The Perpetual Curate · Chapter 41 (2/2)

“I was about to say that we have no second son,” she said, taking up the thread of her discourse where it had been interrupted. “Our duty is solely towards the Christian people. I do not pretend to be infallible,” said Miss Leonora, with a meek air of self-contradiction; “but I should be a very poor creature indeed, if, at my age, I did not know what I believed, and was not perfectly convinced that I am right. Consequently (though, I repeat, Mr. Shirley has chosen the most inconvenient moment possible for dying), it can’t be expected of me that I should appoint my nephew, whose opinions in most points are exactly the opposite of mine.”

“I wish, at least, you would believe what I say,” interrupted the Curate, impatiently. “There might have been some sense in all this three months ago; but if Skelmersdale were the highroad to everything desirable in the Church, you are all quite aware that I could not accept it. Stop, Gerald; I am not so disinterested as you think,” said Frank; “if I left Carlingford now, people would remember against me that my character had been called in question here. I can remain a perpetual curate,” said the young man, with a smile, “but I can’t tolerate any shadow upon my honour. I am sorry I came in at such an awkward moment. Good morning, aunt Leonora. I hope Julia Trench, when she has the Rectory, will always keep of your way of thinking. She used to incline a little to mine,” he said, mischievously, as he went away.

“Come back, Frank, presently,” said the Squire, whose attention had been distracted from his Times. Mr. Wentworth began to be tired of such a succession of exciting discussions. He thought if he had Frank quietly to himself he could settle matters much more agreeably; but the Times was certainly an accompaniment more tranquillising so far as a comfortable meal was concerned.

“He can’t come back presently,” said aunt Leonora. “You speak as if he had nothing to do; when, on the contrary, he has everything to do⁠—that is worth doing,” said that contradictory authority. “Come back to lunch, Frank; and I wish you would eat your breakfast, Dora, and not stare at me.”

Miss Dora had come down to breakfast as an invalid, in a pretty little cap, with a shawl over her dressing-gown. She had not yet got over her adventure and the excitement of Rosa’s capture. That unusual accident, and all the applauses of her courage which had been addressed to her since, had roused the timid woman. She did not withdraw her eyes from her sister, though commanded to do so; on the contrary, her look grew more and more emphatic. She meant to have made a solemn address, throwing off Leonora’s yoke, and declaring her intention, in this grave crisis of her nephew’s fortunes, of acting for herself; but her feelings were too much for Miss Dora. The tears came creeping to the corners of her eyes, and she could not keep them back; and her attempt at dignity broke down. “I am never consulted,” she said, with a gasp. “I don’t mean to pretend to know better than Leonora; but⁠—but I think it is very hard that Frank should be disappointed about Skelmersdale. You may call me as foolish as you please,” said Miss Dora, with rising tears, “I know everybody will say it is my fault; but I must say I think it is very hard that Frank should be disappointed. He was always brought up for it, as everybody knows; and to disappoint him, who is so good and so nice, for a fat young man, buttered all over like⁠—like⁠—a pudding-basin,” cried poor Miss Dora, severely adhering to the unity of her desperate metaphor. “I don’t know what Julia Trench can be thinking of; I⁠—I don’t know what Leonora means.”

“I am of the same way of thinking,” said aunt Cecilia, setting down, with a little gentle emphasis, her cup of tea.

Here was rebellion, open and uncompromised. Miss Leonora was so much taken by surprise, that she lifted the tea-urn out of the way, and stared at her interlocutors with genuine amazement. But she proved herself, as usual, equal to the occasion.

“It’s unfortunate that we never see eye to eye just at once,” she said, with a look which expressed more distinctly than words could have done the preliminary flourish of his whip by means of which a skilful charioteer gets his team under hand without touching them; “but it is very lucky that we always come to agree in the end,” she added, more significantly still. It was well to crush insubordination in the bud. Not that she did not share the sentiment of her sisters; but then they were guided like ordinary women by their feelings; whereas Miss Leonora had the rights of property before her, and the approval of Exeter Hall.

“And he wants to marry, poor dear boy,” said Miss Dora, pale with fright, yet persevering; “and she is a dear good girl⁠—the very person for a clergyman’s wife; and what is he to do if he is always to be Curate of St. Roque’s? You may say it is my fault, but I cannot help it. He always used to come to me in all his little troubles; and when he wants anything very particular, he knows there is nothing I would not do for him,” sobbed the proud aunt, who could not help recollecting how much use she had been to Frank. She wiped her eyes at the thought, and held up her head with a thrill of pride and satisfaction. Nobody could blame her in that particular at least. “He knew he had only to tell me what he wanted,” said Miss Dora, swelling out her innocent plumes. Jack, who was sitting opposite, and who had been listening with admiration, thought it time to come in on his own part.

“I hope you don’t mean to forsake me, aunt Dora,” he said. “If a poor fellow cannot have faith in his aunt, whom can he have faith in? I thought it was too good to last,” said the neglected prodigal. “You have left the poor sheep in the wilderness and gone back to the ninety-and-nine righteous men who need no repentance.” He put up his handkerchief to his eyes as he spoke, and so far forgot himself as to look with laughter in his face at his brother Gerald. As for the Squire, he was startled to hear his eldest son quoting Scripture, and laid aside his paper once more to know what it meant.

“I am sure I beg your pardon, Jack,” said aunt Dora, suddenly stopping short, and feeling guilty. “I never meant to neglect you. Poor dear boy, he never was properly tried with female society and the comforts of home; but then you were dining out that night,” said the simple woman, eagerly. “I should have stayed with you, Jack, of course, had you been at home.”

From this little scene Miss Leonora turned away hastily, with an exclamation of impatience. She made an abrupt end of her tea-making, and went off to her little business-room with a grim smile upon her iron-grey countenance. She too had been taken in a little by Jack’s pleasant farce of the Sinner Repentant; and it occurred to her to feel a little ashamed of herself as she went upstairs. After all, the ninety-and-nine just men of Jack’s irreverent quotation were worth considering now and then; and Miss Leonora could not but think with a little humiliation of the contrast between her nephew Frank and the comfortable young Curate who was going to marry Julia Trench. He was fat, it could not be denied; and she remembered his chubby looks, and his sermons about self-denial and mortification of the flesh, much as a pious Catholic might think of the Lenten oratory of a fat friar. But then he was perfectly sound in his doctrines, and it was undeniable that the people liked him, and that the appointment was one which even a Scotch ecclesiastical community full of popular rights could scarcely have objected to. According to her own principles, the strong-minded woman could not do otherwise. She threw herself into her armchair with unnecessary force, and read over the letter which Miss Trench herself had written. “It is difficult to think of any consolation in such a bereavement,” wrote Mr. Shirley’s niece; “but still it is a little comfort to feel that I can throw myself on your sympathy, my dear and kind friend.” “Little calculating thing!” Miss Leonora said to herself as she threw down the mournful epistle; and then she could not help thinking again of Frank. To be sure, he was not of her way of thinking; but when she remembered the “investigation” and its result, and the secret romance involved in it, her Wentworth blood sent a thrill of pride and pleasure through her veins. Miss Leonora, though she was strong-minded, was still woman enough to perceive her nephew’s motives in his benevolence to Wodehouse; but these motives, which were strong enough to make him endure so much annoyance, were not strong enough to tempt him from Carlingford and his Perpetual Curacy, where his honour and reputation, in the face of love and ambition, demanded that he should remain. “It would be a pity to balk him in his self-sacrifice,” she said to herself, with again a somewhat grim smile, and a comparison not much to the advantage of Julia Trench and her curate. She shut herself up among her papers till luncheon, and only emerged with a stormy front when that meal was on the table; during the progress of which she snubbed everybody who ventured to speak to her, and spoke to her nephew Frank as if he might have been suspected of designs upon the plate-chest. Such were the unpleasant consequences of the struggle between duty and inclination in the bosom of Miss Leonora; and, save for other unforeseen events which decided the matter for her, it is not by any means so certain as, judging from her character, it ought to have been, that duty would have won the day.