The Perpetual Curate

to admit any great amount of light, with a sensation of fatigue and discouragement very natural to a man who had been interfering in other people’s affairs. There was some comfort in the litany which he was just going to say, but not much comfort in any of the human individuals who would come into Mr. Wentworth’s mind as he paused in the midst of the suffrage for “sick persons” and for those who “had erred and were deceived,” that the worshippers might whisper into God’s ear the names for which their hearts were most concerned. The young priest sighed heavily as he put on his surplice, pondering all the obstinate selfishness and strange contradictions of men; and it was only when he heard a rather loud echo to his breath of weariness that he looked up and saw Elsworthy, who was contemplating him with a very curious expression of face. The clerk started a little on being discovered, and began to look over all the choristers’ books and set them in readiness, though, indeed, there were no choristers on Fridays, but only the ladies, who chanted the responses a great deal more sweetly, and wore no surplices. Thinking of that, it occurred to Mr. Wentworth how much he would miss the round full notes which always betrayed Lucy’s presence to him even when he did not see her; and he forgot Elsworthy, and sighed again without thinking of any comment which might be made upon the sound.

“I’m sorry to see, sir, as you aint in your usual good spirits?” said that observant spectator, coming closer up to “his clergyman.” Elsworthy’s eyes were full of meanings which Mr. Wentworth could not, and had no wish to, decipher.

“I am perfectly well, thank you,” said the Perpetual Curate, with his coldest tone. He had become suspicious of the man, he could scarcely tell why.

“There’s a deal of people in church this morning,” said the clerk; and then he came closer still, and spoke in a kind of whisper. “About that little matter as we was speaking of, Mr. Wentworth⁠—that’s all straight, sir, and there aint no occasion to be vexed. She came back this morning,” said Elsworthy, under his breath.

“Who came back this morning?” asked the Curate, with a little surprise. His thoughts had been so much with Lucy that no one else occurred to him at the moment; and even while he asked the question, his busy fancy began to wonder where she could have been, and what motive could have taken her away?

“I couldn’t mean nobody but Rosa, as I talked to you about last night,” said Elsworthy. “She’s come back, sir, as you wished; and I have heard as she was in Carlingford last night just afore you come, Mr. Wentworth, when I thought as she was far enough off; which you’ll allow, sir, whoever it was she come to see, it wasn’t the right thing, nor what her aunt and me had reason to expect.”

The Curate of St. Roque’s said “Pshaw!” carelessly to himself. He was not at all interested in Rosa Elsworthy. Instead of making any answer, he drew on the scarlet band of his hood, and marched away gravely into the reading-desk, leaving the vestry-door open behind him for the clerk to follow. The little dangers that harassed his personal footsteps had not yet awakened so much as an anxiety in his mind. Things much more serious preoccupied his thoughts. He opened his prayerbook with a consciousness of the good of it which comes to men only now and then. At Oxford, in his day, Mr. Wentworth had entertained his doubts like others, and like most people was aware that there were a great many things in heaven and earth totally unexplainable by any philosophy. But he had always been more of a man than a thinker, even before he became a high Anglican; and being still much in earnest about most things he had to do with, he found great comfort just at this moment, amid all his perplexities, in the litany he was saying. He was so absorbed in it, and so full of that appeal out of all troubles and miseries to the God who cannot be indifferent to His creatures, that he was almost at the last Amen before he distinguished that voice, which of all voices was most dear to him. The heart of the young man swelled, when he heard it, with a mingled thrill of sympathy and wounded feeling. She had not left her father’s sickbed to see him, but she had found time to run down the sunny road to St. Roque’s to pray for the sick and the poor. When he knelt down in the reading-desk at the end of the service, was it wrong, instead of more abstract supplications, that the young priest said over and over, “God bless her,” in an outburst of pity and tenderness? And he did not try to overtake her on the road, as he might have done had his heart been less deeply touched, but went off with abstracted looks to Wharfside, where all the poor people were very glad to see him, and where his absence was spoken of as if he had been three months instead of three days away. It was like going back a century or two into primitive life, to go into “the district,” where civilisation did not prevail to any very distressing extent, and where people in general spoke their minds freely. But even when he came out of No. 10, where the poor woman still kept on living, Mr. Wentworth was made aware of his private troubles; for on the opposite side of the way, where there was a little bit of vacant ground, the Rector was standing with some of the schismatics of Wharfside, planning how to place the iron church which, it was said, he meant to establish in the very heart of the “district.” Mr. Morgan took off his hat very stiffly to