On the afternoon of the same day Mr Morgan went home late, and
frightened his wife out of her propriety by the excitement and trouble
in his face. He could do nothing but groan as he sat down in the
drawing-room, where she had just been gathering her work together, and
putting stray matters in order, before she went up-stairs to make
herself tidy for dinner. The Rector paid no attention to the fact that
the dinner-hour was approaching, and only shook his head and repeated
his groan when she asked him anxiously what was the matter. The good
man was too much flushed and heated and put out, to be able at first
to answer her questions.
"Very bad, very bad," he said, when he had recovered sufficient
composure--"far worse than I feared. My dear, I am afraid the
beginning of my work in Carlingford will be for ever associated with
pain to us both. I am discouraged and distressed beyond measure by
what I have heard to-day."
"Dear William, tell me what it is," said the Rector's wife.
"I feared it was a bad business from the first," said the disturbed
Rector. "I confess I feared, when I saw a young man so regardless of
lawful authority, that his moral principles must be defective, but I
was not prepared for what I have heard to-day. My dear, I am sorry to
grieve you with such a story; but as you are sure to hear it, perhaps
it is better that you should have the facts from me."
"It must be about Mr Wentworth," said Mrs Morgan. She was sorry; for
though she had given in to her husband's vehemence, she herself in her
own person had always been prepossessed in favour of the Perpetual
Curate; but she was also sensible of a feeling of relief to know that
the misfortune concerned Mr Wentworth, and was not specially connected
with themselves.
"Yes, it's about Mr Wentworth," said the Rector. He wiped his face,
which was red with haste and exhaustion, and shook his head. He was
sincerely shocked and grieved, to do him justice; but underneath there
was also a certain satisfaction in the thought that he had foreseen
it, and that his suspicions were verified. "My dear, I am very glad he
had not become intimate in our house," said Mr Morgan; "that would
have complicated matters sadly. I rejoice that your womanly instincts
prevented that inconvenience;" and as the Rector began to recover
himself, he looked more severe than ever.
"Yes," said Mrs Morgan, with hesitation; for the truth was, that her
womanly instincts had pronounced rather distinctly in favour of the
Curate of St Roque's. "I hope he has not done anything very wrong,
William. I should be very sorry; for I think he has very good
qualities," said the Rector's wife. "We must not let our personal
objections prejudice us in respect to his conduct otherwise. I am sure
you are the last to do that."
"I have never known an insubordinate man who was a perfect moral
character," said the Rector. "It is very discouraging altogether; and
you thought he was engaged to Wodehouse's pretty daughter, didn't you?
I hope not--I sincerely hope not. That would make things doubly bad;
but, to be sure, when a man is faithless to his most sacred
engagements, there is very little dependence to be placed on him in
other respects."
"But you have not told me what it is," said the Rector's wife, with
some anxiety; and she spoke the more hastily as she saw the shadow of
a curate--Mr Morgan's own curate, who must inevitably be invited to
stop to dinner--crossing the lawn as she spoke. She got up and went a
little nearer the window to make sure. "There is Mr Leeson," she said,
with some vexation. "I must run up-stairs and get ready for dinner.
Tell me what it is!"
Upon which the Rector, with some circumlocution, described the
appalling occurrence of the previous night,--how Mr Wentworth had
walked home with little Rosa Elsworthy from his own house to hers, as
had, of course, been seen by various people. The tale had been told
with variations, which did credit to the ingenuity of Carlingford; and
Mr Morgan's version was that they had walked arm in arm, in the
closest conversation, and at an hour which was quite unseemly for such
a little person as Rosa to be abroad. The excellent Rector gave the
story with strong expressions of disapproval; for he was aware of
having raised his wife's expectations, and had a feeling, as he
related them, that the circumstances, after all, were scarcely
sufficiently horrifying to justify his preamble. Mrs Morgan listened
with one ear towards the door, on the watch for Mr Leeson's knock.
"Was that all?" said the sensible woman. "I think it very likely it
might be explained. I suppose Mr Leeson must have stopped to look at
my ferns; he is very tiresome with his botany. That was all! Dear, I
think it might be explained. I can't fancy Mr Wentworth is a man to
commit himself in that way--if that is all!" said Mrs Morgan; "but I
must run up-stairs to change my dress."
"That was not all," said the Rector, following her to the door. "It is
said that this sort of thing has been habitual, my dear. He takes the
'Evening Mail,' you know, all to himself, instead of having the
'Times' like other people, and she carries it down to his house, and I
hear of meetings in the garden, and a great deal that is very
objectionable," said Mr Morgan, speaking very fast in order to deliver
himself before the advent of Mr Leeson. "I'm afraid it is a very bad
business. I don't know what to do about it. I suppose I must ask
Leeson to stay to dinner? It is absurd of him to come at six o'clock."
"Meetings in the garden?" said Mrs Morgan, aghast. "I don't feel as if
I could believe it. There is that tiresome man at last. Do as you
like, dear, about asking him to stay; but I must make my escape," and
the Rector's wife hastened up-stairs, divided between vexation about
Mr Leeson and regret at the news she had just heard. She put on her
dress rather hastily, and was conscious of a little ill-temper, for
which she was angry with herself; and the haste of her toilette, and
the excitement under which she laboured, aggravated unbecomingly that
redness of which Mrs Morgan was painfully sensible. She was not at all
pleased with her own appearance as she looked in the glass. Perhaps
that sense of looking not so well as usual brought back to her mind a
troublesome and painful idea, which recurred to her not unfrequently
when she was in any trouble. The real Rector to whom she was married
was so different from the ideal one who courted her; could it be
possible, if they had married in their youth instead of now, that her
husband would have been less open to the ill-natured suggestions of
the gossips in Carlingford, and less jealous of the interferences of
his young neighbour? It was hard to think that all the self-denial and
patience of the past had done more harm than good; but though she was
conscious of his defects, she was very loyal to him, and resolute to
stand by him whatever he might do or say; though Mrs Morgan's "womanly
instincts," which the Rector had quoted, were all on Mr Wentworth's
side, and convinced her of his innocence to start with. On the whole,
she was annoyed and uncomfortable; what with Mr Leeson's intrusion
(which had occurred three or four times before, and which Mrs Morgan
felt it her duty to check) and the Rector's uncharitableness, and her
own insufficient time to dress, and the disagreeable heightening of
her complexion, the Rector's wife felt in rather an unchristian frame
of mind. She did not look well, and she did not feel better. She was
terribly civil to the Curate when she went down-stairs, and snubbed
him in the most unqualified way when he too began to speak about Mr
Wentworth. "It does not seem to me to be at all a likely story," she
said, courageously, and took away Mr Leeson's breath.
"But I hear a very unfavourable general account," said the Rector, who
was almost equally surprised. "I hear he has been playing fast and loose
with that very pretty person, Miss Wodehouse, and that her friends begin
to be indignant. It is said that he has not been nearly so much there
lately, but, on the contrary, always going to Elsworthy's, and has
partly educated this little thing. My dear, one false step leads to
another. I am not so incredulous as you are. Perhaps I have studied
human nature a little more closely, and I know that error is always
fruitful;--that is my experience," said Mr Morgan. His wife did not say
anything in answer to this deliverance, but she lay in wait for the
Curate, as was natural, and had her revenge upon him as soon as his ill
fate prompted him to back the Rector out.
"I am afraid Mr Wentworth had always too much confidence in himself,"
said the unlucky individual who was destined to be scapegoat on this
occasion; "and as you very justly observe, one wrong act leads to
another. He has thrown himself among the bargemen on such an equal
footing that I daresay he has got to like that kind of society. I
shouldn't be surprised to find that Rosa Elsworthy suited him better
than a lady with refined tastes."
"Mr Wentworth is a gentleman," said the Rector's wife, with emphasis,
coming down upon the unhappy Leeson in full battle array. "I don't think
he would go into the poorest house, if it were even a bargeman's,
without the same respect of the privacy of the family as is customary
among--persons of our own class, Mr Leeson. I can't tell how wrong or
how foolish he may have been, of course--but that he couldn't behave to
anybody in a disrespectful manner, or show himself intrusive, or forget
the usages of good society," said Mrs Morgan, who was looking all the
time at the unfortunate Curate, "I am perfectly convinced."
It was this speech which made Mr Morgan "speak seriously," as he
called it, later the same night, to his wife, about her manner to poor
Leeson, who was totally extinguished, as was to be expected. Mrs
Morgan busied herself among her flowers all the evening, and could not
be caught to be admonished until it was time for prayers: so that it
was in the sacred retirement of her own chamber that the remonstrance
was delivered at last. The Rector said he was very sorry to find that
she still gave way to temper in a manner that was unbecoming in a
clergyman's wife; he was surprised, after all her experience, and the
way in which they had both been schooled in patience, to find she had
still to learn that lesson: upon which Mrs Morgan, who had been
thinking much on the subject, broke forth upon her husband in a manner
totally unprecedented, and which took the amazed Rector altogether by
surprise.
"Oh, William, if we had only forestalled the lesson, and been _less_
prudent!" she cried in a womanish way, which struck the Rector dumb
with astonishment; "if we hadn't been afraid to marry ten years ago,
but gone into life when we were young, and fought through it like so
many people, don't you think it would have been better for us? Neither
you nor I would have minded what gossips said, or listened to a pack
of stories when we were five-and-twenty. I think I was better then
than I am now," said the Rector's wife. Though she filled that
elevated position, she was only a woman, subject to outbreaks of
sudden passion, and liable to tears like the rest. Mr Morgan looked
very blank at her as she sat there crying, sobbing with the force of a
sentiment which was probably untranslatable to the surprised,
middle-aged man. He thought it must be her nerves which were in fault
somehow, and though much startled, did not inquire farther into it,
having a secret feeling in his heart that the less that was said the
better on that subject. So he did what his good angel suggested to
him, kissed his wife, and said he was well aware what heavy calls he
had made upon her patience, and soothed her the best way that occurred
to him. "But you were very hard upon poor Leeson, my dear," said the
Rector, with his puzzled look, when she had regained her composure.
Perhaps she was disappointed that she had not been able to convey her
real meaning to her husband's matter-of-fact bosom; at all events, Mrs
Morgan recovered herself immediately, and flashed forth with all the
lively freshness of a temper in its first youth.
"He deserved a great deal more than I said to him," said the Rector's
wife. "It might be an advantage to take the furniture, as it was all
new, though it is a perpetual vexation to me, and worries me out of my
life; but there was no need to take the curate, that I can see. What
right has he to come day after day at your dinner-hour? he knows we
dine at six as well as we do ourselves; and I do believe he knows what
we have for dinner," exclaimed the incensed mistress of the house;
"for he always makes his appearance when we have anything he likes. I
hope I know my duty, and can put up with what cannot be mended,"
continued Mrs Morgan, with a sigh, and a mental reference to the
carpet in the drawing-room; "but there are some things really that
would disturb the temper of an angel. I don't know anybody that could
endure the sight of a man always coming unasked to dinner;--and he to
speak of Mr Wentworth, who, if he were the greatest sinner in the
world, is _always_ a gentleman!" Mrs Morgan broke off with a sparkle
in her eye, which showed that she had neither exhausted the subject,
nor was ashamed of herself; and the Rector wisely retired from the
controversy. He went to bed, and slept, good man, and dreamt that Sir
Charles Grandison had come to be his curate in place of Mr Leeson; and
when he woke, concluded quietly that Mrs Morgan had "experienced a
little attack on the nerves," as he explained afterwards to Dr
Marjoribanks. Her compunctions, her longings after the lost life they
might have lived together, her wistful womanish sense of the
impoverished existence, deprived of so many experiences, on which they
had entered in the dry maturity of their middle age, remained for ever
a mystery to her faithful husband. He was very fond of her, and had a
high respect for her character; but if she had spoken Sanscrit, he
could not have had less understanding of the meaning her words were
intended to convey.
Notwithstanding, a vague idea that his wife was disposed to side with
Mr Wentworth had penetrated the brain of the Rector, and was not
without its results. He told her next morning, in his curt way, that
he thought it would be best to wait a little before taking any steps
in the Wharfside business. "If all I hear is true, we may have to
proceed in a different way against the unhappy young man," said Mr
Morgan, solemnly; and he took care to ascertain that Mr Leeson had an
invitation somewhere else to dinner, which was doing the duty of a
tender husband, as everybody will allow.