"God moves in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform," she wrote apropos of the gin-palace, and set very distinctly before her spiritual retainers all that Providence might intend by this unexpected hindrance; and so quite contented herself about her nephew, whose views on this and many other subjects were so different from her own.
Meanwhile Mr Wentworth went about the rest of the day's work in a not unusual, but far from pleasant, frame of mind. When one suddenly feels that the sympathy upon which one calculated most surely has been withdrawn, the shock is naturally considerable. It might not be anything very great while it lasted, but still one feels the difference when it is taken away. Lucy had fallen off from him; and even aunt Dora had ceased to feel his concerns the first in the world. He smiled at himself for the wound he felt; but that did not remove the sting of it. After the occupations of the day were over, when at last he was going home, and when his work and the sense of fatigue which accompanied it had dulled his mind a little, the Curate felt himself still dwelling on the same matter, contemplating it in a half-comic point of view, as proud men are not unapt to contemplate anything that mortifies them. He began to realise, in a humorous way, his own sensations as he stood at the drawing-room door and recognised the prodigal on the sofa; and then a smile dawned upon his lip as he thought once more of the prodigal's elder brother, who regarded that business with unsympathetic eyes and grudged the supper. And from that he went into a half-professional line of thought, and imagined to himself, half smiling, how, if he had been Dr Cumming or the minister of Salem Chapel, he might have written a series of sermons on the unappreciated characters of Scripture, beginning with that virtuous uninteresting elder brother; from which suggestion, though he was not the minister of Salem nor Dr Cumming, it occurred to the Perpetual Curate to follow out the idea, and to think of such generous careless souls as Esau, and such noble unfortunates as the peasant-king, the mournful magnificent Saul—people not generally approved of, or enrolled among the martyrs or saints. He was pursuing this kind of half-reverie, half-thought, when he reached his own house. It was again late and dark, for he had dined in the mean time, and was going home now to write his sermon, in which, no doubt, some of these very ideas were destined to reappear. He opened the garden-gate with his latch-key, and paused, with an involuntary sense of the beauty and freshness of the night, as soon as he got within the sheltering walls. The stars were shining faint and sweet in the summer blue, and all the shrubs and the grass breathing forth that subdued breath of fragrance and conscious invisible life which gives so much sweetness to the night. He thought he heard whispering voices, as he paused glancing up at the sky; and then from the side-walk he saw a little figure run, and heard a light little footstep fluttering towards the door which he had just closed. Mr Wentworth started and went after this little flying figure with some anxiety. Two or three of his long strides brought him up with the escaping visitor, as she fumbled in her agitation over the handle of the door. "You have come again, notwithstanding what I said to you? but you must not repeat it, Rosa," said the Curate; "no good can come of these meetings. I will tell your uncle, if I ever find you here again."
"Oh no, no, please don't," cried the girl; "but, after all, I don't mind," she said, with more confidence: "he would think it was something very different;" and Rosa raised her eyes to the Curate's face with a coquettish inquiry. She could not divest herself of the thought that Mr Wentworth was jealous, and did not like to have her come there for anybody but himself.
"If you were not such a child, I should be very angry," said the Curate; "as it is, I am very angry with the person who deludes you into coming. Go home, child," he said, opening the door to her, "and remember I will not allow you on any pretext to come here again."
His words were low, and perhaps Rosa did not care much to listen; but there was quite light enough to show them both very plainly, as he stood at the door and she went out. Just then the Miss Hemmings were going up Grange Lane from a little tea-party with their favourite maid, and all their eyes about them. They looked very full in Mr Wentworth's face, and said How d'ye do? as they passed the door; and when they had passed it, they looked at each other with eyes which spoke volumes. Mr Wentworth shut the door violently with irrepressible vexation and annoyance when he encountered that glance. He made no farewells, nor did he think of taking care of Rosa on the way home as he had done before. He was intensely annoyed and vexed, he could not tell how. And this was how it happened that the last time she was seen in Carlingford, Rosa Elsworthy was left standing by herself in the dark at Mr Wentworth's door.
CHAPTER XXV.
The Curate got up very early next morning. He had his sermon to write and it was Saturday, and all the events of the week had naturally enough unsettled his mind, and indisposed him for sermon-writing. When the events of life come fast upon a man, it is seldom that he finds much pleasure in abstract literary composition, and the style of the Curate of St Roque's was not of that hortatory and impassioned character which sometimes gives as much relief to the speaker as excitement to the audience. So he got up in the early sweetness of the summer morning, when nobody but himself was astir in the house, with the sense of entering upon a task, and taking up work which was far from agreeable to him. When he came into the little room which he used as a study, and threw the window open, and breathed the delicious air of the morning, which was all thrilling and trembling with the songs of birds, Mr Wentworth's thoughts were far from being concentrated upon any one subject. He sat down at his writing-table and arranged his pens and paper, and wrote down the text he had selected; and when he had done so much, and could feel that he had made a beginning, he leaned back in his chair, and poised the idle pen on his finger, and abandoned himself to his thoughts. He had so much to think about. There was Wodehouse under the same roof, with whom he had felt himself constrained to remonstrate very sharply on the previous night. There was Jack, so near, and certainly come to Carlingford on no good errand. There was Gerald, in his great perplexity and distress, and the household at home in their anxiety; and last, but worst of all, his fancy would go fluttering about the doors of the sick chamber in Grange Lane, longing and wondering. He asked himself what it could be which had raised that impalpable wall between Lucy and himself—that barrier too strong to be overthrown, too ethereal to be complained of; and wondered over and over again what her thoughts were towards him—whether she thought of him at all, whether she was offended, or simply indifferent?—a question which any one else who had observed Lucy as closely could have solved without any difficulty, but which, to the modest and true love of the Perpetual Curate, was at present the grand doubt of all the doubts in the universe. With this matter to settle, and with the consciousness that it was still only five o'clock, and that he was at least one hour beforehand with the world, it is easy to understand why Mr Wentworth mused and loitered over his work, and how, when it was nearly six o'clock, and Sarah and the cook were beginning to stir from their sleep, there still remained only the text written upon the sermon-paper, which was so nicely arranged before him on the table. "When the wicked man turneth away from the evil of his ways, and doeth that which is lawful and right."—This was the text; but sitting at the open window, looking out into the garden, where the birds, exempt, as they seemed to think, for once from the vulgar scrutiny of man, were singing at the pitch of all their voices as they prepared for breakfast; and where the sweet air of the morning breathed into his mind a freshness and hopefulness which youth can never resist, and seduced his thoughts away from all the harder problems of his life to dwell upon the sweeter trouble of that doubt about Lucy,—was not the best means of getting on with his work. He sat thus leaning back—sometimes dipping his pen in the ink, and hovering over the paper for two or three seconds at a time, sometimes reading over the words, and making a faint effort to recall his own attention to them; for, on the whole, perhaps, it is not of much use getting up very early in the morning when the chief consequence of it is, that a man feels he has an hour to spare, and a little time to play before he begins.
Mr Wentworth was still lingering in this peaceful pause, when he heard, in the stillness, hasty steps coming down Grange Lane. No doubt it was some workmen going to their work, and he felt it must be nearly six o'clock, and dipped his pen once more in the ink; but, the next moment, paused again to listen, feeling in his heart a strange conviction that the steps would stop at his door, and that something was going to happen. He was sure of it, and yet somehow the sound tingled upon his heart when he heard the bell ring, waking up echoes in the silent house. Cook and Sarah had not yet given any signs of coming down-stairs, and nobody stirred even at the sound of the bell. Mr Wentworth put down his pen altogether, and listened with an anxiety which he could scarcely account for—knowing, as he said to himself, that it must be the milk, or the baker, or somebody. But neither the milk nor the baker would have dared to knock, and shake, and kick the door as the new arrivals were doing. Mr Wentworth sat still as long as he could, then he added to the din they were making outside by an indignant ring of his own bell; and finally getting anxious, as was natural, and bethinking himself of his father's attack and Mr Wodehouse's illness, the Curate took the matter into his own hands, and hastened down-stairs to open the door. Mrs Hadwin called to him as he passed her room, thinking it was Sarah, and begging for goodness gracious sake to know directly what was the matter; and he felt himself growing agitated as he drew back the complicated bolts, and turned the key in the door, which was elaborately defenced, as was natural. When he hurried out into the garden, the songs of the birds and the morning air seemed to have changed their character. He thought he was about to be summoned to the deathbed of one or other of the old men upon whom their sons had brought such misery. He was but little acquainted with the fastenings of the garden-door, and fumbled a little over them in his anxiety. "Wait a moment and you shall be admitted," he called out to those outside, who still continued to knock; and he fancied, even in the haste and confusion of the moment, that his voice caused some little commotion among them. Mr Wentworth opened the door, looking anxiously out for some boy with a telegram, or other such mournful messenger; but to his utter amazement was nearly knocked down by the sudden plunge of Elsworthy, who entered with a spring like that of a wild animal, and whose face looked white and haggard as he rushed in. He came against the Curate so roughly as to drive him a step or two farther into the garden, and naturally aroused somewhat sharply the temper of the young man, who had already begun to regard him with disagreeable sensations as a kind of spy against himself.
"What in the world do you want at such an early hour in the morning?" cried Mr Wentworth—"and what do you mean by making such a noise? Is Mr Wodehouse worse? or what has happened?" for, to tell the truth, he was a little relieved to find that the two people outside both belonged to Carlingford, and that nowhere was there any visible apparition of a telegraph boy.
"Don't trifle with me, Mr Wentworth," said Elsworthy. "I'm a poor man; but a worm as is trodden on turns. I want my child, sir!—give me my child. I'll find her out if it was at the end of the world. I've only brought down my neighbour with me as I can trust," he continued, hoarsely—"to save both your characters. I don't want to make no talk; if you do what is right by Rosa, neither me or him will ever say a word. I want Rosa, Mr Wentworth. Where's Rosa? If I had known as it was for this you wanted her home! But I'll take my oath not to make no talk," cried the clerk, with passion and earnestness, which confounded Mr Wentworth—"if you'll promise to do what's right by her, and let me take her home."