The Perpetual Curate

by Mrs. Oliphant

"There's a deal of people in church this morning," said the clerk; and then he came closer still, and spoke in a kind of whisper. "About that little matter as we was speaking of, Mr Wentworth—that's all straight, sir, and there aint no occasion to be vexed. She came back this morning," said Elsworthy, under his breath.

"Who came back this morning?" asked the Curate, with a little surprise. His thoughts had been so much with Lucy that no one else occurred to him at the moment; and even while he asked the question, his busy fancy began to wonder where she could have been, and what motive could have taken her away?

"I couldn't mean nobody but Rosa, as I talked to you about last night," said Elsworthy. "She's come back, sir, as you wished; and I have heard as she was in Carlingford last night just afore you come, Mr Wentworth, when I thought as she was far enough off; which you'll allow, sir, whoever it was she come to see, it wasn't the right thing, nor what her aunt and me had reason to expect."

The Curate of St Roque's said "Pshaw!" carelessly to himself. He was not at all interested in Rosa Elsworthy. Instead of making any answer, he drew on the scarlet band of his hood, and marched away gravely into the reading-desk, leaving the vestry-door open behind him for the clerk to follow. The little dangers that harassed his personal footsteps had not yet awakened so much as an anxiety in his mind. Things much more serious preoccupied his thoughts. He opened his prayer-book with a consciousness of the good of it which comes to men only now and then. At Oxford, in his day, Mr Wentworth had entertained his doubts like others, and like most people was aware that there were a great many things in heaven and earth totally unexplainable by any philosophy. But he had always been more of a man than a thinker, even before he became a high Anglican; and being still much in earnest about most things he had to do with, he found great comfort just at this moment, amid all his perplexities, in the litany he was saying. He was so absorbed in it, and so full of that appeal out of all troubles and miseries to the God who cannot be indifferent to His creatures, that he was almost at the last Amen before he distinguished that voice, which of all voices was most dear to him. The heart of the young man swelled, when he heard it, with a mingled thrill of sympathy and wounded feeling. She had not left her father's sick-bed to see him, but she had found time to run down the sunny road to St Roque's to pray for the sick and the poor. When he knelt down in the reading-desk at the end of the service, was it wrong, instead of more abstract supplications, that the young priest said over and over, "God bless her," in an outburst of pity and tenderness? And he did not try to overtake her on the road, as he might have done had his heart been less deeply touched, but went off with abstracted looks to Wharfside, where all the poor people were very glad to see him, and where his absence was spoken of as if he had been three months instead of three days away. It was like going back a century or two into primitive life, to go into "the district," where civilisation did not prevail to any very distressing extent, and where people in general spoke their minds freely. But even when he came out of No. 10, where the poor woman still kept on living, Mr Wentworth was made aware of his private troubles; for on the opposite side of the way, where there was a little bit of vacant ground, the Rector was standing with some of the schismatics of Wharfside, planning how to place the iron church which, it was said, he meant to establish in the very heart of the "district." Mr Morgan took off his hat very stiffly to the Perpetual Curate, who returned up Prickett's Lane with a heightened colour and quickened pulse. A man must be an angel indeed who can see his work taken out of his hands and betray no human emotion. Mr Wentworth went into Elsworthy's, as he went back, to write a forcible little note to the Rector on the subject before he returned home. It was Rosa who handed him the paper he wanted, and he gave her a little nod without looking at her. But when he had closed his note, and laid it on the counter to be delivered, the Curate found her still standing near, and looked at the little blushing creature with some natural admiration. "So you have come back," he said; "but mind you don't go into Grange Lane any more after dark, little Rosa." When he had left the shop and finished this little matter, he bethought himself of his aunts, whom he had not seen since he returned. Aunt Dora was not at her usual sentinel window when he crossed Grange Lane towards their garden-door; and the door itself was open, and some one from the Blue Boar was carrying in a large portmanteau. Mr Wentworth's curiosity was strangely excited by the sight. He said, "Who has come, Lewis?" to Miss Wentworth's man, who stood in the hall superintending the arrival, but ran up-stairs without waiting for any answer. He felt by instinct that the visitor was some one likely to increase the confusion of affairs, and perplex matters more and more to himself.

But even this presentiment did not prepare him for the astonishing sight which met his eyes when he entered the drawing-room. There the three ladies were all assembled, regarding with different developments of interest the new-comer, who had thrown himself, half-reclining, on a sofa. Aunt Dora was sitting by him with a bottle of eau-de-Cologne in her hand, for this meeting had evidently gone to the heart of the returned prodigal. Aunt Dora was ready to have sacrificed all the veal in the country in honour of Jack's repentance; and the Curate stood outside upon the threshold, looking at the scene with the strangest half-angry, half-comical realisation of the state of mind of the elder brother in the parable. He had himself been rather found fault with, excused, and tolerated, among his relations; but Jack had at once become master of the position, and taken possession of all their sympathies. Mr Wentworth stood gazing at them, half-amused, and yet more angry than amused—feeling, with a little indignation, as was natural, that the pretended penitence of the clever sinner was far more effective and interesting than his own spotless loyalty and truth. To be sure, they were only three old ladies—three old aunts—and he smiled at the sight; but though he smiled, he did not like it, and perhaps was more abrupt than usual in his salutations. Miss Leonora was seated at her writing-table, busy with her correspondence. The question of the new gin-palace was not yet decided, and she had been in the middle of a letter of encouragement to her agents on the subject, reminding them that, even though the licence was granted, the world would still go on all the same, and that the worst possibilities must be encountered, when Jack the prodigal made his appearance, with all the tokens of reformation and repentance about him, to throw himself upon the Christian charity of his relations. A penitent sinner was too tempting a bait for even Miss Leonora's good sense to withstand, and she had postponed her letter-writing to hear his explanations. But Jack had told his story by this time, and had explained how much he wanted to withdraw out of the world in which he had been led astray, and how sick he was of all its whirl of temptations and disappointment; and Miss Leonora had returned to her letter when her younger nephew arrived. As for Miss Wentworth, she was seated placidly in her usual easy-chair, smiling with equable smiles upon both the young men, and lifting her beautiful old cheek for Frank to kiss, just as she had lifted it to Jack. It was Miss Dora who was most shaken out of her allegiance; she who had always made Frank her special charge. Though she had wept herself into a day's headache on his behalf so short a time ago, aunt Dora for a moment had allowed the more effusive prodigal to supersede Frank. Instead of taking him into her arms as usual, and clinging to him, she only put the hand that held the eau-de-Cologne over his shoulder as she kissed him. Jack, who had been so dreadfully, inexpressibly wicked, and who had come back to his aunts to be converted and restored to his right mind, was more interesting than many curates. She sat down again by her penitent as soon as she had saluted his brother; and even Miss Leonora, when she paused in her letter, turned her eyes towards Jack.

"So Gerald is actually going over to Rome," said the strong-minded aunt. "I never expected anything else. I had a letter from Louisa yesterday, asking me to use my influence: as if I had any influence over your brother! If a silly wife was any justification for a man making an idiot of himself, Gerald might be excused; but I suppose the next thing we shall hear of will be that you have followed him, Frank. Did you hear anything further about Janet and that lover of hers? In a large family like ours there is always something troublesome going on," said Miss Leonora. "I am not surprised to hear of your father's attack. My father had a great many attacks, and lived to eighty; but he had few difficulties with the female part of his household," she continued, with a grim little smile—for Miss Leonora rather piqued herself upon her exemption from any known sentimental episode, even in her youth.

"Dear Jack's return will make up for a great deal," said aunt Dora. "Oh, Frank, my dear, your brother has made us all so happy. He has just been telling us that he means to give up all his racing and betting and wickedness; and when he has been with us a little, and learned to appreciate a domestic circle—" said poor Miss Dora, putting her handkerchief to her eyes. She was so much overcome that she could not finish the sentence. But she put her disengaged hand upon Jack's arm and patted it, and in her heart concluded that as soon as the blanket was done for Louisa's bassinet, she would work him a pair of slippers, which should endear more and more to him the domestic circle, and stimulate the new-born virtue in his repentant heart.

"I don't know what Jack's return may do," said Mr Wentworth, "but I hope you don't imagine it was Gerald who caused my father's illness. You know better, at least," said the indignant Curate, looking at the hero on the sofa. That interesting reprobate lifted his eyes with a covert gleam of humour to the unresponsive countenance of his brother, and then he stroked his silky beard and sighed.

"My dear aunt, Frank is right," said Jack, with a melancholy voice. "I have not concealed from you that my father has great reason to be offended with me. I have done very much the reverse of what I ought to have done. I see even Frank can't forgive me; and I don't wonder at it," said the prodigal, "though I have done him no harm that I know of;" and again the heir of the Wentworths sighed, and covered his face for a moment with his hand.

"Oh, Frank," cried Miss Dora, with streaming eyes—"oh, my dear boy!—isn't there joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth? You're not going to be the wicked elder brother that grudged the prodigal his welcome—you're not going to give way to jealousy, Frank?"