The Perpetual Curate

Carlingford is, as is well known, essentially a quiet place. There is no trade in the town, properly so called. To be sure, there are two or three small countinghouses at the other end of George Street, in that ambitious pile called Gresham Chambers; but the owners of these places of business live, as a general rule, in villas, either detached or semidetached, in the North-end, the new quarter, which, as everybody knows, is a region totally unrepresented in society. In Carlingford proper there is no trade, no manufactures, no anything in particular, except very pleasant parties and a superior class of people⁠—a very superior class of people, indeed, to anything one expects to meet with in a country town, which is not even a county town, nor the seat of any particular interest. It is the boast of the place that it has no particular interest⁠—not even a public school: for no reason in the world but because they like it, have so many nice people collected together in those pretty houses in Grange Lane⁠—which is, of course, a very much higher tribute to the town than if any special inducement had led them there. But in every community some centre of life is necessary. This point, round which everything circles, is, in Carlingford, found in the clergy. They are the administrators of the commonwealth, the only people who have defined and compulsory duties to give a sharp outline to life.

“No, I suppose not,” said Mr. Morgan, not without a thrill of importance; “nor the stake,” he added, with a little laugh, for he was not without a sense of humour; and the two went out to the architect’s to ascertain the result of his cogitations over the church. They passed that sacred edifice in their way, and went in to gaze at it with a disgust which only an unhappy priest of high culture and aesthetic tastes, doomed to officiate in a building of the eighteenth century, of the churchwarden period of architecture, could fully enter into. “Eugh!” said Mr. Morgan, looking round upon the high pews and stifling galleries with an expressive contraction of his features⁠—his wife looked on sympathetic; and it was at this unlucky moment that the subject of their late conference made his appearance cheerfully from behind the ugly pulpit, in close conference with Mr. Folgate. The pulpit was a three-storeyed mass, with the reading-desk and the clerk’s desk beneath⁠—a terrible eyesore to the Rector and his wife.

“I can fancy the expediency of keeping the place in repair,” said the Curate of St. Roque’s, happy in the consciousness of possessing a church which, though not old, had

The Miss Wentworths were in the very best sitting-room which the Blue Boar contained⁠—the style in which they travelled, with a man and two maids, was enough to secure that; and the kitchen of that respectable establishment was doing its very best to send up a dinner worthy of “a party as had their own man to wait.” The three ladies greeted their nephew with varying degrees of enthusiasm. The eldest, Miss Wentworth, from whom he took his second name Cecil, did not rise from her chair, but nevertheless kissed him in an affectionate dignified way when he was brought to her. As for aunt Dora, she ran into her dear Frank’s arms, and in the very moment of that embrace whispered in his ear the expression of her anxiety, and the panic which always followed those rash steps which she was in the habit of taking. “Oh, my dear, I hope you don’t think I’m to blame,” she said, with her lips at his ear, and gained but cold comfort from the Curate’s face. The alarming member of the party was Miss Leonora. She rose and made two steps forward to meet the unfortunate young man. She shook both his hands cordially, and said she was very glad to see him, and hoped he was well. She was the sensible sister of the three, and no doubt required all the sense she had to manage her companions. Miss Wentworth, who had been very pretty in her youth, was now a beautiful old lady, with snow-white hair and the most charming smile; and Miss Dora, who was only fifty, retained the

But Mr. Wentworth started with a very strange sensation when the door was stealthily, noiselessly opened to him before he could ring. He could not see who it was that called him in the darkness; but he felt that he had been watched for, and that the door was thrown open very hurriedly to prevent him from making his usual summons at the bell. Such an incident was incomprehensible. He went into the dark garden like a man in a dream, with a horrible vision of Archimage and the false Una somehow stealing upon his mind, he could not tell how. It was quite dark inside, for the moon was late of rising that night, and the faint stars threw no effectual lustre down upon the trees. He had to grope before him to know where he was going, asking in a troubled voice, “Who is there? What is the matter?” and falling into more and more profound bewilderment and uneasiness.

“Hush, hush, oh hush!⁠—Oh, Mr. Wentworth, it is I⁠—I want to speak to you,” said an agitated voice beside him. “Come this way⁠—this way; I don’t want anyone to hear us.” It was Miss Wodehouse who thus pitifully addressed the amazed Curate. She laid a tremulous hand on his arm, and drew him deeper into the shadows⁠—into that walk where the limes and tall lilac-bushes grew so thickly. Here she came to a pause, and the sound of the terrified panting breath in the silence alarmed him more and more.

When Mr. Wentworth entered Mrs. Hadwin’s garden in the dark, his first glance up at the house showed him that a certain change had passed on it also. The decorous little house had been turned inside out. The windows of his own sitting-room were open, the blind drawn up to the top, and in addition to his usual lamp some candles were flaring wildly in the draught. He could see into the room as he paused at the garden-door, and was able to distinguish that the table was still covered as for dinner, and to catch the purple gleam of the light in the claret-jug which occupied the place of honour; but nobody was visible in the room. That wildly-illuminated and open apartment stood in strange contrast with the rest of the house, where everything was dark, save in Mrs. Hadwin’s own chamber. The Curate proceeded on his way, after that moment’s pause, with hasty and impatient steps. On the way up he encountered Sarah the housemaid, who stopped in the middle of the stairs to make a frightened little curtsy, and utter an alarmed “La!” of recognition and surprise. But Sarah turned round as soon as she had recovered herself, to say that her missis wanted very bad to see Mr. Wentworth as soon as he came home; but she was gone up to bed now, and didn’t he think it would be a pity to wake her up?