Her husband, without verifying for himself one of the things it was his business to teach others, was yet held in some sort of communion with sacred things by his love for his suffering wife, and his admiration of her goodness and gentleness. He had looked up to her, though several years younger than himself, with something of the same reverence with which he had regarded his mother, a women with an element of greatness in her. It was not possible he should ever have adopted her views, or in any active manner allied himself with the school whose doctrines she accepted as the logical embodiment of the gospel, but there was in him all the time a vague something that was not far from the kingdom of heaven. Some of his wife's friends looked upon him as a wolf in the sheepfold; he was no wolf, he was only a hireling. Any neighborhood might have been the better for having such a man as he for the parson of the parish—only, for one commissioned to be in the world as he was in the world!—why he knew more about the will of God as to a horse's legs, than as to the heart of a man. As he drew near the house, the older and tenderer time came to meet him, and the spirit of his suffering, ministering wife seemed to overshadow him. Two tears grew half-way into his eyes:—they were a little bloodshot, but kind, true eyes. He was not sorry he had married again, for he and his wife were at peace with each other, but he had found that the same part of his mind would not serve to think of the two: they belonged to different zones of his unexplored world. For one thing, his present wife looked up to him with perfect admiration, and he, knowing his own poverty, rather looked down upon her in consequence, though in a loving, gentle, and gentlemanlike way.
He was shown into the same room, looking out on the churchyard, where in the first months of his married life, he sat and heard his wife sing her few songs, accompanying them on the little piano he had saved hard to buy for her, until she made him love them. It had lasted only through those few months; after her first baby died, she rarely sang. But all the colors and forms of the room were different, and that made it easier to check the lump rising in his throat. It was the faith of his curate that had thus set his wife before him, although the two would hardly have agreed in any confession narrower than the Apostles' creed.
When Wingfold entered the room, the rector rose, went halfway to meet him, and shook hands with him heartily. They seated themselves, and a short silence followed. But the rector knew it was his part to speak.
"I was in church this morning," he said, with a half-humorous glance right into the clear gray eyes of his curate.
"So my wife tells me," returned Wingfold with a smile.
"You didn't know it then?" rejoined the rector, with now an almost quizzical glance, in which hovered a little doubt. "I thought you were preaching at me all the time."
"God forbid!" said the curate; "I was not aware of your presence. I did not even know you were in the town yesterday."
"You must have had some one in your mind's eye. No man could speak as you did this morning, who addressed mere abstract humanity."
"I will not say that individuals did not come up before me; how can a man help it where he knows every body in his congregation more or less? But I give you my word, sir, I never thought of you."
"Then you might have done so with the greatest propriety," returned the rector. "My conscience sided with you all the time. You found me out. I've got a bit of the muscle they call a heart left in me yet, though it has got rather leathery.—But what do they mean when they say you are setting the parish by the ears?"