The Perpetual Curate · Chapter 46 (2/2)

While the house was in such an agitated condition, it is not to be supposed that it could be very comfortable for the gentlemen when they came upstairs to the drawing-room, and found domestic sovereignty overthrown by a headache which nobody could comprehend, and chaos reigning in Miss Leonora’s place. Naturally there was, for one of the party at least, a refuge sweet and close at hand, to which his thoughts had escaped already. Frank Wentworth did not hesitate to follow his thoughts. Against the long years when family bonds make up all that is happiest in life, there must always be reckoned those moments of agitation and revolution, during which the bosom of a family is the most unrestful and disturbing place in existence, from which it is well to have a personal refuge and means of escape. The Perpetual Curate gave himself a little shake, and drew a long breath, as he emerged from one green door in Grange Lane and betook himself to another. He shook himself clear of all the Wentworth perplexities, all the family difficulties and doubts, and betook himself into the paradise which was altogether his own, and where there were no conflicting interests or differences of opinion. He was in such a hurry to get there that he did not pay any attention to the general aspect of Grange Lane, or to the gossips who were gathered round Elsworthy’s door: all that belonged to a previous stage of existence. At present he was full of the grand discovery, boldly stated by his brother Jack⁠—“The man who gets his own way is the man who takes it.” It was not an elevated doctrine, or one that had hitherto commended itself specially to the mind of the Perpetual Curate; but he could not help thinking of his father’s pathetic reliance upon Jack’s advice as a man of the world, as he laid up in his mind the prodigal’s maxim, and felt, with a little thrill of excitement, that he was about to act on it; from which manner of stating the case Mr. Wentworth’s friends will perceive that self-will had seized upon him in the worst form; for he was not going boldly up to the new resolution with his eyes open, but had resigned himself to the tide, which was gradually rising in one united flux of love, pride, impatience, sophistry, and inclination; which he watched with a certain passive content, knowing that the stormy current would carry him away.

Mr. Wentworth, however, reckoned without his host, as is now and then the case with most men, Perpetual Curates included. He walked into the other drawing-room, which was occupied only by two ladies, where the lamp was burning softly on the little table in the corner, and the windows, half open, admitted the fragrant air, the perfumed breath and stillness and faint inarticulate noises of the night. Since the visit of Wodehouse in the morning, which had driven Lucy into her first fit of passion, an indescribable change had come over the house, which had now returned to the possession of its former owners, and looked again like home. It was very quiet in the familiar room which Mr. Wentworth knew so well, for it was only when excited by events “beyond their control,” as Miss Wodehouse said, that the sisters could forget what had happened so lately⁠—the loss which had made a revolution in their world. Miss Wodehouse, who for the first time in her life was busy, and had in hand a quantity of mysterious calculations and lists to make out, sat at the table in the centre of the room, with her desk open, and covered with long slips of paper. Perhaps it was to save her Rector the trouble that the gentle woman gave herself so much labour; perhaps she liked putting down on paper all the things that were indispensable for the new establishment. At all events, she looked up only to give Mr. Wentworth a smile and sisterly nod of welcome as he came in and made his way to the corner where Lucy sat, not unexpectant. Out of the disturbed atmosphere he had just left, the Perpetual Curate came softly into that familiar corner, feeling that he had suddenly reached his haven, and that Eden itself could not have possessed a sweeter peace. Lucy in her black dress, with traces of the exhaustion of nature in her face, which was the loveliest face in the world to Mr. Wentworth, looked up and welcomed him with that look of satisfaction and content which is the highest compliment one human creature can pay to another. His presence rounded off all the corners of existence to Lucy for that moment at least, and made the world complete and full. He sat down beside her at her worktable with no further interruption to the tête-à-tête than the presence of the kind elder sister at the table, who was absorbed in her lists, and who, even had that pleasant business been wanting, was dear and familiar enough to both to make her spectatorship just the sweet restraint which endears such intercourse all the more. Thus the Perpetual Curate seated himself, feeling in some degree master of the position; and surely here, if nowhere else in the world, the young man was justified in expecting to have his own way.

“They have settled about their marriage,” said Lucy, whose voice was sufficiently audible to be heard at the table, where Miss Wodehouse seized her pen hastily and plunged it into the ink, doing her best to appear unconscious, but failing sadly in the attempt. “Mr. Proctor is going away directly to make everything ready, and the marriage is to be on the 15th of next month.”

“And ours?” said Mr. Wentworth, who had not as yet approached that subject. Lucy knew that this event must be far off, and was not agitated about it as yet; on the contrary, she met his look sympathetically and with deprecation after the first natural blush, and soothed him in her feminine way, patting softly with her pretty hand the sleeve of his coat.

“Nobody knows,” said Lucy. “We must wait, and have patience. We have more time to spare than they have,” she added, with a little laugh. “We must wait.”

“I don’t see the must,” said the Perpetual Curate. “I have been thinking it all over since the morning. I see no reason why I should always have to give in, and wait; self-sacrifice is well enough when it can’t be helped, but I don’t see any reason for postponing my happiness indefinitely. Look here, Lucy. It appears to me at present that there are only two classes of people in the world⁠—those who will wait, and those who won’t. I don’t mean to enrol myself among the martyrs. The man who gets his own way is the man who takes it. I don’t see any reason in the world for concluding that I must wait.”

Lucy Wodehouse was a very good young woman, a devoted Anglican, and loyal to all her duties; but she had always been known to possess a spark of spirit, and this rebellious quality came to a sudden blaze at so unlooked-for a speech. “Mr. Wentworth,” said Lucy, looking the Curate in the face with a look which was equivalent to making him a low curtsy, “I understood there were two people to be consulted as to the must or must not;” and having entered this protest, she withdrew her chair a little farther off, and bestowed her attention absolutely upon the piece of needlework in her hand.

If the ground had suddenly been cut away underneath Frank Wentworth’s feet, he could not have been more surprised; for, to tell the truth, it had not occurred to him to doubt that he himself was the final authority on this point, though, to be sure, it was part of the conventional etiquette that the lady should “fix the day.” He sat gazing at her with so much surprise that for a minute or two he could say nothing. “Lucy, I am not going to have you put yourself on the other side,” he said at last; “there is not to be any opposition between you and me.”

“That is as it may be,” said Lucy, who was not mollified. “You seem to have changed your sentiments altogether since the morning, and there is no change in the circumstances, at least that I can see.”

“Yes, there is a great change,” said the young man. “If I could have sacrificed myself in earnest and said nothing⁠—”

“Which you were quite free to do,” interrupted Lucy, who, having given way to temper once today, found in herself an alarming proclivity towards a repetition of the offence.

“Which I was quite free to do,” said the Perpetual Curate, with a smile, “but could not, and did not, all the same. Things are altogether changed. Now, be as cross as you please, you belong to me, Lucia mia. To be sure, I have no money⁠—”

“I was not thinking of that,” said the young lady, under her breath.

“Of course one has to think about it,” said Mr. Wentworth; “but the question is, whether we shall be happier and better going on separate in our usual way, or making up our minds to give up something for the comfort of being together. Perhaps you will forgive me for taking that view of the question,” said the Curate, with a little enthusiasm. “I have got tired of ascetic principles. I don’t see why it must be best to deny myself and postpone myself to other things and other people. I begin to be of my brother Jack’s opinion. The children of this world are wiser in their generation than the children of light. A man who will wait has to wait. Providence does not invariably reward him after he has been tried, as we used to suppose. I am willing to be a poor man because I can’t help it; but I am not willing to wait and trust my happiness to the future when it is in my reach now,” said the unreasonable young man, to whom it was of course as easy as it was to Lucy to change the position of his chair, and prevent the distance between them being increased. Perhaps he might have carried his point even at that moment, had not Miss Wodehouse, who had heard enough to alarm her, come forward hastily in a fright on the prudential side.

“I could not help hearing what you were saying,” said the elder sister. “Oh, Mr. Wentworth, I hope you don’t mean to say that you can’t trust Providence? I am sure that is not Lucy’s way of thinking. I would not mind, and I am sure she would not mind, beginning very quietly; but then you have nothing, next to nothing, neither of you. It might not matter, just at the first,” said Miss Wodehouse, with serious looks; “but then⁠—afterwards, you know,” and a vision of a nursery flashed upon her mind as she spoke. “Clergymen always have such large families,” she said half out before she was aware, and stopped, covered with confusion, not daring to look at Lucy to see what effect such a suggestion might have had upon her. “I mean,” cried Miss Wodehouse, hurrying on to cover over her inadvertence if possible, “I have seen such cases; and a poor clergyman who has to think of the grocer’s bill and the baker’s bill instead of his parish and his duty⁠—there are some things you young people know a great deal better than I do, but you don’t know how dreadful it is to see that.”

Here Lucy, on her part, was touched on a tender point, and interposed. “For a man to be teased about bills,” said the young housekeeper, with flushed cheeks and an averted countenance, “it must be not his poverty, but his⁠—his wife’s fault.”

“Oh, Lucy, don’t say so,” cried Miss Wodehouse; “what is a poor woman to do, especially when she has no money of her own, as you wouldn’t have? and then the struggling, and getting old before your time, and all the burdens⁠—”

“Please don’t say any more,” said Lucy; “there was no intention on⁠—on any side to drive things to a decision. As for me, I have not a high opinion of myself. I would not be the means of diminishing anyone’s comforts,” said the spiteful young woman. “How can I be sure that I might not turn out a very poor compensation? We settled this morning how all that was to be, and I for one have not changed my mind⁠—as yet,” said Lucy. That was all the encouragement Mr. Wentworth got when he propounded his new views. Things looked easy enough when he was alone, and suffered himself to drift on pleasantly on the changed and heightened current of personal desires and wishes; but it became apparent to him, after that evening’s discussion, that even in Eden itself, though the dew had not yet dried on the leaves, it would be highly incautious for any man to conclude that he was sure of having his own way. The Perpetual Curate returned a sadder and more doubtful man to Mrs. Hadwin’s, to his own apartments; possibly, as the two states of mind so often go together, a wiser individual too.