that, though I would not willingly prejudge any man, much less a brother clergyman, I do not feel that it would be seemly on my part, under the circumstances, to avail myself of your assistance today in the burial-service for the late Mr. Wodehouse.⁠—Believe me, very sincerely yours,

When Mr. Wentworth looked up from this letter, he caught sight of his face in the mirror opposite, and gazed into his own eyes like a man stupefied. He had not been without vexations in eight-and-twenty years of a not uneventful life, but he had never known anything like the misery of that moment. It was nearly four hours later when he walked slowly up Grange Lane to the house, which before night might own so different a master, but he had found as yet no time to spare for the Wodehouses⁠—even for Lucy⁠—in the thoughts which were all occupied by the unlooked-for blow. Nobody could tell, not even himself, the mental discipline he had gone through before he emerged, rather stern, but perfectly calm, in the sunshine in front of the closed-up house. If it was not his to meet the solemn passenger at the gates with words of hope, at least he could do a man’s part to the helpless who had still to live; but the blow was cruel, and all the force of his nature was necessary to sustain it. All Carlingford knew, by the evidence of its senses, that Mr. Wentworth had been a daily visitor of the dead, and one of his most intimate friends, and nobody had doubted for a moment that to him would be assigned as great a portion of the service as his feelings permitted him to undertake. When the bystanders saw him join the procession, a thrill of surprise ran through the crowd; but nobody⁠—not even the man who walked beside him⁠—ventured to trifle with the Curate’s face so far as to ask why. The Grand Inquisitor himself, if such a mythical personage exists any longer, could not have invented a more delicate torture than that which the respectable and kindhearted Rector of Carlingford inflicted calmly, without knowing it, upon the Curate of St. Roque’s. How was Mr. Morgan to know that the sting would go to his heart? A Perpetual Curate without a district has nothing to do with a heart so sensitive. The Rector put on his own robes with a peaceful mind, feeling that he had done his duty, and, with Mr. Leeson behind him, came to the church door with great solemnity to meet the procession. He read the words which are so sweet and so terrible with his usual reading-desk voice as he read the invitations every Sunday. He was a good man, but he was middle-aged, and not accessible to impression from the mere aspect of death; and he did not know Mr. Wodehouse, nor care much for anything in the matter, except his own virtue in excluding the Perpetual Curate from any share in the service. Such was the Rector’s feeling in respect to this funeral, which made so much commotion in Carlingford. He felt that he was vindicating the purity of his profession as he threaded his way through the pathetic hillocks, where the nameless people were lying, to poor Mr. Wodehouse’s grave.

This, however, was not the only thing which aroused the wonder and interest of the townspeople when the two shrinking, hooded female figures, all black and unrecognisable, rose up trembling to follow their dead from the church to the grave. Everybody saw with wonder that their place was contested, and that somebody else, a man whom no one knew, thrust himself before them, and walked alone in the chief mourner’s place. As for Lucy, who, through her veil and her tears, saw nothing distinctly, this figure, which she did not know, struck her only with a vague astonishment. If she thought of it at all, she thought it a mistake, simple enough, though a little startling, and went on, doing all she could to support her sister, saying broken prayers in her heart, and far too much absorbed in the duty she was performing to think who was looking on, or to be conscious of any of the attending circumstances, except Mr. Morgan’s voice, which was not the voice she had expected to hear. Miss Wodehouse was a great deal more agitated than Lucy. She knew very well who it was that placed himself before her, asserting his own right without offering any help to his sisters; and vague apprehensions, which she herself could not understand, came over her just at the moment when she required her strength most. As there were no other relations present, the place of honour next to the two ladies had been tacitly conceded to Mr. Proctor and Mr. Wentworth; and it was thus that the Curate rendered the last service to his old friend. It was a strange procession, and concentrated in itself all that was most exciting in Carlingford at the moment. Everybody observed and commented upon the strange man, who, all remarkable and unknown, with his great beard and sullen countenance, walked by himself as chief mourner. Who was he? and whispers arose and ran through the outskirts of the crowd of the most incredible description. Some said he was an illegitimate son whom Mr. Wodehouse had left all his property to, but whom the ladies knew nothing of; some that it was a strange cousin, whom Lucy was to be compelled to marry or lose her share; and after a while people compared notes, and went back upon their recollections, and began to ask each other if it was true that Tom Wodehouse died twenty years ago in the West Indies? Then behind the two ladies⁠—poor ladies, whose fate was hanging in the balance, though they did not know it⁠—came Mr. Wentworth in his cap and gown, pale and stern as nobody ever had seen him before in Carlingford, excluded from all share in the service, which Mr. Leeson, in a flutter of surplice and solemnity, was giving his valuable assistance in. The churchyard at Carlingford had not lost its semi-rural air though the town had increased so much, for the district was very healthy, as everybody knows, and people did not die before their time, as in places less favoured. The townspeople, who knew Mr. Wodehouse so well, lingered all about among the graves, looking with neighbourly, calm regret, but the liveliest curiosity. Most of the shopkeepers at that end of George Street had closed their shops on the mournful occasion, and felt themselves repaid. As for Elsworthy, he stood with a group of supporters round him, as near as possible to the funeral procession; and farther off in the distance, under the trees, was a much more elegant spectator⁠—an unlikely man enough to assist at such a spectacle, being no less a person than Jack Wentworth, in the perfection of an English gentleman’s morning apparel, perfectly at his ease and indifferent, yet listening with close attention to all the scraps of talk that came in his way. The centre of all this wondering, curious crowd, where so many passions and emotions and schemes and purposes were in full tide, and life was beating so strong and vehement, was the harmless dead, under the heavy pall which did not veil him so entirely from the living as did the hopes and fears and curious speculations which had already sprung up over him, filling up his place. Among the whole assembly there was not one heart really occupied by thoughts of him, except that of poor Lucy, who knew nothing of all the absorbing anxieties and terrors that occupied the others. She had still a moment’s leisure for her natural grief. It was all she could do to keep upright and support her sister, who had burdens to bear which Lucy knew nothing of; but still, concealed under her hood and veil, seeing nothing but the grave before her, hearing nothing but the sacred words and the terrible sound of “dust to dust,” the young creature stood steadfast, and gave the dead man who had loved her his due⁠—last offering of nature and love, sweeter to anticipate than any honours. Nobody but his child offered to poor Mr. Wodehouse that last right of humanity, or made his grave sacred with natural tears.

When they went back sadly out of all that blinding sunshine into the darkened house, it was not all over, as poor Lucy had supposed. She had begun to come to herself and understand once more the looks of the people about her, when the old maid, who had been the attendant of the sisters during all Lucy’s life, undid her wrappings, and in her agitation of the moment kissed her white cheek, and held her in her arms. “Oh, Miss Lucy, darling, don’t take on no more than you can help. I’m sore, sore afeared that there’s a deal of trouble afore you yet,” said the weeping woman. Though Lucy had not the smallest possible clue to her meaning, and was almost too much worn out to be curious, she could not help a vague thrill of alarm. “What is it, Alland?” she said, rising up from the sofa on which she had thrown herself. But Alland could do nothing but cry over her nursling and console her. “Oh, my poor dear! oh, my darling! as he never would have let the wind of heaven to blow rough upon her!” cried the old servant. And it was just then that Miss Wodehouse, who was trembling all over hysterically, came into the room.