Meanwhile these two came nearer, approaching each other from different points. And what Mildmay saw was not the brave but burdened creature we knowof, dear reader, bleeding and aching from battles more bitter than Inkerman, with a whole little world of helpless beings hanging upon her, but only a fresh, bright-eyed girl, in a black and white frock, with a black hat shading her face from the sunshine, moving lightly in the animation of her youth across the white high road—a creature full of delicate strength, and variety, and brightness; like her mother! Mildmay could not help thinking that Mrs. St. John must have been a pretty woman, and there came a little pang of sympathy into his heart when he thought of the grave in the twilight where the curate had led him, from which the light in the girls’ windows was always visible, and to which his patient feet had worn that path across the grass. To be sure, across the pathos of this picture there would come the jar of that serio-comic reference to the other Mrs. St. John, who, poor soul! lay neglected down the other turning. This made the new rector laugh within himself. But he suppressed all signs of the laugh when he came up to Cicely, who, though she gave him a smile of greeting, did not seem in a laughing mood. She was the first to speak.
“Have you left papa behind you, Mr. Mildmay? He has always a great many places to go to, and parish work is not pleasant on such a hot day.”
Was there an insinuation in this that he had abandoned the unpleasant work, finding it uncongenial to him? Poor Cicely was sore and wounded, and the temptation to give a passing sting in her turn was great.
“Mr. St. John did not permit me to try its pleasantness or unpleasantness,” said Mildmay. “He took me over the parish indeed, and showed me the church and the school, and some other things; and then he left me at Mr. Ascott’s. I come from the Heath now.”
“Ah, from the Heath?” said Cicely, changing colour a little, and looking at him with inquiring eyes. What had they done or said, she wondered, to him? for she could not forget the projected petition to the Lord Chancellor, which had raised a fallacious hope in their hearts when she saw Mrs. Ascott last.
“They have a pretty house, and they seem kind people,” said Mildmay, not knowing what to say.
“Yes, they have a pretty house.” Cicely looked at him even more eagerly,with many questions on her lips. Had they said nothing to him? Had they received him at once as the new rector without a word? Kind! what did he mean when he said they were kind? Had they, too, without an effort, without a remonstrance, gone over to the enemy?
“Mr. St. John somewhat rashly introduced me as the new rector,” said Mildmay, “which was very premature; and they knew some relations of mine. Miss St. John, the Ascotts are much less interesting to me than our conversation of this morning. Since then my mind has been in a very confused state. I can no longer feel that anything is settled about the living.”
“Didn’t they say anything?” said Cicely, scarcely listening to him; “didn’t they make any objection?” This was a shock of a new kind which she was not prepared for. “I beg your pardon,” she cried; “they had no right to make any objection; but didn’t they say anything at least—about papa?”
What was Mildmay to answer? He hesitated scarcely a moment, but her quick eye saw it.
“A great deal,” he said eagerly; “theysaid, as every one must, that Mr. St. John’s long devotion——”
“Don’t try to deceive me,” said Cicely, with a smile of desperation. “I see you do not mean it. They did not say anything sincere. They were delighted to receive a new rector, a new neighbour, young and happy and well off——”
“Miss St. John——”
“Yes, I know; it is quite natural, quite right. I have nothing to say against it. Papa has only been here for twenty years, knowing all their troubles, doing things for them which he never would have done for himself; but—‘Le roi est mort; vive le roi!’” cried the impetuous girl in a flash of passion; in the strength of which she suddenly calmed down, and, smiling, turned to him again. “Is it not a pretty house? and Mrs. Ascott is very pretty too—has been, people say, but I think it is hard to say, has been. She is not young, but she has the beauty of her age.”
“I take very little interest in Mrs. Ascott,” said Mildmay, “seeing I never saw her till to-day; but I take a great deal of interest in what you were saying this morning.”
“You never saw any of us till yesterday, Mr. Mildmay.”
“I suppose that is quite true. I cannot help it—it is different. Miss St. John, I don’t know what you would think of the life I have been living, but yours has had a great effect upon me. What am I to do? you have unsettled me, you have confused my mind and all my intentions. Now tell me what to do.”
“I,” said Cicely aghast. “Oh, if I could only see a little in advance, if I could tell what to do myself!”
“You cannot slide out of it like this,” he said; “nay, pardon me, I don’t mean to be unkind; but what am I to do?”
Cicely looked at him with a rapid revulsion of feeling from indignation to friendliness. “Oh,” she cried, “can’t you fancy how a poor girl, so helpless as I am, is driven often to say a great deal more than she means? What can we do, we girls?—say out some of the things that choke us, that make our hearts bitter within us, and then be sorry for it afterwards? that is all we are good for. We cannot go and do things like you men, and we feel all the sharper, all the keener, because we cannotdo. Mr. Mildmay, all that I said was quite true; but what does that matter? a thing may be wrong and false to every principle, and yet it cannotbe helped. You ought not to have the living; papa ought to have it; but what then? No one will give it to papa, and if you don’t take it some one else will; therefore, take it, though it is wicked and a cruel wrong. It is not your fault, it is—I don’t know whose fault. One feels as if it were God’s fault sometimes,” cried Cicely; “but that must be wrong; the world is all wrong and unjust, and hard—hard; only sometimes there is somebody who is very kind, very good, who makes you feel that it is not God’s fault, and you forgive even the world.”
She put up her hand to wipe the tears from those young shining eyes, which indignation and wretchedness and tears only made the brighter. Cicely was thinking of the butcher—you will say no very elevated thought. But Mildmay, wondering, and touched to the heart, asked himself, with a suppressed throb of emotion, could she mean him?
“I am going back to Oxford,” he said hastily. “I shall not go to town. The first thing I do will be to see everybody concerned, and to tell them what you say. Yes, Miss St. John, you are right; it is wicked and wrong that I or any one should have it while your father is here.I will tell the Master so, I will tell them all so. It shall not be my fault if Mr. St. John does not have his rights.”
They were close to the rectory gate, and as fire communicates to fire, the passionate impulse and fervour of Cicely’s countenance had transferred themselves to Mr. Mildmay, whose eyes were shining, and his cheeks flushed with purpose like her own. Cicely was not used to this rapid transmission of energy. She gazed at him half frightened. Usually her interlocutor did all that was possible to calm her down—wondered at her, blamed her a little, chilled her vehemence with surprised or disapproving looks. This new companion who caught fire at her was new to the girl. She was half alarmed at what she had done.
“Will you do so, really?” she said, the tears starting to her eyes. “O Mr. Mildmay, perhaps I am wrong! Papa would not advise you so. He would say he never asked for anything in his life, and that he would not be a beggar for a living now. And think—perhaps I should not have said half so much if I could have done anything. I am too ignorant and too inexperienced for any one to be guided by me.”
“Yes, you are ignorant,” cried the young man. “You don’t know the sophistries with which we blind ourselves and each other. You dare to think what is right and what is wrong—and, for once in my life, so shall I.”
The moisture that had been gathering dropped all at once in two great unexpected tears out of Cicely’s eyes. Her face lighted like the sky when the sun rises, a rosy suffusion as of dawn came over her. Her emotion was so increased by surprise that even now she did not know what to think. In the least likely quarter all at once, in her moment of need, she had found sympathy and succour; and I think perhaps that even the most strong and self-sustaining do not know how much they have wanted sympathy and comprehension until it comes. It made Cicely weak, not strong. She felt that she could have sat down on the roadside and cried. She had an idiotic impulse to tell him everything, and especially about the butcher—how kind he had been. These impulses passed through her mind mechanically, or, as one ought to say nowadays, automatically; but Cicely, who had no notion of being an automaton, crushed them in the bud.And what she really would have said in the tumult of her feelings, beyond what the look in her eyes said, behind the tears, I cannot tell, if it had not been that the curate came forth leisurely at that moment from the rectory, making it necessary that tears and every other evidence of emotion should be cleared away.
“Cicely, it is just time for dinner,” he said. “You should not walk, my dear, in the heat of the day; and Mr. Mildmay, too, must be tired, and want something to refresh him. It is a long time since breakfast,” said the gentle curate, opening the door that his guest might precede him. Mr. St. John was not a great eater, but he had a mild, regular appetite, and did not like any disrespect to the dinner hour.
MILDMAYmade his way back to Oxford without any delay. He knew that the Master of the college, who was a man with a family, had not yet set out on the inevitable autumn tour. But I must add that, though no man could have been more anxious to obtain preferment in his own person than he was to transfer his preferment to another, yet various doubts of the practicability of what he was going to attempt interfered, as he got further and further from Brentburn, with the enthusiasm which had sprung up so warmly in Cicely’s presence. It would be very difficult, he felt, to convey to the Master the same clear perception of the rights of the case as had got into his own head by what he had seen and heard atthe rectory; and if all he made by his hesitation was to throw the living into the hands of Ruffhead! For Brentburn was no longer an indifferent place—the same as any other in the estimation of the young don; quite the reverse; it was very interesting to him now. Notwithstanding the bran-new church, he felt that no other parish under the sun was half so attractive. The churchyard, with those two narrow threads of paths; the windows, with the lights in them, which glimmered within sight of the grave; the old-fashioned, sunny garden; the red cottages, with not one wall which was not awry, and projecting at every conceivable angle; the common, with its flush of heather—all these had come out of the unknown, and made themselves plain and apparent to him. He felt Brentburn to be in a manner his own; a thing which he would be willing to give to Mr. St. John, or rather to lend him for his lifetime; but he did not feel the least inclination to let it fall into the hands of any other man. Neither did he feel inclined to do as Mr. Chester, the late rector, had done—to expatriate himself, and leave the work of his parish to the curate in charge. Besides, he could not do this,for he was in perfect health; and he could neither tell the necessary lie himself, nor, he thought, get any doctor to tell it for him. As he got nearer and nearer to the moment which must decide all these uncertainties, he got more and more confused and troubled in his mind. The Master was the college, as it happened at that moment; he was by far the most influential and the most powerful person in it; and what he said was the thing that would be done. Mildmay accordingly took his way with very mingled feelings, across the quadrangle to the beautiful and picturesque old house in which this potentate dwelt. Had he any right to attempt to make such a bargain as was in his mind? It was enough that the living had been offered to him. What had he to say but yes or no?
The Master’s house was in a state of confusion when Mildmay entered it. The old hall was full of trunks, the oaken staircase encumbered with servants and young people running up and down in all the bustle of a move. Eight children of all ages, and half as many servants, was the Master—brave man!—about to carry off to Switzerland. The packing was terrible, and not less terrible the feelingsof the heads of the expedition, who were at that moment concluding their last calculation of expenses, and making up little bundles of circular notes. “Here is Mr. Mildmay,” said the Master’s wife, “and, thank Heaven! this reckoning up is over;” and she escaped with a relieved countenance, giving the new comer a smile of gratitude. The head of the college was slightly flustrated, if such a vulgar word can be used of such a sublime person. I hope no one will suspect me of Romanizing tendencies, but perhaps a pale ecclesiastic, worn with thought, and untroubled by children, would have been more like the typical head of a college than this comely yet careworn papa. The idea, however, flashed through Mildmay’s mind, who had the greatest reverence for the Master, that these very cares, this evident partaking of human nature’s most ordinary burdens, would make the great don feel for the poor curate. Does not a touch of nature make the whole world kin?
“Well, Mildmay,” said the Master, “come to say good-bye? You are just in time. We are off to-night by the Antwerp boat, which we have decided is the best way with our enormous party.” Here the good man sighed. “Where are you going? You young fellows don’t know you’re born, as people say—coming and going, whenever the fancy seizes you, as light as a bird. Ah! wait till you have eight children, my dear fellow, to drag about the world.”
“That could not be for some time, at least,” said Mildmay, with a laugh; “but I am not so disinterested in my visit as to have come merely to say good-bye. I wanted to speak to you about Brentburn.”
“Ah—oh,” said the Master; “to be sure, your living. You have been to see it? Well! and how do you think it will feel to be an orderly rector, setting a good example, instead of enjoying yourself, and collecting crockery here?”
That was a cruel speech, and Mildmay grew red at the unworthy title crockery; but the Master’s savage sentiments on this subject were known. What is a man with eight children to be expected to know about rare china?
“I believe there are much better collections than mine in some country rectories,” he said; “but, never mind; I want to speak to you of something more interesting than crockery. I do not think I can take Brentburn.”
The Master framed his lips into that shape which in a profane and secular person would have produced a whistle of surprise. “So!” he said, “you don’t like it? But I thought you were set upon it. All the better for poor Ruffhead, who will now be able to marry after all.”
“That is just what I wanted to speak to you about,” said Mildmay, embarrassed. “I don’t want it to fall to Ruffhead. Listen, before you say anything! I don’t want to play the part of the dog in the manger. Ruffhead is young, and so am I; but, my dear Master, listen to me. The curate in charge, Mr. St. John, is not young; he has been twenty years at Brentburn, a laborious excellent clergyman. Think how it would look in any other profession, if either Ruffhead or I should thus step over his head.”
“The curate in charge!” said the Master, bewildered. “What are you talking about? What has he to do with it? I know nothing about your curate in charge.”
“Of course you don’t; and therefore there seemed to be some hope in coming to tell you. He is a member of our own college; that of itself is something. He used to know you, he says, long ago,when he was an undergraduate. He has been Chester’s curate at Brentburn, occupying the place of the incumbent, and doing everything for twenty years; and now that Chester is dead, there is nothing for him but to be turned out at a moment’s notice, and to seek his bread, at over sixty, somewhere else—and he has children too.”
This last sentence was added at a venture to touch the Master’s sympathies; but I don’t think that dignitary perceived the application; for what is there in common between the master of a college and a poor curate? He shook his head with, however, that sympathetic gravity and deference towards misfortune which no man who respects himself ever refuses to show.
“St. John, St. John?” he said. “Yes, I think I recollect the name: very tall—stoops—a peaceable sort of being? Yes. So he’s Chester’s curate? Who would have thought it? I suppose he started in life as well as Chester did, or any of us. What has possessed him to stay so long there?”
“Well—he is, as you say, a peaceable, mild man; not one to push himself——”
“Pushhimself!” cried the Master; “not much of that, I should think. But even if you don’t push yourself, you needn’t stay for twenty years a curate. What does he mean by it? I am afraid there must be something wrong.”
“And I am quite sure there is nothing wrong,” cried Mildmay, warmly, “unless devotion to thankless work, and forgetfulness of self is wrong; for that is all his worst enemy can lay to his charge.”
“You are very warm about it,” said the Master, with some surprise; “which does you credit, Mildmay. But, my dear fellow, what do you expect me—what do you expect the college to do? We can’t provide for our poor members who let themselves drop out of sight and knowledge. Perhaps if you don’t take the living, and Ruffhead does, you might speak to him to keep your friend on as curate. But I have nothing to do with that kind of arrangement. And I’m sure you will excuse me when I tell you we start to-night.”
“Master,” said Mildmay solemnly, “when you hear of a young colonel of thirty promoted over the head of an old captain of twice his age, what do you say?”
“Say, sir!” cried the Master, whose sentiments on this, as on most other subjects, were well known; “say! why I say it’s a disgrace to the country. I say it’s the abominable system of purchase which keeps our best soldiers languishing. Pray, what do you mean by that smile? You know I have no patience to discuss such a question; and I cannot see what it has to do with what we were talking of,” he added abruptly, breaking off with a look of defiance, for he suddenly saw the mistake he had made in Mildmay’s face.
“Hasn’t it?” said the other. “If you will think a moment—Ruffhead and I are both as innocent of parochial knowledge as—as little Ned there.” (Ned at this moment had come to the window which opened upon the garden, and, knocking with impatient knuckles, had summoned his father out.) “Mr. St. John has some thirty years’ experience, and is thoroughly known and loved by the people. What can anybody think—what can any one say—if one of us miserable subalterns is put over that veteran’s head? Where but in the Church could such a thing be done—without at least such a clamour as would set half England by the ears?”
“Softly, softly,” cried the Master. “(Get away, you little imp. I’ll come presently.) You mustn’t abuse the Church, Mildmay. Our arrangements may be imperfect, as indeed all arrangements are which are left in human hands. But, depend upon it, the system is the best that could be devised; and there is no real analogy between the two professions. A soldier is helpless who can only buy his promotion, and has no money to buy it with. But a clergyman has a hundred ways of making his qualifications known, and as a matter of fact I think preferment is very justly distributed. I have known dozens of men, with no money and very little influence, whose talents and virtues alone—but you must know that as well as I do. In this case there must be something behind—something wrong—extreme indolence, or incapacity, or something——”
“There is nothing but extreme modesty, and a timid retiring disposition.”
“Yes, yes, yes,” cried the Master; “these are the pretty names for it. Indolence which does nothing for itself, and hangs a dead weight upon friends. Now, tell me seriously and soberly, why do you come to me with this story?What, in such a case, do you suppose I can do?”
“If you were a private patron,” said Mildmay, “I should say boldly, I have come to ask you to give this living to the best man—the man who has a right to it; not a new man going to try experiments like myself, but one who knows what he is doing, who has done all that has been done there for twenty years. I would say you were bound to exercise your private judgment on behalf of the parish in preference to all promises or supposed rights; and that you should offer the living of Brentburn to Mr. St. John without an hour’s delay.”
“That is all very well,” said the Master, scratching his head, as if he had been a rustic clodhopper, instead of a learned and accomplished scholar, “and very well put, and perhaps true. I say,perhapstrue, for of course this is only one side of the question. But I am not a private patron. I am only a sort of trustee of the patronage, exercising it in conjunction with various other people. Come, Mildmay, you know as well as I do, poor old St. John, though his may be a hard case, has no claim whatever upon the college; and if you don’t accept it, there’s Ruffheadand two or three others who have a right to their chance. You may be sure Ruffhead won’t give up his chance of marriage and domestic bliss for any poor curate. Of course the case, as you state it, is hard. What does the parish say?”
“The parish! I was not there long enough to find out the opinion of the parish.”
“Ah, you hesitate. Look here, Mildmay; if I were a betting man, I’d give you odds, or whatever you call it, that the parish would prefer you.”
“It is impossible; or, if they did, it would only be a double wrong.” But Mildmay’s voice was not so confident as when he had been pleading Mr. St. John’s cause, and his eyes fell before the Master’s penetrating eyes.
“A wrong if you like, but it’s human nature,” said the Master, with some triumph. “I will speak to the Dean about it, if I see him this afternoon, and I’ll speak to Singleton. If they think anything of your arguments, I shan’t oppose. But I warn you I don’t think it the least likely. His age, if there were nothing else, is against him, rather than in his favour. We don’t want parishes hampered with an old man past work.”
“He is just as old being curate as if he were rector.”
“Yes, yes. But to give him the living now, at his age, would be to weight the parish with him till he was a hundred, and destroy the chance for young men like yourself.Youdon’t mind, but I can tell you Ruffhead does. No, no. Singleton will never hear of it; and what can I do? I am going away.”
“Singleton will do whatever you tell him,” said Mildmay; “and you could write even though you are going away.”
“Hush, hush,” said the Master, with a half laugh, “that is all a popular delusion. Singleton is the most independent-minded man I know—and the others are as obstinate as pigs. Talk of turning them as one likes! Poor old St. John, though! we might hear of another place to suit him, perhaps. He has something of his own, I suppose—some private income? How many children has he? of course, being only a curate, he must have heaps of children. (Coming, you rascal! coming, Ned.)”
“He has two daughters grown up,” said Mildmay, “and two small children; and so far as I can judge is—— What is there to laugh at?” he added, with a look of the greatest surprise.
“So, so; he hasdaughters?” said the Master, with a burst of genial laughter. “That is it? Don’t blush, my dear fellow; as good men as you have been in the same predicament. Go and marry her, which will be much more sensible; and I hope Miss St. John is everything that is pretty and charming for your sake.”
Perhaps Mildmay blushed, but he was not aware of it. He felt himself grow pale in a white heat of passion. “This is a very poor joke,” he said. “Excuse me, Master, if I must say so. I speak to you of an injury to the Church, and a serious wrong to one of her priests, and you answer me with a jest most inappropriate to the occasion. I saw Miss—I mean Mr. St. John and his family for the first time two days ago. Personal feeling of any kind has not been my inducement to make this appeal to your sense of justice. But I have made a mistake, it seems. Good morning! I will not detain you more.”
“Why, Mildmay! a man may have his joke. Don’t take it in this tragical way. And don’t be so withering in your irony about my sense of justice,” said the Master, with a laugh, half apologetic,half angry. But he did not ask the young man to sit down again. “Justice goes both ways,” he added; “and I have justice to the college, and justice to its more distinguished members, and even to the parish, for whose good we are called upon to act—to consider; as well as justice to Mr. St. John, which really is not our affair. But, my dear fellow, all this is very admirable in you—and don’t think I fail to see that, though you say I made a poor joke. Yes, I am in a hurry, there is no denying it; but I’ll see Singleton, and leave the matter in his hands. Meet you in the Oberland, eh? My wife talks of St. Moritz, but we never can drag the children all that way. Good-bye.”
Mildmay marched out of the old house with all his pulses tingling. It seemed to him that poor Cicely, in the midst of all the anxieties that lurked in her young eyes, had been insulted. Was it that sort of folly he was thinking of, or she, poor girl, who had said nothing to him but reproaches? But yet, I will allow, that absolutely innocent as he felt of any such levity, the accusation excited him more, perhaps, than was needful. He could not forget or forgive it, as one forgivesa sorry jest at one’s own expense, the reason being, he said to himself, that it was an insult to her, and that this insult had come upon a young innocent creature through him, which was doubly hard. He was still tingling with this blow, when he met his second in succession, so to speak, Mr. Ruffhead, who was serving a curacy near Oxford, and who had a slight unspoken, unacknowledged grudge at his brother Fellow who had been preferred before himself. Mildmay, in his excitement, laid hold upon this probable heir of his, in case he should give up Brentburn, and poured the whole story into his ears, asking with some heat and passion for his advice. “I don’t see how I can take the living over Mr. St. John’s head; it seems to me the most terrible injustice,” he cried.
Mr. Ruffhead shook his head.
“You must not ask my advice,” said that sensible person. “If you don’t take it, and it’s offered to me, I shall of course. I don’t know Mr. St. John, and if one neglected one’s own interests for every hard case one heard of, where would one be? I can’t afford to play with my chances. I daresay you think I am very hard-hearted; but that is what I should do.”
This plain declaration of sentiment subdued Mildmay, and brought him back to matters of fact. “I suppose you are right; but I have not made up my mind to decline the living,” he said coldly, and did not ask Ruffhead to dinner as he had at first intended. No man, they say, likes his heir, and this kind of inheritance was doubly disagreeable to think of. Certainly, if the only alternative was Ruffhead and his honeymooning (which somehow it disgusted Mildmay to think of, as of something almost insulting to himself), it would be better, much better, that he himself should take Brentburn. He would not give it up only to see it passed on to this commonplace fellow, to enable him, forsooth, to marry some still more commonplace woman. Good heavens! was that the way to traffic with a cure of souls? He went back to his beautiful rooms in a most disturbed state of mind, and drew up impatiently the blinds which were not intended to be drawn up. The hot August light came in scorching and broad over all his delights, and made him loathe them; he tripped upon, and kicked away to the end of the room, a rug for which you or I, dear reader, would have given one of ourears; and jerked his Italian tapestry to one side, and I think, if good sense had not restrained him, would have liked to take up his very best bit of china and smash it into a hundred pieces. But after a while he smiled at himself, and reduced the blaze of daylight to a proper artistic tone, and tried to eat some luncheon. Yesterday at the same hour he had shared the curate’s dinner, with Cicely at the head of the table, looking at him with sweet eyes, in which there was still the dewy look of past tears. She had the house and all its cares upon her delicate shoulders, that girl; and her innocent name had been made the subject of a jest—through him!
IDOnot suppose that Cicely St. John had really any hope in her new acquaintance, or believed, when she looked at the matter reasonably, that his self-renunciation, if he had the strength of mind to carry it out, would really secure for her father the living of Brentburn. But yet a certain amount of faith is natural at her years, and she was vaguely strengthened and exhilarated by that suppressed expectation of something pleasant that might possibly happen, which is so great an element in human happiness; and, with this comfort in her soul, went about her work, preparing for the worst, which, to be sure, notwithstanding her hope, was, she felt, inevitable. Mab, when the stranger’s enthusiasticadoption of her sister’s suggestion was told to her, accepted it for her part with delight, as a thing settled. A true artist has always more or less a practical mind. However strong his imagination may be, he does not confine himself to fancies, or even words, but makes something tangible and visible out of it, and this faculty more or less shapes the fashion of his thinking. Mab, who possessed in addition that delightful mixture of matter-of-factness which is peculiar to womankind, seized upon the hope and made it into reality. She went to her work as gaily as if all the clouds had been in reality dispersed from her path. This time it was little Annie, the nursemaid—Cicely having interfered to protect the babies from perpetual posing—who supplied her with the necessary “life.” Annie did not much like it. She would have been satisfied, indeed, and even proud, had “her picture” been taken in her best frock, with all her Sunday ribbons; but to be thrust into a torn old dingy garment, with bare feet, filled the little handmaiden with disgust and rage great enough for a full-grown woman. “Folks will think as I hain’t got no decent clothes,” she said; and Mab’s injudiciousconsolation, to the effect that “folks would never see the picture,” did not at all mend the matter. Cicely, however, drew up her slight person, and “looked Miss St. John,” according to Mab’s description; and Annie was cowed. There were at least twenty different representations in Mab’s sketch-books of moments in which Cicely had looked Miss St. John; and it was Mab’s conviction in life as well as in art that no opponent could stand before such a demonstration. Bare-footed, in her ragged frock, Annie did not look an amiable young person, which, I am ashamed to say, delighted the artist. “She will do for the naughty little girl in the fairy tale, the one with toads and frogs dropping from her lips,” cried Mab, in high glee. “And if it comes well I shall send it to Mr. Mildmay, to show we feel how kind he is.”
“Wait till he has been kind,” said Cicely, shaking her head. “I always liked the naughty little girl best, not that complacent smiling creature who knew she had been good, and whom everybody praised. Oh, what a pity that the world is not like a fairy tale! where the good are always rewarded, and even the naughty, when they are sorry. If wewere to help any number of old women, what would it matter now?”
“But I suppose,” said Mab, somewhat wistfully, for she distrusted her sister’s words, which she did not understand, and was afraid people might think Cicely Broad Church, “I suppose whatever may happen in the meantime, it all comes right in the end?”
“Papa is not so very far from the end, and it has not come right for him.”
“O Cicely, how can you talk so! Papa is not so old. He will live years and years yet!” cried Mab, her eyes filling.
“I hope so. Oh, I hope so! I did not think of merely living. But he cannot get anything very great now, can he, to make up for so long waiting? So long—longer,” said Cicely, with a little awe, thinking of that enormous lapse of time, “than we have been alive!”
“If he gets the living, he will not want anything more,” said Mab, blithely working away with her charcoal. “How delightful it will be! More than double what we have now? Fancy! After all, you will be able to furnish as you said.”
“But not in amber satin,” said Cicely, beguiled into a smile.
“In soft, soft Venetian stuff, half green, half blue, half no colour at all. Ah! she has moved! Cicely, Cicely, go and talk to her, for heaven’s sake, or my picture will be spoilt!”
“If you please, miss, I can’t stop here no longer. It’s time as I was looking after the children. How is Betsy to remember in the middle of her cooking the right time to give ‘em their cod-liver oil?”
“I’ll go and look after the children,” said Cicely. “What you have got to do, Annie, is to stop here.”
Upon which Annie burst into floods of tears, and fell altogether out of pose. “There ain’t no justice in it!” she said. “I’m put up here to look like a gipsy or a beggar; and mother will never get over it, after all her slaving and toiling to get me decent clothes!”
Thus it will be perceived that life studies in the domestic circle are very difficult to manage. After a little interval of mingled coaxing and scolding, something like the lapsed attitude was recovered, and Annie brought back into obedience. “If you will be good, I’ll draw a picture of you in your Sunday frock to give to your mother,” said Mab—a promise which had too good an effect upon her model, driving away the clouds from her countenance; and Cicely went away to administer the cod-liver oil. It was not a very delightful office, and I think that now and then, at this crisis, it seemed to Cicely that Mab had the best of it, with her work, which was a delight to her, and which occupied both her mind and her fingers; care seemed to fly the moment she got that charcoal in her hand. There was no grudge in this sense of disadvantage. Nature had done it, against which there is no appeal. I don’t think, however, that care would have weighed heavily on Mab, even if she had not been an artist. She would have hung upon Cicely all the same if her occupation had been but needlework, and looked for everything from her hands.
But it was not until Annie was released, and could throw off the ragged frock in which she had been made picturesque, and return to her charge, that Cicely could begin the more important business that waited for her. She took this quite quietly, not thinking it necessary to be on the look-out for a grievance, and took her work into the nursery, where the two babies were playing in a solemn sort ofway. They had their playthings laid out upon the floor, and had some mild little squabbles over them. “Zat’s Harry’s!” she heard again and again, mingled with faint sounds of resistance. The children were very mysterious to Cicely. She was half afraid of them as mystic incomprehensible creatures, to whom everybody in heaven and earth did injustice. After a while she put down her work and watched them play. They had a large box of bricks before them, playthings which Cicely herself well remembered, and the play seemed to consist in one little brother diving into the long box in search of one individual brick, which, when he produced it, the other snatched at, saying, “Zat’s Harry’s.” Charley, who wanted both his hands to swim with on the edge of the box, did not have his thumb in his mouth this time; but he was silenced by the unvarying claim. They did not laugh, nor did they cry, as other children do; but sat over the box of bricks, in a dumb conflict, of which it was impossible to tell whether it was strife or play.
“Are they all Harry’s?” asked Cicely, suddenly moved to interfere. The sound of the voice startled the little creatureson the floor. They turned right round, and contemplated her from the carpet with round and wondering eyes.
“Zat’s Harry’s,” said the small boy over again with the iteration common to children. Charley was not prepared with any reply. He put his thumb into his mouth in default of any more extended explanation. Cicely repeated her question—I fear raising her voice, for patience was not Cicely’s forte; whereupon Harry’s eyes, who was the boldest, got bigger and bigger, and redder and redder, with fright, and Charley began to whimper. This irritated the sister much. “You little silly things!” she said, “I am not scolding you. What are you crying for? Come here, Harry, and tell me why you take all the bricks? They are Charley’s too.”
Children are the angels of life; but they are sometimes little demons for all that. To see these two pale little creatures sitting half dead with fright, gazing at her sunny young countenance as if she were an ogre, exasperated Cicely. She jumped up, half laughing, half furious, and at that movement the babies set up a unanimous howl of terror. This fairly daunted her, courageous asshe was. She went back to her seat again, having half a mind to cry too. “I am not going to touch you,” said Cicely piteously. “Why are you frightened at me? If you will come here I will tell you a story.” She was too young to have the maternal instinct so warmly developed as to make her all at once, without rhyme or reason, “fond of” her little half-brothers; but she was anxious to do her duty, and deeply wounded that they did not “take to her.” Children, she said to herself with an internal whisper of self-pity, had always taken to her before; and she was not aware of that instinctive resistance, half defiance, half fright, which seems to repel the child-dependant from those whose duty it is to take care of it—most unreasonable, often most cruel, but yet apparently most universal of sentiments. Is it that the very idea of a benefactor, even before the mind is capable of comprehending what it is, sets nature on edge? This was rather a hard lesson for the girl, especially as, while they were still howling, little Annie burst in indignant, and threw herself down beside the children, who clung to her, sobbing, one on each side. “You have made ‘em cry,miss,” cried Annie, “and missus’s orders was as they was never to be allowed to cry. It is very dangerous for boys; it busts their little insides. Did she frighten ‘em, then? the naughty lady. Never mind, never mind, my precious! Annie’s here.”
To see this child spread out upon the floor with these chicks under her wings would have been amusing to a cool spectator. But Cicely did not take it in that light. She waited till the children were pacified, and had returned to their play, and then she took the little nursemaid by the arm, and led her to the door. “You are not to enter this room again or come near the children,” she said, in a still voice which made Annie tremble. “If you make a noise I will beat you. Go downstairs to your sister, and I will see you afterwards. Not a word! I have nothing more to say to you here.”
Cicely went back again to her seat trembling with the excitement of the moment, and then said to herself, what a fool she was! but, oh! what a much greater fool Miss Brown had been to leave this legacy of trouble to two girls who had never done any harm to her. “Though, I suppose,” Cicely added toherself with a sense of justice, “she was not thinking about us.” And indeed it was not likely that poor Mrs. St. John had brought these babies into the world solely to bother her husband’s daughters. Poor Cicely, who had a thousand other things to do, and who already felt that it was impolitic, though necessary, to dismiss Annie, pondered long, gazing at those pale-faced and terrible infants, how she was to win them over, which looked as hard as any of her other painful pieces of business. At last some kind fairy put it into her head to sing: at which the two turned round once more upon their bases solemnly, and stared at her, intermitting their play till the song was finished. Then an incident occurred almost unparalleled in the nursery chronicles of Brentburn. Charley took his thumb out of his mouth, and looking up at her with his pale eyes, said of his own accord, “Adain.”
“Come here then, and sit on my lap,” said Cicely, holding out her hand. There was a momentary struggle between terror and gathering confidence, and then pushing himself up by the big box of bricks Charley approached gradually, keeping a wary eye upon her movements. Onceon her lap, however, the little adventurer felt himself comfortable. She was soft and pleasant, and had a bigger shoulder to support him and a longer arm to enfold him than Annie. He leant back against her, feeling the charm of that softness and sweetness, though he did not know how. “Adain,” said Charley; and put his thumb in his mouth with all the feelings of a connoisseur in a state of perfect bodily ease prepared to enjoy themorceauspecially given at his desire.
Thus Cicely conquered the babies once for all. Harry, too much astounded by thus seeing his lead taken from him to make any remonstrance, followed his brother in dumb surprise, and stood against her, leaning on her knee. They made the prettiest group; for, as Mab said, even when they are ugly, how pretty children are! and they “compose” so beautifully with a pretty young woman, making even a commonplace mother into a Madonna and Lady of Blessing. Cicely sang them a song, so very low down in the scale at once both of music and of poetry that I dare not shock the refined reader by naming it, especially after that well-worn comparison; and this time both Harry and Charley joined in theencore, the latter too happy to think of withdrawing that cherished thumb from his mouth, murmuring thickly, “Adain.”
“But, oh, what a waste of time—what a waste of time it will be!” cried poor Cicely, when she took refuge in the garden, putting the delicate children to play upon a great rug, stretched on the grass. “To be sure there will be one mouth less to feed, which is always something. You must help me a little while I write my letters, Mab.”
“Who are you going to write to?” said Mab, with colloquial incorrectness which would have shocked out of their senses the Miss Blandys, and all the excellent persons concerned in bringing her up. “Oh yes, I will try to help; but won’t you forgive Annie, just for this little time, and let her stay?”
“I can’t be defied in my own house,” said Cicely, erecting her head with an air which frightened Mab herself; “and I must take to it sooner or later. Wherever we go, it is I that must look after them. Well! it will be a trouble at first; but I shall like it when I get fond of them. Mab, we ought to be fond of them now.”
Mab looked at the children, and thenlaughed. “I don’t hate them,” she said; “they are such funny little things, as if they had been born about a hundred years before their time. I believe, really, they are not children at all, but old, old men, that know a great deal more than we do. I am sure that Charley could say something very wonderful if he liked. He has a great deal in him, if he would but take his thumb out of his mouth.”
“Charley is my boy,” said Cicely, brightening up; “he is the one I like best.”
“I like him best, too. He is the funniest. Are you going to write there?”
“I must keep my eye upon them,” said Cicely, with great solemnity. She was pleased with her victory, and felt it to be of the most prodigious importance that she should not lose the “influence” she had gained; for she was silly, as became her age, as well as wise. She had brought out her little desk—a very commonplace little article, indeed, of rosewood, with brass bindings—and seated herself under the old mulberry-tree, with the wind ruffling her papers, and catching in the short curling locks about her forehead. (N.B.—Don’t suppose,dear reader, that she had cut them short; those stray curls were carefully smoothed away under the longer braids when she brushed her hair; but the breeze caught them in a way which vexed Cicely as being untidy). It was as pretty a garden scene as you could see; the old mulberry bending down its heavy branches, the babies on the rug at the girl’s feet; but yet, when you look over Cicely’s shoulder, a shadow falls upon the pretty scene. She had two letters to write, and something still less agreeable than her letters—an advertisement for theGuardian. This was very difficult, and brought many a sigh from her young breast.
“‘An elderly clergyman who has filled the office of curate for a very long time in one parish, finding it now necessary to make a change, desires to find a similar——‘”
“Do you think that will do?” said Mab. “It is as if poor papa were a butler, or something—‘filled the office of curate for a long time in one parish’—it does not sound nice.”
“We must not be bound by what sounds nice,” said Cicely. “It is not nice, in fact—is it? How hard it is toput even such a little thing as this as one ought! Will this do better?—‘A clergyman, who has long occupied the position of curate in charge, in a small parish, wishes to hear of a similar——‘ What, Mab? I cannot say situation, can I? that is like a butler again. Oh, dear, dear; it is so very much like a butler altogether. Tell me a word.”
“Position,” said Mab.
“But I have just said position. ‘A clergyman who has long held the—anappointmentas curate in charge’—there, that is better—‘wishes to hear of a similar position in a small parish.’ I think that will do.”
“Isn’t there a Latin word?Locumsomething or other; would not that be more dignified?” said Mab.
“Locum tenens. I prefer English,” said Cicely; “and now I suppose we must say something about his opinions. Poor dear papa! I am sure I do not know whether he is High, or Low, or Broad.”
“Not Broad,” said Mab, pointedly; for she was very orthodox. “Say sound; I have often seen that, and it does not commit you to anything,—sound, but not extreme, like Miss Blandy’s clergyman.”
“‘Of sound, but not extreme principles,’” wrote Cicely. “That sounds a little strange, for you might say that a man who could not tell a lie, but yet did not mind a fib, was sound, but not extreme. ‘Church principles’—is that better? But I don’t like that either. Stop, I have it—‘He is a sound, but not extreme Churchman’—that is the very thing—‘and has much experience’ (Ah, poor papa!) ‘in managing a parish. Apply’—but that is another question. Where ought they to apply? We cannot give, I suppose, the full name and address here?”
“I wonder if any one will apply? But, Cicely, suppose all comes right, as I am sure it will, you may be deceiving some one, making them think—Here is the very person I want; and then how disappointed they will be!”
“Oh, if there is onlytheirdisappointment to think of! Mab, you must not think there is any reliance to be put on Mr. Mildmay. He meant it; yes, tears came into his eyes,” cried Cicely, with a look of gratitude and pleasure in her own. “But when he goes back among those Oxford men, those dons, do you think they will pay any attention tohim? They will laugh at him; they will say he is a Quixote; they will turn it all into fun, or think it his folly.”
“Why should Oxford dons be so much worse than other men?” said Mab, surprised. “Papa is an Oxford man—he is not hard-hearted. Dons, I suppose, are just like other people?”
“No,” said Cicely, who was arguing against herself, struggling against the tide of fictitious hope, which sometimes threatened to carry her away. “They live by themselves among their books; they have nobody belonging to them; their hearts dry up, and they don’t care for common troubles. Oh, I know it: they are often more heathens than Christians. I have no faith in those sort of people. He will have a struggle with them, and then he will find it to be of no use. I am as sure as if it had happened already,” cried Cicely, her bright eyes sparkling indignant behind her tears.
“At least we need not think them so bad till we know,” said Mab, more charitably.
Cicely had excited herself by this impassioned statement, in which indeed the Oxford men were innocent sufferers enough, seeing that she knew nothing about them. “I must not let myselfbelieve it; I dare not let myself believe it,” she said in her heart; “but, oh! if by chance things did happenso!” What abundant compensation, what lavish apology, did this impetuous young woman feel herself ready to offer to those maligned dons!
The advertisement was at last fairly written out, with the exception of the address to be given. “Papa may surely tell me where they are to apply,” Cicely said, though with doubts in her mind as to whether he was good even for this; and then she wrote her letters, one of which was in Mr. St. John’s name to the lawyer who had written to him about the furniture, asking that the sale might not take place until the curate’s half-year, which ended in the end of September, should be out. Mr. St. John would not do this himself. “Why should I ask any favour of those people who do not know me?” he said; but he had at length consented that Cicely might write “if she liked;” and in any case the lawyer’s letter had to be answered. Cicely made this appeal as business-like as possible. “I wonder how a man would write who did not mind much—to whom this was only a little convenience,” shesaid to her sister. “I don’t want to go and ask as if one was asking a favour of a friend—as if we cared.”
“But we do care; and it would be a favour——”
“Never mind. I wish we knew what a man would say that was quite independent and did not care. ‘If it is the same to you, it would be more convenient for me not to have the furniture disturbed till the 22nd of September’—that is the kind of thing. We girls always make too much of a favour of everything,” said Cicely, writing; and she produced an admirable imitation of a business letter, to which she appended her own signature, “Cecil St. John,” which was also her father’s, with great boldness. The curate’s handwriting was almost more womanlike than hers, for Cicely’s generation are not taught to write Italian hands, and I do not think the lawyer suspected the sex of the production. When she had finished this, she wrote upon another sheet of paper, “My dear Aunt, I am——” and then she stopped sharply. “It is cool now, let us take them out for a walk on the common,” she said, shutting up her desk. “I can finish this to-night.”
It was not, however, the walk on the common Cicely wanted, but to hide from her sister that the letter to Aunt Jane was much less easy than even those other dolorous pieces of business. Poor Cicely looked upon the life before her with a shudder. To live alone in some new place, where nobody knew her, as nursemaid to these babies, and attendant upon her father, without her sweet companion, the little sister, who, though so near in age, had always been the protected one, the reliant dependent nature, believing in Cicely, and giving her infinite support by that belief! How could she do it? Yet she herself, who felt it most, must insist upon it; must be the one to arrange and settle it all, as so often happens. It would not be half so painful to Mab as to Cicely; yet Mab would be passive in it, and Cicely active; and she could not write under Mab’s smiling eyes betraying the sacrifice it cost her. Mab laughed at her sister’s impetuosity, and concluded that it was exactly like Cicely to tire of her work all in a moment, and dash into something else. And, accordingly, the children’s out-door apparel was got from the nursery, and the girls put on their hats, and strayed out by the garden doorupon the common, with its heathery knolls and furze bushes. Harry and Charley had never in all their small lives had such a walk as this. The girls mounted them upon their shoulders, and ran races with them, Charley against Harry, till first one twin, and then the other, was beguiled into shrill little gusts of laughter: after which they were silent—themselves frightened by the unusual sound. But when the races ended, Charley, certainly the hero of the day, opened his mouth and spoke, and said “Adain!” and this time when they laughed the babies were not frightened. Then they were set down and rolled upon the soft grass, and throned in mossy seats among the purple fragrant heather. What an evening it was! The sky all ablaze with the sunset, with clouds of rosy flame hanging like canopies over the faint delicious openings of that celestial green which belongs to a summer evening. The curate, coming from a distant round into the parish, which had occupied him all the day, found them on the grass under the big beech-tree, watching the glow of colour in the west. He had never seen his girls “taking to” his babies before so kindly, and the old man was glad.
“But it is quite late enough to have them out; they have been used to such early hours,” he said.
“And Harry wants his tea,” piped that small hero, with a half whimper.
Then the girls jumped up, and looked at each other, and Cicely grew crimson. Here was a beginning to make, an advantage terrible to think of, to be given to the dethroned Annie, who no doubt was enjoying it keenly. Cicely had already forgotten the children’s tea!
CICELYwrote her letter to her aunt that evening, dropping some tears over it when Mab was not by to see; and almost as soon as it was possible she had a very kind answer, granting her request, and more. Aunt Jane declared that she would receive Mab with great delight, and do everything that could be done to further her art-studies, which, as the British Museum was near, and “a very good artist” lived next door to Miss Maydew, seemed likely to be something worth while. “She shall be to me like my own child; though I have never concealed from either of you that you, Cicely, are my pet,” wrote Miss Maydew; and she added a still more liberal invitation.“If you want to spend a few days anywhere between leaving Brentburn and going to the new place, wherever that may be, you must come here—babies and all. I can manage to find beds for you near; and it will be a nice little holiday for us all,” said the kind woman. She even added a postscript, to the effect that, if there was a little money wanting at the time of the removal, Cicely was “not to hesitate” to apply to her: and what could woman do more? Sympathy and hospitality, and a little money, “is wanted.” Alas! perhaps it is because the money is so sure to be wanted that so few people venture on such an offer; but Miss Maydew knew she was safe with Hester’s child, who was so like her mother. Cicely’s other letter was successful, too. The lawyer who represented the Chester family was quite willing to postpone the sale until Mr. St. John’s time was up. After all, the world is not so very bad as it is called. Nobody was cruel to the St. Johns. The tradespeople agreed to wait for their money. The Chesters would not for the world disturb the departing curate until he was ready to go; and Mrs. Ascott, and all the other great people in the parish, called andmade much of the girls. The church was more full than usual every Sunday, for a vague expectation of a farewell (or, as old Mrs. Joel called it, a funeral) sermon was in the people’s minds. A great many of them, now it came to the point, were very sorry that Mr. St. John was going. They would have signed freely anything that had been set before them to make the curate stay. But, nevertheless, they were all interested about his farewell sermon, and what he would say for himself, and what account he would give of various matters which stuck fast in their rustic recollections. Thus the weeks stole away quite placidly, and the harvest was got in, and August wore out under a great blazing moon with the utmost cheerfulness. One or two answers came to the advertisement in theGuardian; but they were not of an encouraging kind. Cicely felt that it was better to repeat it and wait; and her father was always pleased to wait under all circumstances; and the long bright days went away one by one in a kind of noiseless procession, which Cicely felt herself watch with a dreary dismay and restlessness. Nothing had happened yet to avert the calamity that was impending. Everything,on the contrary, seemed preparing for it—leading up to it—though still Mr. St. John went “into the parish,” and still all went on as usual at the rectory. The curate showed no symptom of feeling these last days different from any other; but the girls kept looking forward, and hoping for something, with a hope which gradually fell sick, and grew speechless—and nothing came.
One day when Mrs. Ascott called, Cicely had got into that state of exhaustion and strained anxiety when the mind grows desperate. She had been occupied with the children all day, not able to get free of them—Annie having finally departed, and Betsy, being too much displeased at the loss of her sister and subordinate to make any offer of help. The babies had grown more active and more loquacious under the changedrégime, and this, though it was her own doing, increased poor Cicely’s cares. Mab was upstairs preparing for her departure, which was to be a few days before the general breaking up. Altogether when Mrs. Ascott came in, fresh and cool out of her carriage, Cicely was not in the best mood to receive her. She gave the children her work-basket to play withto keep them quiet, and cleared her own brow as best she could, as she stood up and welcomed the great lady. How fresh her toilette was, how unwrinkled her face! a woman altogether at ease, and ready to smile upon everything. She shook hands with Cicely, and took her seat with smiling prettiness. “I have come really on business,” she said; “to see if we could be of any use to you, Cicely—in packing or any of your preparations; and to ask if the time is quite fixed? I suppose your papa must have heard from Mr. Mildmay, and that all is settled now?”
“All—settled?” said Cicely, faintly. The words, so softly and prettily said, went into the girl’s heart like a knife; and yet of course it was no more than she expected—no more.
“The appointment, as you would see, is in the paper to-day. I am so sorry your papa is going, my dear; but as he must go, and we cannot help it, at least we have reason to be thankful that we are getting such a good man as Mr. Mildmay. It will be some little compensation to the parish for losing Mr. St. John.”
“Is it—in the papers?” said Cicely,feeling suddenly hoarse and unable to speak.
“You feel it, my poor dear child!—of course you must feel it—and so do we all. There will not be a dry eye in the whole church when Mr. St. John preaches his farewell sermon. To think that he should have been here so long—though it is a little consolation, Mr. Ascott says, that we are getting a thorough gentleman, and so well connected—an admirable man.”
“Consolation!” cried Cicely, raising her head. “What consolation is wanted? Papa is pretty well worn out; he has done almost as much work as a man can do. People cannot keep old things when they are worn out—the new are better; but why should any one pretend to make a moan over it? I do not see what consolation the parish can want. If you cry at the farewell sermon, Mrs. Ascott, I shall laugh. Why should not your eyes be dry—as dry as the fields—as dry as people’s hearts?”
“Cicely, Cicely!” cried Mrs. Ascott, shocked; “my dear, I am very sorry for it, but a misfortune like this should be borne in a better spirit. I am sure your poor dear papa would say so; and it is nobody’s fault.”
“It is everybody’s fault,” cried Cicely, forgetting herself, getting up in her passion, and walking about the room; “the parish, and the Church, and all the world! Oh, you may smile! It does not touch you; you are well off; you cannot be put out of your home; you cannot have everything taken from you, and see everybody smiling pity upon you, and no one putting out a hand to help. Pity! we don’t want pity,” cried Cicely; “we want justice. How dare you all stand by and see it done? The Church, the Church! that everybody preaches about as if it was God, and yet that lets an old servant be so treated—an old servant that has worked so hard, never sparing himself! If this is the Church’s doing, the Church is harder than the farmers—worse, worse than worldly people. Do you think God will be pleased because he is well connected? or is it God’s fault?” Here her voice broke with a sob and shudder, and suddenly dropping from her height of passion, Cicely said faintly, “Papa!”
“What is it?” said the curate, coming in. “Surely I heard something very strange. Mrs. Ascott, I beg your pardon; my ears must have deceivedme. I thought Cicely must be repeating, to amuse herself, some speech, perhaps out ofParadise Lost. I have heard of some great man who was caught doing that, and frightened everybody who heard him,” said Mr. St. John, shaking hands with the visitor with his friendly smile.
He sat down, weary and dusty from “the parish,” and there was a painful pause. Cicely stole away to the corner where her little brothers were playing, her pulse bounding, her heart throbbing, her cheeks aflame, her whole being, soul and body, full of the strong pain and violent stimulus of the shock she had received. She had never expected anything else, she said to herself; she had steadily prepared for the going away, the ruin that awaited them; but, nevertheless, her heart had never believed in it, since that conversation with Mildmay at the rectory gate. Day by day she had awoke with a certainty in her mind, never put into words, that the good news would come, that all would be well. But the shock did not crush her, as it does some people; it woke her up into freshened force and life; her heart seemed to thrill and throb, not somuch with pain as with activity, and energy and power.
“Cicely is very much excited,” said Mrs. Ascott in a low tone. “I fear she is very excitable; and she ought to be more careful in her position—a clergyman’s daughter—what she says. I think you ought to speak to her, Mr. St. John. She flew at me (not that I mind that) and said such things—because I mentioned that Mr. Mildmay’s appointment was in the paper this morning; and that since we must lose you—which nobody can be more sorry for than we are—it was well at least that we were getting so good a man.”
“Ah!” said the curate. The announcement took him by surprise, and gave him a shock too, though of a different kind. He caught his breath after it, and panted for a moment. “Is it in the papers? I have not seen it. I have no time in the morning; and, besides, I never see theTimes.”
“We hope you will settle to dine with us one day before you go,” said Mrs. Ascott. “How we shall miss you, Mr. St. John! I don’t like to think of it—and if we can be of any use in your preparations—— I hear there is to be a sale, too?”
“Not till we move. They will not put us to any inconvenience; indeed,” said the curate, with a sigh and a smile, “everybody is very kind.”
“I am sure everybody wishes to be kind,” said Mrs. Ascott, with emphasis. “I must not take up your time any longer, for you look very tired after your rounds. But Mr. St. John, mark my words, you must hold a tight hand over Cicely. She uses expressions which a clergyman’s daughter ought not to use.”
“What were you saying to her, my dear?” said Mr. St. John, coming in again after he had taken the lady to her carriage; “your voice was raised, and you still look excited. What did you say?”
“It was nothing, papa. I lost my temper—who could help it? I will never do it again. To think ofthatman calmly accepting the living and turning you out of it, after all he said.”
“What good would it have done had he refused?” said Mr. St. John. “My dear, how could he help it?”
“Help it?” cried Cicely. “Can nobody help anything in this world? Must we stand by and see all manner of wrong done and take the advantage, and thenthink we are innocent and cannot help it. That is what I scorn. Let him do wrong if he will, and bear the blame—that is honest at least. But to say he cannot help it; how could he ever dare to give such a miserable excuse?”
“My dear,” said the curate, “I am too tired to argue. I don’t blame Mildmay; he has done just what was natural, and I am glad he is coming here; while in the meantime talking will do no good, but I think my tea would do me good,” he added with a smile.
Always tea, Cicely could not help thinking as she went away dutifully to prepare it—or dinner, or some trifle; never any serious thought of what was coming, of what had already come. She was young and impatient and unjust, as it is so natural to be at her years. The curate put his hand over his eyes when he was left alone. He was not disappointed or surprised. He had known exactly all along how it would be; but when it thus came upon him with such obvious and unmistakable reality, he felt it sharply. Twenty years! All that part of his life in which anything to speak of had happened to him, and—what was almost as hard to bear—allthe familiar things which had framed in his life—the scene, the place, the people, the surroundings he was used to. He had not even his favourite consolation, forlorn pride in never having asked anything, to sustain him, for that was no longer the case. He was asking something—a poor curacy, a priest’s place for a piece of bread. The pang was momentary, but it was sharp. He got up, and stretched his long languid figure, and said to himself, “Ah, well! what is the good of thinking? It is soon enough to make oneself wretched when the moment comes,” and then he went peacefully into the dining-room to tea. This was not how the younger people took it, but then perhaps they had more capacity for feeling left.
Next morning Cicely got a letter of a very unusual description, which affected her in no small degree. It was from Mildmay, and, perhaps, it will be best to give it in full here:—