“Thanks; I understand what you mean,” said Mr. Wentworth, who had come to himself. “But will you tell me what it is you don’t believe in?” he asked, with a smile which Mrs. Morgan did not quite comprehend.
“I will tell you,” she said, with a little quiet exasperation. “I don’t think you would risk your prospects, and get yourself into trouble, and damage your entire life, for the sake of any girl, however pretty she might be. Men don’t do such things for women nowadays, even when it is a worthy object,” said the disappointed optimist. “And I believe you are a great deal more sensible, Mr. Wentworth.” There was just that tone of mingled approval and contempt in this speech which a woman knows how to deliver herself of without any appearance of feeling; and which no young man, however blasé, can hear with composure.
“Perhaps not,” he said, with a little heat and a rising colour. “I am glad you think me so sensible.” And then there ensued a pause, upon the issue of which depended the question of peace or war between these two. Mr. Wentworth’s good angel, perhaps, dropped softly through the dusky air at that moment, and jogged his perverse charge with the tip of a celestial wing. “And yet there might be women in the world for whom—” said the Curate; and stopped again. “I daresay you are not anxious to know my sentiments on the subject,” he continued, with a little laugh. “I am sorry you think so badly—I mean so well of me.”
“I don’t think badly of you,” said Mrs. Morgan, hastily. “Thank you for walking with me; and whatever happens, remember that I for one don’t believe a word of it,” she said, holding out her hand. After this little declaration of friendship, the Rector’s wife returned to the Rectory, where her husband was waiting for her, more than ever prepared to stand up for Mr. Wentworth. She went back to the drawing-room, forgetting all about the carpet, and poured out the tea with satisfaction, and made herself very agreeable to Mr. Finial, the architect, who had come to talk over the restorations. In that moment of stimulation she forgot all her experience of her husband’s puzzled looks, of the half-comprehension with which he looked at her, and the depths of stubborn determination which were far beyond the reach of her hastier and more generous spirit, and so went on with more satisfaction and gaiety than she had felt possible for a long time, beating her drums and blowing her trumpets, to the encounter in which her female forces were so confident of victory.
XXIX
Mr. Wentworth went upon his way, after he had parted from Mrs. Morgan, with a moment’s gratitude; but he had not gone half-a-dozen steps before that amiable sentiment yielded to a sense of soreness and vexation. He had almost acknowledged that he was conscious of the slander against which he had made up his mind to present a blank front of unconsciousness and passive resistance, and he was angry with himself for his susceptibility to this unexpected voice of kindness. He was going home, but he did not care for going home. Poor Mrs. Hadwin’s anxious looks of suspicion had added to the distaste with which he thought of encountering again the sullen shabby rascal to whom he had given shelter. It was Saturday night, and he had still his sermon to prepare for the next day; but the young man was in a state of disgust with all the circumstances of his lot, and could not make up his mind to go in and address himself to his work as he ought to have done. Such a sense of injustice and cruelty as possessed him was not likely to promote composition, especially as the pulpit addresses of the Curate of St. Roque’s were not of a declamatory kind. To think that so many years’ work could be neutralised in a day by a sudden breath of scandal, made him not humble or patient, but fierce and resentful. He had been in Wharfside that afternoon, and felt convinced that even the dying woman at No. 10 Prickett’s Lane had heard of Rosa Elsworthy; and he saw, or imagined he saw, many a distrustful inquiring glance thrown at him by people to whom he had been a kind of secondary Providence. Naturally the mere thought of the failing allegiance of the “district” went to Mr. Wentworth’s heart. When he turned round suddenly from listening to a long account of one poor family’s distresses, and saw Tom Burrows, the gigantic bargeman, whose six children the Curate had baptised in a lump, and whose baby had been held at the font by Lucy Wodehouse herself, looking at him wistfully with rude affection, and something that looked very much like pity, it is impossible to describe the bitterness that welled up in the mind of the Perpetual Curate. Instead of leaving Wharfside comforted as he usually did, he came away wounded and angry, feeling to its full extent the fickleness of popular sympathy. And when he came into Grange Lane and saw the shutters closed, and Mr. Wodehouse’s green door shut fast, as if never more to open, all sources of consolation seemed to be shut against him. Even the habit he had of going into Elsworthy’s to get his newspaper, and to hear what talk might be current in Carlingford, contributed to the sense of utter discomfort and wretchedness which overwhelmed him. Men in other positions have generally to consult the opinion of their equals only; but all sorts of small people can plant thorns in the path of a priest who has given himself with fervour to the duties of his office. True enough, such clouds blow by, and sometimes leave behind a sky clearer than before; but that result is doubtful, and Mr. Wentworth was not of the temper to comfort himself
