“I will not forsake you,” said the Curate; “but tell me what it is. I have been summoned to Carlingford by my brother, and I am bewildered and disturbed beyond what I can tell you—”
“By your brother?” said Miss Wodehouse, with her unfailing instinct of interest in other people. “I hope there is no trouble in your own family, Mr. Wentworth. One gets so selfish when one is in great distress. I hope he is not ill. It sounds as if there was comfort in the very name of a brother,” said the gentle woman, drying her tears, “and I hope it is so with you; but it isn’t always so. I hope you will find he is better when you get home. I am very, very sorry to hear that you are in trouble too.”
Mr. Wentworth got up from his chair with a sigh of impatience. “Will nobody tell me what is the matter?” he said. “Mr. Wodehouse is ill, and there is some mysterious cause for it; and you are miserable, and there is a cause for that too; and I am to do something to set things right without knowing what is wrong. Will you not tell me? What is it? Has your—”
“Oh, Mr. Wentworth, don’t say anybody’s name—don’t speak so loud. There may be a servant in the staircase or something,” cried Miss Wodehouse. “I hear somebody coming now.” She got up to listen, her face growing white with panic, and went a few steps towards the door, and then tottered into another chair, unable to command herself. A certain sick thrill of apprehension came over the Curate, too, as he hastened forward. He could not tell what he was afraid of, or whether it was only the accumulated agitation of the day that made him weak. Somebody was coming up the stairs, and towards the room, with a footstep more careless than those stealthy steps with which all the servants were stealing about the house. Whoever he was, he stopped at the door a moment, and then looked cautiously in. When he saw the figure of the Curate in the imperfect light, he withdrew his head again as if deliberating with himself, and then, with a sudden rush, came in, and shut the door after him. “Confound these servants, they’re always prowling about the house,” said the newcomer. He was an alarming apparition in his great beard and his shabbiness, and the fugitive look he had. “I couldn’t help it,” he broke forth, with a spontaneous burst of apology and self-defence. “I heard he was ill, and I couldn’t keep quiet. How is he? You don’t mean to say that’s my fault. Molly, can’t you speak to me? How could I tell I should find you and the parson alone here, and all safe? I might have been risking my—my—freedom—everything I care for; but when I heard he was ill, I couldn’t stay quiet. Is he dying?—what’s the matter? Molly, can’t you speak?”
“Oh, Mr. Wentworth, somebody will see him,” cried Miss Wodehouse, wringing her hands. “Oh Tom, Tom, how could you do it? Suppose somebody was to come in—John or somebody. If you care for your own life, oh, go away, go away!”
“They can’t touch my life,” said the stranger, sullenly. “I daresay she doesn’t know that. Nor the parson need not look superior—there are more people concerned than I; but if I’ve risked everything to hear, you may surely tell me how the old man is.”
“If it was love that brought you,” said poor Miss Wodehouse; “but oh, Tom, you know I can’t believe that. He is very, very ill; and it is you that have done it,” cried the mild woman, in a little gush of passion—“you whom he has forgiven and forgiven till his heart is sick. Go away, I tell you, go away from the house that you have shamed. Oh, Mr. Wentworth, take him away,” she cried, turning to the Curate with clasped hands—“tell him to hide—to fly—or he’ll be taken: he will not be forgiven this time; and if my father—if my dear father dies—” But when she got so far her agitation interrupted her. She kept her eyes upon the door with a wild look of terror, and waved her helpless hands to warn the intruder away.
“If he dies, matters will be altered,” said the stranger: “you and I might change places then, for that matter. I’m going away from Carlingford. I can’t stay in such a wretched hole any longer. It’s gout or something?” said the man, with a tone of nature breaking through his bravado—“it’s not anything that has happened? Say so, and I’ll never trouble you more.”
“Oh, if Lucy were to see him!” said poor Miss Wodehouse. The words came unawares out of her heart without any thought; but the next thing of which she was conscious was that the Perpetual Curate had laid his hand on the stranger’s arm, and was leading him reluctantly away. “I will tell you all you want to know,” said Mr. Wentworth, “but not here;” and with his hand upon the other’s arm, moved him somehow with an irresistible command, half physical, half mental, to the door. Before Miss Wodehouse could say anything they were gone; before she could venture to draw that long sighing breath of relief, she heard the door below close, and the retreating footsteps in the garden. But the sound, thankful though she was, moved her to another burst of bitter tears. “To think I should have to tell a stranger to take him away,” she sobbed, out of the anguish of her heart; and sat weeping over him with a relenting that wrung her tender spirit, without power to move till the servant
