It was mid-day, and more than twelve hours after he had left Carlingford,
before Mr Wentworth reached the Rectory. He had snatched a few hours'
sleep in London, where he was obliged to pause because of the trains,
which did not correspond; and accordingly, though he was very anxious
about Gerald, it was with a mien and gait very much like his usual
appearance that he jumped out of the railway carriage at the little
station which was on his father's property, and where everybody knew the
Squire's son. Left in entire uncertainty as he was in respect to the
trouble which had overtaken his brother, it was a little comfort to the
Curate to find that everybody looked surprised to see him, and that
nobody seemed to know of any cause demanding his presence. All was well
at the Hall, so far as the station-master knew; and as for the Rector,
he had no special place in the local report which the handiest porter
supplied "Mr Frank"--a blessed neglect, which was very consolatory to
the heart of the anxious brother, to whom it became evident that nothing
had happened, and who began to hope that Gerald's wife, who never was
very wise, had been seized with some merely fantastic terror. With this
hope he walked on briskly upon the familiar road to his brother's house,
recovering his courage, and falling back upon his own thoughts, and at
last taking pleasure in the idea of telling all his troubles to Gerald,
and getting strength and enlightenment from his advice. He had come
quite into this view of the subject when he arrived at the Rectory, and
saw the pretty old-fashioned house, with its high ivied garden-walls,
and the famous cedar on the lawn, standing all secure and sweet in the
early sunshine, like something too steadfast to be moved, as if sorrow
or conflict could never enter there. Unconsciously to himself, the
perfect tranquillity of everything altered the entire scope of Frank
Wentworth's thoughts. He was no longer in anxiety about his brother. He
was going to ask Gerald's advice upon his own troubles, and lay the
difficulties and dangers of his position before the clear and lucid eyes
of the best man he ever knew.
It shook him a little out of his position, however, to find himself
admitted with a kind of scared expectation by Mrs Gerald Wentworth's
maid, who made no exclamation of wonder at the sight of him, but
opened the door in a troubled, stealthy way, strangely unlike the
usual customs of the place. "Is my brother at home?" said the Curate,
going in with a step that rang on the hall, and a voice that sounded
into the house. He would have proceeded straight, as usual, to
Gerald's study after this question, which was one of form merely, but
for the disturbed looks of the woman, who put up her hand imploringly.
"Oh hush! Mr Frank; hush! My mistress wants to see you first. She
said I was to show you into her sitting-room," said the maid, half
in a whisper, and led him hastily down a side-passage to a little
out-of-the-way room, which he knew was where Louisa was wont to retire
when she had her headaches, as was well known to all the house of
Wentworth. The Curate went in with some impatience and some alarm to
this retired apartment. His eyes, dazzled by the sunshine, could not
penetrate at first the shadowy greenness of the room, which, what with
the trees without and the Venetian blind within, was lost in a kind of
twilight, grateful enough after a while, but bewildering at the first
moment. Out of this darkness somebody rose as he entered, and walked
into his arms with trembling eagerness. "Oh Frank, I am so thankful
you are come! now perhaps something may be done; for _you_ always
understood," said his little sister-in-law, reaching up to kiss him.
She was a tiny little woman, with soft eyes and a tender little
blooming face, which he had never before seen obscured by any cloud,
or indeed moved by any particular sentiment. Now the firmament was all
overcast, and Louisa, it was evident, had been sitting in the shade of
her drawn blinds, having a quiet cry, and going into all her grievances.
To see such a serene creature all clouded over and full of tears, gave
the Curate a distinct shock of alarm and anxiety. He led her back to her
sofa, seeing clearer and clearer, as he watched her face, the plaintive
lines of complaint, the heavy burden of trouble which she was about to
cast on his shoulders. He grew more and more afraid as he looked at her.
"Is Gerald ill?" he said, with a thrill of terror; but even this could
scarcely account for the woeful look of all the accessories to the
picture.
"Oh, Frank, I am so glad you are come!" said Louisa through her tears.
"I felt sure you would come when you got my letter. Your father thinks
I make a fuss about nothing, and Cuthbert and Guy do nothing but laugh
at me, as if they could possibly know; but you always understand me,
Frank. I knew it was just as good as sending for a brother of my own;
indeed better," said Mrs Wentworth, wiping her eyes; "for though
Gerald is using me so badly, I would not expose him out of his own
family, or have people making remarks--oh, not for the world!"
"Expose him!" said the Curate, with unutterable astonishment. "You
don't mean to say you have any complaint to make about Gerald?" The
idea was so preposterous that Frank Wentworth laughed; but it was not
a laugh pleasant to hear.
"Oh, Frank, if you but knew all," said Louisa; "what I have had to put
up with for months--all my best feelings outraged, and so many things
to endure that were dreadful to think of. And I that was always
brought up so differently; but now," cried the poor little woman,
bursting into renewed tears, "it's come to such a pass that it can't
be concealed any longer. I think it will break my heart; people will
be sure to say I have been to blame; and how I am ever to hold up my
head in society, and what is to be my name, and whether I am to be
considered a widow--"
"A widow!" cried the Perpetual Curate, in utter consternation.
"Or worse," sobbed Gerald's poor little wife: "it feels like being
divorced--as if one had done something wrong; and I am sure I never
did anything to deserve it; but when your husband is a Romish priest,"
cried the afflicted woman, pressing her handkerchief to her eyes, "I
would just ask anybody what are you? You can't be his wife, because he
is not allowed to have any wife; and you can't go back to your maiden
name, because of the children; and how can you have any place in
society? Oh, Frank, I think I shall go distracted," said poor Louisa;
"it will feel as if one had done something wicked, and been put out of
the pale. How can I be called Mrs Wentworth any more when my husband
has left me? and even if he is a priest, and can't have any wife,
still he will be alive, and I shall not have the satisfaction of being
a widow even. I am sure I don't know what I say," she concluded, with
a fresh outburst; "for to be a widow would be a poor satisfaction, and
I don't know how I could ever, ever live without Gerald; but to feel
as if you were an improper person, and all the children's prospects in
life!--Oh, Frank!" cried the weeping Louisa, burying her face in her
handkerchief, "I think I shall go distracted, and my heart will
break."
To all this strange and unexpected revelation the startled Curate
listened like a man in a dream. Possibly his sister-in-law's
representation of this danger, as seen entirely from her own point of
view, had a more alarming effect upon him that any other statement of
the case. He could have gone into Gerald's difficulties with so much
sympathy and fellow-feeling that the shock would have been trifling in
comparison; and between Rome and the highest level of Anglicanism
there was no such difference as to frighten the accustomed mind of the
Curate of St Roque's. But, seen from Louisa's side, matters appeared
very different: here the foundations of the earth were shaking, and
life itself going to pieces; even the absurdity of her distress made
the whole business more real; and the poor little woman, whose trouble
was that she herself would neither be a wife nor a widow, had enough
of truth on her side to unfold a miserable picture to the eyes of the
anxious spectator. He did not know what answer to make her; and
perhaps it was a greater consolation to poor Louisa to be permitted to
run on--
"And you know it never needed to have come to this if Gerald had been
like other people," she said, drying her tears, and with a tone of
remonstrance. "Of course it is a family living, and it is not likely
his own father would have made any disturbance; and there is no other
family in the parish but the Skipwiths, and they are great friends,
and never would have said a word. He might have preached in six
surplices if he had liked," cried poor Louisa--"who would have minded?
And as for confession, and all that, I don't believe there is anybody
in the world who had done any wrong that could have helped confessing
to Gerald; he is so good--oh, Frank, you know he is so good!" said the
exasperated little wife, overcome with fondness and admiration and
impatience, "and there is nobody in the parish that I ever heard of
that does not worship him; but when I tell him so, he never pays the
least attention. And then Edward Plumstead and he go on talking about
subscription, and signing articles, and nonsense, till they make my
head swim. Nobody, I am sure, wants Gerald to subscribe or sign
articles. I am sure I would subscribe any amount," cried the poor
little woman, once more falling into tears--"a thousand pounds if I
had it, Frank--only to make him hear reason; for why should he leave
Wentworth, where he can do what he likes, and nobody will interfere
with him? The Bishop is an old friend of my father's, and I am sure
he never would say anything; and as for candles and crosses
and--anything he pleases, Frank--"
Here poor Louisa paused, and put her hand on his arm, and looked up
wistfully into his face. She wanted to convince herself that she was
right, and that the faltering dread she had behind all this, of
something more mysterious than candles or crosses--something which she
did not attempt to understand--was no real spectre after all. "Oh,
Frank, I am sure I never would oppose him, nor your father, nor
anybody; and why should he go and take some dreadful step, and upset
everything?" said Mrs Wentworth. "Oh, Frank! we will not even have
enough to live upon; and as for me, if Gerald leaves me, how shall I
ever hold up my head again, or how will anybody know how to behave to
me? I can't call myself Miss Leighton again, after being married so
long; and if I am not his wife, what shall I be?" Her crying became
hysterical as she came back to this point; and Mr Wentworth sat by her
trying to soothe her, as wretched as herself.
"But I must see Gerald, Louisa," said the Curate; "he has never
written to me about this. Perhaps things have not gone so far as you
think; but as for the crosses and the candles, you know, and not being
interfered with--"
"I would promise to do anything he likes," cried the weeping woman. "I
never would worry him any more about anything. After aunt Leonora was
here, perhaps I said things I should not have said; but, oh Frank,
whatever he likes to do I am sure I will give in to it. I don't
_really_ mind seeing him preach in his surplice, only you know poor
papa was so _very_ Low-Church; and as for the candles, what are they
to pleasing one's husband? Oh, Frank, if you would only tell him--I
can't argue about things like a man--tell him nobody will ever
interfere, and he shall do whatever he pleases. I trust to you to say
_everything_," said the poor wife. "You can reason with him and
explain things. Nobody understands Gerald like you. You will not
forsake me in my trouble, Frank? I thought immediately of you. I knew
you could help us, if anybody could. You will tell him all I have
said," she continued, rising as Mr Wentworth rose, and going after him
to the door, to impress once more upon him the necessities of the
case. "Oh, Frank, remember how much depends upon it!--everything in
the world for me, and all the children's prospects in life; and he
would be miserable himself if he were to leave us. You know he would?"
said Louisa, looking anxiously into his face, and putting her hand on
his arm. "Oh, Frank, you don't think Gerald could be happy without the
children--and me?"
The terrible thought silenced her. She stopped crying, and a kind of
tearless horror and dread came over her face. She was not very wise,
but her heart was tender and full of love in its way. What if perhaps
this life, which had gone so smoothly over her unthinking head without
any complications, should turn out to be a lie, and her happiness a
mere delusion? She could not have put her thoughts into words, but the
doubt suddenly came over her, putting a stop to all her lamentations.
If perhaps Gerald _could_ be happy without the children and herself,
what dreadful fiction had all her joy been built upon! Such an
inarticulate terror seemed to stop the very beating of her heart. It
was not a great calamity only but an overthrowal of all confidence in
life; and she shivered before it like a dumb creature piteously
beholding an approaching agony which it could not comprehend. The
utterance of her distress was arrested upon her lips,--she looked up
to her brother with an entreating look, so suddenly intensified and
grown desperate that he was startled by it. It alarmed him so much
that he turned again to lead her back to her sofa, wondering what
momentary passion it could be which had woke such a sudden world of
confused meaning in Louisa's eyes.
"You may be sure he could not," said the Curate, warmly. "Not happy,
certainly; but to men like Gerald there are things in the world
dearer than happiness," he said, after a little pause, with a sigh,
wondering to himself whether, if Lucy Wodehouse were his, his dearest
duty could make him consent to part with her. "If he thinks of such a
step, he must think of it as of martyrdom--is that a comfort to you?"
he continued, bending, in his pity and wonder, over the trembling
wife, who burst forth into fresh tears as he spoke, and forgot her
momentary horror.
"Oh, Frank, go and speak to him, and tell him how miserable I am, and
what a dreadful thing it would be; tell him everything, Frank. Oh, don't
leave him till you have persuaded him. Go, go; never mind me," cried Mrs
Wentworth; and then she went to the door after him once more--"Don't say
I sent for you. He--he might not be pleased," she said, in her
faltering, eager voice; "and oh, Frank, consider how much hangs upon
what you say." When he left her, Louisa stood at the door watching him
as he went along the passage towards her husband's room. It was a
forlorn-hope; but still the unreasoning, uncomprehending heart took a
little comfort from it. She watched his figure disappearing along the
narrow passage with a thrill of mingled anxiety and hope; arguing with
Gerald, though it was so ineffectual when she tried it, might still be
of some avail in stronger hands. His brother understood him, and could
talk to him better than anybody else could; and though she had never
convinced anybody of anything all her life, Mrs Wentworth had an
inalienable confidence in the effect of "being talked to." In the
momentary stimulus she went back to her darkened room and drew up the
blind, and went to work in a tremulous way; but as the slow time went
on, and Frank did not return, poor Louisa's courage failed her; her
fingers refused their office, and she began to imagine all sorts of
things that might be going on in Gerald's study. Perhaps the argument
might be going the wrong way; perhaps Gerald might be angry at his
brother's interference; perhaps they might come to words--they who had
been such good friends--and it would be her fault. She jumped up with
her heart beating loud when she heard a door opened somewhere; but when
nobody came, grew sick and faint, and hid her face, in the impatience of
her misery. Then the feeling grew upon her that those precious moments
were decisive, and that she must make one last appeal, or her heart
would burst. She tried to resist the impulse in a feeble way, but it was
not her custom to resist impulses, and it got the better of her; and
this was why poor Louisa rushed into the library, just as Frank thought
he had made a little advance in his pleading, and scattered his
eloquence to the winds with a set of dreadful arguments which were all
her own.