" speak," said the young man; "I take me, Lucy," he said, after have no right to speak, I know; another pause, coming back to her if I had attained the height of self- with humility, "I don't venture to sacrifice and self-denial, I might, I say that you would have accepted would be silent-but it is impos- any thing I had to offer; but this I sible now." He came to a break mean, that to have a home for you just then, looking at her to see now-to have a life for you ready what encouragement he had to go to be laid at your feet, whether you on; but as Lucy did nothing but would have had it or not;-what listen and grow pale, he had to right have I to speak of such detake his own way. "What I have lights?" cried the young man. "It to say is not anything new," said does not matter to you; and as for the Curate, labouring a little in his me, I have patience-patience to voice, as was inevitable when affairs console myself withhad come to such a crisis, "if I were not in the cruelest position possible to a man. I have only an empty love to lay at your feet; I tell it to you only because I am obliged-because, after all, love is worth telling, even if it comes to nothing. I am not going to appeal to your generosity,", continued the young man, kneeling down at the table, not by way of kneeling to Lucy, but by way of bringing hinself on a level with her, where she sat with her head bent down on her low chair, "or to ask you to bind yourself to a man who has nothing in the world but love to offer you; but after what has been for years, after all the hours I have spent here, I cannot-part-I cannot let you go without a word And here he stopped short. He had not asked anything, so that Lucy, even had she been able, had nothing to answer; and as for the young lover himself, he seemed to have come to the limit of his cloquence. He kept waiting for a moment, gazing at her in breathless expectation of a response for which his own words had left no room. Then he rose in an indescribable tumult of disappointment and mortification-unable to conclude that all was over, unable to keep silence, yet not knowing what to say. "I have been obliged to close all the doors of advancement upon myself," said the Curate, with a little bitterness; "I don't know if you understand me. At this moment I have to deny myself the dearest privilege of existence. Don't mis Poor Lucy, though she was on the verge of tears, which nothing but the most passionate self-restraint could have kept in, could not help a passing sensation of amusement at these words. "Not too much of that either," she said, softly, with a tremulous smile. "But Patience carries the lilies of the saints," said Lucy, with a touch of the sweet asceticism which had once been so charming to the young Anglican. It brought him back like a spell to the common ground on which they used to meet; it brought him back also to his former position on his knee, which was embarrassing to Lucy, though she had not the heart to draw back, nor even to withdraw her hand, which somehow happened to be in Mr. Wentworth's way. "I am but a man," said the young lover. "I would rather have the roses of life-but, Lucy, I am only a Perpetual Curate,' he continued, with her hands in his. Her answer was made in the most heartless and indifferent words. She let two big drops which fell like hail, though they were warmer than any summer rain-drop out of her eyes, and she said, with lips that had some difficulty in enunciating that heartless sentiment, "I don't see that it matters to me Which was true enough, though it did not sound encouraging; and it is dreadful to confess that, for a little while after, neither Skelmersdale, nor Wentworth, nor Mr. Proctor's new rectory, nor the no-income of the Perpetual Curacy of St. Roque's had the smallest place in the thoughts of either of these perfectly inconsiderate young people. For half an hour they were an Emperor and Empress seated upon two thrones, to which all the world was subject; and when at the end of that time they began to remember the world, it was but to laugh at it in their infinite youthful superiority. Then it became apparent that to remain in Carlingford, to work at "the district," to carry out all the ancient intentions of well-doing which had been the first bond between them, was, after all, the life of lives; which was the state of mind they had both arrived at when Miss Wodehouse, who thought they had been too long together under the circumstances, and could not help wondering what Mr. Wentworth could be saying, came into the room, rather flurried in her own person. She thought Lucy must have been telling the curate about Mr. Proctor and his hopes, and was, to tell the truth a little curious how Mr. Wentworth would take it, and a little the very least-ashamed of encountering his critical looks. The condition of mind into which Miss Wodehouse was thrown when she perceived the real state of affairs would be difficult to describe. She was very glad and very sorry, and utterly puzzled how they were to live; and underneath all these varying emotions was a sudden, half-ludicrous, half-humiliating sense of being cast into the shade, which made Mr. Proctor's fiancée laugh and made her cry, and brought her down altogether off the temporary pedestal upon which she had stepped, not without a little feminine satisfaction. When a woman is going to be married, especially if that marriage falls later than usual, it is natural that she should expect, for that time at least, to be the first and most prominent figure in her little circle. But, alas! what chance could there be for a mild, dove-coloured bride of forty beside a creature of half her age, endued with all the natural bloom and natural interest of youth? Miss Wodehouse could not quite make out her own feelings on the subject. "Don't you think if you had waited a little it would have been wiser?" she said, in her timid way; and then kissed her young sister, and said, "I am so glad, my darling-I am sure dear papa would have been pleased," with a sob which brought back to Lucy the grief from which she had for the moment escaped. Under all the circumstances, however, it may well be supposed that it was rather hard upon Mr. Wentworth to recollect that he had engaged to return to luncheon with the Squire, and to prepare himself, after this momentous morning's work, to face all the complications of the family, where still Skelmersdale and Wentworth were hanging in the balance, and where the minds of his kith and kin were already too full of excitement to leave much room for another event. He went away reluctantly enough out of the momentary Paradise where his Perpetual Curacy was a matter of utter indifference, if not a tender pleasantry, which rather increased than diminished the happiness of the moment-into the ordinary daylight world, where it was a very serious matter, and where what the young couple would have to live upon became the real question to be considered. Mr. Wentworth met Wodehouse as he went out, which did not mend matters. The vagabond was loitering about in the garden, attended by one of Elsworthy's errand-boys, with whom he was in earnest conversation, and stopped in his talk to give a sulky nod and "Good morning," to which the Curate had no desire to respond more warmly than was necessary. Lucy was thinking of nothing but himself and perhaps a little of the great work" at Wharfside, which her father's illness and death had interrupted; but Mr. Wentworth, who was only a man, remembered that Tom Wodehouse would be his brother-in-law with a distinct sensation of disgust, even in the moment of his triumph-which is one in stance of the perennial inequality the same moment in respect to Mr. between the two halves of mankind. Wentworth-whose affairs, as was He had to brace himself up to the natural, were extensively canvassed encounter of all his people, while she in Grange Lane, as well as in other had to meet nothing less delightful less exclusive quarters-it would than her own dreams. This was be wrong to omit a remarkable how matters came to an issue in consultation which took place in respect to Frank Wentworth's per- the Rectory, where Mrs. Morgan sat sonal happiness. His worldly affairs in the midst of the great bouquets were all astray as yet, and he had of the drawing-room carpet, making not the most distant indication of up her first matrimonial difficulty. any gleam of light dawning upon It would be difficult to explain what the horizon which could reconcile influence the drawing-room carpet his duty and honour with good for- in the Rectory had on the fortunes tune and the delights of life. Mean- of the Perpetual Curate; but when while other discussions were going Mr. Wentworth's friends come to on in Carlingford, of vital import- hear the entire outs and ins of the ance to the two young people who business, it will be seen that it was had made up their minds to cast not for nothing that Mr. Proctor themselves upon Providence. And covered the floor of that pretty among the various conversations apartment with roses and lilies half which were being carried on about a yard long. "I SUPPOSE M'Gruder's right," muttered Tony, as he sauntered away drearily from the door at Downing street, one day in the second week after his arrival in London. "A man gets to feel very like a flunkey,' coming up in this fashion each morning for orders.' I am more than half disposed to close with his offer and go into rags' at once." If he hesitated, he assured himself, very confidently too, that it was not from the name or nature of the commercial operation. He had no objection to trade in rags any more than in hides, or tallow, or oakum, and some gum which did not breathe of Araby the blest." He was sure that it could not possibly affect his choice, and that rags were just as legitimate and just as elevating a speculation as sherry from Cadiz or silk from China. He was ingenious enough in his selfdiscussions; but, somehow, though he thought he could tell his mother frankly and honestly the new trade he was about to embark in, for the life of him he could not summon VOL. XCVL-NO. DLXXXVI. courage to make the communication to Alice. He fancied her as she read the avowal repeating the word "rags," and, while her lips trembled with the coming laughter, saying, "What in the name of all absurdity led him to such a choice?" And what a number of vapid and tasteless jokes would it provoke! "Such snobbery as it all is," cried he, as he walked the room angrily; "as if there was any poetry in cotton bales, or anything romantic in molasses, and yet I might engage in these without reproach, without ridicule. I think I ought to be above such considerations. I do think my good blood might serve to assure me, that in whatever I do honourably, honestly, and avowedly, there is no derogation." But the snobbery was stronger than he wotted of; for, do what he would, he could not frame the sentence in which he should write the tidings to Alice, and yet he felt that there would be a degree of meanness in the non-avowal infinitely more intolerable. While he thus chafed and fretted, K he heard a quick step mounting the stair, and at the same instant his door was flung open, and Skeffy Damer rushed towards him and grasped both his hands. "Well, old Tony, you scarcely expected to see me here, nor did I either thirty hours ago, but they telegraphed for me to come at once. I'm off for Naples." "And why to Naples ?" "I'll tell you, Tony," said he, confidentially; "but remember this is for yourself alone. These things mustn't get abroad; they are Cabinet secrets, and not known out of the Privy Council." "You may trust me," said Tony; and Skeffy went on. "I'm to be attached there," said he, solemnly. "What do you mean by attached?" "I'm going there officially. They want me at our Legation. Sir George Home is on leave, and Mecklam is Chargé d'Affaires; of course every one knows what that means." "But I don't," said Tony, bluntly. "It means being bullied, being jockeyed, being out - manoeuvred, laughed at by Brennier, and derided by Caraffa. Mecklam's an ass, Tony, that's the fact, and they know it at the Office, and I'm sent out to steer the ship." "But what do you know about Naples ?" "I know it just as I know the Ecuador question-just as I know the Mouth of the Danube question -as I know the slave treaty with Portugal, and the Sound dues with Denmark, and the right of search, and the Mosquito frontier, and everything else that is pending throughout the whole globe. Let me tell you, old fellow, the othersthe French, the Italians, and the Austrians-know me as well as they know Palmerston. What do you think Walewski told Lady Pancroft the day Cavour went down to Vichy to see the Emperor? They held a long conversation at a table where there were writing materials, and Cavour has an Italian habit of scribbling all the time he talks, and he kept on scratching with a pen on a sheet of blotting-paper, and what do you think he wrote ?-the one word, over and over again, Skeff, Skeff-nothing else. Which led us,' says Walewski, 'to add, Who or what was Skeff? when they told us he was a young fellowthese are his own words-'of splendid abilities in the Foreign Office;' and if there is anything remarkable in Cavour, it is the way he knows and finds out the coming man." "But how could he have heard of you." "These fellows have their spies everywhere, Tony. Gortchakoff has a photograph of me, with two words in Russian underneath, that I got translated, and that mean 'infernally dangerous'—tanski serateztrakoff, infernally dangerous!-over his stove in his study. You're behind the scenes now, Tony, and it will be rare fun for you to watch the newspapers and see how differently things will go on at Naples after I arrive there." "Tell me something about home, Skeffy; I want to hear about Tilney. Whom did you leave there when you came away?" "I left the Lyles, Alice and Bella none else. I was to have gone back with them to Lyle Abbey if I had stayed till Monday, and I left them, of course, very disconsolate, and greatly put out." "I suppose you made up to Alice. I thought you would," said Tony, half sulkily. "No, old fellow, you do me wrong; that's a thing I never do. As I said to Ernest Palfi about Pauline Esterhazy, I'll take no unfair advantage-I'll take no steps in your absence; and Alice saw this herself." "How do you mean? Alice saw it?" said Tony, reddening. "She saw it, for she said to me one day, Mr. Damer, it seems to me you have very punctilious notions on the score of friendship.' "I have,' said I; 'you're right there.' "I thought so,' said she." |