The Curate of St Roque's found his brother in his library, looking
very much as he always looked at first glance. But Gerald was not
reading nor writing nor doing anything. He was seated in his usual
chair, by his usual table, with all the ordinary things around. Some
manuscript--lying loosely about, and looking as if he had thrown down
his pen in disgust, and pushed it away from him in the middle of a
sentence--was on the table, and an open book in his other hand; but
neither the book nor the manuscript occupied him; he was sitting
leaning his head in his hands, gazing blankly out through the window,
as it appeared, at the cedar, which flung its serene shadow over the
lawn outside. He jumped up at the sound of his brother's voice, but
seemed to recall himself with a little difficulty even for that, and
did not look much surprised to see him. In short, Frank read in
Gerald's eyes that he would not at that moment have been surprised to
see any one, and that, in his own consciousness, the emergency was
great enough to justify any unlooked-for appearance, though it might
be from heaven or from the grave.
"I am glad you have come," he said, after they had greeted each other,
his mouth relaxing ever so slightly into the ghost of his old smile;
"you and I always understood each other, and it appears I want
interpretation now. And one interpretation supposes many," he said
with a gleam, half of pathos half of amusement, lighting up his face
for a moment; "there is no such thing as accepting a simple version
even of one man's thoughts. You have come at a very fit time,
Frank--that is, for me."
"I am glad you think so," said the other brother; and then there was a
pause, neither liking to enter upon the grand subject which stood
between them.
"Have you seen Louisa?" said Gerald. He spoke like a man who was ill,
in a preoccupied interrupted way. Like a sick man, he was occupied
with himself, with the train of thought which was always going on in
his mind whatever he might be doing, whether he was working or
resting, alone or in company. For months back he had carried it with
him everywhere. The cedar-tree outside, upon which his thoughtful eyes
fell as he looked straight before him out of the library window, was
all garlanded with the reasonings and questionings of this painful
spring. To Frank's eyes, Gerald's attention was fixed upon the
fluttering of a certain twig at the extremity of one of those broad
solemn immovable branches. Gerald, however, saw not the twig, but one
of his hardest difficulties which was twined and twined in the most
inextricable way round that little sombre cluster of spikes; and so
kept looking out, not at the cedar, but at the whole confused yet
distinct array of his own troubled thoughts.
"If you have seen Louisa, she has been talking to you, no doubt," he
said, after another little pause, with again the glimmer of a smile. "We
have fallen upon troubles, and we don't understand each other, Frank.
That's all very natural; she does not see things from my point of view:
I could not expect she should. If I could see from hers, it might be
easier for us all; but that is still less to be expected; and it is hard
upon her, Frank--very hard," said Gerald, turning round in his old
ingenuous way, with that faculty for seeing other people's difficulties
which was so strong a point in his character. "She is called upon to
make, after all, perhaps, the greater sacrifice of the two; and she does
not see any duty in it--the reverse, indeed. She thinks it a sin. It is
a strange view of life, to look at it from Louisa's point. Here will be
an unwilling, unintentional martyrdom; and it is hard to think I should
take all the merit, and leave my poor little wife the suffering without
any compensation!" He began to walk up and down the room with uneasy
steps, as if the thought was painful, and had to be got rid of by some
sudden movement. "It must be that God reckons with women for what they
have endured, as with men for what they have done," said Gerald. He
spoke with a kind of grieved certainty, which made his brother feel, to
start with, the hopelessness of all argument.
"But must this be? Is it necessary to take such a final, such a
terrible step?" said the Perpetual Curate.
"I think so." Gerald went to the window, to resume his contemplation
of the cedar, and stood there with his back turned to Frank, and his
eyes going slowly over all the long processes of his self-argument,
laid up as they were upon those solemn levels of shadow. "Yes--you
have gone so far with me; but I don't want to take you any farther,
Frank. Perhaps, when I have reached the perfect peace to which I am
looking forward, I may try to induce you to share it, but at present
there are so many pricks of the flesh. You did not come to argue with
me, did you?" and again the half-humorous gleam of old came over
Gerald's face as he looked round. "Louisa believes in arguing," he
said, as he came back to the table and took his seat again; "not that
she has ever gained much by it, so far as I am aware. Poor girl! she
talks and talks, and fancies she is persuading me; and all the time my
heart is bleeding for her. There it is!" he exclaimed, suddenly hiding
his face in his hands. "This is what crushes one to think of. The rest
is hard enough, Heaven knows--separation from my friends, giving up my
own people, wounding and grieving, as I know I shall, everybody who
loves me. I could bear that; but Louisa and her children--God help me,
there's the sting!"
They were both men, and strong men, not likely to fall into any
sentimental weakness; but something between a groan and a sob, wrung
out of the heart of the elder brother at the thought of the terrible
sacrifice before him, echoed with a hard sound of anguish into the
quiet. It was very different from his wife's trembling, weeping,
hoping agony; but it reduced the Curate more than ever to that
position of spectator which he felt was so very far from the active
part which his poor sister expected of him.
"I don't know by what steps you have reached this conclusion," said
Frank Wentworth; "but even if you feel it your duty to give up the
Anglican Church (in which, of course, I think you totally wrong,"
added the High Churchman in a parenthesis), "I cannot see why you are
bound to abandon all duties whatever. I have not come to argue with
you; I daresay poor Louisa may expect it of me, but I can't, and you
know very well I can't. I should like to know how it has come about
all the same; but one thing only, Gerald--a man may be a Christian
without being a priest. Louisa--"
"Hush, I am a priest, or nothing. I can't relinquish my life!" cried the
elder brother, lifting his hands suddenly, as if to thrust away
something which threatened him. Then he rose up again and went towards
the window and his cedar, which stood dark in the sunshine, slightly
fluttered at its extremities by the light summer-wind, but throwing
glorious level lines of shadow, which the wind could not disturb, upon
the grass. The limes near, and that one delicate feathery birch which
was Mrs Wentworth's pride, had all some interest of their own on hand,
and went on waving, rustling, coquetting with the breezes and the
sunshine in a way which precluded any arbitrary line of shade. But the
cedar stood immovable, like a verdant monument, sweeping its long level
branches over the lawn, passive under the light, and indifferent, except
at its very tops and edges, to the breeze. If there had been any human
sentiment in that spectator of the ways of man, how it must have groaned
and trembled under the pitiless weight of thoughts, the sad lines of
discussion and argument and doubt, which were entangled in its branches!
Gerald Wentworth went to his window to refer to it, as if it were a book
in which all his contests had been recorded. The thrill of the air in it
tingled through him as he stood looking out; and there, without looking
at Frank, except now and then for a moment when he got excited with his
subject, he went into the history of his struggle--a history not
unprecedented or unparalleled, such as has been told to the world before
now by men who have gone through it, in various shapes, with various
amounts of sophistry and simplicity. But it is a different thing reading
of such a conflict in a book, and hearing it from lips pallid with the
meaning of the words they uttered, and a heart which was about to prove
its sincerity by voluntary pangs more hard than death. Frank Wentworth
listened to his brother with a great deal of agreement in what he said,
and again with an acute perception of mistakes on Gerald's part, and
vehement impulses of contradiction, to which, at the same time, it was
impossible to give utterance; for there was something very solemn in the
account he was giving of himself, as he stood with his face half turned
to the anxious listener, leaning on the window, looking into the cedar.
Gerald did not leave any room for argument or remonstrance; he told his
brother how he had been led from one step to another, without any
lingering touch of possibility in the narrative that he might be
induced to retrace again that painful way. It was a path, once trod,
never to be returned upon; and already he stood steadfast at the end,
looking back mournfully, yet with a strange composure. It would be
impossible to describe the mixture of love, admiration, impatience--even
intolerance--which swelled through the mind of the spectator as he
looked on at this wonderful sight, nor how hard he found it to restrain
the interruptions which rushed to his lips, the eager arguments which
came upon him in a flood, all his own favourite fences against the
overflow of the tide which ran in lawful bounds in his own mind, but
which had inundated his brother's. But though it was next to impossible
to keep silence, it was altogether impossible to break in upon Gerald's
history of this great battle through which he had just come. He _had_
come through it, it was plain; the warfare was accomplished, the weapons
hung up, the conflict over; and nothing could be more apparent than that
he had no intention of entering the battle-field again. When he had
ended, there was another pause.
"I am not going to argue with you," said Frank Wentworth; "I don't even
need to tell you that I am grieved to the heart. It isn't so very many
years ago," said the younger brother, almost too much touched by the
recollection to preserve his composure, "since I took all my opinions
from you; and since the time came for independent action, I too have
gone over all this ground. My conclusions have been very different from
yours, Gerald. I see you are convinced, and I can say nothing; but they
do not convince me--you do not convince me, nor the sight of your faith,
though that is the most touching of all arguments. Will you go back and
go over it again?" said the Curate, spurred, by a thought of poor
Louisa, to contradict himself, while the words were still on his lips.
"No," said Gerald; "it would be of no use, Frank. We should only grieve
each other more."
"Then I give up that subject," said the younger brother: "but there
is one matter which I must go back to. You may go to Rome, and cease
to be a priest of the Anglican Church, but you cannot cease to be a
man, to bear the weight of your natural duties. Don't turn away, but
hear me. Gerald, Louisa--"
"Don't say any more. Do you imagine I have not thought of that?" said
Gerald, once more, with a gesture of pain, and something like terror;
"I have put my hand to the plough and I cannot go back. If I am not a
priest, I am nothing." But when he came to that point, his cedar-tree
no longer gave him any assistance; he came back to his chair, and
covered his face with his hands.
"Louisa is your wife; you are not like a man free from the bonds of
nature," said the Curate of St Roque's. "It is not for me to speak of
the love between you; but I hold it, as the Scripture says, for a holy
mystery, like the love of Christ for his Church--the most sacred of
all bonds," said the young man, with a certain touch of awe and
emotion, as became a young man and a true lover. He made a little
pause to regain command of himself before he continued, "And she is
dependent on you--outwardly, for all the comfort of her life--and in
her heart, for everything, Gerald. I do not comprehend what that duty
is which could make you leave her, all helpless and tender, as you
know her to be, upon the mercies of the world. She herself says"--and
poor Louisa's complaint grew into pathos under the subliming force of
her advocate's sympathy--"that she would be like a widow, and worse
than a widow. I am not the man to bid you suppress your convictions
because they will be your ruin, in the common sense of the word; but,
Gerald--your wife--"
Gerald had bent his head down upon his clasped hands; sometimes a
great heave of his frame showed the last struggle that was going on
within him--a struggle more painful, more profound, than anything that
had gone before. And the voice of the Curate, who, like his brother,
was nothing if not a priest, was choked, and painful with the force
of his emotion. He drew his breath hard between his words: it was not
an argument, but an admonition; an appeal, not from a brother only,
but from one who spoke with authority, as feeling himself accredited
from God. He drew closer towards the voluntary martyr beside him, the
humbleness of his reverential love for his elder brother mingling in
that voice of the priest, which was natural to him, and which he did
not scruple to adopt. "Gerald,--your wife," he said, in softened but
firm tones, laying his hand on his brother's arm. And it was at this
moment, when in his heart he felt that his influence might be of some
avail, and when all the powers of his mind were gathering to bear upon
this last experiment, that the door opened suddenly, and poor Louisa,
all flushed and tearful, in womanish hot impatience and misery that
knew no prudence, burst, without any warning, into the room.
"I can't bear it any longer," cried the poor wife. "I knew you were
talking it all over, and deciding what it was to be; and when one's
life is hanging on a chance, how can one keep quiet and not interfere?
Oh, Gerald, Gerald! I have been a true wife to you. I know I am not
clever; but I would have died to do you any good. You are not going to
forsake me!" cried poor Louisa, going up to him and putting her arms
round him. "I said Frank was to tell you everything, but a man can
never tell what is in a woman's heart. Oh, Gerald, why should you go
and kill me! I will never oppose you any more; whatever you want, I
will give in to it as freely as if it were my own way. I will make
_that_ my own way, Gerald, if you will only listen to me. Whatever
changes you please, oh Gerald, I will never say a word, nor your
father, nor any one! If the Bishop should interfere, we would all
stand up for you. There is not a soul in Wentworth to oppose--you know
there is not. Put anything you please in the church--preach how you
please--light the candles or anything. Gerald, you know it is true I
am saying--I am not trying to deceive you!" cried the poor soul,
bewildered in her folly and her grief.
"No, Louisa, no--only you don't understand," said her husband, with a
groan: he had raised his head, and was looking at her with a hopeless
gleam of impatience in the pity and anguish of his eyes. He took her
little hand and held it between his own, which were trembling with all
this strain--her little tender helpless woman's hand, formed only for
soft occupations and softer caresses; it was not a hand which could
help a man in such an emergency; it was without any grasp in it to
take hold upon him, or force of love to part--a clinging impotent
hand, such as holds down, but cannot raise up. He held it in a close
tremulous pressure, as she stood looking down upon him, questioning
him with eager hopeful eyes, and taking comfort in her ignorance from
his silence, and the way in which he held her. Poor Louisa concluded
she was yet to win the day.
"I will turn Puseyite too," she said with a strange little touch of
attempted laughter. "I don't want to have any opinions different from
my husband's; and you don't think your father is likely to do anything
to drive you out of the church? You have only given us a terrible
fright, dear," she continued, beginning to tremble again, as he shook
his head and turned away from her. "You did not really mean such a
dreadful thing as sending _me_ away. You could not do without me,
Gerald--you know you could not." Her breath was getting short, her
heart quickening in its throbs--the smile that was quivering on her
face got no response from her husband's downcast eyes. And then poor
Louisa lost all her courage; she threw herself down at his feet,
kneeling to him. "Oh, Gerald, it is not because you want to get rid of
me? You are not doing it for that? If you don't stay in the Rectory,
we shall be ruined--we shall not have enough to eat! and the Rectory
will go to Frank, and your children will be cast upon the world--and
what, oh what is it for, unless it is to get rid of me?" cried Mrs
Wentworth. "You could have as much freedom as you like here at your
own living--nobody would ever interfere or say what are you doing?
and the Bishop is papa's old friend. Oh, Gerald, be wise in time, and
don't throw away all our happiness for a fancy. If it was anything
that could not be arranged, I would not mind so much; but if we all
promise to give in to you, and that you shall do what you please, and
nobody will interfere, how can you have the heart to make us all so
wretched? We will not even be respectable," said the weeping woman; "a
family without any father, and a wife without her husband--and he
living all the time! Oh, Gerald, though I think I surely might be
considered as much as candles, have the altar covered with lights if
you wish it; and if you never took off your surplice any more, I would
never say a word. You can do all that and stay in the Rectory. You
have not the heart--surely--surely you have not the heart--all for an
idea of your own, to bring this terrible distress upon the children
and me?"
"God help us all!" said Gerald, with a sigh of despair, as he lifted
her up sobbing in a hysterical fit, and laid her on the sofa. He had
to stand by her side for a long time holding her hand, and soothing
her, with deeper and deeper shadows growing over his face. As for
Frank, after pacing the room in great agitation for some time, after
trying to interpose, and failing, he went away in a fever of
impatience and distress into the garden, wondering whether he could
ever find means to take up the broken thread, and urge again upon his
brother the argument which, but for this fatal interruption, he
thought might have moved him. But gathering thoughts came thick upon
the Perpetual Curate. He did not go back to make another attempt, even
when he knew by the sounds through the open windows that Louisa had
been led to her own room up-stairs. He stood outside and looked at the
troubled house, which seemed to stand so serene and secure in the
sunshine. Who could have supposed that it was torn asunder in such a
hopeless fashion? And Louisa's suggestion came into his mind, and
drove him wild with a sense of horror and involuntary guilt, as
though he had been conspiring against them. "The Rectory will go to
Frank." Was it his fault that at that moment a vision of Lucy
Wodehouse, sweet and strong and steadfast--a delicate, firm figure, on
which a man could lean in his trouble--suddenly rose up before the
Curate's eyes? Fair as the vision was, he would have banished it if he
could, and hated himself for being capable of conjuring it up at such
a time. Was it for him to profit by the great calamity which would
make his brother's house desolate? He could not endure the thought,
nor himself for finding it possible; and he was ashamed to look in
Gerald's face with even the shadow of such an imagination on his own.
He tapped at the library window after a while, and told his brother
that he was going up to the Hall. Louisa had gone up-stairs, and her
husband sat once more, vacant yet occupied, by his writing-table. "I
will follow you presently," said Gerald. "Speak to my father without
any hesitation, Frank; it is better to have it over while we are all
together--for it must be concluded now." And the Curate saw in the
shadow of the dim apartment that his brother lifted from the table the
grand emblem of all anguish and victory, and pressed upon it his pale
lips. The young man turned away with the shadow of that cross standing
black between him and the sunshine. His heart ached at the sight of
the symbol most sacred and most dear in the world. In an agony of
grief and impatience, he went away sadly through the familiar road to
his father's house. Here had he to stand by and see this sacrifice
accomplished. This was all that had come of his mission of consolation
and help.