Unfortunately the Squire got up when his sons did, which was by no means their intention; but Mr. Wentworth was vexed and restless, and was not willing to let Gerald off so easily. If he were mad, at least he ought to be made duly wretched in his madness, Mr. Wentworth thought; and he went out with them, and arrested the words on their lips. Somehow everything seemed to concur in hindering any appeal on the part of the Curate. And Gerald, like most imaginative men, had a power of dismissing his troubles after they had taken their will of him. It was he who took the conversation on himself when they went out of doors. Finding Frank slow in his report, Gerald went into all the country news for the instruction of his brother. He had been down to the very depths during the two previous days, and now he had come aloft again; for a man cannot be miserable every moment of his life, however heavy his burden may be. The “girls,” whose anxieties had been much stimulated by the renewed conference held with closed doors in the library, stood watching them from one of the drawing-room windows. The boldest of the two had, indeed, got her hat to follow them, not comprehending why Frank should be monopolised for days together by anybody but herself, his favourite sister; but something in the aspect of the three men, when they first appeared under the lime-trees, had awed even the lively Letty out of her usual courage. “But Gerald is talking and laughing just as usual,” she said, as she stood at the window dangling her hat in her hand—“more than usual, for he has been very glum all this spring. Poor fellow! I daresay Louisa worries him out of his life;” and with this easy conclusion the elder brother was dismissed by the girls. “Perhaps Frank is going to be married,” said the other sister, who, under the lively spur of this idea, came back to the window to gaze at him again, and find out whether any intimation of this alarming possibility could be gathered from the fit of his long clerical coat, or his manner of walk, as he sauntered along under the limes. “As if a Perpetual Curate could marry!” said Letty, with scorn, who knew the world. As for little Janet, who was a tenderhearted little soul, she folded her two hands together, and looked at her brother’s back with a great increase of interest. “If one loved him, one would not mind what he was,” said the little maiden, who had been in some trouble herself, and understood about such matters. So the girls talked at their window, Mrs. Wentworth being, as usual, occupied with her nursery, and nobody else at hand to teach them wisdom, and soon branched off into speculations about the postbag, which was “due,” and which, perhaps, was almost more interesting, to one of them at least, than even a brother who was going to be married.
In the meantime Gerald was talking of Huxtable and Plumstead, the brother-in-law and cousin, who were both clergymen in the same district, and about the people in the village whom they had known when they were boys, and who never grew any older. “There is old Kilweed, for example, who was Methuselah in those days—he’s not eighty yet,” he said, with a smile and a sigh; “it is we who grow older and come nearer to the winter and the sunset. My father even has come down a long way off the awful eminence on which I used to behold him: every year that falls on my head seems to take one off his: if we both live long enough, we shall feel like contemporaries by-and-by,” said Gerald: “just now the advantage of years is all on my side; and you are my junior, sir.” He was switching down the weeds among the grass with his cane as he spoke, like any schoolboy; the air, and perhaps a little excitement, had roused the blood to his cheek. He did not look the same man as the pale martyr in the library—not that he had any reason for appearing different, but only that inalienable poetic waywardness which kept him up through his trouble. As for Mr. Wentworth, he resented the momentary brightening, which he took for levity.
“I thought we came out here to prolong our discussion,” said the Squire. “I don’t understand this light way of talking. If you mean what you have said, sir, I should never expect to see you smile more.”
“The smiling makes little difference,” said Gerald; but he stopped short in his talk, and there was a pause among them till the postboy came up to them with his bag, which Mr. Wentworth, with much importance, paused to open. The young men, who had no special interest in its contents, went on. Perhaps the absence of their father was a relief to them. They were nearer to each other, understood each other better than he could do; and they quickened their pace insensibly as they began to talk. It is easy to imagine what kind of talk it was—entire sympathy, yet disagreement wide as the poles—here for a few steps side by side, there darting off at the most opposite tangent; but they had begun to warm to it, and to forget everything else, when a succession of lusty hollos from the Squire brought them suddenly to themselves, and to a dead stop. When they looked round, he was making up to them with choleric strides. “What the deuce do you mean, sir, by having telegrams sent here?” cried Mr. Wentworth, pitching at his son Frank an ominous ugly envelope, in blue and red, such as the unsophisticated mind naturally trembles at. “Beg your pardon, Gerald; but I never can keep my temper when I see a telegraph.
