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Updated: June 5, 2025
Though he frowned as he paced and muttered now and again to himself, he was not thinking of John Romley. Some men are born to be the curse of women and, through women, of the world. Despicable in themselves they inherit a dreadful secret before which, as in a fortress betrayed to a false password, the proudest virtue hauls down its flag, and kneeling, proffers its keys.
That Dick Ellison fuddled himself upon it was notorious, and on her last visit to Wroote she had heard scandalous tales of John Romley, who had come to haunt the taverns in and about Epworth, singing songs and soaking with the riff-raff of the neighbourhood until turned out at midnight to roll homeward to his lonely lodgings.
They were strained and staring. She put out her hand. "Where is the licence?" she asked. "Give it to me." The change in her voice and manner confused him. "My dear child, don't be silly," he blundered. "Give me the licence." "Tut, tut let us understand one another like sensible folks. You must not treat me like a boy, to be bounced in this fashion by John Romley."
The Rector is not with you. Who, then?" "We came here last night early this morning, rather " "'We'?" "I have left home. You know what we intended? But my father locked me up. I had tried to be open with him, and he would listen to nothing. So as everything was ready and you here with the licence " John Romley stepped back a pace. It is doubtful if he heard the last words.
Wesley's experience of curates had been far from happy, but Romley promised to be the bright exception in a long list of failures. To his voice, alas! he owed most of his misfortunes in life. The Rector had no high opinion of his brains: but tolerated him, and at first looked on leniently enough when he began to pay his addresses to Patty.
But Patty, having untied the strings of her hat, tossed it on to the edge of her bed and collapsed beside it. "I wish I was dead!" she announced. John Romley was the cause of her exile.
Of the letters received from home by him during the struggle to raise money for his Ordination fees, the above are but extracts. Let us go back to the month of May, and to Kelstein. "Patty dear," asked Hetty one morning, "have you heard lately of John Romley?" She was sitting up in bed with a letter in her hand.
She had lived a lifetime in those hours, and for the while Wroote Parsonage lay remote as a painful daily round from the dream which follows it. Only the practical instinct, as it were a nerve in the centre of her brain, awake and refusing to be drugged, had kept sounding its alarm to rise and seek Romley; and though at length she obeyed in a panic, she went as one walking in sleep.
The match was broken off, and Emilia renounced her love, though she never forgave the mischief-maker. Patty again had formed an attachment for John Romley, who had been a pupil of Sam's, had afterwards graduated at Lincoln College, Oxford, and was now the ambitious young master of the Free School at Epworth. Again the Rector interfered, and Patty sighed and renounced her romance.
"Of course he has." "And are you going to obey?" "Of course I am." It was Hetty's turn to stare wide-eyed. "You are going to give Romley up?" she asked very slowly. "Yes, yes, yes and I wish I was in my grave!" Patty collapsed again dismally, but sat upright after a moment. "As for your behaviour, 'tis positively wicked, and I think father ought to be told of it!"
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