“Where is he?” said the Curate, firmly.
“Oh, please sir, I don’t know,” said Sarah, who was very near crying. “He’s gone out for a walk, that’s all. Oh, Mr. Wentworth, don’t look at me so dreadfully, and I’ll tell you hall,” cried the frightened girl, “hall—as true as if I was on my oath. He ’as a taking way with him,” said poor Sarah, to whom the sulky and shabby rascal was radiant still with the fascinating though faded glory of “a gentleman”—“and he aint one as has been used to regular hours; and seeing as he was a friend of yours, I knew as hall was safe, Mr. Wentworth; and oh, sir, if you’ll not tell missis, as might be angry. I didn’t mean no harm; and knowing as he was a friend of yours, I let him have the key of the little door.”
Here Sarah put her apron to her eyes; she did not cry much into it, or wet it with her tears—but under its cover she peeped at Mr. Wentworth, and, encouraged by his looks, which did not seem to promise any immediate catastrophe, went on with her explanation.
“He’s been and took a walk often in the morning,” said Sarah, with little gasps which interrupted her voice, “and come in as steady as steady, and nothing happened. He’s gone for a walk now, poor gentleman. Them as goes out first thing in the morning, can’t mean no harm, Mr. Wentworth. If it was at night, it would be different,” said the apologetic Sarah. “He’ll be in afore we’ve done our breakfast in the kitchen; that’s his hour, for I always brings him a cup of coffee. If you hadn’t been up not till your hour, sir, you’d never have known nothing about it;” and here even Mrs. Hadwin’s housemaid looked sharply in the Curate’s face. “I never knew you so early, sir, not since I’ve been here,” said Sarah; and though she was a partisan of Mr. Wentworth, it occurred even to Sarah that perhaps, after all, Elsworthy might be right.
“If he comes in let me know immediately,” said the Curate; and he went to his study and shut himself in, to think it all over with a sense of being baited and baffled on every side. As for Sarah, she went off in great excitement to discuss the whole business with the cook, tossing her head as she went. “Rosa Elsworthy, indeed!” said Sarah to herself, thinking her own claims to admiration quite as well worth considering—and Mr. Wentworth had already lost one humble follower in Grange Lane.
The Curate sat down at his table as before, and gazed with a kind of exasperation at the paper and the text out of which his sermon was to have come. “When the wicked man turneth away from the evil of his ways”—he began to wonder bitterly whether that ever happened, or if it was any good trying to bring it about. If it were really the case that Wodehouse, whom he had been labouring to save from the consequences of one crime, had, at the very crisis of his fate, perpetrated another of the basest kind, what was the good of wasting strength in behalf of a wretch so abandoned? Why should such a man be permitted to live to bring shame and misery on everybody connected with him? and why, when noxious vermin of every other description were hunted down and exterminated, should the vile human creature be spared to suck the blood of his friends? Mr. Wentworth grew sanguinary in his thoughts as he leaned back in his chair, and tried to return to the train of reflection which Elsworthy’s arrival had banished. That was totally impossible, but another train of ideas came fast enough to fill up the vacant space. The Curate saw himself hemmed in on every side without any way of escape. If he could not extract any information from Wodehouse, or if Wodehouse denied any knowledge of Rosa, what could he do to clear himself from an imputation so terrible? and if, on the other hand, Wodehouse did not come back, and so pleaded guilty, how could he pursue and put the law upon the track of the man whom he had just been labouring to save from justice, and over whose head a criminal prosecution was impending? Mr. Wentworth saw nothing but misery, let him turn where he would—nothing but disgrace, misapprehension, unjust blame. He divined with the instinct of a man in deadly peril, that Elsworthy, who was a mean enough man in common circumstances, had been inspired by the supposed injury he had sustained into a relentless demon; and he saw distinctly how strong the chain of evidence was against him, and how little he could do to clear himself. As his miseries grew upon him, he got up, as was natural, and began to walk about the room to walk down his impatience, if he could, and acquire sufficient composure to enable him to wait for the time when Wodehouse might be expected to arrive. Mr. Wentworth had forgotten at the moment that Mrs. Hadwin’s room was next to his study, and that, as she stood putting on her cap, his footsteps vibrated along the flooring, which thrilled under her feet almost as much as under his own. Mrs. Hadwin, as she stood before her glass smoothing her thin little braids of white hair, and putting on her cap, could not but wonder to herself what could make Mr. Wentworth walk about the room in such an agitated way. It was not by any means the custom of the Perpetual Curate, who, up to the time of his aunts’ arrival in Carlingford, had known no special disturbances in his individual career. And then the old lady thought of that report about little Rosa Elsworthy, which she had never believed, and grew troubled, as old ladies are not unapt to do
