XLII
Frank Wentworth once more went up Grange Lane, a thoughtful and a sober man. Exhilaration comes but by moments in the happiest of lives—and already he began to remember how very little he had to be elated about, and how entirely things remained as before. Even Lucy; her letter very probably might be only an effusion of friendship; and at all events, what could he say to her—what did he dare in honour say? And then his mind went off to think of the two rectories, between which he had fallen as between two stools: though he had made up his mind to accept neither, he did not the less feel a certain mortification in seeing that his relations on both sides were so willing to bestow their gifts elsewhere. He could not tolerate the idea of succeeding Gerald in his own person, but still he found it very disagreeable to consent to the thought that Huxtable should replace him—Huxtable, who was a good fellow enough, but of whom Frank Wentworth thought, as men generally think of their brothers-in-law, with a half-impatient, half-contemptuous wonder what Mary could ever have seen in so commonplace a man. To think of him as rector of Wentworth inwardly chafed the spirit of the Perpetual Curate. As he was going along, absorbed in his own thoughts, he did not perceive how his approach was watched for from the other side of the way by Elsworthy, who stood with his bundle of newspapers under his arm and his hat in his hand, watching for “his clergyman” with submission and apology on the surface, and hidden rancour underneath. Elsworthy was not penitent; he was furious and disappointed. His mistake and its consequences were wholly humiliating, and had not in them a single saving feature to atone for the wounds of his self-esteem. The Curate had not only baffled and beaten him, but humbled him in his own eyes, which is perhaps, of all others, the injury least easy to forgive. It was, however, with an appearance of the profoundest submission that he stood awaiting the approach of the man he had tried so much to injure.
“Mr. Wentworth, sir,” said Elsworthy, “if I was worth your while, I might think as you were offended with me; but seeing I’m one as is so far beneath you”—he went on with a kind of grin, intended to represent a deprecatory smile, but which would have been a snarl had he dared—“I can’t think as you’ll bear no malice. May I ask, sir, if there’s a-going to be any difference made?”
“In what respect, Elsworthy?” said the Curate, shortly.
“Well, sir, I can’t tell,” said the clerk of St. Roque’s. “If a clergyman was to bear malice, it’s in his power to make things very unpleasant. I don’t speak of the place at church, which aint either here nor there—it’s respectable, but it aint lucrative; but if you was to stretch a point, Mr. Wentworth, by continuing the papers and suchlike—it aint that I value the money,” said Elsworthy, “but I’ve been a faithful servant; and I might say, if you was to take it in a right spirit, an ’umble friend, Mr. Wentworth,” he continued, after a little pause, growing bolder. “And now, as I’ve that unfortunate creature to provide for, and no one knowing what’s to become of her—”
“I wonder that you venture to speak of her to me,” said the Curate, with a little indignation, “after all the warnings I gave you. But you ought to consider that you are to blame a great deal more than she is. She is only a child; if you had taken better care of her—but you would not pay any attention to my warning;—you must bear the consequences as you best can.”
“Well, sir,” said Elsworthy, “if you’re a-going to bear malice, I haven’t got nothing to say. But there aint ten men in Carlingford as wouldn’t agree with me that when a young gentleman, even if he is a clergyman, takes particklar notice of a pretty young girl, it aint just for nothing as he does it—not to say watching over her paternal to see as she wasn’t out late at night, and suchlike. But bygones is bygones, sir,” said Elsworthy,
