“You mean the two Miss Wodehouses?” said Miss Leonora. “Their father has turned out to be—bankrupt?—or something?—”
“Worse than bankrupt,” said the Curate: “there is a brother who takes everything. Will you stand by them—offer them shelter?—I mean for a time. I don’t know anybody I should care to apply to but you.”
Miss Leonora paused and looked at her nephew. “First tell me what you have to do with them,” she asked. “If there is a brother, he is their natural protector—certainly not you—unless there is something I don’t know of. Frank, you know you can’t marry,” said Miss Leonora, with a little vehemence, once more looking in her nephew’s face.
“No,” said Frank, with momentary bitterness; “I am not likely to make any mistake about that—at present, at least. The brother is a reprobate of whom they know nothing. I have no right to consider myself their protector—but I am their friend at least,” said the Curate, breaking off with again that softening in his voice. “They may have a great many friends, for anything I know; but I have confidence in you, aunt Leonora: you are not perhaps particularly sympathetic,” he went on, with a laugh; “you don’t condole with Louisa, for instance; but I could trust you with—”
“Lucy Wodehouse!” said Miss Leonora; “I don’t dislike her at all, if she would not wear that ridiculous grey cloak; but young men don’t take such an interest in young women without some reason for it. What are we to do for you, Frank?” said the strong-minded woman, looking at him with a little softness. Miss Leonora, perhaps, was not used to be taken into anybody’s confidence. It moved her more than might have been expected from so self-possessed a woman. Perhaps no other act on the part of her nephew could have had so much effect, had he been able to pursue his advantage, upon the still undecided fate of Skelmersdale.
“Nothing,” said the Curate. He met her eye very steadily, but she was too clear-sighted to believe that he felt as calmly as he looked. “Nothing,” he repeated again—“I told you as much before. I have been slandered here, and here I must remain. There are no parsonages or paradises for me.”
With which speech Mr. Wentworth shook hands with his aunt and went away. He left Miss Leonora as he had left her on various occasions—considerably confused in her ideas. She could not enjoy any longer the cream of the missionary’s letter. When she tried to resume her reading, her attention flagged over it. After a while she put on her bonnet and went out, after a little consultation with her maid, who assisted her in the housekeeping department. The house was tolerably full at the present moment, but it was elastic. She was met at the green door of Mr. Wodehouse’s garden by the new proprietor, who stared excessively, and did not know what to make of such an apparition. “Jack Wentworth’s aunt, by Jove!” he said to himself, and took off his hat, meaning to show her “a little civility.” Miss Leonora thought him one of the attendants at the recent ceremonial, and passed him without any ceremony. She was quite intent upon her charitable mission. Mr. Wentworth’s confidence was justified.
XXXV
Mr. Wentworth’s day had been closely occupied up to this point. He had gone through a great many emotions, and transacted a good deal of business, and he went home with the comparative ease of a man whose anxieties are relieved, not by any real deliverance, but by the soothing influence of fatigue and the sense of something accomplished. He was not in reality in a better position than when he left his house in the morning, bitterly mortified, injured, and wounded at the tenderest point. Things were very much the same as they had been, but a change had come over the feelings of the Perpetual Curate. He remembered with a smile, as he went down Grange Lane, that Mr. Proctor was to dine with him, and that he had rashly undertaken to have something better than a chop. It was a very foolish engagement under the circumstances. Mr. Wentworth was cogitating within himself whether he could make an appeal to the sympathies of his aunt’s cook for something worthy of the sensitive palate of a Fellow of All Souls, when all such thoughts were suddenly driven out of his mind by the apparition of his brother Gerald—perhaps the last man in the world whom he could have expected to see in Carlingford. Gerald was coming up Grange Lane in his meditative way from Mrs. Hadwin’s door. To look at him was enough to reveal to any clear-sighted spectator the presence of some perpetual argument in his mind. Though he had come out to look for Frank, his eyes were continually forsaking his intention, catching spots of lichen on the wall and clumps of herbage on the roadside. The long discussion had become so familiar to him, that even now, when his mind was made up, he could not relinquish the habit which possessed him. When he perceived Frank, he quickened his steps. They
