The Perpetual Curate

and hearing it from lips pallid with the meaning of the words they uttered, and a heart which was about to prove its sincerity by voluntary pangs more hard than death. Frank Wentworth listened to his brother with a great deal of agreement in what he said, and again with an acute perception of mistakes on Gerald’s part, and vehement impulses of contradiction, to which, at the same time, it was impossible to give utterance; for there was something very solemn in the account he was giving of himself, as he stood with his face half turned to the anxious listener, leaning on the window, looking into the cedar. Gerald did not leave any room for argument or remonstrance; he told his brother how he had been led from one step to another, without any lingering touch of possibility in the narrative that he might be induced to retrace again that painful way. It was a path, once trod, never to be returned upon; and already he stood steadfast at the end, looking back mournfully, yet with a strange composure. It would be impossible to describe the mixture of love, admiration, impatience⁠—even intolerance⁠—which swelled through the mind of the spectator as he looked on at this wonderful sight, nor how hard he found it to restrain the interruptions which rushed to his lips, the eager arguments which came upon him in a flood, all his own favourite fences against the overflow of the tide which ran in lawful bounds in his own mind, but which had inundated his brother’s. But though it was next to impossible to keep silence, it was altogether impossible to break in upon Gerald’s history of this great battle through which he had just come. He had come through it, it was plain; the warfare was accomplished, the weapons hung up, the conflict over; and nothing could be more apparent than that he had no intention of entering the battlefield again. When he had ended, there was another pause.

“I am not going to argue with you,” said Frank Wentworth; “I don’t even need to tell you that I am grieved to the heart. It isn’t so very many years ago,” said the younger brother, almost too much touched by the recollection to preserve his composure, “since I took all my opinions from you; and since the time came for independent action, I too have gone over all this ground. My conclusions have been very different from yours, Gerald. I see you are convinced, and I can say nothing; but they do not convince me⁠—you do not convince me, nor the sight of your faith, though that is the most touching of all arguments. Will you go back and go over it again?” said the Curate, spurred, by a thought of poor Louisa, to contradict himself, while the words were still on his lips.

“No,” said Gerald; “it would be of no use, Frank. We should only grieve each other more.”

“Then I give up that subject,” said the younger brother: “but there is one matter which I must go back to. You may go to Rome, and cease to be a priest of the Anglican Church, but you cannot cease to be a man, to bear the weight of your natural duties. Don’t turn away, but hear me. Gerald, Louisa⁠—”

“Don’t say any more. Do you imagine I have not thought of that?” said Gerald, once more, with a gesture of pain, and something like terror; “I have put my hand to the plough and I cannot go back. If I am not a priest, I am nothing.” But when he came to that point, his cedar-tree no longer gave him any assistance; he came back to his chair, and covered his face with his hands.

“Louisa is your wife; you are not like a man free from the bonds of nature,” said the Curate of St. Roque’s. “It is not for me to speak of the love between you; but I hold it, as the Scripture says, for a holy mystery, like the love of Christ for his Church⁠—the most sacred of all bonds,” said the young man, with a certain touch of awe and emotion, as became a young man and a true lover. He made a little pause to regain command of himself before he continued, “And she is dependent on you⁠—outwardly, for all the comfort of her life⁠—and in her heart, for everything, Gerald. I do not comprehend what that duty is which could make you leave her, all helpless and tender, as you know her to be, upon the mercies of the world. She herself says”⁠—and poor Louisa’s complaint grew into pathos under the subliming force of her advocate’s sympathy⁠—“that she would be like a widow, and worse than a widow. I am not the man to bid you suppress your convictions because they will be your ruin, in the common sense of the word; but, Gerald⁠—your wife⁠—”

Gerald had bent his head down upon his clasped hands; sometimes a great heave of his frame showed the last struggle that was going on within him⁠—a struggle more painful, more profound, than anything that had gone before. And the voice of the Curate, who, like his brother, was nothing if not a priest, was choked, and painful with the force of his emotion. He drew his breath hard between his words: it was not an argument, but an admonition; an appeal, not from a brother only, but from one who spoke with authority, as feeling himself accredited from God. He drew closer towards the voluntary martyr beside him, the humbleness of his reverential love for his elder brother mingling in that voice of the priest, which was natural to him, and which he did not scruple to adopt. “Gerald⁠—your wife,” he said, in softened but firm tones, laying his hand on his brother’s arm. And it was at this moment, when in his heart he felt that his influence might be of some avail, and when all the