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At the present moment neither Skelmersdale nor Wentworth would tempt me. I am in no doubt as to where my work lies, and there is enough of it to satisfy any man." He could not help thinking, as he spoke, of ungrateful Wharfside, for which he had done so much, and the recollection brought a little flush of indignant colour to his cheek.
Thinking of that, Mr Wentworth made his way without any further hesitation to the green door over which hung the apple-blossoms, totally untroubled in his mind as to what the reverend pair were thinking whom he had left behind him in the ugly church; and unconscious that his impromptu chapel at Wharfside, with its little carved reading-desk, and the table behind, contrived so as to look suspiciously like an altar, was a thorn in anybody's side.
If I come to any advancement," said the Curate of St Roque's, "it must be in social estimation, and not in worldly wealth, which is out of my way;" and he went down to Wharfside rather cheerfully than otherwise, having begun to experience that pertinacity carries the day, and that it might be possible to goad Lucy into the experiment of how much her housekeeping talents were good for, and whether, with a good wife, even a Perpetual Curate might be able to live without any particular bother in respect to the grocer's bill.
"I can't fancy that you are ignorant of the law. I repeat, Wharfside is in my parish; and on what ground you can possibly justify such an incredible intrusion " "Perhaps we might find a fitter place to discuss the matter," said the Curate, with great suavity. "If you care to go to the schoolroom, we could be quiet there." "No, sir. I don't care to go to the schoolroom.
He returned to the "great work" in Wharfside with undiminished belief in it, and a sense of being able to serve his God and his fellow-creatures, which, though it may seem strange to some people, was a wonderful compensation to him for the loss of Skelmersdale.
"The fountainhead!" said the Rector, who began not unnaturally to lose his temper. "Are you aware, sir, that Wharfside is in my parish?" "And so is St Roque's, I suppose," said the Curate, affably. "I have no district, but I have my cure of souls all the same. As for Wharfside, the Rector of Carlingford never had had anything to do with it. Mr Bury and Mr Proctor made it over to me.
It was Mrs Morgan at length who took heart to explain to Mr Proctor the real state of affairs. "He has been a very good clergyman for five years," said Mrs Morgan; "he might behave foolishly, you know, about Wharfside, but then that was not his fault so much as the fault of the Rector's predecessors.
"Wharfside is a district, where I am going presently to conduct service, and the little Burrowses are a set of little heathens, to whom I am to administer holy baptism this Easter Sunday. Good-bye just now." "Oh, Frank, my dear, just come in for a moment, and tell Leonora it will show her how wrong she is," said poor aunt Dora, clinging to his arm.
Mr Brown, for his part, knew little of the Perpetual Curate in his social capacity, but he knew about Wharfside, which was more to the purpose; and having himself been truly in love once in his life, commonplace as he looked, this honest man did not believe it possible that Lucy Wodehouse's representative could be Rosa Elsworthy's seducer the two things looked incompatible to the straightforward vision of John Brown.
He put on his surplice with the conviction that in that white ephod the truest embodiment of Christian purity was brought within sight of the darkened world. He was not himself, but a Christian priest, with power to deliver and to bless, when he went to Wharfside.
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