The Curate in Charge

“Ah! you will learn; you are young; and we always think we can do better than the old people. I do myself often,” said Cicely, under her breath.

“I did not mean anything so presumptuous,” he said; “indeed, I did not know. I thought of myself, as one does so often without being aware – I hope you will not form a bad opinion of me, Miss St. John. I accepted the living for the sake of the work, not for any smaller motive. Books and society are not life. It seemed to me that to instruct one’s fellow-creatures so far as one can, to help them as far as one can, to bring a higher ideal into their existence – ”

Cicely was bewildered by this manner of speech. She did not quite understand it. No one had ever spoken to her of a high ideal; a great deal had been said to her one time and another about doing her duty, but nothing of this. She was dazzled, and yet half contemptuous, as ignorance so often is. “A high ideal for the poor folk in the village, and Wilkins the grocer, and old Mrs. Joel with her pigs?” she cried mocking; yet while she said it, she blushed for herself.

Mildmay blushed too. He was young enough to be very sensitive to ridicule, and to know that high ideals should not be rashly spoken of except to sympathetic souls. “Why not,” he said, “for them as well as for others?” then stopped between disappointment and offence.

“Ah!” said Cicely, “you don’t know the village people. If you spoke to them of high ideals, they would only open their mouths and stare. If it was something to make a little money by, poor souls! or to get new boots for their children, or even to fatten the pigs. Now you are disgusted, Mr. Mildmay; but you don’t know how poor the people are, and how little time they have for anything but just what is indispensable for living.” As she said this, Cicely’s eyes grew wistful, and filled with moisture. The young man thought it was an angelical pity for the poverty and sufferings of others; but I fear the girl was at that moment thinking of what lay before herself.

“Miss St. John,” he said, “when you feel for them so deeply, you must sympathize with me too. The harder life is, has it not the more need of some clear perception of all the higher meanings in it? If it is worth while to be a clergyman at all, this is the use, it seems to me, to which we should put ourselves; and for that reason – ”

“You are coming to Brentburn!” cried Cicely. The tears disappeared from her eyes, dried by the flush of girlish impatience and indignation that followed. “As if they were all heathens; as if no one else had ever taught them – and spent his time and strength for them! Out of your Latin and Greek, and your philosophy, and your art, and all those fine things, you are coming to set a high ideal before poor Sally Gillows, whose husband beats her, and the Hodges, with their hundreds of children, and the hard farmers and the hard shopkeepers that grind the others to the ground. Well!” she said, coming rapidly down from this indignant height to a half disdainful calm, “I hope you will find it answer, Mr. Mildmay. Perhaps it will do better than papa’s system. He has only told them to try and do their best, poor souls! to put up with their troubles as well as they could, and to hope that some time or other God would send them something better either in this world or another. I don’t think papa’s way has been very successful, after all,” said Cicely, with a faint laugh; “perhaps yours may be the best.”

“I think you do me injustice,” said Mildmay, feeling the attack so unprovoked that he could afford to be magnanimous. “I have never thought of setting up my way in opposition to Mr. St. John’s way. Pray do not think so. Indeed, I did not know, and could not think – ”

“Of papa at all!” cried Cicely, interrupting him as usual. “Why should you? No, no, it was not you who ought to have thought of him. You never heard his name before, I suppose. No one could expect it of you.”

“And if I have entered into this question,” he continued, “it was to show you that I had not at least mere petty personal motives.”

“Oh, I beg your pardon, Mr. Mildmay. I had no right to inquire into your motives at all.”

Mildmay was not vain; but he was a young man, and this was a young woman by his side, and it was she who had begun a conversation much too personal for so slight an acquaintance. When he thought of it, it was scarcely possible to avoid a touch of amiable complacency in the evident interest he had excited. “Nay,” he said, with that smile of gratified vanity which is always irritating to a woman, “your interest in them can be nothing but flattering to me – though perhaps I may have a difficulty in understanding – ”

“Why, I am so much interested! Mr. Mildmay!” cried Cicely, with her eyes flashing, “don’t you think if any one came to you to take your place, to turn you out of your home, to banish you from everything you have ever known or cared for, and send you desolate into the world – don’t you think you would be interested too? Don’t you think you would wonder over him, and try to find out what he meant, and why this thing was going to be done, and why – oh, what am I saying?” cried Cicely, stopping short suddenly, and casting a terrified look at him. “I must be going out of my senses. It is not that, it is not that I mean!”

Poor Mildmay looked at her aghast. The flash of her eyes, the energy of her words, the sudden change to paleness and horror when she saw how far she had gone, made every syllable she uttered so real, that to pass it over as a mere ebullition of girlish temper or feeling was impossible; and there was something in this sudden torrent of reproach – which, bitter as it was, implied nothing like personal, intentional wrong on his part – which softened as well as appalled him. The very denunciation was an appeal. He stood thunderstruck, looking at her, but not with any resentment in his eyes. “Miss St. John,” he said, almost tremulously, “I don’t understand. This is all strange – all new to me.”

“Forget it,” she said hastily. “Forgive me, Mr. Mildmay, when I ask your pardon! I did not think what I was saying. Oh, don’t think of it any more!”

“There is nothing to forgive,” he said; “but you will tell me more? Indeed I am not angry – how could I be angry? – but most anxious to know.”

“Cicely,” said the curate’s gentle voice from the window, “it is time for prayers, and we are all waiting for you. Come in, my dear.” Mr. St. John stood looking out with a large prayer-book in his hand. His tall figure, with a slight wavering of constitutional feebleness and age in it, filled up one side of the window, and at his feet stood the two babies, side by side as usual, their hats taken off, and little white pinafores put on over their black frocks, looking out with round blue eyes. There was no agitation about that placid group. The little boys were almost too passive to wonder, and it had not occurred to Mr. St. John as possible that anything calculated to ruffle the countenance or the mind could have been talked of between his daughter and his guest. He went in when he had called them, and took his seat at his usual table. Betsy and Annie stood by the great sideboard waiting for the family devotions, which Betsy, at least, having much to do, was somewhat impatient of; and Mab was making the tea, in order that it might be “drawn” by the time that prayers were over. The aspect of everything was so absolutely peaceful, that when Mr. Mildmay stepped into the room he could not but look at Cicely with a question in his eyes. She, her face flushed and her mouth quivering, avoided his eye, and stole away to her place at the breakfast-table behind. Mildmay, I am afraid, got little benefit by Mr. St. John’s prayer. He could not even hear it for thinking. Was this true? and if it was true, what must he do? A perfect tempest raged in the new rector’s bosom, while the old curate read so calmly, unmoved by anything but the mild every-day devotion which was habitual to him. Secular things did not interfere with sacred in the old man’s gentle soul, though they might well have done so, Heaven knows, had human necessities anything to do with human character. And when they rose from their knees, and took their places round the breakfast-table, Mildmay’s sensations became more uncomfortable still. The girl who had denounced him as about to drive her from her home, made tea for him, and asked him if he took cream and sugar. The old man whom he was about to supplant placed a chair for him, and bade him take his place with genial kindness. Mr. Mildmay had been in the habit for the greater part of his life of thinking rather well of himself; and it is inconceivable how unpleasant it is when a man accustomed to this view of the subject, feels himself suddenly as small and pitiful as he did now. Mr. St. John had some letters, which he read slowly as he ate his egg, and Mabel also had one, which occupied her. Only Cicely and the stranger, the two who were not at ease with each other, were free to talk, and I don’t know what either of them could have found to say.

The curate looked up from his letter with a faint sigh, and pushed away the second egg which he had taken upon his plate unconsciously. “Cicely,” he said, “this is a startling letter, though perhaps I might have been prepared for something of the kind. Mr. Chester’s relations, my dear, write to say that they wish to sell off the furniture.” Mr. St. John gave a glance round, and for a moment his heart failed him. “It is sudden; but it is best, I suppose, that we should be prepared.”

“It was to be expected,” said Cicely, with a little gasp. She grew paler, but exerted all her power to keep all signs of emotion out of her face.

“Sell the furniture?” said Mab, with a laugh. “Poor old things! But who will they find to buy them?” Mab did not think at all of the inevitable departure which must take place before Mr. Chester’s mahogany could be carried away.

“You will think it very weak,” said poor Mr. St. John, “but I have been here so long that even the dispersion of the furniture will be something in the shape of a trial. It has seen so much. Of course, such a grievance is merely sentimental – but it affects one more than many greater things.”

“I did not know that you had been here so long,” said Mildmay.

“A long time – twenty years. That is a great slice out of one’s life,” said Mr. St. John. (He here thought better of a too hasty determination, and took back his egg.) “Almost all that has happened to me has happened here. Here I brought your mother home, my dears. Cicely is very like what her mother was; and here you were born, and here – ”

“Oh, papa, don’t go on like that odious Jessica and her lover, ‘On such a night!’” said Cicely, with a forced laugh.

“I did not mean to go on, my dear,” said the curate, half aggrieved, half submissive; and he finished his egg with a sigh.

“But I wonder very much,” said Mildmay, “if you will pardon me for saying so, why, when you have been here so long, you did not take some steps to secure the living. You must like the place, or you would not have stayed; and nobody would have been appointed over your head; it is impossible, if the circumstances had been known.”

“My dear sir,” said the curate, with his kind smile, “you don’t think I mean to imply any grudge against you? That would shut my mouth effectually. No, there are a great many reasons why I could not do anything. First, I did not know till a few days ago that the rector was dead; he should have sent me word. Then I have grown out of acquaintance with all my friends. I have not budged out of Brentburn, except now and then to town for a day, these twenty years; and, besides all this,” he said, raising his head with simple grandeur, “I have never asked anything from anybody, and I hope I shall end my life so. A beggar for place or living I could never be.”

Cicely, with her eyes fixed upon him with the most curious mixture of pride, wonder, humiliation, satisfaction, and shame, raised her head too, sharing this little lyrical outburst of the humble old man’s self-consequence.

But Mab burst lightly in from the midst of her letter. “Don’t boast of that, papa, please,” she said. “I wish you had asked something and got it. I am sure it would have been much better for Cicely and me.”

“My dear!” said Mr. St. John, with a half smile, shaking his head. It was all the reply he made to this light interruption. Then he resumed the former subject. “Take the letter, Cicely, and read it, and tell me what you think. It is grievous to think of a sale here, disturbing old associations. We must consult afterwards what is best to do.”

“Papa,” said Cicely, in a low voice full of agitation, “the best thing of all would be to settle now, while Mr. Mildmay is here; to find out when he wishes to come; and then there need be no more to put up with than is absolutely necessary. It is better to know exactly when we must go.”

The curate turned his mild eyes to the young man’s face. There was a look of pain and reluctance in them, but of submission; and then he smiled to save the stranger’s feelings. “It is hard upon Mr. Mildmay,” he said, “to be asked this, as if we were putting a pistol to his head; but you will understand that we wish you every good, though we may be grieved to leave our old home.”

Mildmay had been making a pretence at eating, feeling as if every morsel choked him. Now he looked up flushed and nervous. “I am afraid I have inadvertently said more than I meant,” he said. “I don’t think I have made up my mind beyond the possibility of change. It is not settled, as you think.”

“Dear me,” said Mr. St. John, concerned, “I am very sorry; I hope it is not anything you have heard here that has turned you against Brentburn? It is not a model parish, but it is no worse than other places. Cicely has been telling you about my troubles with those cottages; but, indeed, there is no parish in England where you will not have troubles of some kind – unwholesome cottages or other things.”

“I said nothing about the cottages,” said Cicely, with downcast looks. “I hope Mr. Mildmay does not mind anything I said. I say many things without thinking. It is very foolish, but it would be more foolish to pay any attention. I am sure you have often said so, papa.”

“I?” said the curate, looking at her disturbed countenance with some surprise. “No, I do not think you are one of the foolish talkers, my dear. It is a long story about these cottages; and, perhaps, I let myself be more worried than I ought. I will tell you all about it on the way to the Heath, for I think you ought to call on the Ascotts, if you will permit me to advise. They are the chief people about here. If you are ready, perhaps we should start soon; and you will come back and have some of our early dinner before you go?”

“I am ashamed to give so much trouble, to – receive so much kindness,” said Mildmay, confused. He rose when Mr. St. John did, but he kept his eyes fixed upon Cicely, who kept her seat, and would not look at him. The curate had various things to do before he was ready to start. He had his scattered memoranda to collect, and to get his note-book from his study, and yesterday’s newspaper to carry to an old man in the village, and a book for a sick child, and I don’t know how many trifles besides. “Papa’s things are always all over the house,” Mab cried, running from one room to another in search of them. Cicely generally knew exactly where to find all these properties which Mr. St. John searched for habitually with unfounded yet unalterable confidence in the large pockets of his long clerical coat. But Cicely still kept her seat, and left her duties to her sister, her mind being full of other things.

“What is the matter with Cicely?” said Mab, running back with her hands full. “I have found them, but I don’t know which of your pockets they belong to. This is the one for the note-book, and this is the one for the newspaper; but what does Cicely mean, sitting there like a log, and leaving everything to me?”

“Miss St. John,” said Mildmay, in this interval, “may I come back as your father says? May we finish the conversation we began this morning? or is the very sight of me disagreeable to you? There are so many things I want to know.”

Cicely got up suddenly, half impatient, half sad. “We are always glad to see any one whom papa asks,” she said; “you must call it luncheon, Mr. Mildmay, but to us it is dinner; that makes the difference between rector and curate,” she added, with a laugh.

CHAPTER XII

THE PARSON’S ROUND

HOW brilliant was that August morning when the two men went out! the sky so blue and warm and full of sunshine, bending with friendly tenderness toward the luxuriant earth which it embraced, lost everywhere in soft distances, limits that were of the eye and not of the infinite melting space – showing through the foliage, opening out sweet and full over the breezy purpled common. The red cottage roofs, with all their lichens, shone and basked in the light; the apples reddened moment by moment, the yellow corn rustled and waved in every breath of air, conscious of the coming sickle. Everything was at its fullest blaze of colour; the trees more deeply green than usual, the sky of more profound and dazzling blue, the heather purple-royal, showing in its moorland flush against the russet-golden fields burning in the sun which gave them their last perfection of ripeness; and even the flowers in the gardens blazing their brightest to hide the fact from all men that the sweetness and hope of the year were almost lost in that harvest and climax which touches upon decay, as everything does which is perfect. The sun was too fierce for anything but red burning geraniums, and gaudy hollyhocks and rank dahlias. But the red old cottages at Brentburn were of themselves like growths of nature, with all their stains of moss, red and grey and yellow, relieved and thrown up by the waving greyness of the willows, that marked every spot of special dampness, and by the wealthy green woods that rolled away into the distance, into the sky. Everything is musical in such a morning; the very cackle of the ducks in that brown pond – how cool it looks to the dusty wayfarer! – takes a tone from the golden air; the slow roll of the leisurely cart along the country road; the voices from the cottages calling in full Berkshire drawl to Jyain or Jeo outside. A harmonious world it seemed, with nothing in it to jar or wound; the very air caressing every mother’s son it met, blowing about the rags as if it loved them, conveying never a chill to the most poorly clad. How different was that broad outdoor satisfaction and fulness to the complainings and troubles enclosed by every set of four walls in the parish! Mildmay, as was natural, knew nothing about these nor suspected them; his spirits rose when he came out into the summer air – to walk along the cool side of the road in the shade, and watch the triumphant sunshine blazing over everything, leaving not an inch even of the common high road unglorified, brought a swell of pleasure to his heart he could not tell why.

“You must not come to a country parish with the idea that it is Arcadia,” said Mr. St. John; “such ideas lead to a great deal of disappointment; but you must not let yourself be discouraged either. I don’t think that Cicely knows all the outs and ins of the story about the cottages.”

“Miss St. John said nothing about the cottages.”

“Ah! I thought she had put you out of spirits; that would be foolish,” said the curate kindly. “You see, Mr. Mildmay, everybody here thinks a great deal of a little money; it is so, I believe, in every small place; they have little, very little, Heaven knows; and somehow, when one is very poor, that gets to look of more importance than anything else. I don’t say so from personal experience, though I have always been poor enough. My way, I am afraid, is to think too little of the money, not too much – which is, perhaps, as great a mistake the other way; but it is much easier, you know, to condemn those faults we have no mind to,” Mr. St. John added with a smile. The visit of an intelligent stranger had quite brightened the good man up, though it ought to have depressed him, according to all principles of good sense. The curate forgot how much he himself must suffer from the change that was coming. Mildmay pleased him; he was deferential to his own grey hairs and long experience; he was willing to hear and apparently to take, his predecessor’s opinion, and Mr. St. John liked the novelty, the new companion, the attentive listener. He walked on quite briskly, with the easy steps of a man to whom the way is so familiar that he does not need to pause to look where he is going. Now and then he would stop to point out a view, a glimpse of the distant forest, a slope opening down upon the lower level of the common, or even a pretty cottage; and one of them, a most picturesque refuge of misery, with tiny little casement windows bulging anyhow from the ruddy old wall, and a high roof of the most indescribable and beautiful mixture of tints, set him easily afloat again upon the subject of which his mind was full.

“Look at it!” he said; “it is a picture. If one could only clear them out and shut them up – or rather throw them open, that the winds of heaven might enter, but not our fellow-creatures, Mr. Mildmay! As I was saying, they are all poor here. The people think you do them an injury when you speak of anything that has to be paid for. Because I have tried to get the cottages put into good repair, the arrangements made a little more decent, and the places fit to live in, more than two or three of the people have left the parish church. Yes, that is quite true – I thought Cicely must have told you – well-to-do people, who might have spared a few pounds well enough. It was a trial; but what of that? I have outlived it, and perhaps done a little good.”

“The cottagers, at least, must have been grateful to you,” said Mildmay; but the curate shook his head.

“The cottagers thought I was only trying to get them turned out,” he said. “They almost mobbed me once. I told them they should not take lodgers and lodgers till every room was crowded. They are as bad as the landlords; but, poor souls! it was easy to forgive them, for the shilling or two they gained was such an object to them. I thought it best to tell you; but there was really nothing in it, nothing to be annoyed about. It was soon over. You, a young man, need not be discouraged by any such episode as that.”

“Mr. St. John, there is something which discourages me much more,” said Mildmay. “When I came yesterday to see Brentburn, I did not know you at all. I had heard your name; that was all. I thought you were most likely a man of my own standing, or younger – ”

“As a curate ought to be,” said Mr. St. John, once more shaking his head. “Yes; I was saying to Cicely, it is almost a stigma upon a man to be a curate at my age; but so it is, and I cannot help it. Perhaps if I had not settled down so completely when I was young, if I had been more energetic; I feel that now – but what good does it do? it is too late now to change my nature. The children are the worst,” he said, with a sigh, “for they must come upon the girls.” Then recovering himself with a faint smile, “I beg your pardon, Mr. Mildmay, for going off with my own thoughts. You said it discouraged you. Do you mean my example? You must take it as a lesson and a warning, not as an example. I am very sensible it is my own fault.”

“I came to supplant you, to take your place, to turn you out of your home,” said Mildmay, finding it a kind of relief to his feelings to employ Cicely’s words, “and you received me like a friend, took me into your house, made me sit at your table – ”

The curate was startled by his vehemence. He laughed, then looked at him half alarmed. “What should I have done else?” he said. “I hope you are a friend. Supplant me! I have been here a great deal longer than I had any right to expect. Of course, we all knew a new rector would come. The girls, indeed, had vague notions about something that might be done – they did not know what, poor things! how should they? But of course from the first I was aware what must happen. No, no; you must not let that trouble you. I am glad, on the contrary, very glad, that the people are going to fall into hands like yours.”

“Poor hands,” said Mildmay. “Mr. St. John, you may think it strange that I should say this; but it is you who ought to be the rector, not me. You ought to stay here; I feel it. If I come after all, I shall be doing a wrong to the people and to you, and even to the Church, where such things should not be.”