“Dear Miss St. John,“I have delayed writing to you until I could make sure that you must have seen or heard of the announcement in the papers which will tell the resultsof my last three weeks’ work. Do not think that our last conversation has been obliterated from my mind. Very far from that. I have seen the Master and all who are concerned, and have done my best to show them the step which bare justice required at their hands, but ineffectually. I made a point at the same time of ascertaining what were the views of the gentleman to whom Brentburn would be offered in case I refused it, and found him quite decided on the subject. What could I do then? Should I have declined and put myself entirely out of the way of being of any use at all?“As a matter of simple justice, I refer the question to you. What am I to do now? My thoughts on the subject have been many, I need not say, since I saw you. May I ask your father to continue at Brentburn as my curate? I am quite inexperienced; his assistance would be of infinite advantage to me; and, in point of fact, as is natural at our respective ages, I should be his curate, not he mine. May I do this? or what else can I do? The position in which I find myself is a painful one. It would have been much easier, I assure you, to have shuffled the whole matter off upon Ruffhead,and to have withdrawn. But I felt a responsibility upon me since I met you; and I ask you now urgently, feeling that I have almost a right to your advice, what am I to do?“Yours very truly,“Roger Mildmay.”
“Dear Miss St. John,
“I have delayed writing to you until I could make sure that you must have seen or heard of the announcement in the papers which will tell the resultsof my last three weeks’ work. Do not think that our last conversation has been obliterated from my mind. Very far from that. I have seen the Master and all who are concerned, and have done my best to show them the step which bare justice required at their hands, but ineffectually. I made a point at the same time of ascertaining what were the views of the gentleman to whom Brentburn would be offered in case I refused it, and found him quite decided on the subject. What could I do then? Should I have declined and put myself entirely out of the way of being of any use at all?
“As a matter of simple justice, I refer the question to you. What am I to do now? My thoughts on the subject have been many, I need not say, since I saw you. May I ask your father to continue at Brentburn as my curate? I am quite inexperienced; his assistance would be of infinite advantage to me; and, in point of fact, as is natural at our respective ages, I should be his curate, not he mine. May I do this? or what else can I do? The position in which I find myself is a painful one. It would have been much easier, I assure you, to have shuffled the whole matter off upon Ruffhead,and to have withdrawn. But I felt a responsibility upon me since I met you; and I ask you now urgently, feeling that I have almost a right to your advice, what am I to do?
“Yours very truly,“Roger Mildmay.”
This letter excited Cicely greatly. By chance it arrived before the others had come into the breakfast-room, and she was able to read it without any looker-on. She put it hurriedly into her pocket before her father and sister appeared. She did not know what answer to make, neither did she feel comfortable about making any answer, and she said nothing about it all day; though—oh, how the letter burned her pocket and her mind! She had scarcely ever known what it was to have a secret before, and not to tell Mab seemed almost wrong. She felt that there was something clandestine about her, going up and down the house with that letter in her possession which nobody knew of. And to answer it—to answer it without any one knowing? This she could not do. She bore the burden of her secret all the day, and surprised Mab very much by her silenceabout Mr. Mildmay, whom the younger sister abused roundly. “Perhaps it was not his fault,” Cicely faltered. What had come over her? What change had happened? Mab was lost in a maze.
The difficulty, however, was solved in a very unexpected way. Next morning—no later—Mr. St. John himself had a letter from Oxford; a letter which made him change colour, and bend his meek brows, and then smile—but not like himself. “Cicely, this must be your doing,” he said. “I never made any complaints to Mr. Mildmay, nor said anything to call for his pity. He asks me to be his curate,” the old man added, after a pause, with a strange smile. No one had suspected that Mr. St. John was proud, until it became apparent all at once how proud he was.
“His curate—O papa! you will stay here, and never go away at all,” cried Mab out of the fulness of her heart. Cicely knew better. She grew pale, and to stop that outcry of inconvenient delight, grasped tightly her sister’s hand.
“Stay here!” said Mr. St. John, smiling again. “No, Mab, I am not fallen so low as that, I hope. There is no need of a curate at Brentburn. If I could dowithout one, at double his age, what should he want with a curate? It is pity, pity! Oh yes, my dear, I know very creditable to him; but I did not expect—I never expected to be exposed. Cicely, have you that letter about the curacy in Liverpool? I should like to look at it again.”
“But, papa, we agreed that it would not do; a bad town district full of dreadful people——”
“The more dreadful people are, the more they want to be looked after,” he said. “Write and inquire about it, my dear; I am not particular. Work! thatis all I want, not idleness and charity. You all know I am old—but you don’t know how much strength I have in me, nor how I like work!” he cried, with a quiver in his voice.
The shock had something of the same effect upon him now that it had previously had on Cicely. The latent pride in him rose up in arms. She had to write by that post about the Liverpool curacy; and before the week was out he had accepted this strange, uncongenial post. He was to be one of three curates in a large parish, including some of the most wretched quarters in the town; the work very hard; the people very degraded.
“Papa, you will never be able to bear it,” cried Cicely, with tears in her eyes.
“Nonsense, nonsense,” he cried, with feverish energy; “write at once and say I accept. It will do me all the good in the world.”
THEday after Mr. St. John made this abrupt decision—almost the only decision he had made for himself, without stimulation from others, all his life—he went out into the parish as usual, but came home very tired, and went to bed early, which the girls thought natural enough. During the day Cicely had told Mab of her letter from Mildmay, and had written an answer to it, thanking him for his consideration, and informing him of the step her father had taken. “We shall never forget how kind you have been,” she wrote, gratefully; “both Mab and I feel it to the bottom of our hearts. Is that too much?” she said, reading it over. “I don’t want to say too much.”
“But we must not say too little; andif a man who is willing to sacrifice the half of his income is not to be thanked for it, I don’t know who is,” cried Mab, always practical.
“It is not so much the income,” Cicely said, slightly wounded by this matter-of-fact suggestion; “it is the feeling.”
“But the offer proves the feeling,” said her sister; and indeed she was right.
Mr. St. John came home, as has been said, before his usual hour, and went very early to bed. Next morning he rang his bell—the most unusual sound—and sent word by Betsy that he thought he would not get up. When Cicely went to him—as she did at once in a fright, for the bell and the message together produced a great panic in a house quite unaccustomed (at least, so far as the girls’ experience went) to illness—she found him in a partial doze, his large pale hand, looking very nerveless and feeble, lying outside the coverlet.
“No, no!” he said, when she roused him; “not very bad; not bad at all; only tired—and lazy. I have often thought of late that I should like to lie still some morning; and to-day I have done it. That’s all, that’s all, my dear.” He would not hear of the doctor beingsent for; and wanted nothing, he declared—nothing but a day’s rest. Cicely had to go downstairs, feigning content with this; but she was far from satisfied. They talked it over all the morning, but there was little enough to be made of it. There was no harm in a day’s laziness, and nothing but good in a day’s rest; but yet—the girls did not know what to think. Had he been looking ill lately? they asked each other. But, no! he had not been looking ill—a little fatigued, perhaps; tired by the hot weather, as he often was; but just as usual, doing as much as he always did; spending the whole long day “in the parish;” ready to go out morning or night when he was called to any one who was sick. “And what so natural as that he should be tired?” Mab said; “a day’s rest will do him good.” Cicely, though she was generally the leader, accepted this decision humbly, saying nothing for her own part, but feeling a sense of dismay steal into her mind, she could not tell why; for though it was quite natural that he should do this, he had never done it before; and an innovation on habits so long established and firmly fixed was very alarming and bewildering. But Mabhad the coolest judgment of the two, she said to herself—and no doubt Mab was right.
And next day it appeared indeed that Mab had been right. Mr. St. John came down to breakfast as usual; saying cheerfully that he was quite well, and went out “into the parish” as usual. The day’s rest had done him “all the good in the world;” it had “set him up;” nor did he say anything more again about feeling tired. How quickly the days past during that last fortnight! They seemed to tumble on each other, one following on another’s heels, holding so little of all the work they ought to see completed. It was settled that the curate was to leave on the 25th of September, in order that the sale should be over and everything cleared away before the quarter-day. Mildmay wrote again a pleading note to Cicely, a guarded but anxious one to her father, pointing out with abject civility that it would be the greatest possible advantage to himself if Mr. St. John would consent to stay. Mr. St. John only smiled and shook his head, and handed the letter over to Cicely, who was not so confidential in return. “Write to him for me, my dear, for Ihave not time. Say how obliged I am, but that it is impossible.” “Is that all, papa?” said Cicely, faltering. “All? What could be said more? And that everything will be ready by quarter-day—everything ready.” As he said this he gave a strange bewildered look round him at the solid mahogany furniture which stood steadfast against the walls, looking as if it never could be changed or taken away. This look was still in his eyes when he went out to the parish, and when he came back—a sort of dreamy wonder and confusion. Cicely thought he had the same look next morning, and the next and next, as if he had somehow got astray from his moorings in life, and could not make out what was going to happen to him, or why it was going to happen. Mab said, “Nonsense, you are getting fanciful. Papa looks exactly as he has always looked;” and indeed everything went on just the same as usual, showing no other difference except this look, if there was a difference at all. He went about just as usual, preached his two little sermons on the Sunday, went to the schools, kept up all the occupations he had been used to for twenty years; but nevertheless continued tohave that dazed look in his eyes, sometimes only bewildered, sometimes startled, like the look of an animal who dumbly foresees something approaching which it knows to be malign, but can neither avert nor understand. This, at least, was what Cicely saw in her father’s eyes; no one else dreamt of looking at his eyes particularly, or cared what they meant. Perhaps his usually tranquil manners were disturbed a little, but how natural that was! In the evening when they were sitting together he would grow quite talkative, telling the girls little stories of his first coming here, and of their mother’s trials in the new parish, and would even laugh softly over them, saying, “Poor Hester! You grow more and more like her, Cicely, my dear!” and then he would drop into long silence, never taking a book or the newspaper which came in the evening, but sitting quite still looking round him. The girls did not know, however, that his parish rounds got shorter; that in several of the cottages he had been compelled to wait and rest, and that here and there he had seemed to forget everything around him, falling into a half faint or harmless trance, from which he would rouse up,and smile upon them, and go on. This, however, they were not told till long after, when it seemed to them, that, if they had but known;—but if they had, I don’t know what they could have done.
On the 22nd Mab went to London to Aunt Jane. It was not to be a parting, for it was arranged that Mr. St. John and the rest of the family were to go there also on the 25th, and rest for the night, and afterwards start on their journey to Liverpool; but still the girls were sad enough as they walked to the station together, Mab’s boxes having been sent on before by Farmer Dent’s cart. Their eyes were dim with tears as they went through the faded heather on the common. “You will have plenty to fret about,” said Mab, “with all you have got to do; and, oh, Cicely, I beg of you, don’t be silly and fret about papa! He feels it, of course—but he is quite well, as well as you or me.” “I hope so, dear,” said Cicely, meekly, with a tremor in her voice; and when they got to the station they looked through all the carriages till they saw in one a middle-aged homely woman, whose box, labelled for “London,” was being put in, under the seat. Then Cicely established Mab in the opposite corner.It was the best that could be done for her, for no one could be spared to go with her, even could they have afforded the expense. Cicely walked home alone, feeling as if the world had suddenly grown dark and lonely round her. Mab had set out upon life, and she for her part was returning to hers—to the tradespeople, who were all to be paid so much, out of the fifty pounds which the curate had to receive, and to the babies, who had no one to look after them but herself, and to her father with that bewildered look in his eyes. Next morning the auctioneer was coming to begin his inventory, and arrange the business of the sale, though the actual auction did not commence until twelve o’clock on Thursday, the day they were to leave.
On Tuesday morning, however, before he went out to the parish, Mr. St. John suddenly stumbled upon the auctioneer, who had gone quietly into the study as soon as its temporary master left, and was kneeling before the large old-fashioned writing-table, which Mr. St. John had used for so long, examining it, and tapping it with his knuckles to see where the drawers were. He had his back to the door, and did not see the surprised spectator,who stood and looked at him for a whole minute in silence. The curate went back to the hall where Cicely stood waiting for him with his hat in her hand. “Who is that?—who is that man?” he said, with his eyes more cloudy and wild than they had ever been, and a sort of palsied trembling all over him.
“No harm, papa,” said Cicely, trying to be cheerful; “only the auctioneer.”
“Yes, yes, I remember,” he said, taking his hat from her. “It was stupid of me not to remember.”
“But, papa, you are trembling. You are not well. Come back and rest a little,” she cried.
“No, no; it is nothing. Go back where? I suppose he is going through all the rooms?” said Mr. St. John. “No, no; it gave me a little shock, foolishly, but the air will blow it all away,” he said, with a smile, recovering himself.
What terrors were in Cicely’s mind all that day! but fortunately for her she had not much time to indulge them. She had to do all her packing, to take care of the children, to separate the few things her father possessed from Mr. Chester’s furniture, to see after everything andeverybody, providing something even (though she had so little) for the auctioneer and his men. And it was a relief to her when her father came back a little earlier than usual, and looking no worse. She said to herself that Mab was right; that he felt it, of course—which was to be expected—but otherwise was as well as usual. He had a little colour in his cheeks, and ate very well, and afterwards fell asleep in his chair. How natural it was that he should fall asleep! It was the very best thing for him. Notwithstanding, in her anxiety, Cicely went out into the garden to look at him through the open window, and make sure that all was right. How white his venerable head looked lying against the dark corner of the chair, his face like ivory but for the little pink in his cheeks, but he looked well, although he was wearied out, evidently; and no wonder! It was the most natural thing in the world.
Next day he was stronger and more cheerful in the morning. He went out, and made a round of all the poor people, saying good-bye to them; and half the people in Brentburn came crying to the doors of the cottages, and said “Good-bye, sir!” and “God bless you, sir!” curtsying and wiping their eyes with their aprons. All the last sixpences he had went that day to the old women and the children, to buy a little tea or some sweets in the little shop. He was very heavy about the eyes when he came home, and took his tea eagerly. Then he went out for an evening stroll, as he had been used to do before all these troubles came. He did not ask Cicely to go with him, but no doubt he knew how busy she was. When, however, she had put the children to bed, and packed everything but the last box, which was left till to-morrow morning, Cicely perceived that daylight was over, and that it was getting late. Her father was not in any of the rooms. Frightened, she ran out, and gazed about her looking for him; then, seeing no one up or down, in a sudden passion of terror, hurried up the bank to the white churchyard stile. There she found him at once, standing close by the cross on her mother’s grave. He had one arm round it, and with his other hand was picking away the yellow mosses that had crept over the stone; but he stopped when she called him, and picked up his hat which lay at his feet, and came with her quite submissively.
“It is late, papa,” said Cicely, with quivering lips.
“Yes, yes, my dear; yes, you are quite right,” he said, and walked towards the rectory—but like a blind man, as if he did not see where he was going. Two or three times she had to guide him to keep him from stumbling over the humble graves, for which usually he had so much reverence. He went into the house in the same way, going straight before him, as if he did not know where the door were; and, instead of going into the dining-room, where supper was laid as usual, he took up a candle which stood on the hall-table, and went to his study. Cicely followed him, alarmed; but he did nothing more than seat himself at his writing-table.
“Are you not coming to supper, papa?” she said.
“Did any one speak?” he asked, looking up eagerly as if he did not see.
“O papa, dear, come to supper!” she cried. Then his vacant face seemed to brighten.
“Yes, my love, yes. I am coming; I am coming——”
Cicely did not know what to say or to think. Was it to her he was speaking?She went away, her heart beating loud, to see that all was ready, hoping he would follow. But as he did not come in about ten minutes after, she went back. The room was dark, one corner of it only lighted by the candle, which threw all its light on his pale face and white hair. He was turning over some papers, apparently absorbed. He did not seem to observe her entrance. She went up to him softly, and put her hand upon his shoulder. “Come, please, papa, I am waiting,” she said.
He turned to her, a great light shining over his face. “Ah! yes, my darling, you are waiting. How long you have been waiting! But I’m ready—ready.—I knew you would come, Hester, I knew you would come when I wanted you most——”
“Papa!” cried Cicely, in a voice shrill with terror.
He started, the light went out of his face, his eyes grew cloudy and bewildered. “What were you saying, Cicely? I am getting—a little hard of hearing. I don’t think I heard what you said.”
“Come in to supper, papa.”
“Yes, yes; but you need not trouble; there is nothing the matter,” he said,recovering himself. And he went with her and ate something dutifully, not without appetite. Then he returned to his study. When Cicely went to him there to say good-night he was smiling to himself. “I am coming; I am coming,” he said. “No need to tell me twice; I know when I am in good hands.”
“Good night, papa—you are going to bed?—we must be early to-morrow,” said Cicely.
“Yes, early—early,” he said, still smiling. “Directly, Hester—before you have reached the gate——”
“Papa! don’t you know me?” cried Cicely, trembling from head to foot.
Again he turned to her with his old face all lighted up and shining. “Know you! my darling!” he said.
CICELYwent to her room that night in a very nervous and disturbed condition. It was her last night, too, in the house in which she had been born; but she had no leisure to think of that, or to indulge in any natural sentiments on the subject. She was very much alarmed about her father, whose looks were so strange, but did not know what to do. That he should take her for her mother was perhaps not wonderful at such a moment of agitation; but it frightened her more than words can say. What could she do? It was night, and there was no one in the house with her but Betsy, who had for hours been buried in deepest slumbers; and even had she been able to send for the doctor, whatadvance would that have made?—for he was not ill, only strange, and it was so natural that he should be strange;—and the good steady-going country doctor, acquainted with honest practical fevers and rheumatism, what help could he bring to a mind diseased? Cicely had changed her room in her new office of nurse, and now occupied a small inner chamber communicating with that of the two children. She was sitting there pondering and thinking when she heard her father come upstairs. Then he appeared suddenly bending over the children’s little cots. He had a candle in his hand, and stooping feebly, kissed the little boys. He was talking to himself all the time; but she could not make out what he said, except, as he stood looking at the children, “Poor things, poor things! God bless you.” Cicely did not show herself, anxiously as she watched, and he went out again and on to his own room. He was going to bed quietly, and after all it might turn out to be nothing; perhaps he had been dozing when he called her Hester, and was scarcely awake. After this she intended to go to bed herself; for she was sadly worn out with her long day’s work and many cares,and fell dead asleep, as youth unaccustomed to watching ever will do in the face of all trouble. The house was perfectly still so long as she was awake; not a sound disturbed the quiet except the breathing of Harry and Charley, and the tap of the jessamine branches against her windows. There was one last blossom at the end of a branch, late and long after its neighbours, which shed some of its peculiar sweetness through the open window. The relief was so great to hear her father come upstairs, and to know that he was safe in his room, that her previous fright seemed folly. She said her prayers, poor child! in her loneliness, giving tearful thanks for this blessing, and fell asleep without time to think of any bothers or sorrow of her own. Thus sometimes, perhaps, those who have other people to carry on their shoulders avoid occasionally the sharp sting of personal feeling—at least, of all the sentiments which are of a secondary kind.
The morning was less warm and bright than usual, with a true autumnal haze over the trees. This soothed Cicely when she looked out. She was very early, for there were still various lastthings to do. She had finished her own individual concerns, and locked her box ready for removal, before it was time to call the children, who slept later and more quietly than usual by another happy dispensation of providence. Cicely heard the auctioneer arrive, and the sound of chatter and laughter with which Betsy received the men, with whom already she had made acquaintance. Why not? Shall everybody be sad because we are in trouble? Cicely asked herself; and she leant out of the window which overlooked the garden, and took a deep draught of the dewy freshness of the morning before she proceeded to wake the children and begin the day’s work. Her eyes, poor child! were as dewy as the morning; but she did not give herself time to cry, or waste her strength by such an indulgence. A knock at her door disturbed her, and she shut the window hastily, and shaking off those stray drops from her eyelashes, went to see what Betsy wanted so early. Betsy stood outside, looking pale and excited. “The men says, please, miss, will you come downstairs?” said Betsy, making an effort at a curtsy, which was so very unusual that Cicely was half amused.
“What do they want? I have to dress the children, Betsy. Could not you do instead?”
“If you please, miss, I’ll dress the children. Do go—go, please Miss Cicely! I’m too frightened. O miss, your poor papa!”
“Papa?” Cicely gave the girl one frightened beseeching look, and then flew downstairs, her feet scarcely touching the steps. Why was he up so early? Why was he vexing himself with those men, and their preparations, making himself miserable about nothing, when there were so many real troubles to bear? The men were standing in a little knot by the study door, which was half open. “What do you want with me? What is it?”
They were confused; one of them put forward another to speak to her, and there was a little rustling, and shuffling, and changing of position, which permitted her to see, as she thought, Mr. St. John sitting, facing the door, in his usual chair. “Ah! it is papa who has come down, I see—thank you for not wishing to disturb him. I will tell him,” said Cicely, passing through the midst of them with swift light youthful steps.
“Don’t let her go! Stop her, forGod’s sake!” cried one of the men, in subdued confused tones. She heard them, for she remembered them afterwards; but at that moment the words conveyed no meaning to her. She went in as any child would go up to any father. The chair was pushed away from the writing-table, facing towards the door, as if he had been expecting some one. What surprised Cicely more than the aspect of his countenance, in which at the first glance she saw no particular difference, was that he had upon his knees, folded neatly, a woman’s cloak and hat—her mother’s cloak and hat—which had remained in his room by his particular desire ever since Hester died.
“Papa, what are you doing with these?” she said.
There was no reply. “Papa, are you asleep?” cried Cicely. She was getting very much frightened, her heart beating against her breast. For the moment some impulse of terror drove her back upon the men at the door. “He has gone to sleep,” she said, hurriedly; “he was tired, very much tired last night.”
“We have sent for the doctor, miss,” said one of the men.
“Papa, papa!” said Cicely. She hadgone back to him paying no attention to them; and then she gave a low cry, and threw herself on her knees by his side, gazing up into his face, trembling. “What is the matter?” said the girl, speaking low; “what is it, papa? Where were you going with that hat and cloak? Speak to me; don’t sit there and doze. We are to go away—to go away—don’t you remember, to-day?”
Some one else came in just then, though she did not hear. It was the doctor, who came and took her by the arm to raise her. “Run away, my dear; run upstairs till I see what is to be done,” he said. “Somebody take her away.”
Cicely rose up quickly. “I cannot awake him,” she said. “Doctor, I am so glad you have come, though he would not let me send yesterday. I think he must be in a faint.”
“Go away, go away, my dear.”
It neither occurred to the poor girl to obey him nor to think what he meant. She stood by breathless while he looked at the motionless figure in the chair, and took into his own the grey cold hand which hung helpless by Mr. St. John’s side. Cicely did not look at her father, but at the doctor, to know what it was;and round the door the group of men gazed too awestricken, with Betsy, whom curiosity and the attraction of terror had brought downstairs, and one or two labourers from the village passing to their morning’s work, who had come in, drawn by the strange fascination ofwhat had happened, and staring too.
“Hours ago,” said the doctor to himself, shaking his head; “he is quite cold; who saw him last?”
“O doctor, do something!” cried Cicely, clasping her hands; “don’t lose time; don’t let him be like this; do something—oh, do something, doctor! Don’t you know that we are going to-day?”
He turned round upon her very gently, and the group at the door moved with a rustling movement of sympathy. Betsy fell a crying loudly, and some of the men put their hands to their eyes. The doctor took Cicely by the arm, and turned her away with gentle force.
“My dear, you must come with me. I want to speak to you in the next room.”
“But papa?” she cried.
“My poor child,” said the compassionate doctor, “we can do nothing for him now.”
Cicely stood quite still for a moment, then the hot blood flushed into her face, followed by sudden paleness. She drew herself out of the kind doctor’s hold, and went back and knelt down again by her father’s side. Do nothing more for him—while still he sat there, just as he always did, in his own chair?
“Papa, what is it?” she said, trembling, while they all stood round. Suddenly the roughest of all the men, one of the labourers, broke forth into loud sobs.
“Don’t you, miss—don’t, for the love of God!” cried the man.
She could not hear it. All this came fresh to her word for word a little later, but just then she heard nothing. She took the hand the doctor had taken, and put her warm cheek and her young lips to it.
“He is cold because he has been sleeping in his chair,” she cried, appealing to them. “Nothing else—what could it be else? and we are going away to-day!”
The doctor grasped at her arm, almost hurting her. “Come,” he said, “Cicely, this is not like you. We must carry him to bed. Come with me to another room. I want to ask you how he was last night.”
This argument subdued her, and she went meekly out of the room, trying to think that her father was to be carried to his bed, and that all might still be well. Trying to think so; though a chill had fallen upon her, and she knew, in spite of herself.
The men shut the door reverently as the doctor took her away, leaving him there whom no one dared to touch, while they stood outside talking in whispers. Mr. St. John, still and cold, kept possession of the place. He had gone last night, when Cicely saw him, to fetch those relics of his Hester, which he had kept for so many years in his room; but, in his feeble state, had been so long searching before he could find them, that sleep had overtaken Cicely, and she had not heard him stumbling downstairs again with his candle. Heaven knows what fancy it was that had sent him to seek his wife’s cloak and hat; his mind had got confused altogether with trouble and weakness, and the shock of uprootal; and then he had sat down again with a smile, with her familiar garments ready for her, to wait through the night till Hester came. What hour or moment it was noone could tell; but Hester, or some other angel, had come for him according to his expectation, and left nothing but the case and husk of him sitting, as he had sat waiting for her, with her cloak upon his knees.
“I am going to telegraph for her sister,” said the doctor, coming out with red eyes after all was done that could be done, both for the living and the dead. “Of course you will send and stop the people from coming; there can be no sale to-day.”
“Of course,” said the auctioneer. “The young lady wouldn’t believe it, my man tells me. I must get them off at once, or they’ll get drinking. They’re all upset like a parcel of women—what with finding him, and what with seeing the young lady. Poor thing! and, so far as I can learn, very badly left?”
“Left!” cried the doctor; there was derision in the very word. “They are notleftat all; they have not a penny in the world. Poor St. John, we must not say a word now against him, and there is not much to say. He got on with everybody. He did his duty by rich and poor. There was never a better clergyman, always ready when you called him, earlyor late; more ready for nothing,” the doctor added remorsefully, “than I am for my best paying patients. We might have done more to smooth his way for him, perhaps, but he never could take care of money or do anything to help himself; and now they’ll have to pay for it, these two poor girls.”
Thus the curate’s record was made. The news went through the parish like the wind, in all its details; dozens of people were stopped in the village going to the sale, and a little comforted for their disappointment by the exciting story. Some of the people thought it was poor Miss Brown, theotherMrs. St. John, whom he was looking for. Some felt it a strange heathenish sort of thing of him, a clergyman, that he should be thinking at that last moment of anything but the golden city with the gates of pearl; and thought there was a dreadful materialism in the cloak and hat. But most people felt a thrill of real emotion, and the moment he was dead, mourned Mr. St. John truly, declaring that Brentburn would never see the like of him again. Mrs. Ascott cried so that she got a very bad headache, and was obliged to go and lie down. But she sent her maid to ask if they could doanything, and even postponed a dinner-party which was to have been that evening, which was a very gratifying token of respect. Mrs. Joel, who was perhaps at the other extremity of the social scale, cried too, but had no headache, and went off at once to the rectory to make herself useful, pulling all the blinds down, which Betsy had neglected, and telling all the callers that poor Miss Cicely was as well as could be expected, though “it have given her a dreadful shock.” The trunks stood all ready packed and corded, with Mr. St. John’s name upon them. But he had no need of them, though he had kept his word and left Brentburn on the appointed day. After a while people began to think that perhaps it was the best thing that could have happened—best for him certainly—he could never have borne the rooting up, they said—he could never have borne Liverpool, so noisy and quarrelsome. “Why, it would have killed him in a fortnight, such a place,” said Mr. Ascott, who had not, however, lent a hand in any way to help him in his struggle against fate.
Mab, it is needless to say, came down at once with Aunt Jane, utterly crushed and helpless with sorrow. Poor Cicely,who was only beginning to realize what it was, and to make sure that her father absolutely was dead, and beyond the reach of all bringing back, had to rouse herself, and take her sister into her arms and console her. Mab sobbed quietly when she was in her sister’s arms, feeling a sense of strong protection in them.
“I have still you, Cicely,” she said, clinging to her.
“But Cicely has no one,” said Aunt Jane, kissing the pale girl with that compassionate insight which age sometimes brings even to those who do not possess it by nature. “But it is best for you to have them all to look after, if you could but see it, my poor child!”
“I do see it,” said Cicely—and then she had to disentangle herself from Mab’s clinging, and to go out of the room where they had shut themselves up, to see somebody about the “arrangements,” though indeed everybody was very kind and spared her as much as they could.
After the first shock was over it may well be supposed what consultations there were within the darkened rooms. The funeral did not take place till the following Tuesday, as English custom demands,and the days were very slow and terrible to the two girls, hedged round by all the prejudices of decorum, who could do nothing but dwell with their grief in the gloomy house which crushed their young spirits with its veiled windows and changeless dimness. That, and far more, they were ready to do for their father and the love they bore him; but to feel life arrested and stopped short by that shadow of death is hard upon the young. Miss Maydew, whose grief naturally was of a much lighter description than that of the girls, and with whom decorum was stronger than grief, kept them upstairs in their rooms, and treated them as invalids, which was the right thing to do in the circumstances. Only at dusk would she let them go even into the garden, to get the breath of air which nature demanded. She knew all the proper ceremonials which ought to be observed when there was “a death in the house,” and was not quite sure even now how far it was right to let them discuss what they were going to do. To make up for this, she carried to them the scraps of parish gossip which she gleaned from Mrs. Joel and from Betsy in the kitchen. There had, it appeared, been a double tragedy in the parish. Afew days after the death of the curate, the village schoolmistress, a young widow with several babies, had “dropped down” and died of heart disease in the midst of the frightened children. “It is a terrible warning to the parish,” said Miss Maydew, “two such events in one week. But your dear papa, everybody knows, was ready to go, and I hope Mrs. Jones was so too. They tell me she was a good woman.”
“And what is to become of the children?” said Cicely, thinking of her own burden.
“Oh, my dear, the children will be provided for; they always are somehow. There are so many institutions for orphans, and people are very good if you know how to get at them. No doubt somebody will take them up. I don’t doubt Mr. Ascott has votes for the British Orphans’ or St. Ann’s Society, or some of these. Speaking of that, my dears, I have been thinking that we ought to try for something of the same kind ourselves. Cicely, hear first what I have got to say before you speak. It is no disgrace. How are Mab and you to maintain these two little boys? Of course you shall have all that I can giveyou, but I have so little; and if girls can maintain themselves, it is all they are likely to do. There is a society, I am sure, for the orphans of clergymen——”
“Aunt Jane! Papa’s sons shall never be charity boys—never! if I should work my fingers to the bone, as people say.”
“Your fingers to the bone—what good would that do? Listen to me, girls. Both of you can make a fair enough living for yourselves. You will easily get a good governess’s place, Cicely; for, though you are not very accomplished, you are so thorough—and Mab, perhaps, if she succeeds, may do still better. But consider what that is: fifty pounds a year at the outside; and at first you could not look for that; and you are always expected to dress well and look nice, and Mab would have all sorts of expenses for her materials and models and so forth. The cheapest good school for boys I ever heard of was forty pounds without clothes, and at present they are too young for school. It is a woman’s work to look after two little things like that. What can you do with them? If you stay and take care of them, you will all three starve. It would be far better to get them into someasylum where they would be well looked after; and then,” said Aunt Jane, insinuatingly, “if you got on very well, or if anything fortunate happened, you could take them back, don’t you see, whenever you liked.”
Mab, moved by this, turned her eyes to Cicely for her cue; for there was a great deal of reason in what Aunt Jane said.
“Don’t say anything more about it, please,” said Cicely. “We must not say too much, for I may break down, or any one may break down; but they shall not go upon charity if I can help it. Oh, charity is very good, I know; we may be glad of it, all of us, if we get sick or can’t find anything to do; but I must try first—I must try!”
“O Cicely, this is pride, the same sort of pride that prevented your poor papa from asking for anything——”
“Hush, Aunt Jane! Whatever he did was right; but I am not like papa. I don’t mind asking so long as it is for work. I have an idea now. Poor Mrs. Jones! I am very very sorry for her, leaving her children desolate. But some one will have to come in her place. Why should it not be me? There is alittle house quite comfortable and pleasant where I could have the children; and I think the parish would not refuse me, if it was only for papa’s sake.”
“Cicely! my dear child, of what are you thinking?” said Miss Maydew, in dismay. “A parish schoolmistress! you are dreaming. All this has been too much for you. My dear, my dear, you must never think of such a thing again!”
“O Cicely, it is not a place for a lady, surely,” cried Mab.
“Look here,” said Cicely, the colour mounting to her face. “I’d take in washing if it was necessary, and if I knew how. A lady! there’s nothing about ladies that I know of in the Bible. Whatever a woman can do I’m ready to try, and I don’t care, not the worth of a pin, whether it’s a place for a lady or not. O Aunt Jane, I beg your pardon. I know how good you are—but charity! I can’t bear the thought of charity. I must try my own way.”
“Cicely, listen to me,” cried Aunt Jane, with tears. “I held back, for the children are not my flesh and blood as you are. Perhaps it was mean of me to hold back. O Cicely, I wanted to save what I had for you; but, my dear,if it comes to that, better, far better, that you should bring them to London. I don’t say I’m fond of children,” said Miss Maydew; “it’s so long since I had anything to do with them. I don’t say but what they’d worry me sometimes; but bring them, Cicely, and we’ll do what we can to get on, and when you find a situation, I’ll—I’ll—try——”
Her voice sank into quavering hesitation, a sob interrupted her. She was ready to do almost all they wanted of her, but this was hard; still, sooner than sacrifice her niece’s gentility, the standing of the family—Cicely had good sense enough to perceive that enough had been said. She kissed her aunt heartily with tender thanks, but she did not accept her offer or say anything further about her own plans. For the moment nothing could be done, whatever the decision might be.
MR. MILDMAYcame to Brentburn the Saturday after the curate’s death. The Ascotts invited him to their house, and he went there feeling more like a culprit than an innocent man has any right to do. He fairly broke down in the pulpit next day, in the little address he made to the people. “God knows,” he said to them, “that I would give everything I have in the world to bring back to you the familiar voice which you have heard here so long, and which had the teachings of a long experience to give you, teachings more precious than anything a new beginner can say. When I think that but for my appointment this tragedy might not have happened, my heart sinks within me; and yet I amblameless, though all who loved him have a right to blame me.” His voice quivered, his eyes filled with tears, and all the Brentburn folks, who were not struck dumb with wonder, wept. But many of them were struck dumb with wonder, and Mr. Ascott, who was his host, and felt responsible for him, did more than wonder. He interfered energetically when the service was over.
“Mildmay,” he said, solemnly, “mark my words, this will never do. You are no more to blame for poor St. John’s death than I am or any one, and nobody has a right to blame you. Good heavens, if you had never heard of the poor fellow, don’t you think it would have happened all the same? You did a great deal more than any one else would have done—is that why you think it is your fault?”
Mildmay did not make any reply to this remonstrance. Perhaps after he had said it, he felt, as so many impulsive men are apt to do, a hot nervous shame for having said it, and betraying his feelings; but he would not discuss the question with the Ascotts, who had no self-reproach in the matter, no idea that any one could have helped it. They discussed thequestion now, the first shock being over, and a comfortable Sunday put between them and the event, with great calm.
“He was just the sort of man that would not even have his life insured,” said Mr. Ascott. “What those poor girls are to do, I do not know. Go out for governesses, I suppose, poor things! the common expedient; but then there are those babies. There ought to be an Act of Parliament against second families. I never had any patience with that marriage; and Miss Brown, I suppose, had no friends that could take them up?”
“None that I know of,” his wife replied. “It is a dreadful burden for those girls. It will hamper them in their situations, if they get situations, and keep them from marrying——”
“They are pretty girls,” said Mr. Ascott. “I don’t see why they shouldn’t marry.”
“That is all very well, Henry,” she replied; “but what man, in his senses, would marry a girl with a couple of children dependent on her?”
“A ready-made family,” he said, with a laugh.
This was on the Sunday evening afterdinner. It was dusk, and they could not see their guest’s face, who took no part in the conversation. To hear such a discussion as this, touching the spoiling of a girl’s marriage, is quite a commonplace matter, which the greater part of the world would think it foolishly fastidious to object to, and probably Mr. Mildmay had heard such talk upon other occasions quite unmoved; but it is astonishing the difference it makes when you know the girl thus discussed, and have, let us say, “a respect” for her. He felt the blood come hot to his face; he dared not say anything, lest he should say too much. Was it mere poverty that exposed those forlorn young creatures, whose case surely was sad enough to put all laughter out of court, to such comment? Mrs. Ascott thought it quite possible that Mr. Mildmay, fresh from Oxford, might consider female society frivolous, and was reserving himself for loftier conversation with her husband, and that this was the reason of his silence, so she went away smiling, rustling her silken skirts to the drawing-room, in the humility which becomes the weaker vessel, not feeling herself equal to that loftier strain, to make the gentlemen’s tea.
Her husband, however, came upstairs after her, by himself. Mildmay had gone out for a stroll, he said, and seemed to prefer being alone; he was afraid, after all, he was a morose sort of fellow, with very little “go” in him. As for the new rector, he was very glad to get out into the stillness of the dewy common after the hot room and the fumes of Mr. Ascott’s excellent port, which he disliked, being altogether a man of the new school. He skirted the common under the soft light of some stars, and the incipient radiance of the moon, which had not yet risen, but showed that she was rising. He went even as far as the back of the rectory, and that little path which the curate’s feet had worn, which he followed reverently to the grey cross upon Hester’s grave. Here a flood of peaceful and friendly thoughts came over the young man, bringing the tears to his eyes. He had only known Mr. St. John for about twenty-four hours, yet how much this short acquaintance had affected him! He seemed to be thinking of a dear old friend when he remembered the few moments he had stood here, six weeks before, listening to the curate’s simple talk. “The lights in the girls’ windows;”—there theywere, the only lights in the dark house, a glimmer through the half-closed shutters. Then he thought of the old man, bewildered with death and death’s weakness, sitting with his wife’s cloak and hat ready, waiting for her to come who had been waiting all these years under the sod for him to come. “I shall go to her, but she will not come to me,” said the new rector to himself, letting a tear fall upon the cross, where the curate’s hand had rested so tenderly. His heart was full of that swelling sensation of sympathetic sorrow which is both sweet and painful. Andshewas, they all said, so like her mother. Would any one, he wondered, think ofhersometimes as Mr. St. John had done of his Hester? Or would nobody, in his senses, marry a girl burdened with two babies dependent on her? When those words came back to his mind, his cheeks reddened, his pace quickened in a sudden flush of anger. And it was a woman who had said it—a woman whose heart, it might have been thought, would have bled for the orphans, not much more than children any of them, who were thus left in the world to struggle for themselves.
It was Mildmay who took all thetrouble about the funeral, and read the service himself, with a voice full of emotion. The people had scarcely known before how much they felt the loss of Mr. St. John. If the new parson was thus affected, how much more ought they to be! Everybody wept in the churchyard, and Mr. Mildmay laid that day the foundation of a popularity far beyond that which any clergyman of Brentburn, within the memory of man, had enjoyed before. “He was so feelin’ hearted,” the poor people said; they shed tears for the old curate who was gone, but they became suddenly enthusiasts for the new rector. The one was past, and had got a beautiful funeral, carriages coming from all parts of the county; and what could man desire more? The other was the present, cheerful and full of promise. A thrill of friendliness ran through every corner of the parish. The tragedy which preceded his arrival, strangely enough, made the most favourable preface possible to the commencement of the new reign.
“Do you think I might call upon Miss St. John?” Mildmay asked, the second day after the funeral. “I would not intrude upon her for the world; but theywill be going away, I suppose—and if you think I might venture——”
He addressed Mrs. Ascott, but her husband replied. “Venture? to be sure you may venture,” said that cheerful person. “Of course you must want to ascertain when they go and all that. Come, I’ll go with you myself if you have any scruples. I should like to see Cicely, poor thing! to tell her if I can be of any use—— We are not much in the governessing line; but you, Adelaide, with all your fine friends——”
“Tell her I should have gone to her before now, but that my nerves have been upset with all that has happened,” said Mrs. Ascott. “Of course I have written and told her how much I feel for her; but sayeverythingfor me, Henry. I will make an effort to go to-morrow, though I know that to enter that house will unhinge me quite. If she is able to talk of business, tell her to refer any one to me. Of course we shall do everything we possibly can.”
“Of course; yes, yes, I’ll sayeverything,” said her husband; but on the way, when Mildmay reluctantly followed him, feeling his purpose defeated, Mr. Ascott gave forth his individual sentiments.“Cicely St. John will never answer as a governess,” he said; “she is far too independent, and proud—very proud. So was her father before her. He prided himself, I believe, on never having asked for anything. God bless us! a nice sort of world this would be if nobody asked for anything. That girl spoke to me once about the living as if it wasmybusiness to do something in respect to what she thought her father’s rights! Ridiculous! but women are very absurd in their notions. She was always what is called a high-spirited girl; the very worst recommendation I think that any girl can have.”
Mildmay made no reply; he was not disposed to criticise Cicely, or to discuss her with Mr. Ascott. The rectory was all open again, the shutters put back, the blinds drawn up. In the faded old drawing-room, where the gentlemen were put by Betsy to wait for Miss St. John, everything looked as usual, except a scrap of paper here and there marked Lot——. This had been done by the auctioneer, before Mr. St. John’s death. Some of these papers Betsy, much outraged by the sight of them, had furtively rubbed off with her duster, but some remained. Mr.Mildmay had something of Betsy’s feeling. He, too, when Mr. Ascott was not looking, tore off the label from the big old chiffonnier which Mab had called a tomb, and threw it behind the ornaments in the grate—a foolish sort of demonstration, no doubt, of being on the side of the forlorn family against fate, but yet comprehensible. He did not venture upon any such freaks when Cicely came in, in the extreme blackness of her mourning. She was very pale, keeping the tears out of her eyes with a great effort, and strung to the highest tension of self-control. She met Mr. Ascott with composure; but when she turned to Mildmay, broke down for the moment. “Thanks!” she said, with a momentary pressure of his hand, and an attempt at a smile in the eyes which filled at sight of him, and it took her a moment to recover herself before she could say any more.
“Mrs. Ascott charged me with a great many messages,” said that lady’s husband. “I am sure you know, Cicely, nobody has felt for you more; but she is very sensitive—that you know too—and I am obliged to interpose my authority to keep her from agitating herself. She talks of coming to-morrow. When do you go?”
“On Saturday,” said Cicely, having just recovered the power of speech, which, to tell the truth, Mildmay did not quite feel himself to have done.
“On Saturday—so soon! and you are going——”
“With my aunt, Miss Maydew,” said Cicely, “to London for a time—as short a time as possible—till I get something to do.”
“Ah—h!” said Mr. Ascott, shaking his head. “You know how sincerely sorry we all are; and, my dear Cicely, you will excuse an old friend asking, is there no little provision—nothing to fall back upon—for the poor little children, at least?”
“Mr. Ascott,” said Cicely, turning full towards him, her eyes very clear, her nostrils dilating a little—for emotion can dry the eyes as well as dim them, even of a girl—“you know what papa had almost as well as he did himself. He could not coin money; and how do you think he could have saved it off what he had? There is enough to pay every penny he ever owed, which is all I care for.”
“And you have nothing—absolutely nothing?”
“We have our heads and our hands,” said Cicely; the emergency even gave her strength to smile. She faced the two prosperous men before her, neither of whom had ever known what it was to want anything or everything that money could buy, her small head erect, her eyes shining, a smile upon her lip—not for worlds would she have permitted them to see that her heart failed her at sight of the struggle upon which she was about to enter;—“and fortunately we have the use of them,” she said, involuntarily raising the two small hands, looking all the smaller and whiter for the blackness that surrounded them, which lay on her lap.
“Miss St. John,” said Mildmay, starting up, “I dare not call myself an old friend. I have no right to be present when you have to answer such questions. If I may come another time——”
To look at his sympathetic face took away Cicely’s courage. “Don’t make me cry, please; don’t be sorry for me!” she cried, under her breath, holding out her hands to him in a kind of mute appeal. Then recovering herself, “I would rather you stayed, Mr. Mildmay. I am not ashamed of it, and I want to ask something from you, now that you are bothhere. I do not know who has the appointment; but you must be powerful. Mr. Ascott, I hear that Mrs. Jones, the schoolmistress, is dead—too.”
“Yes, poor thing! very suddenly—even more suddenly than your poor father. And so much younger, and an excellent creature. It has been a sad week for Brentburn. She was buried yesterday,” said Mr. Ascott, shaking his head.
“And there must be some one to replace her directly, for the holidays are over. I am not very accomplished,” said Cicely, a flush coming over her face; “but for the rudiments and the solid part, which is all that is wanted in a parish school, I am good enough. It is difficult asking for one’s self, or talking of one’s self, but if I could get the place——”
“Cicely St. John!” cried Mr. Ascott, almost roughly in his amazement; “you are going out of your senses—the appointment to the parish school?”
“I know what you think,” said Cicely, looking up with a smile; but she was nervous with anxiety, and clasped and unclasped her hands, feeling that her fate hung upon what they might decide.“You think, like Aunt Jane, that it is coming down in the world, that it is not a place for a lady. Very well, I don’t mind; don’t call me a lady, call me a young woman—a person even, if you like. What does it matter? and what difference does it make after all?” she cried. “No girl who works for her living is anything but looked down upon. I should be free of all that, for the poor people know me, and they would be kind to me, and the rich people would take no notice. And I should have a place of my own, a home to put the children in. The Miss Blandys, I am sure, would recommend me, Mr. Mildmay, and they know what I can do.”
“This is mere madness!” cried Mr. Ascott, paling a little in his ruddy complexion. Mildmay made a rush at the window as she spoke, feeling the situation intolerable. When she appealed to him thus by name, he turned round suddenly, his heart so swelling within him that he scarcely knew what he was doing. It was not for him to object or to remonstrate as the other could do. He went up to her, scarcely seeing her, and grasped for a moment her nervous interlaced hands. “Miss St. John,” he cried, ina broken voice, “whatever you want that I can get you, you shall have—that, if it must be so, or anything else,” and so rushed out of the room and out of the house, passing Mab in the hall without seeing her. His excitement was so great that he rushed straight on, into the heart of the pine-woods a mile off, before he came to himself. Well! this, then, was the life he had been wondering over from his safe retirement. He found it not in anything great or visible to the eye of the world, not in anything he could put himself into, or share the advantages of. He, well off, rich indeed, strong, with a man’s power of work, and so many kinds of highly-paid, highly-esteemed work open to him, must stand aside and look on, and see this slight girl, nineteen years old, with not a tittle of his education or his strength, and not two-thirds of his years, put herself into harness, and take up the lowly work which would sink her in social estimation, and, with all superficial persons, take away from her her rank as gentlewoman. The situation, so far as Cicely St. John was concerned, was not remarkable one way or another, except in so much as she had chosen to be village schoolmistress instead of governess in aprivate family. But to Mildmay it was as a revelation. He could do nothing except get her the place, as he had promised to do. He could not say, Take part of my income; I have more than I know what to do with, though that was true enough. He could do nothing for her, absolutely nothing. She must bear her burden as she could upon her young shrinking shoulders; nay, not shrinking—when he remembered Cicely’s look, he felt something come into his throat. People had stood at the stake so, he supposed, head erect, eyes smiling, a beautiful disdain of the world they thus defied and confronted in their shining countenances. But again he stopped himself; Cicely was not defiant, not contemptuous, took upon her norôleof martyr. If she smiled, it was at the folly of those who supposed she would break down, or give in, or fail of courage for her work; but nothing more. She was, on the contrary, nervous about his consent and Ascott’s to give her the work she wanted, and hesitated about her own powers and the recommendation of the Miss Blandys; and no one—not he, at least, though he had more than he wanted—could do anything! If Cicely hadbeen a lad of nineteen, instead of a girl, something might have been possible, but nothing was possible now.
The reader will perceive that the arbitrary and fictitious way of cutting this knot, thattour de forcewhich is always to be thought of in every young woman’s story, the very melodramatic begging of the question, still, and perennially possible, nay probable, in human affairs, had not occurred to Mildmay. He had felt furious indeed at the discussion of Cicely’s chances or non-chances of marriage between the Ascotts; but, so far as he was himself concerned, he had not thought of this easy way. For why? he was not in love with Cicely. His sympathy was with her in every possible way, he entered into her grief with an almost tenderness of pity, and her courage stirred him with that thrill of fellow-feeling which those have who could do the same; though he felt that nothing he could do could ever be the same as what she, at her age, so boldly undertook. Mildmay felt that she could, if she pleased, command him to anything, that, out of mere admiration for her bravery, her strength, her weakness, and youngness and dauntless spirit, he couldhave refused her nothing, could have dared even the impossible to help her in any of her schemes. But he was not in love with Cicely; or, at least, he had no notion of anything of the kind.
It was well, however, that he did not think of it; the sudden “good marriage,” which is the one remaining way in which a god out of the machinery can change wrong into right at any moment in the modern world, and make all sunshine that was darkness, comes dreadfully in the way of heroic story; and how such a possibility, not pushed back into obscure regions of hazard, but visibly happening before their eyes every day, should not demoralize young women altogether, it is difficult to say. That Cicely’s brave undertaking ought to come to some great result in itself, that she ought to be able to make her way nobly, as her purpose was, working with her hands for the children that were not hers, bringing them up to be men, having that success in her work which is the most pleasant of all recompenses, and vindicating her sacrifice and self-devotion in the sight of all who had scoffed and doubted—this, no doubt, would be the highest and best,the most heroical and epical development of story. To change all her circumstances at a stroke, making her noble intention unnecessary, and resolving this tremendous work of hers into a gentle domestic necessity, with the “hey presto!” of the commonplace magician, by means of a marriage, is simply a contemptible expedient. But, alas! it is one which there can be no doubt is much preferred by most people to the more legitimate conclusion; and, what is more, he would be justified by knowing the accidental way is perhaps, on the whole, the most likely one, since marriages occur every day which are perfectly improbable and out of character, meretours de force, despicable as expedients, showing the poorest invention, a disgrace to any romancist or dramatist, if they were not absolute matters of fact and true. Pardon the parenthesis, gentle reader.
But Mr. Mildmay was not in love with Cicely, and it never occurred to him that it might be possible to settle matters in this ordinary and expeditious way.
Mr. Ascott remained behind when Mildmay went away, and with the complacenceof a dull man apologised for his young friend’s abrupt departure. “He is so shocked about all this, you must excuse his abruptness. It is not that he is without feeling—quite the reverse, I assure you, Cicely. He has felt it all—your poor father’s death, and all that has happened. You should have heard him in church on Sunday. He feels for you all very much.”
Cicely, still trembling from the sudden touch on her hands, the agitated sound of Mildmay’s voice, the sense of sympathy and comprehension which his looks conveyed, took this apology very quietly. She was even conscious of the humour in it. And this digression being over, “her old friend” returned seriously to the question. He repeated, but with much less force, all that Miss Maydew had said. He warned her that she would lose “caste,” that, however much her friends might wish to be kind to her, and to treat her exactly as her father’s daughter ought to be treated, that she would find all that sort of thing very difficult. “As a governess, of course you would always be known as a lady, and when you met with old friends it would be a mutual pleasure; but the villageschoolmistress!” said Mr. Ascott; “I really don’t like to mention it to Adelaide, I don’t know what she would say.”
“She would understand me when she took all into consideration,” said Cicely, “I could be then at home, independent, with the little boys.”
“Ah, independent, Cicely!” he cried; “now you show the cloven hoof—that is the charm. Independent! What woman can ever be independent? That is your pride; it is just what I expected. An independent woman, Cicely, is an anomaly; men detest the very name of it; and you, who are young, and on your promotion—”
“I must be content with women then,” said Cicely, colouring high with something of her old impetuosity; “they will understand me. But, Mr. Ascott, at least, even if you disapprove of me, don’t go against me, for I cannot bring up the children in any other way.”
“You could put them out to nurse.”
“Where?” cried Cicely; “and who would take care of them for the money I could give? They are too young for school; and I have no money for that either. If there is any other way, Icannot see it; do not go against me at least.”
This he promised after a while, very doubtfully, and by and by went home, to talk it over with his wife, who was as indignant as he could have wished. “What an embarrassment it will be!” she cried. “Henry, I tell you beforehand, I will not ask her here. I cannot in justice to ourselves ask her here if she is the schoolmistress. She thinks, of course, we will make no difference, but treat her always like Mr. St. John’s daughter. It is quite out of the question. I must let her know at once that Cicely St. John is one thing and the parish schoolmistress another. Think of the troubles that might rise out of it. A pretty thing it would be if some young man in our house was to form an attachment to the schoolmistress! Fancy! She can do it if she likes; but, Henry, I warn you, I shall not ask her here.”
“That’s exactly what I say,” said Mr. Ascott. “I can’t think even how she could like to stay on here among people who have known her in a different position; unless—” he concluded with a low whistle of derision and surprise.
“Please don’t be vulgar, Henry—unless what?”
“Unless—she’s after Mildmay; and I should not wonder—he’s as soft as wax and as yielding. If a girl like Cicely chooses to tell him to marry her, he’d do it. That’s what she’s after, as sure as fate.”