"But I hear a very unfavourable general account," said the Rector, who was almost equally surprised. "I hear he has been playing fast and loose with that very pretty person, Miss Wodehouse, and that her friends begin to be indignant. It is said that he has not been nearly so much there lately, but, on the contrary, always going to Elsworthy's, and has partly educated this little thing. My dear, one false step leads to another. I am not so incredulous as you are. Perhaps I have studied human nature a little more closely, and I know that error is always fruitful; – that is my experience," said Mr Morgan. His wife did not say anything in answer to this deliverance, but she lay in wait for the Curate, as was natural, and had her revenge upon him as soon as his ill fate prompted him to back the Rector out.
"I am afraid Mr Wentworth had always too much confidence in himself," said the unlucky individual who was destined to be scapegoat on this occasion; "and as you very justly observe, one wrong act leads to another. He has thrown himself among the bargemen on such an equal footing that I daresay he has got to like that kind of society. I shouldn't be surprised to find that Rosa Elsworthy suited him better than a lady with refined tastes."
"Mr Wentworth is a gentleman," said the Rector's wife, with emphasis, coming down upon the unhappy Leeson in full battle array. "I don't think he would go into the poorest house, if it were even a bargeman's, without the same respect of the privacy of the family as is customary among – persons of our own class, Mr Leeson. I can't tell how wrong or how foolish he may have been, of course – but that he couldn't behave to anybody in a disrespectful manner, or show himself intrusive, or forget the usages of good society," said Mrs Morgan, who was looking all the time at the unfortunate Curate, "I am perfectly convinced."
It was this speech which made Mr Morgan "speak seriously," as he called it, later the same night, to his wife, about her manner to poor Leeson, who was totally extinguished, as was to be expected. Mrs Morgan busied herself among her flowers all the evening, and could not be caught to be admonished until it was time for prayers: so that it was in the sacred retirement of her own chamber that the remonstrance was delivered at last. The Rector said he was very sorry to find that she still gave way to temper in a manner that was unbecoming in a clergyman's wife; he was surprised, after all her experience, and the way in which they had both been schooled in patience, to find she had still to learn that lesson: upon which Mrs Morgan, who had been thinking much on the subject, broke forth upon her husband in a manner totally unprecedented, and which took the amazed Rector altogether by surprise.
"Oh, William, if we had only forestalled the lesson, and been less prudent!" she cried in a womanish way, which struck the Rector dumb with astonishment; "if we hadn't been afraid to marry ten years ago, but gone into life when we were young, and fought through it like so many people, don't you think it would have been better for us? Neither you nor I would have minded what gossips said, or listened to a pack of stories when we were five-and-twenty. I think I was better then than I am now," said the Rector's wife. Though she filled that elevated position, she was only a woman, subject to outbreaks of sudden passion, and liable to tears like the rest. Mr Morgan looked very blank at her as she sat there crying, sobbing with the force of a sentiment which was probably untranslatable to the surprised, middle-aged man. He thought it must be her nerves which were in fault somehow, and though much startled, did not inquire farther into it, having a secret feeling in his heart that the less that was said the better on that subject. So he did what his good angel suggested to him, kissed his wife, and said he was well aware what heavy calls he had made upon her patience, and soothed her the best way that occurred to him. "But you were very hard upon poor Leeson, my dear," said the Rector, with his puzzled look, when she had regained her composure. Perhaps she was disappointed that she had not been able to convey her real meaning to her husband's matter-of-fact bosom; at all events, Mrs Morgan recovered herself immediately, and flashed forth with all the lively freshness of a temper in its first youth.
"He deserved a great deal more than I said to him," said the Rector's wife. "It might be an advantage to take the furniture, as it was all new, though it is a perpetual vexation to me, and worries me out of my life; but there was no need to take the curate, that I can see. What right has he to come day after day at your dinner-hour? he knows we dine at six as well as we do ourselves; and I do believe he knows what we have for dinner," exclaimed the incensed mistress of the house; "for he always makes his appearance when we have anything he likes. I hope I know my duty, and can put up with what cannot be mended," continued Mrs Morgan, with a sigh, and a mental reference to the carpet in the drawing-room; "but there are some things really that would disturb the temper of an angel. I don't know anybody that could endure the sight of a man always coming unasked to dinner; – and he to speak of Mr Wentworth, who, if he were the greatest sinner in the world, is always a gentleman!" Mrs Morgan broke off with a sparkle in her eye, which showed that she had neither exhausted the subject, nor was ashamed of herself; and the Rector wisely retired from the controversy. He went to bed, and slept, good man, and dreamt that Sir Charles Grandison had come to be his curate in place of Mr Leeson; and when he woke, concluded quietly that Mrs Morgan had "experienced a little attack on the nerves," as he explained afterwards to Dr Marjoribanks. Her compunctions, her longings after the lost life they might have lived together, her wistful womanish sense of the impoverished existence, deprived of so many experiences, on which they had entered in the dry maturity of their middle age, remained for ever a mystery to her faithful husband. He was very fond of her, and had a high respect for her character; but if she had spoken Sanscrit, he could not have had less understanding of the meaning her words were intended to convey.
Notwithstanding, a vague idea that his wife was disposed to side with Mr Wentworth had penetrated the brain of the Rector, and was not without its results. He told her next morning, in his curt way, that he thought it would be best to wait a little before taking any steps in the Wharfside business. "If all I hear is true, we may have to proceed in a different way against the unhappy young man," said Mr Morgan, solemnly; and he took care to ascertain that Mr Leeson had an invitation somewhere else to dinner, which was doing the duty of a tender husband, as everybody will allow.
CHAPTER XIII
"I want to know what all this means about young Wentworth," said Mr Wodehouse. "He's gone off, it appears, in a hurry, nobody knows where. Well, so they say. To his brother's, is it? I couldn't know that; but look here – that's not all, nor nearly all – they say he meets that little Rosa at Elsworthy's every night, and walks home with her, and all that sort of thing. I tell you I don't know – that's what people say. You ought to understand all the rights of it, you two girls. I confess I thought it was Lucy he was after, for my part – and a very bad match, too, and one I should never have given my consent to. And then there is another fine talk about some fellow he's got at his house. What's the matter, Molly? – she looks as if she was going to faint."
"Oh no," said Miss Wodehouse, faintly; "and I don't believe a word about Rosa Elsworthy," she said, with sudden impetuosity, a minute after. "I am sure Mr Wentworth could vindicate himself whenever he likes. I daresay the one story is just as true as the other; but then," said the gentle elder sister, turning with anxious looks towards Lucy, "he is proud, as is natural; and I shouldn't think he would enter into explanations if he thought people did not trust him without them."
"That