“But, Frank, you are not taking any notice of what I say,” said Miss Dora, with something like a suppressed sob. “I don’t doubt your sick people are very important, but I thought you would take some interest. I came down to tell you, all the way by myself.”
“My sister would like to call on you, Miss Wentworth,” said Lucy, interposing. “Gentlemen never understand what one says. Perhaps we could be of some use to you if you are going to settle in Carlingford. I think she has been a great deal better since she confessed,” continued the charitable Sister, looking up to the Curate, and, like him, dropping her voice. “The absolution was such a comfort. Now she seems to feel as if she could die. And she has so little to live for!” said Lucy, with a sigh of sympathetic feeling, remorseful too. Somehow it seemed cruel to feel so young, so hopeful, so capable of happiness, with such desolation close at hand.
“Not even duty,” said the Curate; “and to think that the Church should hesitate to remove the last barriers out of the way! I would not be a priest if I were debarred from the power of delivering such a poor soul.”
“Oh, Frank,” said Miss Dora, with a long breath of fright and horror, “what are you saying? Oh, my dear, don’t say it over again, I don’t want to hear it! I hope when we are dying we shall all feel what great great sinners we are,” said the poor lady, who, between vexation and mortification, was ready to cry, “and not think that one is better than another. Oh, my dear, there is that man again! Do you think it is safe to meet him in such a lonely road? If he comes across and speaks to me any more I shall faint,” cried poor Miss Dora, whose opinions were not quite in accordance with her feelings. Mr. Wentworth did not say anything to soothe her, but with his unoccupied hand he made an involuntary movement towards Lucy’s cloak, and plucked at it to bring her nearer, as the bearded stranger loomed dimly past, looking at the group. Lucy felt the touch, and wondered and looked up at him in the darkness. She could not comprehend the Curate’s face.
“Are you afraid of him?” she said, with a slight smile; “if it is only his beard I am not alarmed; and here is papa coming to meet me. I thought you would have come for me sooner, papa. Has anything happened?” said Lucy, taking Mr. Wodehouse’s arm, who had suddenly appeared from underneath the lamp, still unlighted, at Dr. Marjoribanks’s door. She clung to her father with unusual eagerness, willing enough to escape from the darkness and the Curate’s side, and all the tremulous sensations of the hour.
“What could happen?” said Mr. Wodehouse, who still looked “limp” from his recent illness, “though I hear there are doubtful people about; so they tell me—but you ought to know best, Wentworth. Who is that fellow in the beard that went by on the other side? Not little Lake the drawing-master? Fancied I had seen the build of the man before—eh?—a stranger? Well, it’s a mistake, perhaps. Can’t be sure of anything nowadays;—memory failing. Well, that’s what the doctor says. Come in and rest and see Molly; as for me, I’m not good for much, but you won’t get better company than the girls, or else that’s what folks tell me. Who did you say that fellow was?” said the churchwarden, leaning across his daughter to see Mr. Wentworth’s face.
“I don’t know anything about him,” said the Curate of St. Roque’s.
And curiously enough silence fell upon the little party, nobody could tell how;—for two minutes, which looked like twenty, no one spoke. Then Lucy roused herself, apparently with a little effort. “We seem to talk of nothing but the man with the beard tonight,” she said. “Mary knows everything that goes on in Carlingford—she will tell us about him; and if Miss Wentworth thinks it too late to come in, we will say good night,” she continued, with a little decision of tone, which was not incomprehensible to the Perpetual Curate. Perhaps she was a little provoked and troubled in her own person. To say so much in looks and so little in words, was a mode of procedure which puzzled Lucy. It fretted her, because it looked unworthy of her hero. She withdrew within the green door, holding her father’s arm fast, and talking to him, while Mr. Wentworth strained his ears after the voice, which he thought he could have singled out from a thousand voices. Perhaps Lucy talked to drown her thoughts; and the Curate went away dumb and abstracted, with his aunt leaning on his arm on the other side of the wall. He could not be interested, as Miss Dora expected him to be, in the Miss Wentworths’ plans. He conducted her to the Blue Boar languidly, with an evident indifference to the fact that his aunt Leonora was about to become a permanent resident in Carlingford. He said “Good night” kindly to little Rosa Elsworthy, looking out with bright eyes into the darkness at the door of her uncle’s shop; but he said little to Miss Dora, who could not tell what to make of him, and swallowed her tears as quietly as possible under her veil. When he had deposited his aunt safely at the inn, the Perpetual Curate hastened down Grange Lane at a great pace. The first sound he heard on entering Mrs. Hadwin’s garden was the clear notes of the stranger’s whistle among the trees; and with an impatient exclamation Mr. Wentworth sought his fellow-lodger, who was smoking as usual, pacing up and down a shaded walk, where, even in daylight,
