The Curate in Charge

“Aunt Jane!” the girls cried, and rushed at her with unfeigned relief. They were more familiar with her now than they had been four years ago. They took off her great shawl for her, and loosed her bonnet strings. “Papa told us you were coming,” they cried; “but we did not hope for you so soon. How kind of you to come to-day.”

“Oh, my dears,” said Aunt Jane, “I did not mean to come to-day; I came to see how you were taking it; and what your papa means to do. As soon as I saw it in the paper I thought, oh my poor, poor children, and that helpless old man! What are they to do?”

“Do you mean about Mrs. St. John?” said Cicely, growing grave. “Papa is very composed and kind, and indeed I can do all he wants. Aunt Jane – ”

“About Mrs. St. John? Poor woman, I have nothing to say against her – but she is taken away from the evil to come,” said Miss Maydew. “No, no, it was not about Mrs. St. John I was thinking, it was about something much more serious. Not that anything could be more serious than a death; but in a worldly point of view!”

“What is it?” they both said in a breath. The idea of news was exciting to them, even though, as was evident from their visitor’s agitation, it was disagreeable news they were about to hear. Miss Maydew drew with much excitement from her pocket a copy of the Times, very tightly folded together to enable it to enter there, and opened it with trembling hands.

“There it is! Oh, my poor, poor children! imagine my feelings – it was the very first thing I saw when I took up my paper this morning,” she said.

The girls did not immediately take in the full meaning of the intimation which they read with two startled faces close together over the old lady’s shoulder. “At Castellamare, on the 15th July, the Rev. Edward Chester, Rector of Brentburn, Berks.”

“But we don’t know him,” said Mab, bewildered.

Cicely, I think, had a remark of the same kind on her lips; but she stopped suddenly and clasped her hands together and gave a low cry.

“Ah, you understand, Cicely!” said Miss Maydew, wiping her forehead with her handkerchief; “now let us consult what is to be done. What is the date? I was so agitated I never thought of the date! The 15th. Oh, my dear, here is a fortnight lost!”

“But what can be done?” said Cicely, turning a pathetic glance upon the old room which had seemed so melancholy to her yesterday, and the tons of mahogany which she had just been criticising. How kind, and friendly, and familiar they had become all at once; old, dear friends, who belonged to her no more.

“Mr. Chester, the rector!” said Mab, with sudden apprehension. “Do you mean that something will happen to papa?”

“There is this to be done,” said the old lady, “your poor good father has been here for twenty years; the people ought to be fond of him – I do not know whether they are, for a parish is an incomprehensible thing, as your poor dear grandfather always used to say – but they ought to be; I am sure he has trudged about enough, and never spared himself, though I never thought him a good preacher, so far as that goes. But he ought to have a great many friends after living here for twenty years.”

“But, Aunt Jane, tell us, tell us – what good will that do?”

“It might do a great deal if they would exert themselves. They might get up a petition, for instance – at once – to the Lord Chancellor; they might employ all their influence. It is not a rich parish, nor a large parish, but there are always gentry in it. Oh, a great deal might be done if only people would exert themselves! It is dreadful to think that a fortnight has been lost.”

Cicely, who was not much consoled by this hope, sat down with a very pale countenance and a sudden constriction at her heart. She was almost too much bewildered to realize all that it meant; enough lay on the surface to fill her soul with dismay. Mab, who had less perception of the urgent character of the calamity, was more animated.

“I thought you meant we could do something,” she said. “Oh, Aunt Jane, could not we go to the Chancellor, if that is the man. The parish? I don’t see why they should take the trouble. It will not hurt them. They will have a young, well-off man instead of an old, poor man. Couldn’t we go to the Lord Chancellor, Aunt Jane?”

Miss Maydew’s eyes lighted up for a moment. She seemed to see herself approaching that unknown potentate as lovely ladies went to kings in the days of romance, with a child in each hand. She felt how eloquent she could be, how convincing. She felt herself capable of going down on her knees and asking him whether the father of those two sweet girls was to starve in his old age? All this appeared before her like a dream. But alas! common sense soon resumed its sway; she shook her head. “I don’t know if that would do any good,” she said.

“And we could not get up a petition from the parish,” said Cicely; “whatever the people may do we cannot stir in it. Oh, Aunt Jane, how foolish, how wrong of us never to think of this! I have thought that papa was old and that we should have to maintain ourselves and the two babies if – anything happened; but I never remembered that it all hung upon some one else’s life. Oh, it does seem hard!” cried the girl, clasping her hands. “Papa has done all the work since ever I was born, but yet he has only been here on sufferance, ready to be turned out at a moment’s notice. Oh, it is wrong, it is wrong!”

“Not exactly at a moment’s notice,” said Miss Maydew; “there is six weeks or three months, or something, I forget how long.”

And then there was a painful pause. Mab cried a little, having her feelings most upon the surface, but Cicely sat quite silent and pale with her eyes fixed upon the white blinds which flapped against the open windows. All at once she got up and drew one of them up with a rapid impatient hand. “I want air, I want light,” she said in a stifled voice, and put herself full in the intrusive sunshine, which made Miss Maydew blink her old eyes.

“You will give yourself a headache, my dear, and that will not mend matters,” she said.

Cicely’s heart was very heavy. She drew down the blind again and walked up and down the room in her agitation. “Five of us to provide for now – and that is not the worst; what is papa to do? How can he live with everything taken from him? Oh, go to the Chancellor, or any one, if it will do any good! It is terrible for papa.”

It was while they were still in this agitated state that Betsy threw open the door again, and Mrs. Ascott, of the Heath, one of the greatest ladies in the parish, came in. She was not heated, like poor old Miss Maydew, with walking, but fresh and well dressed from her carriage, and tranquil as prosperity and comfort could make her. The girls made that sudden effort, which women so often have to make, to receive her as if nothing had happened, as if their minds were as easy and their circumstances as agreeable as her own. She inquired about their journey, about their school, about how they found their papa looking, about the “sad trials” he had gone through, all in a sweet even tone, with smiles or serious looks, as became her words, and hoped that now they had come back she should see them often at the Heath. “You are the musical one, Cicely,” she said; “I know Mab draws. It is always nice when sisters have each their distinction, that people can’t mistake. My husband always says girls are so like each other. What is your voice? contralto? oh, a good second is such a want here. We are all more or less musical, you know.”

“My voice is not much one way or the other,” said Cicely. “Mab sings better than I do, though she is the one who draws.”

“But I fear,” said Miss Maydew, clearing her throat and interfering, “unless something is done they will not be here long to be of use to any one. We have just had news – ”

“Ah, about poor Mr. Chester,” said Mrs. Ascott, with the slightest of glances at the stranger; “I saw it in the papers. Will that affect your papa?”

“Unless” – Miss Maydew put herself forward squarely and steadily – “something is done.”

Mrs. Ascott looked at the old lady for the first time. She had thought her an old nurse at first – for the good woman was not of a patrician appearance, like the girls, who were St. Johns. “Unless – something is done? I am sure we will all do anything that is possible. What can be done?”

“Hush! my dear, hush! She does not know I belong to you,” whispered Miss Maydew. “I think a great deal might be done. If Mr. St. John’s friends were to get up a petition to the Lord Chancellor at once – stating how long he had been here, and how much beloved he was, and the whole state of the case. I don’t personally know his lordship,” said the old lady; “but he can’t be a bad man or he never would have risen to that position. I can’t believe but what if the case were put fully before him, he would give Mr. St. John the living. It seems so much the most natural thing to do.”

“Dear me, so it does!” said Mrs. Ascott. “How clever of you to have thought of it. I will speak to my husband, and see what he says.”

“And if there is any one else whom you can influence – to do good it should be general – from the whole parish,” said Miss Maydew – “from all classes; and it ought to be done at once.”

“To be sure,” said Mrs. Ascott. “I assure you I will speak to my husband.” She got up to take her leave, a little frightened by the vehemence of the stranger, and rather elated at the same time by the sense of having a mission. Miss Maydew went with her to the very door.

“At once,” she said, “at once! It is a fortnight already since the rector died. If the parish means to do anything, you should not lose a day.”

“No: I see, I see! I will go at once and speak to my husband,” cried the visitor, escaping hastily. Miss Maydew returned to her seat breathing a sigh of satisfaction. “There, girls! I have set it agoing at least. I have started it. That was a nice woman – if she exerts herself, I don’t doubt that it will be all right. What a blessing she came while I was here.”

“I hope it is all right,” said Cicely doubtfully; “but she is not very – not very, very sensible, you know. But she is always kind. I hope she will not do anything foolish. Is that papa she is talking to?” cried the girl alarmed, for there were sounds of commotion in the hall. A silence fell upon even the chief conspirator, when she felt that Mr. St. John was near – the possibility that her tactics might not be quite satisfactory alarmed her. She withdrew into a corner, instinctively getting the girls and a considerable mass of furniture between herself and any one coming in at the door.

“I do not know what Mrs. Ascott is talking of,” said the curate. “Is tea ready, my dear, for I have a great deal to do? What have you been putting into that good woman’s head? She is talking of a petition, and of the Lord Chancellor, and of bad news. I hope you are not a politician, Cicely. What is it all about?”

“Here is Aunt Jane, papa,” said Cicely, who was not more comfortable than Miss Maydew. And the old lady had to get up and stretch out her hand to Mr. St. John over the sofa, which was her bulwark in chief.

“But I wonder what she meant about bad news,” he went on; “she seemed to think it affected us. My dears, have you heard anything?”

“Oh, papa, very bad news,” said Cicely with tears in her eyes. “It is in the paper. Mrs. Ascott has seen it, and that is what we were talking about. Oh, dear papa, don’t be cast down. Perhaps it may not be so bad as we think. Something may be done; or at the very worst we are both able and willing to work – Mab and I.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” said Mr. St. John, and he read the announcement without much change of countenance. “Dear me, so he is gone at last!” he said. “I have long expected this. His health has been getting worse and worse for years. Poor Chester! has he really gone at last? I remember him at college. He was a year younger than I, but always sickly. Poor fellow! and he was a great deal better off than I am, but never got the good of it. What a lesson it is, my dears!”

“But, oh, papa,” cried Mab, who was the most impatient, “it is a great deal more than a lesson. Think what consequences it will bring to you – and us – and everybody.”

He looked at her with a half smile. “Little Mab,” he said, “teaching her elders. Harry will begin soon. Yes, to be sure; we have got fond of this place; it seems hard that we should have to go.”

“But, papa, where shall we go? What shall we do? What is to become of us?” said Cicely.

Mr. St. John shook his head. “If you will consider that I have only just seen it this moment,” he said, “you will see that I cannot be expected all at once – Was this what Mrs. Ascott was talking of? And what did she mean by petitions, and the Lord Chancellor? I hope you have not been putting anything into her head?”

There was a pause – the girls looked at each other, and blushed as if they were the culprits; then Miss Maydew came boldly to the front. “It was not the fault of the girls, Mr. St. John; on the contrary, they were against it. But I thought there was no harm in saying that a petition from the parish – to the Lord Chancellor – a well signed petition, as there must be so many people here who are fond of you – and that no doubt he would give you the living if he understood the circumstances.”

“I a beggar for a living!” said Mr. St. John. “I who have never asked for anything in my life!” A deep flush came upon his delicate pale face. He had borne a great many more serious blows without wincing. Death had visited him, and care dwelt in his house – and he had borne these visitations placidly; but there was one flaw in his armour, and this unlooked-for assault found it out. A flame of injured pride blazed up in him, swift as fire and as glowing. “I thought I should have died without this,” he said with a groan, half fierce, half bitter. “What was it to you? I never asked you for anything! Oh, this is hard – this is very hard to bear.”

In the memory of man it had never been known that Mr. St. John thus complained before. The girls had never heard his voice raised or seen the flush of anger on his face; and they were overawed by it. This kind of sentiment too has always a certain fictitious grandeur to the inexperienced. Never to ask for anything; to wait – patient merit scorning all conflict with the unworthy – till such time as its greatness should be acknowledged. This sounds very sublime in most cases to the youthful soul.

“Well, Mr. St. John,” said Miss Maydew, “you may say I have no right to interfere; but if you had stooped to ask for something it might have been a great deal better for your family. Besides, you have not asked for anything now. I am not responsible for my actions to any one, and I hope I may do either for you or anybody else whatever I please in the way of service. If the Lord Chancellor does give you the living – ”

Mr. St. John smiled. “I need not make myself angry,” he said, “for it is all sheer ignorance. The living is a college living. I don’t know what your ideas are on the subject, but the Lord Chancellor has as much to do with it as you have. Cicely, let us have tea.”

Miss Maydew shrivelled up upon her chair. She sat very quiet, and did not say a word after this revelation. What she had done would have troubled her mind little; but that she had done nothing after risking so much was hard to bear. After this little ebullition, however, the curate fell back into his usual calm. He spoke to them in his ordinary way. His voice resumed its tranquil tone. He took his tea, which was a substantial meal, doing justice to the bread and butter, and on the whole showed signs of being more concerned for Mr. Chester than he was for himself.

“I remember him at college – we were of the same college,” he said; “but he always the richest, much the best off. How little that has to say to a man’s happiness! Poor Chester was never happy; he might have been very well here. How much I have had to be thankful for here! but it was not his disposition. He was good-looking too when he was young, and did very well in everything. Any one would have said he had a far better chance for a happy life than I had.”

The gentle old man grew quite loquacious in this contrast, though he was in general the most humble-minded of men; and the two girls sat and listened, giving wondering glances at each other, and blushing red with that shame of affection which lively girls perhaps are particularly disposed to feel when their parents maunder. This sort of domestic criticism, even though unexpressed, was hard upon Mr. St. John, as upon all such feeble good men. His last wife had adored him at all times, as much when he was foolish as when he was wise. She would have given him the fullest adhesion of her soul now, and echoed every word he said; but the girls did not. They would have preferred to silence him, and were ashamed of his gentle self-complacency. And yet it was quite true that he felt himself a happier man than Mr. Chester, and higher in the scale of merit though not of fortune; and the calm with which he took this event, which was neither more nor less than ruin to him, was fine in its way.

“But what are we to do, papa?” Cicely ventured to ask him, looking up into his face with big anxious eyes, as he took his last cup of tea.

“My dear, we must wait and see,” he said. “There is no very immediate hurry. Let us see first who is appointed, and what the new rector intends to do.”

“But, Mr. St. John, you are a very learned man – and if it is a college living” – suggested Miss Maydew.

“It is my own college, too,” he said reflectively; “and I suppose I am now one of the oldest members of it. It would not be amiss if they let me stay here the rest of my days. But I never was distinguished. I never was a Fellow, or anything. I never could push myself forward. No – we must just wait and see what is going to happen. A few days or a few weeks will make little difference. Compose yourselves, my dears,” said Mr. St. John. “I am not very anxious after all.”

“I wonder if he would be anxious if you were all starving,” cried Miss Maydew, as the girls walked with her to the station in the evening. “Oh, Cicely, I know I oughtn’t to say anything to you about your papa. But if he has not been anxious, others have been anxious for him. Your poor mother! how she slaved to keep everything as it ought to be; and even poor Miss Brown. It did not cost much to marry her – but it cost her her life.”

“Aunt Jane!” cried both the girls indignant.

“Well, my dears! She might have been living now, a respectable single woman, doing her duty, as she was capable of doing; instead of which what must she do but bring a couple of white-faced babies into the world that nobody wanted, and die of it. Yes, she did die of it. You don’t understand these things – you are only children. And all because he was what you call kind-hearted, and could not bear to see her cry, forsooth. As if the best of us were not obliged both to cry ourselves and to see others cry often enough! but they never thought what they were doing; and the ones to suffer will be you.”

“Aunt Jane, you ought not to speak so of papa.”

“I know I shouldn’t, my dear – and I humbly beg your pardons,” said Aunt Jane, drying her eyes.

“And we ought not to have left him unprotected,” said Cicely, with a sigh.

CHAPTER VIII

THE NEW RECTOR

THE news which so much disturbed the inhabitants of the rectory at Brentburn was already old news in Oxford, where indeed it was known and decided who Mr. Chester’s successor was to be. The august body in whose hands the appointment lay was absolutely unconscious of the existence of Mr. St. John. Several members of it, it is true, were his own contemporaries, and had been his acquaintances in the old days when these very dons themselves traversed their quadrangles with such hopes and fears in respect to the issue of an examination, as the destruction of the world or its salvation would scarcely rouse in them now; but what was it likely they could know about a man who at sixty-five was only a curate, who had never asked for anything, never tried for anything; but had kept himself out of sight and knowledge for a lifetime? Those of them who had a dim recollection that “old St. John” was Chester’s curate in charge, naturally thought that he held that precarious and unprofitable place for so long, because of some personal connection with the locality, or preference for it, which he was well off enough to be able to indulge. He had been poor in his youth, but probably his wife had had money, or something had fallen to him. What so likely as that something good should fall by inheritance to a man with such a patrician name? Therefore let nobody blame the dons. They might have been capable (though I don’t know whether they would have had any right to exercise their patronage so) of a great act of poetic justice, and might have given to the undistinguished but old member of their college the reward of his long exertions, had they known. But as they did not know, what could these good men do but allot it to the excellent young Fellow – already the winner of all kinds of honours – who condescended to be willing to accept the humble rectory? Everybody said it was not worth Mildmay’s while to shelve himself in an obscure place like Brentburn; that it was a strange thing for him to do; that he would hate it as poor Chester – also an extremely accomplished man and fellow of his college – had done. Gossips – and such beings exist in the most classical places – feared that he must want the money; though some thought he was merely disinclined to let a tolerable small living, not far from town, and in a good county, where there were many “nice families,” pass him; but very few people so far as I am aware, thought of any higher motive which a popular young don could have for such a fancy.

Mr. Mildmay was quite one of the advanced rank of young Oxford men. I have never been able to understand how it was that he continued more or less orthodox, but he had done so by special constitution of mind, I suppose, which in some tends to belief as much as in some others it tends to unbelief. He was not one of those uncomfortable people who are always following out “truth” to some bitter end or other, and refusing all compromise. Perhaps he was not so profound as are those troublesome spirits, but he was a great deal happier, and a great deal more agreeable. It is quite possible that some young reader may object to this as a shameful begging of the question whether it is not best to follow “truth” with bosom bare into whatsoever wintry lands that oft-bewildered power may lead. I don’t know; some minds have little inclination towards the sombre guesses of science, new or old; and perhaps some may prefer Roger Mildmay for the mere fact that he did not feel himself to have outgrown Christianity; which, I confess, is my own feeling on the subject. However, if it is any satisfaction to the said young reader, I may as well avow that though nature kept him from being sceptical, that kindly nurse did not hinder him from throwing himself into much semi-intellectual foolishness in other ways. To hear him talk of art was enough to make all the Academy dance with fury, and drive the ordinary learner, however little attached to the Academy, into absolute imbecility; and his rooms were as good as a show, with all the last fantastical delights of the day – more like a museum of china and knick-knacks than rooms to live in. His floors were littered with rugs, over which, in the æsthetic dimness, unwary visitors tumbled; his walls were toned into olive greens or peacock blues, dark enough to have defied all the sunshine of the Indies to light them up. He had few pictures; but his rooms were hung with photographs “taken direct,” and a collection of old china plates, which perhaps, in their primitive colours and broad effect, “came” better than pictures in the subdued and melancholy light. But why insist upon these details? A great many highly-cultured persons have the same kind of rooms, and Mildmay was something more than a highly-cultured person. All this amused and occupied him very much – for indeed collecting is a very amusing occupation; and when he had found something “really good” in an old curiosity shop, it exhilarated him greatly to bring it home, and find a place for it among his precious stores, and to make it “compose” with the other curiosities around it. As sheer play, I don’t know any play more pleasant; and when he looked round upon the dim world of objets d’art that covered all his walls, shelves, and tables, and marked the fine pictorial effect of the one brilliant spot of light which the green shade of his reading-lamp prevented from too great diffusion – when, I say, looking up from his studies, Mr. Mildmay looked round upon all this, and felt that only very fine taste, and much patient labour, supported by a tolerably well-filled purse, could have brought it all together, and arranged everything into one harmonious whole, there came a glow of gentle satisfaction to the heart of the young don.