“I am sure, dear, what we have seen of Mr. Wentworth in private, we have liked very much,” said the Rector’s sensible wife, with a deprecating glance towards her husband. The Rector took no notice of the glance; he grew slightly red in his serious middle-aged face, and cleared his throat several times before he began to speak.
“The fact is, I have reason to be dissatisfied with Mr. Wentworth, as regards my own parish,” said Mr. Morgan: “personally I have nothing to say against him—quite the reverse; probably, as you say, it arises from inadvertence, as he is still a very young man; but—”
“What has he done?” said Miss Leonora, pricking up her ears.
Once more Mr. Morgan cleared his throat, but this time it was to keep down the rising anger of which he was unpleasantly sensible. “I don’t generally enter into such matters with people whom they don’t concern,” he said, with a touch of his natural asperity; “but as you are Mr. Wentworth’s relation—. He has taken a step perfectly unjustifiable in every respect; he has at the present moment a mission going on in my parish, in entire independence, I will not say defiance, of me. My dear, it is unnecessary to look at me so deprecatingly. I am indignant at having such a liberty taken with me. I don’t pretend not to be indignant. Mr. Wentworth is a very young man, and may not know any better; but it is the most unwarrantable intrusion upon a clergyman’s rights. I beg your pardon, Miss Wentworth: you have nothing to do with my grievances; but the fact is, my wife and I were discussing this very unpleasant matter when you came in.”
“A mission in your parish?” said Miss Leonora, her iron-grey eyes lighting up with a sparkle which did not look like indignation; at this point it was necessary that Miss Dora should throw herself into the breach.
“Oh, Mr. Morgan, I am sure my dear Frank does not mean it!” cried the unlucky peacemaker; “he would not for the world do anything to wound anybody’s feelings—it must be a mistake.”
“Mr. Morgan would not have mentioned it if we had not just been talking as you came in,” said the Rector’s wife, by way of smoothing down his ruffled temper and giving him time to recover. “I feel sure it is a mistake, and that everything will come right as soon as they can talk it over by themselves. The last Rector was not at all a working clergyman—and perhaps Mr. Wentworth felt it was his duty—and now I daresay he forgets that it is not his own parish. It will all come right after a time.”
“But the mission is effective, I suppose, or you would not object to it?” said Miss Leonora, who, though a very religious woman, was not a peacemaker; and the Rector, whose temper was hasty, swallowed the bait. He entered into his grievances more fully than his wife thought consistent with his dignity. She sat with her eyes fixed upon the floor, tracing the objectionable pattern on the carpet with her foot, but too much vexed for the moment to think of those bouquets which were so severe a cross to her on ordinary occasions. Perhaps she was thinking secretly to herself how much better one knows a man after being married to him three months than after being engaged to him ten years; but the discovery that he was merely a man after all, with very ordinary defects, did not lessen her loyalty. She sat with her eyes bent upon the carpet, feeling a little hot and uncomfortable as her husband disclosed his weakness, and watching her opportunities to rush in and say a softening word now and then. The chances were, perhaps, on the whole, that the wife grew more loyal, if that were possible, as she perceived the necessity of standing by him and backing him out. The Rector went very fully into the subject, being drawn out by Miss Leonora’s questions, and betrayed an extent of information strangely opposed to the utter ignorance which he had displayed at Mr. Wodehouse’s party. He knew the hours of Mr. Wentworth’s services, and the number of people who attended, and even about Tom Burrows’s six children who had been baptised the day before. Somehow Mr. Morgan took this last particular as a special offence; it was this which had roused him beyond his usual self-control. Six little heathens brought into the Christian fold in his own parish without the permission of the Rector! It was indeed enough to try any clergyman’s temper. Through the entire narrative Miss Dora broke in now and then with a little wail expressive of her general dismay and grief, and certainty that her dear Frank did not mean it. Mrs. Morgan repeated apart to Miss Wentworth with a troubled brow the fact that all they had seen of Mr. Wentworth in private they had liked very much; to which aunt Cecilia answered, “Quite so,” with her beautiful smile; while Miss Leonora sat and listened, putting artful questions, and fixing the heated Rector with that iron-grey eye, out of which the sparkle of incipient light had not faded. Mr. Morgan naturally said a great deal more than he meant to say, and after it was said he was sorry; but he did not show the latter sentiment except by silence and an uneasy rustling about the room just before the Miss Wentworths rose to go—a sign apparent to his wife, though to nobody else. He gave Miss Wentworth his arm to the door with an embarrassed courtesy.
