Meanwhile Mr Wentworth, without much thought of his sins, went down
George Street, meaning to turn off at the first narrow turning which
led down behind the shops and traffic, behind the comfort and beauty
of the little town, to that inevitable land of shadow which always
dogs the sunshine. Carlingford proper knew little about it, except
that it increased the poor-rates, and now and then produced a fever.
The minister of Salem Chapel was in a state of complete ignorance on
the subject. The late Rector had been equally uninformed. Mr Bury, who
was Evangelical, had the credit of disinterring the buried creatures
there about thirty years ago. It was an office to be expected of that
much-preaching man; but what was a great deal more extraordinary, was
to find that the only people now in Carlingford who knew anything
about Wharfside, except overseers of the poor and guardians of the
public peace, were the Perpetual Curate of St Roque's--who had nothing
particular to do with it, and who was regarded by many sober-minded
persons with suspicion as a dilettante Anglican, given over to floral
ornaments and ecclesiastical upholstery--and some half-dozen people of
the very _elite_ of society, principally ladies residing in Grange
Lane.
Mr Wentworth came to a hesitating pause at the head of the turning
which would have led him to Wharfside. He looked at his watch and saw
there was half an hour to spare. He gave a wistful lingering look down
the long line of garden-walls, pausing upon one point where the
blossomed boughs of an apple-tree overlooked that enclosure. There
was quite time to call and ask if the Miss Wodehouses were going down
to the service this afternoon; but was it duty? or, indeed, putting
that question aside, was it quite right to compound matters with his
own heart's desire and the work he was engaged in, in this undeniable
fashion? The young priest crossed the street very slowly, swinging his
cane and knitting his brows as he debated the question. If it had been
one of the bargemen bringing his sweetheart, walking with her along
the side of the canal to which Spring and sweet Easter coming on, and
Love, perhaps, always helpful of illusions, might convey a certain
greenness and sentiment of nature--and echoing her soft responses to
the afternoon prayers--perhaps the Curate might have felt that such
devotion was not entirely pure and simple. But somehow, before he was
aware of it, his slow footstep had crossed the line, and he found
himself in Grange Lane, bending his steps towards Mr Wodehouse's door.
For one thing, to be sure, the Canticles in the evening service could
always be sung when Lucy's sweet clear voice was there to lead the
uncertain melody; and it was good to see her singing the 'Magnificat'
with that serious sweet face, "full of grace," like Mary's own.
Thinking of that, Mr Wentworth made his way without any further
hesitation to the green door over which hung the apple-blossoms,
totally untroubled in his mind as to what the reverend pair were
thinking whom he had left behind him in the ugly church; and
unconscious that his impromptu chapel at Wharfside, with its little
carved reading-desk, and the table behind, contrived so as to look
suspiciously like an altar, was a thorn in anybody's side. Had his
mind been in a fit condition at that moment to cogitate trouble, his
thoughts would have travelled in a totally different direction, but in
the mean time Mr Wentworth was very well able to put aside his
perplexities. The green door opened just as he reached it, and Lucy
and her elder sister came out in those grey cloaks which the Rector
had slandered. They were just going to Wharfside to the service, and
of course they were surprised to see Mr Wentworth, who did not knock
at that green door more than a dozen times in a week, on the average.
The Curate walked between the sisters on their way towards their
favourite "district." Such a position would scarcely have been
otherwise than agreeable to any young man. Dear old Miss Wodehouse was
the gentlest of chaperones. Old Miss Wodehouse people called her, not
knowing why--perhaps because that adjective was sweeter than the harsh
one of middle age which belonged to her; and then there was such a
difference between her and Lucy. Lucy was twenty, and in her sweetest
bloom. Many people thought with Mr Wentworth that there were not other
two such eyes in Carlingford. Not that they were brilliant or
penetrating, but as blue as heaven, and as serene and pure. So many
persons thought, and the Perpetual Curate among them. The grey cloak
fell in pretty folds around that light elastic figure; and there was
not an old woman in the town so tender, so helpful, so handy as Lucy
where trouble was, as all the poor people knew. So the three went down
Prickett's Lane, which leads from George Street towards the canal--not
a pleasant part of the town by any means; and if Mr Wentworth was
conscious of a certain haze of sunshine all round and about him,
gliding over the poor pavement, and here and there transfiguring some
baby bystander gazing open-mouthed at the pretty lady, could any
reasonable man be surprised?
"I hope your aunts were quite well, Mr Wentworth, when you heard from
them last," said Miss Wodehouse, "and all your people at home. In such
a small family as ours, we should go out of our wits if we did not
hear every day; but I suppose it is different where there are so many.
Lucy, when she goes from home," said the tender elder sister, glancing
at her with a half-maternal admiration--"and she might always be
visiting about if she liked--writes to me every day."
"I have nobody who cares for me enough to write every week," said the
Curate, with a look which was for Lucy's benefit. "I am not so lucky
as you. My aunts are quite well, Miss Wodehouse, and they think I had
better go up to town in May for the meetings," added Mr Wentworth,
with a passing laugh; "and the rest of my people are very indignant
that I am not of their way of thinking. There is Tom Burrows on the
other side of the street; he is trying to catch _your_ eye," said the
Curate, turning round upon Lucy; for the young man had come to such a
pass that he could not address her in an ordinary and proper way like
other people, but, because he dared not yet call her by her Christian
name as if she belonged to him, had a strange rude way of indicating
when he was speaking to her, by emphasis and action. It was singularly
different from his usual good-breeding; but Lucy somehow rather liked
it than otherwise. "He is not going to church for the sake of the
service. He is going to please _you_. He has never forgotten what you
did for that little boy of his; and, indeed, if you continue to go on
so," said Mr Wentworth, lowering his voice, and more than ever bending
his tall head to one side, "I shall have to put a stop to it somehow,
for I am not prepared, whatever people say, to go in at once for
_public_ worship of the saints."
"I am going in here to call," said Lucy. She looked up very innocently
in the Curate's face. "I promised the poor sick woman in the back room
to see her every day, and I could not get out any sooner. I daresay I
shall be at the schoolroom before you begin. Good-bye just now," said
the young Sister of Mercy. She went off all at once on this provoking
but unexceptionable errand, looking with calm eyes upon the dismay
which overspread the expressive countenance of her spiritual guide. Mr
Wentworth stood looking after her for a moment, stunned by the
unexpected movement. When he went on, truth compels us to own that a
thrill of disgust had taken the place of that vague general sense of
beatitude which threw beauty even upon Prickett's Lane. The Curate
gave but a sulky nod to the salutation of Tom Burrows, and walked on
in a savage mood by the side of Miss Wodehouse, around whom no nimbus
of ideal glory hovered.
"I am always afraid of its being too much for her, Mr Wentworth," said
the anxious elder sister; "it upsets me directly; but then I never was
like Lucy--I can't tell where all you young people have learned it; we
never used to be taught so in my day; and though I am twice as old as
she is, I know I am not half so much good in the world," said the kind
soul, with a gentle sigh. "I should like to see you in a parish of
your own, where you would have it all your own way. I hope Mr Morgan
won't be meddling when he comes to have time for everything. I should
almost think he would--though it seems unkind to say it--by his face."
"I am doing nothing more than my duty," said the Perpetual Curate, in
morose tones. "This district was given into my hands by the late
Rector. Mr Morgan's face does not matter to me."
"But I should like to see you in a parish of your own," said Miss
Wodehouse, meaning to please him. "You know papa always says so. St
Roque's is very nice, but--"
"If you wish me out of the way, Miss Wodehouse, I am sorry to say you
are not likely to be gratified," said the Curate, "for I have no more
expectation of any preferment than you have. Such chances don't come
in everybody's way."
"But I thought your aunts, Mr Wentworth--" said poor Miss Wodehouse,
who unluckily did not always know when to stop.
"My aunts don't approve of my principles," answered Mr Wentworth, who
had his own reasons for speaking with a little asperity. "They are
more likely to have me denounced at Exeter Hall. I will join you
immediately. I must speak to these men across the street;" and the
Curate accordingly walked into a knot of loungers opposite, with a
decision of manner which Lucy's desertion had helped him to. Miss
Wodehouse, thus left alone, went on with lingering and somewhat doubtful
steps. She was not used to being in "the district" by herself. It
disturbed her mild, middle-aged habits to be left straying about here
alone among all these poor people, whom she looked at half wistfully,
half alarmed, feeling for them in her kind heart, but not at all knowing
how to get at them as the young people did. The unruly children and
gossiping mothers at the poor doors discomposed her sadly, and she was
not near so sure that her grey cloak defended her from all rudeness as
she pretended to be when assenting to the enthusiasm of Mr Wentworth and
Lucy. She made tremulous haste to get out of this scene, which she was
not adapted for, to the shelter of the schoolroom, where, at least, she
would be safe. "We never were taught so in my day," she said to herself,
with an unexpressed wonder which was right; but when she had reached
that haven of shelter, was seized with a little panic for Lucy, and went
out again and watched for her at the corner of the street, feeling very
uncomfortable. It was a great relief to see her young sister coming down
alert and bright even before she was joined by Mr Wentworth, who had
carried his point with the men he had been talking to. To see them
coming down together, smiling to all those people at the doors who
disturbed the gentle mind of Miss Wodehouse with mingled sentiments of
sympathy and repulsion, bestowing nods of greeting here and there,
pausing even to say a word to a few favoured clients, was a wonderful
sight to the timid maiden lady at the corner of the street. Twenty years
ago some such companion might have been by Miss Wodehouse's side, but
never among the poor people in Prickett's Lane. Even with Lucy before
her she did not understand it. As the two came towards her, other
thoughts united with these in her kind soul. "I wonder whether anything
will ever come of it?" she said to herself, and with that wandered into
anxious reflections what this difference could be between Mr Wentworth
and his aunts: which cogitations, indeed, occupied her till the service
began, and perhaps disturbed her due appreciation of it; for if Lucy and
Mr Wentworth got attached, as seemed likely, and Mr Wentworth did not
get a living, what was to come of it? The thought made this
tender-hearted spectator sigh: perhaps she had some experience of her
own to enlighten her on such a point. At least it troubled, with
sympathetic human cares, the gentle soul which had lost the confidence
of youth.
As for the two most immediately concerned, they thought nothing at all
about aunts or livings. Whether it is the divine influence of youth,
or whether the vague unacknowledged love which makes two people happy
in each other's presence carries with it a certain inspiration, this
at least is certain, that there is an absolute warmth of devotion
arrived at in such moments, which many a soul, no longer happy, would
give all the world to reach. Such crowds and heaps of blessings fall
to these young souls! They said their prayers with all their hearts,
not aware of deriving anything of that profound sweet trust and
happiness from each other, but expanding over all the rude but
reverend worshippers around them, with an unlimited faith in their
improvement, almost in their perfection. This was what the wondering
looker-on, scarcely able to keep her anxieties out of her prayers,
could not understand, having forgotten, though she did not think so,
the exaltation of that time of youth, as people do. She thought it all
their goodness that they were able to put away their own thoughts; she
did not know it was in the very nature of those unexpressed emotions
to add the confidence of happiness to their prayers.
And after a while they all separated and went away back into the world
and the everyday hours. Young Wentworth and Lucy had not said a syllable
to each other, except about the people in "the district," and the
Provident Society; and how that sober and laudable conversation could be
called love-making, it would be difficult for the most ardent imagination
to conceive. He was to dine with them that evening; so it was for but a
very brief time that they parted when the Perpetual Curate left the
ladies at the green door, and went away to his room, to attend to some
other duties, before he arrayed himself for the evening. As for the
sisters, they went in quite comfortably, and had their cup of tea before
they dressed for dinner. Lucy was manager indoors as well as out. She
was good for a great deal more than Miss Wodehouse in every practical
matter. It was she who was responsible for the dinner, and had all the
cares of the house upon her head. Notwithstanding, the elder sister took
up her prerogative as they sat together in two very cosy easy-chairs,
in a little room which communicated with both their bed-chambers
up-stairs--a very cosy little odd room, not a dressing-room nor a
boudoir, but something between the two, where the sisters had their
private talks upon occasion, and which was consecrated by many a
libation of fragrant tea.
"Lucy, my dear," said Miss Wodehouse, whose gentle forehead was
puckered with care, "I want to speak to you. I have not been able to
get you out of my mind since ever we met Mr Wentworth at the green
door."
"Was there any need for getting me out of your mind?" said smiling
Lucy. "I was a safe enough inmate, surely. I wonder how often I am out
of your mind, Mary dear, night or day."
"That is true enough," said Miss Wodehouse, "but you know that is not
what I meant either. Lucy, are you quite sure you're going on just as
you ought--"
Here she made a troubled pause, and looked in the laughing face
opposite, intent upon her with its startled eyes. "What have I done?"
cried the younger sister. Miss Wodehouse shook her head with a great
deal of seriousness.
"It always begins with laughing," said the experienced woman; "but if
it ends without tears it will be something new to me. It's about Mr
Wentworth, Lucy. You're always together, day after day; and, my dear,
such things can't go on without coming to something--what is to come
of it? I have looked at it from every point of view, and I am sure I
don't know."
Lucy flushed intensely red, of course, at the Curate's name; perhaps
she had not expected it just at that moment; but she kept her
composure like a sensible girl as she was.
"I thought it was the other side that were questioned about their
intentions," she said. "Am I doing anything amiss? Mr Wentworth is the
Curate of St Roque's, and I am one of the district-visitors, and we
can't help seeing a great deal of each other so long as this work goes
on at Wharfside. You wouldn't like to stop a great work because we are
obliged to see a good deal of--of one particular person?" said Lucy,
with youthful virtue, looking at her sister's face; at which tone and
look Miss Wodehouse immediately faltered, as the culprit knew she
must.
"No--oh no, no--to be sure not," said the disturbed monitor. "When you
say that, I don't know how to answer you. It must be right, I suppose.
I am quite sure it is wonderful to see such young creatures as you,
and how you can tell the right way to set about it. But things did not
use to be so in my young days. Girls dare not have done such things
twenty years ago--not in Carlingford, Lucy," said Miss Wodehouse;
"and, dear, I think you ought to be a little careful, for poor Mr
Wentworth's sake."
"I don't think Mr Wentworth is in any particular danger," said Lucy,
putting down her cup, with a slight curve at the corners of her
pretty mouth--"and it is quite time for you to begin dressing. You
know you don't like to be hurried, dear;" with which speech the young
housekeeper got up from her easy-chair, gave her sister a kiss as she
passed, and went away, singing softly, to her toilette. Perhaps there
was a little flutter in Lucy's heart as she bound it round with her
favourite blue ribbons. Perhaps it was this that gave a certain
startled gleam to her blue eyes, and made even her father remark them
when she went down-stairs--"It seems to me as if this child were
growing rather pretty, Molly, eh? I don't know what other people
think," said Mr Wodehouse--and perhaps Mr Wentworth, who was just
being ushered into the drawing-room at the moment, heard the speech,
for he, too, looked as if he had never found it out before. Luckily
there was a party, and no opportunity for sentiment. The party was in
honour of the Rector and his wife; and Mr Wentworth could not but be
conscious before the evening was over that he had done something to
lose the favour of his clerical brother. There was a good deal of
Church talk, as was natural, at the churchwarden's table, where three
clergymen were dining--for Mr Morgan's curate was there as well; and
the Curate of St Roque's, who was slightly hot-tempered, could not
help feeling himself disapproved of. It was not, on the whole, a
satisfactory evening. Mr Morgan talked rather big, when the ladies
went away, of his plans for the reformation of Carlingford. He went
into statistics about the poor, and the number of people who attended
no church, without taking any notice of that "great work" which Mr
Wentworth knew to be going on at Wharfside. The Rector even talked of
Wharfside, and of the necessity of exertion on behalf of that wretched
district, with a studious unconsciousness of Mr Wentworth; and all but
declined to receive better information when Mr Wodehouse proffered it.
Matters were scarcely better in the drawing-room, where Lucy was
entertaining everybody, and had no leisure for the Perpetual Curate.
He took his hat with a gloomy sentiment of satisfaction when it was
time to go away; but when the green door was closed behind him, Mr
Wentworth, with his first step into the dewy darkness, plunged
headlong into a sea of thought. He had to walk down the whole length
of Grange Lane to his lodging, which was in the last house of the row,
a small house in a small garden, where Mrs Hadwin, the widow of a
whilom curate, was permitted by public opinion, on the score of her
own unexceptionable propriety,[A] to receive a lodger without loss of
position thereby. It was moonlight, or rather it ought to have been
moonlight, and no lamps were lighted in Grange Lane, according to the
economical regulations of Carlingford; and as Mr Wentworth pursued his
way down the dark line of garden-walls, in the face of a sudden April
shower which happened to be falling, he had full scope and opportunity
for his thoughts.
These thoughts were not the most agreeable in the world. In the first
place it must be remembered that for nearly a year past Mr Wentworth had
had things his own way in Carlingford. He had been more than rector, he
had been archdeacon, or rather bishop, in Mr Proctor's time; for that
good man was humble, and thankful for the advice and assistance of his
young brother, who knew so much better than he did. Now, to be looked
upon as an unauthorised workman, a kind of meddling, Dissenterish,
missionising individual, was rather hard upon the young man. And then he
thought of his aunts. The connection, imperceptible to an ignorant
observer, which existed between the Miss Wentworths and Mr Morgan, and
Lucy, and many other matters interesting to their nephew, was a
sufficiently real connection when you came to know it. That parish of
his own which Miss Wodehouse had wished him--which would free the young
clergyman from all trammels so far as his work was concerned; and would
enable him to marry, and do everything for him--it was in the power of
the Miss Wentworths to bestow; but they were Evangelical women, very
public-spirited, and thinking nothing of their nephew in comparison with
their duty; and he was at that time of life, and of that disposition,
which, for fear of being supposed to wish to deceive them, would rather
exaggerate and make a display of the difference of his own views. Not
for freedom, not for Lucy, would the Perpetual Curate temporise and
manage the matter; so the fact was that he stood at the present moment
in a very perilous predicament. But for this family living, which was,
with their mother's property, in the hands of her co-heiresses, the
three Miss Wentworths, young Frank Wentworth had not a chance of
preferment in the world; for the respectable Squire his father had
indulged in three wives and three families, and such a regiment of sons
that all his influence had been fully taxed to provide for them. Gerald,
the clergyman of the first lot, held the family living--not a very large
one--which belonged to the Wentworths; and Frank, who was of the second,
had been educated expressly with an eye to Skelmersdale, which belonged
to his aunts. How he came at the end to differ so completely from these
excellent ladies in his religious views is not our business just at
present; but in the mean time matters were in a very critical position.
The old incumbent of Skelmersdale was eighty, and had been ill all
winter; and if the Miss Wentworths were not satisfied somehow, it was
all over with their nephew's hopes.
Such were the thoughts that occupied his mind as he walked down Grange
Lane in the dark, past the tedious, unsympathetic line of garden-walls,
with the rain in his face. The evening's entertainment had stirred up a
great many dormant sentiments. His influence in Carlingford had been
ignored by this new-comer, who evidently thought he could do what he
liked without paying any attention to the Curate of St Roque's; and,
what was a great deal worse, he had found Lucy unapproachable, and had
realised, if not for the first time, still with more distinctness than
ever before, that she did not belong to him, and that he had no more
right than any other acquaintance to monopolise her society. This last
discovery was bitter to the young man--it was this that made him set his
face to the rain, and his teeth, as if that could do any good. He had
been happy in her mere society to-day, without entering into any of the
terrible preliminaries of a closer connection. But now that was over.
She did not belong to him, and he could not bear the thought. And how
was she ever to belong to him? Not, certainly, if he was to be a Perpetual
Curate of St Roque's, or anywhere else. He felt, in the misery of the
moment, as if he could never go to that green door again, or walk by her
sweet side to that service in which they had joined so lately. He
wondered whether she cared, with a despairing pang of anxiety, through
which for an instant a celestial gleam of consciousness leaped, making
the darkness all the greater afterwards. And to think that three old
ladies, of whom it was not in the nature of things that the young man
could be profoundly reverent, should hold in their hands the absolute
power of his life, and could determine whether it was to be sweet with
hope and love, or stern, constrained, and impoverished, without Lucy or
any other immediate light! What a strange anomaly this was which met him
full in the face as he pursued his thoughts! If it had been his bishop,
or his college, or any fitting tribunal--but his aunts! Mr Wentworth's
ring at his own door was so much more hasty than usual that Mrs Hadwin
paused in the hall, when she had lighted her candle, to see if anything
was the matter. The little neat old lady held up her candle to look at
him as he came in, glistening all over with rain-drops.
"I hope you are not wet, Mr Wentworth," she said. "It is only an April
shower, and we want it so much in the gardens. And I hope you have had
a nice party and a pleasant evening."
"Thank you--pretty well," said the Perpetual Curate, with less suavity
than usual, and a sigh that nearly blew Mrs Hadwin's candle out. She
saw he was discomposed, and therefore, with a feminine instinct, found
more to say than usual before she made her peaceful way to bed. She
waited while Mr Wentworth lighted his candle too. "Mr Wodehouse's
parties are always pleasant," she said. "I never go out, you know; but
I like to hear of people enjoying themselves. I insist upon you going
up-stairs before me, Mr Wentworth. I have so little breath to spare,
and I take such a long time going up, that you would be tired to death
waiting for me. Now, don't be polite. I insist upon you going up
first. Thank you. Now I can take my time."
And she took her time accordingly, keeping Mr Wentworth waiting on the
landing to say good-night to her, much to his silent exasperation. When
he got into the shelter of his own sitting-room, he threw himself upon
a sofa, and continued his thoughts with many a troubled addition. A
young man, feeling in a great measure the world before him, conscious of
considerable powers, standing on the very threshold of so much possible
good and happiness,--it was hideous to look up, in his excited
imagination, and see the figures of these three old ladies, worse than
Fates, standing across the prospect and barring the way.
And Lucy, meantime, was undoing her blue ribbons with a thrill of sweet
agitation in her untroubled bosom. Perhaps Mary was right, and it was
about coming to the time when this half-feared, half-hoped revelation
could not be postponed much longer. For it will be perceived that Lucy
was not in much doubt of young Wentworth's sentiments. And then she
paused in the dark, after she had said her prayers, to give one timid
thought to the sweet life that seemed to lie before her so close at
hand--in which, perhaps, he and she were to go out together, she did not
know where, for the help of the world and the comfort of the sorrowful;
and not trusting herself to look much at that ideal, said another
prayer, and went to sleep like one of God's beloved, with a tear too
exquisite to be shed brimming under her long eyelashes. At this crisis
of existence, perhaps for once in her life, the woman has the best of
it; for very different from Lucy's were the thoughts with which the
Curate sought his restless pillow, hearing the rain drip all the night,
and trickle into Mrs Hadwin's reservoirs. The old lady had a passion for
rain-water, and it was a gusty night.