The Perpetual Curate

he had to take his own way. “What I have to say is not anything new,” said the Curate, labouring a little in his voice, as was inevitable when affairs had come to such a crisis, “if I were not in the cruelest position possible to a man. I have only an empty love to lay at your feet; I tell it to you only because I am obliged⁠—because, after all, love is worth telling, even if it comes to nothing. I am not going to appeal to your generosity,” continued the young man, kneeling down at the table, not by way of kneeling to Lucy, but by way of bringing himself on a level with her, where she sat with her head bent down on her low chair, “or to ask you to bind yourself to a man who has nothing in the world but love to offer you; but after what has been for years, after all the hours I have spent here, I cannot⁠—part⁠—I cannot let you go⁠—without a word⁠—”

And here he stopped short. He had not asked anything, so that Lucy, even had she been able, had nothing to answer; and as for the young lover himself, he seemed to have come to the limit of his eloquence. He kept waiting for a moment, gazing at her in breathless expectation of a response for which his own words had left no room. Then he rose in an indescribable tumult of disappointment and mortification⁠—unable to conclude that all was over, unable to keep silence, yet not knowing what to say.

“I have been obliged to close all the doors of advancement upon myself,” said the Curate, with a little bitterness; “I don’t know if you understand me. At this moment I have to deny myself the dearest privilege of existence. Don’t mistake me, Lucy,” he said, after another pause, coming back to her with humility, “I don’t venture to say that you would have accepted anything I had to offer; but this I mean, that to have a home for you now⁠—to have a life for you ready to be laid at your feet, whether you would have had it or not;⁠—what right have I to speak of such delights?” cried the young man. “It does not matter to you; and as for me, I have patience⁠—patience to console myself with⁠—”

Poor Lucy, though she was on the verge of tears, which nothing but the most passionate self-restraint could have kept in, could not help a passing sensation of amusement at these words. “Not too much of that either,” she said, softly, with a tremulous smile. “But patience carries the lilies of the saints,” said Lucy, with a touch of the sweet asceticism which had once been so charming to the young Anglican. It brought him back like a spell to the common ground on which they used to meet; it brought him back also to his former position on his knee, which was embarrassing to Lucy, though she had not the heart to draw back, nor even to withdraw her hand, which somehow happened to be in Mr. Wentworth’s way.

“I am but a man,” said the young lover. “I would rather have the roses of life⁠—but, Lucy, I am only a perpetual curate,” he continued, with her hand in his. Her answer was made in the most heartless and indifferent words. She let two big drops⁠—which fell like hail, though they were warmer than any summer rain⁠—drop out of her eyes, and she said, with lips that had some difficulty in enunciating that heartless sentiment, “I don’t see what it matters to me⁠—”

Which was true enough, though it did not sound encouraging; and it is dreadful to confess that, for a little while after, neither Skelmersdale, nor Wentworth, nor Mr. Proctor’s new rectory, nor the no-income of the Perpetual Curate of St. Roque’s, had the smallest place in the thoughts of either of these perfectly inconsiderate young people. For half an hour they were an Emperor and Empress seated upon two thrones, to which all the world was subject; and when at the end of that time they began to remember the world, it was but to laugh at it in their infinite youthful superiority. Then it became apparent that to remain in Carlingford, to work at “the district,” to carry out all the ancient intentions of well-doing which had been the first bond between them, was, after all, the life of lives;⁠—which was the state of mind they had both arrived at when Miss Wodehouse, who thought they had been too long together under the circumstances, and could not help wondering what Mr. Wentworth could be saying, came into the room, rather flurried in her own person. She thought Lucy must have been telling the Curate about Mr. Proctor and his hopes, and was, to tell the truth, a little curious how Mr. Wentworth would take it, and a little⁠—the very least⁠—ashamed of encountering his critical looks. The condition of mind into which Miss Wodehouse was thrown when she perceived the real state of affairs would be difficult to describe. She was very glad and very sorry, and utterly puzzled how they were to live; and underneath all these varying emotions was a sudden, half-ludicrous, half-humiliating sense of being cast into the shade, which made Mr. Proctor’s fiancée laugh and made her cry, and brought her down altogether off the temporary pedestal upon which she had stepped, not without a little feminine satisfaction. When a woman is going to be married, especially if that marriage falls later than usual, it is natural that she should expect, for that time at least, to be the first and most prominent figure in her little circle. But, alas! what chance could there be for a mild, dove-coloured bride of forty beside a creature of half her age, endued with all the natural bloom and natural interest of youth?

Miss Wodehouse could not quite make out her own feelings on the subject. “Don’t