The Perpetual Curate

which the Curate could not see without alarm, and from which he roused himself up now and then to wander off into talk, which always began with Gerald, and always came back to his own anxieties and his disappointed hopes in his eldest son. “If Jack had been the man he ought to have been, I’d have telegraphed for him, and he’d have managed it all,” said the Squire, and then relapsed once more into silence. “For neither you nor I are men of the world, Frank,” he would resume again, after a pause of half an hour, revealing pitifully how his mind laboured under the weight of this absorbing thought. The Curate sat up with him in the dimly-lighted library, feeling the silence and the darkness to his heart. He could not assist his father in those dim ranges of painful meditation. Grieved as he was, he could not venture to compare his own distress with the bitterness of the Squire, disappointed in all his hopes and in the pride of his heart; and then the young man saw compensations and heroisms in Gerald’s case which were invisible to the unheroic eyes of Mr. Wentworth, who looked at it entirely from a practical point of view, and regarded with keen mortification an event which would lay all the affairs of the Wentworths open to general discussion, and invite the eye of the world to a renewed examination of his domestic skeletons. Everything had been hushed and shut up in the Hall for at least an hour, when the Squire got up at last and lighted his candle, and held out his hand to his son⁠—“This isn’t a very cheerful visit for you, Frank,” he said; “but we’ll try again tomorrow, and have one other talk with Gerald. Couldn’t you read up some books on the subject, or think of something new to say to him? God bless my soul! if I were as young and as much accustomed to talking as you are, I’d surely find out some argument,” said the Squire, with a momentary spark of temper, which made his son feel more comfortable about him. “It’s your business to convince a man when he’s wrong. We’ll try Gerald once more, and perhaps something may come of it; and as for Jack⁠—” Here the Squire paused, and shook his head, and let go his son’s hand. “I suppose it’s sitting up so late that makes one feel so cold and wretched, and as if one saw ghosts,” said Mr. Wentworth. “Don’t stay here any longer, and take care of the candles. I ought to have been in bed two hours ago. Good night.”

And as he walked away, the Curate could not but observe what an aged figure it looked, moving with a certain caution to the door. The great library was so dim that the light of the candle which the Squire carried in his hand was necessary to reveal his figure clearly, and there was no mistaking his air of age and feebleness. The Curate’s thoughts were not very agreeable when he was left by himself in the half-lighted room. His imagination jumped to a picture very possible, but grievous to think of⁠—Jack seated in his father’s place, and “the girls” and the little children turned out upon the world. In such a case, who would be their protector and natural guardian? Not Gerald, who was about to divest himself of ties still closer and more sacred. The Curate lit his candle too, and went hastily to his room when that thought came upon him. There might be circumstances still more hopeless and appalling than the opposition of a rector or the want of a benefice. He preferred to return to his anxiety about Gerald, and to put away that thought, as he went hurriedly upstairs.

XIX

“The sum of it all is, that you won’t hear any reason, Gerald,” said the Squire. “What your brother says, and what I say, are nothing; your poor wife is nothing; and all a man’s duties, sir, in life⁠—all your responsibilities, everything that is considered most sacred⁠—”

“You may say what you will to me, father,” said Gerald. “I can’t expect you should speak differently. But you may imagine I have looked at it in every possible light before I came to this resolution. A man does not decide easily when everything he prizes on earth is at stake. I cannot see with Frank’s eyes, or with yours; according to the light God has given me, I must see with my own.”

“But, God bless my soul! what do you mean by seeing with your own eyes?” said the Squire. “Don’t you know that is a Protestant doctrine, sir? Do you think they’ll let you see with any eyes but theirs when you get among a set of Papists? Instead of an easygoing bishop, and friendly fellows for brother clergymen, and parishioners that think everything that’s good of you, how do you suppose you’ll feel as an Englishman when you get into a dead Frenchified system, with everything going by rule and measure, and bound to believe just as you’re told? It’ll kill you, sir⁠—that’s what will be the end of it. If you are in your grave within the year, it will be no wonder to me.”

“Amen!” said Gerald, softly. “If that is to be all, we will not quarrel with the result;” and he got up and went to the window, as if to look for his cedar, which was not there. Perhaps the absence of his silent referee gave him a kind of comfort, though at the same time it disappointed him in some fantastical way, for he turned with a curious look of relief and vexation to his brother. “We need not be always thinking of it, even if this were to be the end,” he said. “Come down the avenue with me, Frank, and let us talk of something else. The girls will