The Perpetual Curate

discussed the probabilities as to where she had gone, and whether Rosa could be the lady in a veil who had been handed into the express night-train by two gentlemen, of whom a railway porter bore cautious testimony, the other mysterious rumour about Mr. Wentworth had its share of popular attention. It was discussed in Masters’s with a solemnity becoming the occasion, everybody being convinced of the fact, and nobody knowing how it was to be. One prevailing idea was, that Mr. Wentworth’s brother, who had succeeded to his mother’s fortune (which was partly true, like most popular versions of family history, his mother’s fortune being now Gerald’s sole dependence), intended to establish a great brotherhood, upon the Claydon model, in Carlingford, of which the Perpetual Curate was to be the head. This idea pleased the imagination of the town, which already saw itself talked of in all the papers, and anticipated with excitement the sight of English brothers of St. Benedict walking about in the streets, and people from the Illustrated News making drawings of Grange Lane. To be sure, Gerald Wentworth had gone over to the Church of Rome, which was a step too far to be compatible with the English brotherhood; but popular imagination, when puzzled and in a hurry, does not take time to master all details. Then, again, opinion wavered, and it was supposed to be the Miss Wentworths who were the agents of the coming prosperity. They had made up their mind to endow St. Roque’s and apply to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners to have it erected into a parochial district, rumour reported; and the senior assistant in Masters’s, who was suspected of Low-Church tendencies, was known to be a supporter of this theory. Other ideas of a vague character floated through the town, of which no one could give any explanation; but Carlingford was unanimous in the conviction that good fortune was coming somehow to the popular favourite, who a week ago had occupied temporarily the position of the popular bête noire and impersonation of evil. “But the real sort always triumphs at the last,” was the verdict of Wharfside, which like every primitive community, believed in poetic justice; and among the bargemen and their wives much greater elevation than that of a district church or the headship of a brotherhood was expected “for the clergyman.” If the Queen had sent for him immediately, and conferred upon him a bishopric, or at least appointed him her private chaplain, such a favour would have excited no surprise in Wharfside, where indeed the public mind was inclined to the opinion that the real use of queens and other such dignitaries was to find out and reward merit. Mr. Wentworth himself laughed when the gossip reached his ears. “My people have given away all they had to give,” he said to somebody who had asked the question; “and I know no prospect I have of being anything but a perpetual curate, unless the Queen sends for me and appoints me to a bishopric, as I understand is expected in Prickett’s Lane. If I come to any advancement,” said the Curate of St. Roque’s, “it must be in social estimation, and not in worldly wealth, which is out of my way;” and he went down to Wharfside rather cheerfully than otherwise, having begun to experience that pertinacity carries the day, and that it might be possible to goad Lucy into the experiment of how much her housekeeping talents were good for, and whether, with a good wife, even a Perpetual Curate might be able to live without any particular bother in respect to the grocer’s bill. Mr. Wentworth being at present warmly engaged in this business of persuasion, and as intent as ever on having his own way, was not much affected by the Carlingford gossip. He went his way to Wharfside all the same, where the service was conducted as of old, and where all the humble uncertain voices were buoyed up and carried on by the steady pure volume of liquid sound which issued from Lucy Wodehouse’s lips into the utterance of such a “Magnificat” as filled Mr. Wentworth’s mind with exultation. It was the woman’s part in the worship⁠—independent, yet in a sweet subordination; and the two had come back⁠—though with the difference that their love was now avowed and certain, and they were known to belong to each other⁠—to much the same state of feeling in which they were before the Miss Wentworths came to Carlingford, or anything uncomfortable had happened. They had learned various little lessons, to be sure, in the interim, but experience had not done much more for them than it does for ordinary human creatures, and the chances are that Mr. Wentworth would have conducted himself exactly in the same manner another time had he been placed in similar circumstances; for the lessons of experience, however valuable, are sometimes very slow of impressing themselves upon a generous and hasty temperament, which has high ideas of honour and consistency, and rather piques itself on a contempt for self-interest and external advantages⁠—which was the weakness of the Curate of St. Roque’s. He returned to the “great work” in Wharfside with undiminished belief in it, and a sense of being able to serve his God and his fellow-creatures, which, though it may seem strange to some people, was a wonderful compensation to him for the loss of Skelmersdale. “After all, I doubt very much whether, under any circumstances, we could have left such a work as is going on here,” he said to Lucy as they came up Prickett’s Lane together, where the poor woman had just died peaceably in No. 10, and got done with it, poor soul; and the Sister of Mercy, in her grey cloak, lifted towards him the blue eyes which were full of tears, and answered with natural emphasis, “Impossible! it would have been deserting our post,” and drew a step closer to him in the twilight with a