The Perpetual Curate Part 9

"But must this be? Is it necessary to take such a final, such a terrible step?" said the Perpetual Curate.

"I think so." Gerald went to the window, to resume his contemplation of the cedar, and stood there with his back turned to Frank, and his eyes going slowly over all the long processes of his self-argument, laid up as they were upon those solemn levels of shadow. "Yes--you have gone so far with me; but I don't want to take you any farther, Frank. Perhaps, when I have reached the perfect peace to which I am looking forward, I may try to induce you to share it, but at present there are so many p.r.i.c.ks of the flesh. You did not come to argue with me, did you?" and again the half-humorous gleam of old came over Gerald's face as he looked round. "Louisa believes in arguing," he said, as he came back to the table and took his seat again; "not that she has ever gained much by it, so far as I am aware. Poor girl! she talks and talks, and fancies she is persuading me; and all the time my heart is bleeding for her. There it is!" he exclaimed, suddenly hiding his face in his hands. "This is what crushes one to think of. The rest is hard enough, Heaven knows--separation from my friends, giving up my own people, wounding and grieving, as I know I shall, everybody who loves me. I could bear that; but Louisa and her children--G.o.d help me, there's the sting!"

They were both men, and strong men, not likely to fall into any sentimental weakness; but something between a groan and a sob, wrung out of the heart of the elder brother at the thought of the terrible sacrifice before him, echoed with a hard sound of anguish into the quiet. It was very different from his wife's trembling, weeping, hoping agony; but it reduced the Curate more than ever to that position of spectator which he felt was so very far from the active part which his poor sister expected of him.

"I don't know by what steps you have reached this conclusion," said Frank Wentworth; "but even if you feel it your duty to give up the Anglican Church (in which, of course, I think you totally wrong,"

added the High Churchman in a parenthesis), "I cannot see why you are bound to abandon all duties whatever. I have not come to argue with you; I daresay poor Louisa may expect it of me, but I can't, and you know very well I can't. I should like to know how it has come about all the same; but one thing only, Gerald--a man may be a Christian without being a priest. Louisa--"

"Hush, I am a priest, or nothing. I can't relinquish my life!" cried the elder brother, lifting his hands suddenly, as if to thrust away something which threatened him. Then he rose up again and went towards the window and his cedar, which stood dark in the suns.h.i.+ne, slightly fluttered at its extremities by the light summer-wind, but throwing glorious level lines of shadow, which the wind could not disturb, upon the gra.s.s. The limes near, and that one delicate feathery birch which was Mrs Wentworth's pride, had all some interest of their own on hand, and went on waving, rustling, coquetting with the breezes and the suns.h.i.+ne in a way which precluded any arbitrary line of shade. But the cedar stood immovable, like a verdant monument, sweeping its long level branches over the lawn, pa.s.sive under the light, and indifferent, except at its very tops and edges, to the breeze. If there had been any human sentiment in that spectator of the ways of man, how it must have groaned and trembled under the pitiless weight of thoughts, the sad lines of discussion and argument and doubt, which were entangled in its branches!

Gerald Wentworth went to his window to refer to it, as if it were a book in which all his contests had been recorded. The thrill of the air in it tingled through him as he stood looking out; and there, without looking at Frank, except now and then for a moment when he got excited with his subject, he went into the history of his struggle--a history not unprecedented or unparalleled, such as has been told to the world before now by men who have gone through it, in various shapes, with various amounts of sophistry and simplicity. But it is a different thing reading of such a conflict in a book, and hearing it from lips pallid with the meaning of the words they uttered, and a heart which was about to prove its sincerity by voluntary pangs more hard than death. Frank Wentworth listened to his brother with a great deal of agreement in what he said, and again with an acute perception of mistakes on Gerald's part, and vehement impulses of contradiction, to which, at the same time, it was impossible to give utterance; for there was something very solemn in the account he was giving of himself, as he stood with his face half turned to the anxious listener, leaning on the window, looking into the cedar.

Gerald did not leave any room for argument or remonstrance; he told his brother how he had been led from one step to another, without any lingering touch of possibility in the narrative that he might be induced to retrace again that painful way. It was a path, once trod, never to be returned upon; and already he stood steadfast at the end, looking back mournfully, yet with a strange composure. It would be impossible to describe the mixture of love, admiration, impatience--even intolerance--which swelled through the mind of the spectator as he looked on at this wonderful sight, nor how hard he found it to restrain the interruptions which rushed to his lips, the eager arguments which came upon him in a flood, all his own favourite fences against the overflow of the tide which ran in lawful bounds in his own mind, but which had inundated his brother's. But though it was next to impossible to keep silence, it was altogether impossible to break in upon Gerald's history of this great battle through which he had just come. He _had_ come through it, it was plain; the warfare was accomplished, the weapons hung up, the conflict over; and nothing could be more apparent than that he had no intention of entering the battle-field again. When he had ended, there was another pause.

"I am not going to argue with you," said Frank Wentworth; "I don't even need to tell you that I am grieved to the heart. It isn't so very many years ago," said the younger brother, almost too much touched by the recollection to preserve his composure, "since I took all my opinions from you; and since the time came for independent action, I too have gone over all this ground. My conclusions have been very different from yours, Gerald. I see you are convinced, and I can say nothing; but they do not convince me--you do not convince me, nor the sight of your faith, though that is the most touching of all arguments. Will you go back and go over it again?" said the Curate, spurred, by a thought of poor Louisa, to contradict himself, while the words were still on his lips.

"No," said Gerald; "it would be of no use, Frank. We should only grieve each other more."

"Then I give up that subject," said the younger brother: "but there is one matter which I must go back to. You may go to Rome, and cease to be a priest of the Anglican Church, but you cannot cease to be a man, to bear the weight of your natural duties. Don't turn away, but hear me. Gerald, Louisa--"

"Don't say any more. Do you imagine I have not thought of that?" said Gerald, once more, with a gesture of pain, and something like terror; "I have put my hand to the plough and I cannot go back. If I am not a priest, I am nothing." But when he came to that point, his cedar-tree no longer gave him any a.s.sistance; he came back to his chair, and covered his face with his hands.

"Louisa is your wife; you are not like a man free from the bonds of nature," said the Curate of St Roque's. "It is not for me to speak of the love between you; but I hold it, as the Scripture says, for a holy mystery, like the love of Christ for his Church--the most sacred of all bonds," said the young man, with a certain touch of awe and emotion, as became a young man and a true lover. He made a little pause to regain command of himself before he continued, "And she is dependent on you--outwardly, for all the comfort of her life--and in her heart, for everything, Gerald. I do not comprehend what that duty is which could make you leave her, all helpless and tender, as you know her to be, upon the mercies of the world. She herself says"--and poor Louisa's complaint grew into pathos under the subliming force of her advocate's sympathy--"that she would be like a widow, and worse than a widow. I am not the man to bid you suppress your convictions because they will be your ruin, in the common sense of the word; but, Gerald--your wife--"

Gerald had bent his head down upon his clasped hands; sometimes a great heave of his frame showed the last struggle that was going on within him--a struggle more painful, more profound, than anything that had gone before. And the voice of the Curate, who, like his brother, was nothing if not a priest, was choked, and painful with the force of his emotion. He drew his breath hard between his words: it was not an argument, but an admonition; an appeal, not from a brother only, but from one who spoke with authority, as feeling himself accredited from G.o.d. He drew closer towards the voluntary martyr beside him, the humbleness of his reverential love for his elder brother mingling in that voice of the priest, which was natural to him, and which he did not scruple to adopt. "Gerald,--your wife," he said, in softened but firm tones, laying his hand on his brother's arm. And it was at this moment, when in his heart he felt that his influence might be of some avail, and when all the powers of his mind were gathering to bear upon this last experiment, that the door opened suddenly, and poor Louisa, all flushed and tearful, in womanish hot impatience and misery that knew no prudence, burst, without any warning, into the room.

"I can't bear it any longer," cried the poor wife. "I knew you were talking it all over, and deciding what it was to be; and when one's life is hanging on a chance, how can one keep quiet and not interfere?

Oh, Gerald, Gerald! I have been a true wife to you. I know I am not clever; but I would have died to do you any good. You are not going to forsake me!" cried poor Louisa, going up to him and putting her arms round him. "I said Frank was to tell you everything, but a man can never tell what is in a woman's heart. Oh, Gerald, why should you go and kill me! I will never oppose you any more; whatever you want, I will give in to it as freely as if it were my own way. I will make _that_ my own way, Gerald, if you will only listen to me. Whatever changes you please, oh Gerald, I will never say a word, nor your father, nor any one! If the Bishop should interfere, we would all stand up for you. There is not a soul in Wentworth to oppose--you know there is not. Put anything you please in the church--preach how you please--light the candles or anything. Gerald, you know it is true I am saying--I am not trying to deceive you!" cried the poor soul, bewildered in her folly and her grief.

"No, Louisa, no--only you don't understand," said her husband, with a groan: he had raised his head, and was looking at her with a hopeless gleam of impatience in the pity and anguish of his eyes. He took her little hand and held it between his own, which were trembling with all this strain--her little tender helpless woman's hand, formed only for soft occupations and softer caresses; it was not a hand which could help a man in such an emergency; it was without any grasp in it to take hold upon him, or force of love to part--a clinging impotent hand, such as holds down, but cannot raise up. He held it in a close tremulous pressure, as she stood looking down upon him, questioning him with eager hopeful eyes, and taking comfort in her ignorance from his silence, and the way in which he held her. Poor Louisa concluded she was yet to win the day.

"I will turn Puseyite too," she said with a strange little touch of attempted laughter. "I don't want to have any opinions different from my husband's; and you don't think your father is likely to do anything to drive you out of the church? You have only given us a terrible fright, dear," she continued, beginning to tremble again, as he shook his head and turned away from her. "You did not really mean such a dreadful thing as sending _me_ away. You could not do without me, Gerald--you know you could not." Her breath was getting short, her heart quickening in its throbs--the smile that was quivering on her face got no response from her husband's downcast eyes. And then poor Louisa lost all her courage; she threw herself down at his feet, kneeling to him. "Oh, Gerald, it is not because you want to get rid of me? You are not doing it for that? If you don't stay in the Rectory, we shall be ruined--we shall not have enough to eat! and the Rectory will go to Frank, and your children will be cast upon the world--and what, oh what is it for, unless it is to get rid of me?" cried Mrs Wentworth. "You could have as much freedom as you like here at your own living--n.o.body would ever interfere or say what are you doing?

and the Bishop is papa's old friend. Oh, Gerald, be wise in time, and don't throw away all our happiness for a fancy. If it was anything that could not be arranged, I would not mind so much; but if we all promise to give in to you, and that you shall do what you please, and n.o.body will interfere, how can you have the heart to make us all so wretched? We will not even be respectable," said the weeping woman; "a family without any father, and a wife without her husband--and he living all the time! Oh, Gerald, though I think I surely might be considered as much as candles, have the altar covered with lights if you wish it; and if you never took off your surplice any more, I would never say a word. You can do all that and stay in the Rectory. You have not the heart--surely--surely you have not the heart--all for an idea of your own, to bring this terrible distress upon the children and me?"

"G.o.d help us all!" said Gerald, with a sigh of despair, as he lifted her up sobbing in a hysterical fit, and laid her on the sofa. He had to stand by her side for a long time holding her hand, and soothing her, with deeper and deeper shadows growing over his face. As for Frank, after pacing the room in great agitation for some time, after trying to interpose, and failing, he went away in a fever of impatience and distress into the garden, wondering whether he could ever find means to take up the broken thread, and urge again upon his brother the argument which, but for this fatal interruption, he thought might have moved him. But gathering thoughts came thick upon the Perpetual Curate. He did not go back to make another attempt, even when he knew by the sounds through the open windows that Louisa had been led to her own room up-stairs. He stood outside and looked at the troubled house, which seemed to stand so serene and secure in the suns.h.i.+ne. Who could have supposed that it was torn asunder in such a hopeless fas.h.i.+on? And Louisa's suggestion came into his mind, and drove him wild with a sense of horror and involuntary guilt, as though he had been conspiring against them. "The Rectory will go to Frank." Was it his fault that at that moment a vision of Lucy Wodehouse, sweet and strong and steadfast--a delicate, firm figure, on which a man could lean in his trouble--suddenly rose up before the Curate's eyes? Fair as the vision was, he would have banished it if he could, and hated himself for being capable of conjuring it up at such a time. Was it for him to profit by the great calamity which would make his brother's house desolate? He could not endure the thought, nor himself for finding it possible; and he was ashamed to look in Gerald's face with even the shadow of such an imagination on his own.

He tapped at the library window after a while, and told his brother that he was going up to the Hall. Louisa had gone up-stairs, and her husband sat once more, vacant yet occupied, by his writing-table. "I will follow you presently," said Gerald. "Speak to my father without any hesitation, Frank; it is better to have it over while we are all together--for it must be concluded now." And the Curate saw in the shadow of the dim apartment that his brother lifted from the table the grand emblem of all anguish and victory, and pressed upon it his pale lips. The young man turned away with the shadow of that cross standing black between him and the suns.h.i.+ne. His heart ached at the sight of the symbol most sacred and most dear in the world. In an agony of grief and impatience, he went away sadly through the familiar road to his father's house. Here had he to stand by and see this sacrifice accomplished. This was all that had come of his mission of consolation and help.

CHAPTER XVII.

The Curate of St Roque's went sadly along the road he knew so well from Wentworth Rectory to the Hall. There was scarcely a tree nor the turning of a hedgerow which had not its own individual memories to the son of the soil. Here he had come to meet Gerald returning from Eton--coming back from the university in later days. Here he had rushed down to the old Rector, his childless uncle, with the copy of the prize-list when his brother took his first-cla.s.s. Gerald, and the family pride in him, was interwoven with the very path, and now--The young man pressed on to the Hall with a certain bitter moisture stealing to the corner of his eye. He felt indignant and aggrieved in his love, not at Gerald, but at the causes which were conspiring to detach him from his natural sphere and duties. When he recollected how he had himself dallied with the same thoughts, he grew angry with his brother's n.o.bleness and purity, which never could see less than its highest ideal soul in anything, and with a certain fierce fit of truth, glanced back at his own Easter lilies and choristers, feeling involuntarily that he would like to tear off the flowers and surplices and tread them under his feet. Why was it that he, an inferior man, should be able to confine himself to the mere accessories which pleased his fancy, and could judge and reject the dangerous principles beneath; while Gerald, the loftier, purer intelligence, should get so hopelessly lost in mazes of sophistry and false argument, to the peril of his work, his life, and all that he could ever know of happiness?

Such were the thoughts that pa.s.sed through the mind of the Perpetual Curate as he went rapidly through the winding country-road going "home." Perhaps he was wrong in thinking that Gerald was thus superior to himself; but the error was a generous one, and the Curate held it in simplicity and with all his heart.

Before he reached the house he saw his father walking under the lime-trees, which formed a kind of lateral aisle to the great avenue, which was one of the boasts of the Wentworths. The Squire was like most squires of no particular character; a hale, ruddy, clear-complexioned, well-preserved man, looking his full age, but retaining all the vigour of his youth. He was not a man of any intellect to speak of, nor did he pretend to it; but he had that glimmering of sense which keeps many a stupid man straight, and a certain amount of natural sensibility and consideration for other people's feelings which made persons who knew no better give Mr Wentworth credit for tact, a quality unknown to him. He was walking slowly in a perplexed manner under the lime-trees. They were all in glorious blossom, filling the air with that mingling sense of fragrance and music which is the soul of the murmurous tree: but the short figure of the Squire, in his morning-coat, with his perplexed looks, was not at all an accessory in keeping with the scene. He was taking his walk in a subdued way, pondering something--and it puzzled him sorely in his straightforward, unprofound understanding. He shook his head sometimes as he went along, sad and perplexed and unsatisfactory, among his limes. He had got a note from Gerald that morning; and how his son could intend to give up living and station, and wife and children, for anything in heaven or earth, was more than the Squire could understand. He started very much when he heard Frank's voice calling to him. Frank, indeed, was said to be, if any one was, the Squire's weakness in the family; he was as clever as Gerald, and he had the practical sense which Mr Wentworth prized as knowing himself to possess it. If he could have wished for any one in the present emergency, it would have been Frank--and he turned round overjoyed.

"Frank, my boy, you're heartily welcome home!" he said, holding out his hand to him as became a British parent--"always welcome, but particularly just now. Where did you come from? how did you come? have you eaten anything this morning? it's close upon lunch, and we'll go in directly; but, my dear boy, wait here a moment, if you're not particularly hungry; I can't tell you how glad I am you're come. I'd rather see you than a hundred pound!"

When Frank had thanked him, and returned his greetings, and answered his questions (which the Squire had forgotten), and made his own inquiries, to which Mr Wentworth replied only by a hasty nod, and an "Oh yes, thank you, all well--all well," the two came to a momentary pause: they had nothing particular to add about their happiness in seeing each other; and as Frank wrote to his sisters pretty regularly, there was nothing to tell. They were quite free to plunge at once, as is to British relatives under the trying circ.u.mstances of a meeting a blessed possibility, into the first great subject which happened to be at hand.

"Have you heard anything about Gerald?" said Mr Wentworth, abruptly; "perhaps you called there on your way from the station? Gerald has got into a nice mess. He wrote to tell me about it, and I can't make head nor tail of it. Do you think he's a little touched here?" and the Squire tapped his own round forehead, with a troubled look: "there's no other explanation possible that I can see: a good living, a nice house, a wife that just suits him (and it's not everybody that would suit Gerald), and a lot of fine children--and he talks to me of giving up everything; as if a man could give up everything! It's all very well talking of self-renunciation, and so forth; and if it meant simply considering other people, and doing anything disagreeable for anybody's sake, I don't know a man more likely than my son Gerald.

Your brother's a fine fellow, Frank--a n.o.ble sort of fellow, though he has his crotchets," said the father, with a touch of involuntary pathos; "but you don't mean to tell me that my son, a man like Gerald Wentworth, has a mind to throw away his position, and give up all the duties of his life? He can't do it, sir! I tell you it's impossible, and I won't believe it." Mr Wentworth drew up his s.h.i.+rt-collar, and kicked away a fallen branch with his foot, and looked insulted and angry. It was a dereliction of which he would not suppose the possibility of a Wentworth being guilty. It did not strike him as a conflict between belief and non-belief; but on the question of a man abandoning his post, whatever it might be, the head of the house held strong views.

"I agree it's impossible; but it looks as if it were true," said the Curate. "I don't understand it any more than you do; but I am afraid we shall have to address ourselves to the reality all the same. Gerald has made up his mind that the Church of Rome is the only true Church, and therefore he is in a false position in the Church of England: he can't remain a priest of the Anglican communion with such views, any more than a man could fight against his country, or in a wrong quarrel--"

"But, good heavens, sir!" said the Squire, interrupting him, "is it a time to inquire into the quarrel when you're on the ground? Will you tell me, sir, that my son Charley should have gone into the question between Russia and England when he was before Sebastopol--and deserted," said Mr Wentworth, with a snort of infinite scorn, "if he found the Czar had right on his side? G.o.d bless my soul! that's striking at the root of everything. As for the Church of Rome, it's Antichrist--why, every child in the village school could tell you that; and if Gerald entertains any such absurd ideas, the thing for him to do is to read up all that's been written on the subject, and get rid of his doubts as soon as possible. The short and the long of it is," said the troubled Squire, who found it much the easiest way to be angry, "that you ask me to believe that your brother Gerald is a fool and a coward; and I won't believe it, Frank, if you should preach to me for a year."

"And for my part, I would stake my life on his wisdom and his courage," said the Curate, with a little heat; "but that is not the question--he believes that truth and honour require him to leave his post. There is something more involved which we might yet prevent. I have been trying, but Louisa interrupted me--I don't know if you realise fully what he intends. Gerald cannot cease to be a priest--he will become a Catholic priest when he ceases to be Rector of Wentworth--and that implies--"

"G.o.d bless my soul!" cried the bewildered Squire--he was silent for a long time after he had uttered that benediction. He took out Gerald's letter and read it over while the two walked on in silence under the lime-trees, and the paper shook in his hands, notwithstanding all his steadiness. When he spoke again, it was only after two or three efforts to clear his voice. "I can't make out that he says _that_, Frank--I don't see that _that's_ what he means," said Mr Wentworth, in a fainter tone than usual; and then he continued, with more agitation, "Louisa is a dear good soul, you know; but she's a bit of a fool, like most women. She always takes the worst view--if she can get a good cry out of anything, she will. It's she that's put this fancy into your head, eh? You don't say you had it from Gerald himself? You don't mean to tell me that? By Jove, sir!--by heaven, sir!" cried the excited Squire, blazing up suddenly in a burst of pa.s.sion, "he can't be any son of mine--For any d.a.m.nable Papistical madness to give up his wife!

Why, G.o.d bless us, he was a man, wasn't he, before he became a priest?

A priest! He's not a priest--he's a clergyman, and the Rector of Wentworth. I can't believe it--I won't believe it!" said the head of the house, with vehemence. "Tell me one of my sons is a sneak and a traitor!--and if you weren't another of my sons, sir, I'd knock you down for your pains." In the excitement of the moment Mr Wentworth came full force against a projecting branch which he did not see, as he spoke these words; but though the sudden blow half stunned him, he did not stop in his vehement contradiction. "It can't be. I tell you it can't--it shan't be, Frank!" cried the Squire. He would not pay any attention to the Curate's anxieties, or accept the arm Frank offered, though he could not deny feeling faint and giddy after the blow. It took away all the colour from his ruddy face, and left him pale, with a red welt across his forehead, and wonderfully unlike himself.

"Confound it! I told Miles to look after that tree weeks ago. If he thinks I'll stand his carelessness, he's mistaken," said Mr Wentworth, by way of relieving himself. He was a man who always eased his mind by being angry with somebody when anything happened to put him out.

"My dear father," said the Curate as soon as it was practicable, "I want you to listen to me and help me; there's only one thing to be done that I can see. Gerald is in a state of high excitement, fit for any martyrdom. We can't keep him back from one sacrifice, but by all the force we can gather we must detain him from the other. He must be shown that he can't abandon his natural duties. He was a man before he was a priest, as you say; he can no more give up his duty to Louisa than he can give up his own life. It is going on a false idea altogether; but falsehood in anything except in argument could never be named or dreamed of in connection with Gerald," said his brother, with some emotion; "we all know that."

There was another pause of a few minutes, during which they walked on side by side without even the heart to look at each other. "If it had been Huxtable or Plumstead, or any other fool," burst forth the Squire, after that interval, "but Gerald!" Huxtable was the husband of the eldest Miss Wentworth, and Plumstead was the Squire's sister's son, so the comparison was all in the family. "I suppose your aunt Leonora would say such a thing was sent to bring down my pride and keep me low," said Mr Wentworth, bitterly. "Jack being what he is, was it anything but natural that I should be proud of Gerald? There never was any evil in him, that I could see, from a child; but crotchety, always crotchety, Frank. I can see it now. It must have been their mother," said the Squire, meditatively; "she died very young, poor girl! her character was not formed. As for _your_ dear mother, my boy, she was always equal to an emergency; she would have given us the best of advice, had she been spared to us this day. Mrs Wentworth is absorbed in her nursery, as is natural, and I should not care to consult her much on such a subject. But, Frank, whatever you can do or say, trust to me to back you out," said the anxious father of three families. "Your mother was the most sensible woman I ever knew," he continued, with a patriarchal composure. "n.o.body could ever manage Jack and Gerald as she did. She'd have seen at a glance what to do now. As for Jack, he is not a.s.sistance to anybody; but I consider you very like your mother, Frank. If anybody can help Gerald, it will be you. He has got into some ridiculous complications, you know--that must be the explanation of it. You have only to talk to him, and clear up the whole affair," said the Squire, recovering himself a little. He believed in "talking to," like Louisa, and like most people who are utterly incapable of talking to any purpose. He took some courage from the thought, and recovered his colour a little. "There is the bell for luncheon, and I am very glad of it," he said; "a gla.s.s of sherry will set me all right. Don't say anything to alarm Mrs Wentworth. When Gerald comes we'll retire to the library, and go into the matter calmly, and between us we will surely be able to convince him. I'll humour him, for my part, as far as my conscience will allow me. We must not give in to him, Frank. He will give it up if we show a very firm front and yield nothing," said the Squire, looking with an unusually anxious eye in his son's face.

"For my part, I will not enter into the controversy between the Churches," said the Curate; "it is mere waste of time. I must confine myself to the one point. If he must forsake us, he must, and I can't stop him: but he must not forsake his wife."

"Tut--it's impossible!" said the Squire; "it's not to be thought of for a moment. You must have given undue importance to something that was said. Things will turn out better than you think." They were very nearly at the great entrance when these words were said, and Mr Wentworth took out his handkerchief and held it to his forehead to veil the mark, until he could explain it, from the anxious eye of his wife. "If the worst should come to the worst, as you seem to think,"

he said, with a kind of sigh, "I should at least be able to provide for you, Frank. Of course, the Rectory would go to you; and you don't seem to have much chance of Skelmersdale, so far as I can learn.

Leonora's a very difficult person to deal with. G.o.d bless my soul!"

exclaimed the Squire--"depend upon it, she has had something to do with this business of Gerald's. She's goaded him into it, with her Low-Church ways. She's put poor Louisa up to worrying him; there's where it is. I did not see how your brother could possibly have fallen into such a blunder of his own accord. But come to luncheon; you must be hungry. You will think the boys grown, Frank; and I must ask you what you think, when you have a little leisure, of Cuthbert and Guy."

So saying, the Squire led the way into the house; he had been much appalled by the first hint of this threatened calamity, and was seriously distressed and anxious still; but he was the father of many sons, and the misfortunes or blunders of one could not occupy all his heart. And even the Curate, as he followed his father into the house, felt that Louisa's words, so calmly repeated, "Of course, the Rectory will go to you," went tingling to his heart like an arrow, painfully recalling him, in the midst of his anxiety, to a sense of his own interests and cares. Gerald was coming up the avenue at the moment slowly, with all the feelings of a man going to the stake. He was looking at everything round as a dying man might, not knowing what terrible revolution of life might have happened before he saw them again--

"He looked on hill, and sea, and sh.o.r.e, As he might never see them more."

Life was darkened over to his preoccupied eyes, and the composure of nature jarred upon him, as though it were carelessness and indifference to the fate which he felt to be coming in the air. He thought nothing less than that his father and brother were discussing him with hearts as heavy and clouded as his own; for even he, in all his tolerance and impartiality, did not make due account of the fact, that every man has his own concerns next to him, close enough to ameliorate and lighten the weight of his anxieties for others. The prospect was all gloom to Gerald, who was the sufferer; but the others found gleams of comfort in their own horizon, which threw reflected lights upon his; for perfect sympathy is not, except in dreams. There was quite a joyful little commotion at the luncheon table when Frank's arrival was discovered; and his sisters were kissing him, and his young brothers shaking his hand off, while Gerald came slowly up, with preoccupied, lingering steps, underneath the murmurous limes. All kinds of strange miseries were appearing to him as he pursued his way. Glimpses of scenes to come--a dark phantasmagoria of antic.i.p.ated pain. He saw his wife and his children going away out of their happy house; he saw himself severed from all human ties, among alien faces and customs, working out a hard novitiate. What could he do? His heart, so long on the rack, was aching with dull throbs of anguish, but he did not see any way of escape. He was a priest by all the training, all the habits of his life; how could he give up that service to which he was called before everything, the most momentous work on earth? For ease, for happiness, for even sacred love, could he defraud G.o.d of the service he had vowed, and go back to secular work just at the moment when the true meaning of ecclesiastical work seemed dawning upon him? He had decided that question before, but it came back and back. His eyes were heavy with thought and conflict as he went up to his father's house. All this was wearing out his strength, and sapping his very life. The sooner it was over the better would it be for all.

CHAPTER XVIII.

Very little came, as was natural, of the talk in the library, to which the entire afternoon was devoted. The Squire, in his way, was as great an interruption to the arguments of the Curate as was poor Louisa in hers; and Gerald sat patiently to listen to his father's indignant monologue, broken as it was by Frank's more serious attacks. He was prepared for all they could say to him, and listened to it, sometimes with a kind of wondering smile, knowing well how much more strongly, backed by all his prejudices and interests, he had put the same arguments to himself. All this time n.o.body discussed the practicability of the matter much, nor what steps he meant to take: what immediately occupied both his father and brother was his determination itself, and the reasons which had led him to it, which the Squire, like Louisa, could not understand.

"If I had made myself disagreeable," said Mr Wentworth; "if I had remonstrated with him, as Leonora urged me to do; if I had put a stop to the surplice and so forth, and interfered with his decorations or his saints' days, or anything, it might have been comprehensible. But I never said a syllable on the subject. I give you my word, I never did.

Why couldn't he have sent down for Louisa now, and dined at the Hall, as usual, when any of my sons come home? I suppose a man may change his religion, sir, without getting rid of his natural affections," said the Squire, gazing out with puzzled looks to watch Gerald going slowly down the avenue. "A man who talks of leaving his wife, and declines to dine at his father's house with his brothers and sisters, is a mystery I can't understand."

"I don't suppose he cares for a lively party like ours at this moment,"

said the Curate: "I don't take it as any sign of a want of affection for me."

The Squire puffed forth a large sigh of trouble and vexation as he came from the window. "If _I_ were to give in to trouble when it appears, what would become of our lively party, I wonder?" he said.

"I'm getting an old man, Frank; but there's not a young man in Christendom has more need to take care of himself, and preserve his health, than I have. I am very well, thank G.o.d, though I have had a touch of our Wentworth complaint--just one touch. My father had it ten years earlier in life, and lived to eighty, all the same; but that is an age I shall never see. Such worries as I have would kill any man.

I've not spoken to anybody about it," said the Squire, hastily, "but Jack is going a terrible pace just now. I've had a good deal of bother about bills and things. He gets worse every year; and what would become of the girls and the little children if the estate were to come into Jack's hands, is a thought I don't like to dwell upon, Frank. I suppose he never writes to you?"