The Perpetual Curate quotes

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 nobody could say such things of you,” said Mrs. Morgan, firing up.

“Of me! they’d say them of St. Paul, if he had ever been in the circumstances,” said the Rector;

“and I should just like to know what he would have done in a parish like this, with the Dissenters on one side, and a Perpetual Curate without a district meddling on the other. Ah, my dear,” continued Mr.

… two people happy in each other’s presence carries with it a certain inspiration, this at least is certain, that there is an absolute warmth of devotion arrived at in such moments, which many a soul, no longer happy, would give all the world to reach.

Such crowds and heaps of blessings fall to these young souls!

They said their prayers with all their hearts, not aware of deriving anything of that profound sweet trust and happiness from each other, but expanding over all the rude but reverend worshippers around them, with an unlimited faith in their improvement, almost in their perfection.

Wodehouse’s green door which he no longer entered every day.

Over the young man’s mind, as he went out to his labours, there used to come that sensation of having nobody to fall back upon, which is of all feelings the most desolate.

Amid all those people who were watching him, there was no one upon whom he could rest, secure of understanding and sympathy. They were all critical—examining, with more or less comprehension, what he did;

Once more the darkness was fragrant and musical about him. When he was tired thinking of his affairs, he fell back upon the memories of the evening, and Lucy’s looks and the “us” and “we,” which were so sweet to his ears.

To have somebody behind whom one can fall back upon to fill up the interstices of thought⁠—that makes all the difference, as Mr. Wentworth found out, between a bright and a heavy life.

When he opened the garden-door with his key, and went softly in in the darkness, the Perpetual Curate was much surprised to hear voices among the trees. He waited a little, wondering, to see who it was;

Mr. Wentworth remained standing outside in much amazement, not to say amusement, and a general sense of awakening and recovery.

Next to happiness, perhaps enmity is the most healthful stimulant of the human mind.

The Perpetual Curate woke up and realised his position with a sense of exhilaration, if the truth must be told. He muttered something to himself, uncomplimentary to Mr. Morgan’s good sense, as he turned away;

He began to walk up and down the room with uneasy steps, as if the thought was painful, and had to be got rid of by some sudden movement. “

It must be that God reckons with women for what they have endured, as with men for what they have done,

” said Gerald. He spoke with a kind of grieved certainty, which made his brother feel, to start with, the hopelessness of all argument.

Kings and princes had been known to marry far out of their degree for the sake of a beautiful face; and why a Perpetual Curate should be so much more lofty in his sentiments, puzzled and irritated the clerk of St. Roque’s. “

There aint a worm but will turn when he’s trod upon,

” said Mr. Elsworthy to himself; and when his temper was roused, he became impertinent, according to the manner of his kind.

“Perfectly,” said the elder brother, resuming his cigar. “I always do. It is much more agreeable for all parties. But I don’t know how it is that a man’s younger brothers are always so rapid and unreasonable in their movements.

Instead of saving that unhappy insect, you have precipitated its fate. Poor thing⁠—and it had no soul,

” said the intruder, with a tone of pathos. The scene altogether was a curious one.

“My dear fellow,” said Jack Wentworth, “we have gone through that phase ages ago. Don’t be so much after date.

I have brought down my father’s grey hairs, etc., a hundred times; and, I daresay, so has he.

Don’t treat us as if we were in the nursery—a parson of advanced views like you should have something a little more novel to say.”

“It is very easy to interfere with other people’s work.” And then he paused, not choosing to grumble to an unsympathetic audience.

To feel that nobody cares about your feelings, is better than all the rules of self-control.

The Perpetual Curate stopped instinctively with a dignified restraint, which would have been impossible to him under other circumstances. It was no merit of his, but he reaped the advantage of it all the same.

All this, though it was highly amusing to the prodigal, was gall and bitterness to the Perpetual Curate. It moved him far more deeply than he could have imagined it possible for anything spoken by his aunt Dora to move him.

Perhaps there is something in human nature which demands to be comprehended, even where it is aware that comprehension is impossible

; and it wounded him in the most unreasonable way to have it supposed that he was likely to get into any quarrel with his brother, and to see Jack thus preferred to himself.

I hope Frank knows what he is doing better than a set of old women. At the same time, Frank,” said Miss Leonora, rising and leading the way to the door, “I want to say a word to you. Don’t think you are above misconception.

Most people believe a lie more readily than the truth.

Dora is a fool,” said the elder sister, pausing, when she had led her nephew outside the drawing-room door, “but so are most people; and I advise you to be careful, and not to give occasion for any gossip;

but being neither pretty and young, like Lucy, nor yet a mother with a nursery, qualified to talk about the measles, her reception was not quite as enthusiastic as it might have been.

Somehow it would appear as though our poor neighbours loved most the ministrations of youth, which is superior to all ranks in the matter of possibility and expectation, and inferior to all ranks in the matter of experience

; and so holds a kind of balance and poise of nature between the small and the great. Mrs. Morgan was vaguely sensible of her disadvantages in this respect as well as in others.

but he fortunately remembered in time that Miss Leonora had an acute intelligence, and was not to be trifled with—“As long as he has female relations,” said Jack, in his most feeling tone.

“Men never sympathise with men.”

He seemed to be apologising for Frank’s indifference, as well as for his own sins.

in weeping, and had, besides, living encumbrances to trouble her helpless path, did not look amiss in her black gown. She came in gliding without any noise, but with a little expectation in her gentle countenance.

She was one of the people whom experience never makes any wiser

; and she could not help hoping to be delivered from her troubles this time, as so often before, as soon as she should have transferred them to somebody else’s shoulders, and taken “advice.”

The Curate laughed in spite of himself.

“Fellows of All Souls don’t dine on chops,”

he said, unable to repress a gleam of amusement; “but come at six, and you shall have something to eat, as good as I can give you. As for telling you all about it,” said Mr.

She was too frightened, too excited, to cry, as she would have liked to do; but the proposal was so terrible and unprecedented that she leaned back trembling on her nephew’s arm, and could not move either to obey or to resist him.

“Oh, Frank, I never went after any improper person in my life,” gasped aunt Dora.

“Oh, my dear, don’t make me do anything that is wrong; they will say it is my fault!” cried the poor lady, gradually feeling herself obliged to stand on her feet and collect her forces.

As for Miss Wodehouse, she sat and listened to him till he began to falter, and then her composure gave way all at once.

“But as for trying,” she gasped, in broken mouthfuls of speech, “that would never⁠—never do, Mr. Proctor. It has to be done⁠—done for good and all⁠—if⁠—if it is done at all,”

sobbed the poor lady, whose voice came somewhat muffled through her handkerchief and her tears.

As for Jack Wentworth, he took no apparent notice of the shabby rascal whom he held in awe.

“Rather warm this room for a court of justice. I hope Frank’s witness is not fat,”

said Jack, putting himself up against the wall, and lifting languidly his glass to his eye—which byplay was somewhat startling, but totally incomprehensible, to the amateur judges, who looked upon him with angry eyes.

If it was certainty that echoed in that breath of unsatisfied nature, the sound was sadly out of concord with the sentiment. His soul, notwithstanding that expression of serenity, was still as wistful as the night.

“Have you the interpretation?”

said his brother; and Frank, too, looked up into the pure sky above, with its stars which stretched over them serene and silent, arching over the town that lay behind, and of which nobody knew better than he the human mysteries and wonderful unanswerable questions.

Whatever you may have to do, oh my dear, there is one thing—don’t go and break people’s hearts, and put it off, and put it off, till it never happens!” cried the trembling little woman, with a sudden burst of tears.

“Don’t say you can wait, for you can’t wait, and you oughtn’t to!”

sobbed Miss Dora.

“I wish you would not talk nonsense,” said the Squire. “The Wentworth complaint is nothing to laugh at, but you are perfectly aware that it never attacks women.” Mr. Wentworth spoke with a little natural irritation, displeased to have his prerogative interfered with.

When a man has all the suffering attendant upon a special complaint, it is hard not to have all the dignity.

He felt so much and so justly annoyed by Miss Dora’s vain pretensions, that he forgot his anxiety about the secret conference in the summerhouse. “Women take such fantastic ideas into their heads,” he said to his son as they went away together.

She gave a sigh as she spoke, for she thought of the Virginian creeper and the five feet of new wall at that side of the garden, which had just been completed, to shut out the view of the train.

Life does not contain any perfect pleasure.

But when Mrs. Morgan stooped to lift up some stray reels of cotton which the Rector’s clumsy fingers had dropped out of her workbox, her eye was again attracted by the gigantic roses and tulips on the carpet, and content and satisfaction filled her heart.

… a long series of doubts and qualms, and much internal conflict, which resulted through the rapidly-maturing influences of mortification and humbled self-regard, in this ominous and awe-inspiring Headache which startled the entire assembled family, and added fresh importance to the general crisis of Wentworth affairs.

“I should not wonder if it was the Wentworth complaint,” said Miss Dora, with a sob of fright, to the renewed and increased indignation of the Squire.

“I have already told you that the Wentworth complaint never attacks females,” Mr. Wentworth said emphatically, glad to employ what sounded like a contemptuous title for the inferior sex.

“I have already told you that the Wentworth complaint never attacks females,” Mr. Wentworth said emphatically, glad to employ what sounded like a contemptuous title for the inferior sex.

“Yes, oh yes; but then Leonora is not exactly what you would call⁠—a female,” said poor Miss Dora, from whom an emergency so unexpected had taken all her little wits.

While the house was in such an agitated condition, it is not to be supposed that it could be very comfortable for the gentlemen when they came upstairs to the drawing-room, and found domestic sovereignty overthrown by a headache which nobody could comprehend, and chaos …

all that belonged to a previous stage of existence. At present he was full of the grand discovery, boldly stated by his brother Jack—

“The man who gets his own way is the man who takes it.”

It was not an elevated doctrine, or one that had hitherto commended itself specially to the mind of the Perpetual Curate;

but then you have nothing, next to nothing, neither of you. It might not matter, just at the first,” said Miss Wodehouse, with serious looks; “but then—afterwards, you know,” and a vision of a nursery flashed upon her mind as she spoke.

“Clergymen always have such large families,”

she said half out before she was aware, and stopped, covered with confusion, not daring to look at Lucy to see what effect such a suggestion might have had upon her.