"By Jove! I'm as good a gentleman as you are," cried the new heir. "I could buy you up—you and all that belongs to you, by Jove! I'm giving Jack Wentworth a dinner at the Blue Boar to-night. I'm not a man to be cross-questioned. It appears to me you have got enough to do if you mind your own business," said Wodehouse, with a sneer. "You're in a nice mess, though you are the parson. I told Jack Wentworth so last night."
The Curate stood on the step of Elsworthy's shop with his enemy behind, and the ungrateful vagabond whom he had rescued and guarded, standing in front of him, with that sneer on his lips. It was hard to refrain from the natural impulse which prompted him to pitch the vagabond out of his way. "Look here," he said, sharply, "you have not much character to lose; but a scamp is a different thing from a criminal. I will make the principal people in Carlingford aware what were the precise circumstances under which you came here at Easter if you do not immediately restore this unhappy girl to her friends. Do you understand me? If it is not done at once I will make use of my information—and you know what that means. You can defy me if you please; but in that case you had better make up your mind to the consequences; you will have to take your place as a—"
"Stop!" cried Wodehouse, with a shiver. "We're not by ourselves—we're in the public street. What do you mean by talking like that here? Come to my house, Wentworth—there's a good fellow—I've ordered a dinner—"
"Be silent, sir!" said the Curate. "I give you till noon to-morrow; after that I will spare you no longer. You understand what I mean. I have been too merciful already. To-morrow, if everything is not arranged to my satisfaction here—"
"It was my own name," said Wodehouse, sullenly; "nobody can say it wasn't my own name. You couldn't do me any harm—you know you wouldn't, either, for the sake of the girls; I'll—I'll give them a thousand pounds or so, if I find I can afford it. Come, you don't mean that sort of thing, you know," said the conscious criminal; "you wouldn't do me any harm."
"If I have to fight for my own reputation I shall not spare you," cried the Curate. "Mind what I say! You are safe till twelve o'clock to-morrow; but after that I will have no mercy—not for your sisters' sake, not for any inducement in the world. If you want to be known as a—"
"Oh Lord, don't speak so loud!—what do you mean? Wentworth, I say, hist! Mr Wentworth! By Jove, he won't listen to me!" cried Wodehouse, in an agony. When he found that the Curate was already out of hearing, the vagabond looked round him on every side with his natural instinct of suspicion. If he had known that Mr Wentworth was thinking only of disgrace and the stern sentence of public opinion, Wodehouse could have put up with it; but he himself, in his guilty imagination, jumped at the bar and the prison which had haunted him for long. Somehow it felt natural that such a Nemesis should come to him after the morning's triumph. He stood looking after the Curate, guilty and horror-stricken, till it occurred to him that he might be remarked; and then he made a circuit past Elsworthy's shop-window as far as the end of Prickett's Lane, where he ventured to cross over so as to get to his own house. His own house!—the wretched thrill of terror that went through him was a very sufficient offset against his momentary triumph; and this was succeeded by a flush of rage as he thought of the Curate's other information. What was to be done? Every moment was precious; but he felt an instinctive horror of venturing out again in the daylight. When it approached the hour at which he had ordered that dinner at the Blue Boar, the humbled hero wrapped himself in an old overcoat which he found in the hall, and slunk into the inn like the clandestine wretch he was. He had no confidence in himself, but he had confidence in Jack Wentworth. He might still be able to help his unlucky associate out.
When Mr Wentworth reached his rooms, he found that his guest had arrived before him, and consequently the threatened explanation with Mrs Hadwin was forestalled for that night. Mr Proctor and Gerald were sitting together, not at all knowing what to talk about; for the late Rector was aware that Frank Wentworth's brother was on the verge of Rome, and was confused, and could not help feeling that his position between a man on the point of perversion in an ecclesiastical point of view, and another whose morals were suspected and whose character was compromised, was, to say the least, a very odd position for a clergyman of unblemished orthodoxy and respectability; besides, it was embarrassing, when he had come for a very private consultation, to find a stranger there before him. The Curate went in very full of what had just occurred. The events of the last two or three hours had worked a total change in his feelings. He was no longer the injured, insulted, silent object of a petty but virulent persecution. The contemptuous silence with which he had treated the scandal at first, and the still more obstinate sense of wrong which latterly had shut his lips and his heart, had given way to-day to warmer and more generous emotions. What would have seemed to him in the morning only the indignant reserve of a man unjustly suspected, appeared now a foolish and unfriendly reticence. The only thing which restrained him was a still lingering inclination to screen Wodehouse, if possible, from a public exposure, which would throw shame upon his sisters as well as himself. If any generosity, if any gentlemanly feeling, were still left in the vagabond's soul, it was possible he might answer the Curate's appeal; and Mr Wentworth felt himself bound to offer no public explanation of the facts of the case until this last chance of escape had been left for the criminal. But, so far as regarded himself, his heart was opened, his wounded pride mollified, and he was ready enough to talk of what had just happened, and to explain the whole business to his anxious companions. When he joined them, indeed, he was so full of it as almost to forget that he himself was still believed the hero of the tale. "This unfortunate little girl has been here, and I have missed her," he said, without in the least concealing his vexation, and the excitement which his rapid walk had not subdued; to the great horror of Mr Proctor, who tried all he could, by telegraphic glances, to recall the young man to a sense of that fact that Sarah was in the room.
"I must say I think it is imprudent—highly imprudent," said the late Rector: "they will call these women to prove that she has been here again; and what conclusion but one can possibly be drawn from such a fact? I am very sorry to see you so unguarded." He said this, seizing the moment after Sarah had removed the salmon, which was very good, and was served with a sauce which pleased Mr Proctor all the more that he had not expected much from an impromptu dinner furnished by a Perpetual Curate; but the fact was, that Gerald's arrival had awakened Mrs Hadwin to a proper regard for her own credit, which was at stake.
When Sarah withdrew finally, and they were left alone, Frank Wentworth gave the fullest explanation he was able to his surprised auditors. He told them that it was Wodehouse, and not himself, whom Rosa had met in the garden, and whom she had no doubt come to seek at this crisis of their fortunes. There was not the least doubt in his own mind that Wodehouse had carried her away, and hidden her somewhere close at hand; and when he had given them all his reasons for thinking so, his hearers were of the same opinion; but Mr Proctor continued very doubtful and perplexed, clear though the story was. He sat silent, brooding over the new mystery, while the brothers discussed the original questions.