The Curate in Charge

It was Mildmay who took all the trouble 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 they will 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 say everything for 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 say everything,” 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 was my business 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 both here. 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, in a 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 a private 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 no rôle of 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 had been 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, that tour de force which 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 could have 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, mere tours 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 complacence of 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 village schoolmistress!” 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, I cannot 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.”

CHAPTER XX

THE PARISH SCHOOLMISTRESS

I WILL not follow all the intermediate steps, and tell how the curate’s family left their home, and went to London; or how Miss Maydew made the most conscientious effort to accustom herself to the little boys, and to contemplate the possibility of taking the oversight of them. They were not noisy, it is true; but that very fact alarmed Aunt Jane, who declared that, had they been “natural children,” always tumbling about, and making the walls ring, she could have understood them. Perhaps had they been noisy, she would have felt at once the superiority of “quiet children.” As it was, the two little tiny, puny old men appalled the old lady, who watched them with fascinated eyes, and a visionary terror, which grew stronger every day. Sometimes she would jump up in a passion and flee to her own room to take breath, when the thought of having them to take care of came suddenly upon her. And thus it came about that her opposition to Cicely’s scheme gradually softened. It was a bitter pill to her. To think of a Miss St. John, Hester’s child, dropping into the low degree of a parish schoolmistress, went to her very heart; but what was to be done? How could she oppose a thing Cicely had set her heart upon? Cicely was not one to make up a scheme without some reason in it; and you might as well (Miss Maydew said to herself) try to move St. Paul’s, when the girl had once made up her mind. I do not think Cicely was so obstinate as this, but it was a comfort to Miss Maydew to think so. And after everybody had got over their surprise at the idea, Miss St. John was duly installed as the schoolmistress at Brentburn. The few little bits of furniture which had belonged to them in the rectory – the children’s little beds, the old faded carpets, etc. – helped to furnish the schoolmistress’s little house. Cicely took back the little Annie whom she had sent away from the rectory for interfering with her own authority, but whose devotion to the children was invaluable now, and no later than October settled down to this curious new life. It was a very strange life. The schoolmistress’s house was a new little square house of four rooms, with no beauty to recommend it, but with little garden plots in front of it, and a large space behind where the children could play. The little kitchen, the little parlour, the two little bedrooms were all as homely as could be. Cicely had the old school-room piano, upon which her mother had taught her the notes, and which Miss Brown had shed tears over on that unfortunate day when Mr. St. John proposed to marry her rather than let her go back to the Governesses’ Institute – and she had a few books. These were all that represented to her the more beautiful side of life: but, at nineteen, fortunately life itself is still beautiful enough to make up for many deprivations, and she had a great deal to do. As for her work, she said, it was quite as pleasant to teach the parish children as to teach the little ladies at Miss Blandy’s; and the “parents” did not look down upon her, which was something gained.

And it was some time before Cicely awoke to the evident fact that, if the parents did not look down upon her, her old acquaintances were much embarrassed to know how to behave to her. Mrs. Ascott had gone to see her at once on her arrival, and had been very kind, and had hoped they would see a great deal of her. On two or three occasions after she sent an invitation to tea in the evening, adding always, “We shall be quite alone.” “Why should they be always quite alone?” the girl said to herself; and then she tried to think it was out of consideration for her mourning. But it soon became visible enough what Mrs. Ascott meant, and what all the other people meant. Even as the curate’s daughter Cicely had but been a girl whom they were kind to; now she was the parish schoolmistress – “a very superior young person, quite above her position,” but belonging even by courtesy to the higher side no more. She was not made to feel this brutally. It was all quite gently, quite prettily done; but by the time spring came, brightening the face of the country, Cicely was fully aware of the change in her position, and had accepted it as best she could. She was still, eight months after her father’s death – so faithful is friendship in some cases – asked to tea, when they were quite alone at the Heath; but otherwise, by that time, most people had ceased to take any notice of her. She dropped out of sight except at church, where she was only to be seen in her plain black dress in her corner among the children; and though the ladies and gentlemen shook hands with her still, when she came in their way, no one went out of his or her way to speak to the schoolmistress. It would be vain to say that there was no mortification involved in this change. Cicely felt it in every fibre of her sensitive frame, by moments; but fortunately her temperament was elastic, and she possessed all the delicate strength which is supposed to distinguish “blood.” She was strong, and light as a daisy, jumping up under the very foot that crushed her. This kind of nature makes its possessor survive and surmount many things that are death to the less elastic; it saves from destruction, but it does not save from pain.

As for Mr. Mildmay, it was soon made very apparent to him that, for him at his age to show much favour or friendship to the schoolmistress at hers, was entirely out of the question. He had to visit the school, of course, in the way of his duty, but to visit Cicely was impossible. People even remarked upon the curious frequency with which he passed the school. Wherever he was going in the parish (they said), his road seemed to turn that way, which, of course, was highly absurd, as every reasonable person must see. There was a side window by which the curious passer-by could see the interior of the school as he passed, and it was true that the new rector was interested in that peep. There were the homely children in their forms, at their desks, or working in the afternoon at their homely needlework: among them, somewhere, sometimes conning little lessons with portentous gravity, the two little boys in their black frocks, and the young school-mistress seated at her table; sometimes (the spy thought) with a flush of weariness upon her face. The little house was quite empty during the school-hours; for Annie was a scholar too, and aspiring to be pupil-teacher some day, and now as reverent of Miss St. John as she had once been critical. Mildmay went on his way after that peep with a great many thoughts in his heart. It became a kind of necessity to him to pass that way, to see her at her work. Did she like it, he wondered? How different it was from his own! how different the position – the estimation of the two in the world’s eye! He who could go and come as he liked, who honoured the parish by condescending to become its clergyman, and to whom a great many little negligences would have been forgiven, had he liked, in consequence of his scholarship, and his reputation, and his connections. “We can’t expect a man like Mildmay, fresh from a University life, to go pottering about among the sick like poor old St. John,” Mr. Ascott would say. “That is all very well, but a clergyman here and there who takes a high position for the Church in society is more important still.” And most people agreed with him; and Roger Mildmay went about his parish with his head in the clouds, still wondering where life was – that life which would string the nerves and swell the veins, and put into man the soul of a hero. He passed the school-room window as often as he could, in order to see it afar off – that life which seemed to him the greatest of all things; but he had not yet found it himself. He did all he could, as well as he knew how, to be a worthy parish priest. He was very kind to everybody; he went to see the sick, and tried to say what he could to them to soothe and console them. What could he say? When he saw a man of his own age growing into a gaunt great skeleton with consumption, with a wistful wife looking on, and poor little helpless children, what could the young rector say? His heart would swell with a great pang of pity, and he would read the prayers with a faltering voice, and, going away wretched, would lavish wine and soup, and everything he could think of, upon the invalid; but what could he say to him, he whose very health and wealth and strength and well-being seemed an insult to the dying? The dying did not think so, but Mildmay did, whose very soul was wrung by such sights. Then, for lighter matters, the churchwardens and the parish business sickened him with their fussy foolishness about trifles; and the careful doling out of shillings from the parish charities would have made him furious, had he not known that his anger was more foolish still. For his own part, he lavished his money about, giving it to everybody who told him a pitiful story, in a reckless way, which, if persevered in, would ruin the parish. And when any one went to him for advice, he had to bite his lip in order not to say the words which were on the very tip of his tongue longing to be said, and which were, “Go to Cicely St. John at the school and ask. It is she who is living, not me. I am a ghost like all the rest of you.” This was the leading sentiment in the young man’s mind.