The Curate in Charge

The two clung together in an agony of silence for a moment; how many wringings of the heart have been caused by a little money! and so often those who suffer are not those who are to blame. The ruin that seemed to be involved was unspeakable to the two girls; they did not know what the butcher and the baker might be able to do to them; nor did they know of any way of escape.

“If there was any hope,” said Cicely after a pause, “of staying here – I would go round to them all, and ask them to take pity upon us; to let us begin again paying every week, and wait till we could scrape some money together for what is past. That, I think, would be quite possible, if we were to stay; and we might take pupils – ”

“To be sure,” cried Mab, relieved, springing up with the easy hope of a sanguine disposition, “and I might get something to do. In the meantime I can finish my drawing. They have not stirred a bit, look, Cicely. They are like two little white statues. It may be a pity that they were ever born, as Aunt Jane says – but they are delightful models. I almost think,” Mab went on piously, working with bold and rapid fingers, “that in all this that has happened there must have been a special providence for me.”

Cicely looked up with surprise at this speech, but she made no reply. She was too full of thought to see the humour of the suggestion. Mab’s art furnished a delightful way of escape for her out of all perplexity; but Cicely could only go back to the butcher’s book. “What could we do, I wonder,” she said half to herself, for she did not expect any advice from her sister, “about the living? Very likely they don’t know anything about poor papa. It may be very highminded never to ask for anything,” said poor Cicely, “but then how can we expect that other people will come and thrust bread into our mouths? It is better to ask than to starve. As a matter of fact we cannot starve quietly, because if we are found dead of hunger, there is sure to be a business in the papers, and everything exposed. ‘Death, from starvation, of a clergyman’s family!’ That would make a great deal more fuss than quietly going and asking for something for papa. I am not a bold girl – at least I don’t think so,” she cried, her soft face growing crimson at the thought, “but I would not mind going to any one, if it was the Head of the College, or the Lord Chancellor, or even the Queen!”

“I wonder,” said Mab, “if we met the Queen driving in the forest – as one does sometimes – whether we might not ask her, as people used to do long ago? I don’t think she would mind. Why should she mind? She could not be frightened, or even angry, with two girls.”

Cicely shook her head. “The Queen has nothing to do with Brentburn; and why should she be troubled with us any more than any other lady? No! that sort of thing has to be done in a business way,” said the elder sister seriously. “If I could find out who was the chief man, the Head of the College – ”

They had been so much absorbed that they had not heard any sound outside; and at this moment the door was suddenly thrown open, admitting a flood of cross light, and revealing suddenly the figures of the curate and some one who followed him.

“My dears!” began Mr. St. John, surprised.

“Oh, papa! you have woke them up. You have spoiled my light!” cried Mab, in despair.

Cicely started to her feet, letting the account books tumble on the floor; and the two little boys raised a simultaneous howl of sleepy woe. “Harry wants his tea,” they both piped piteously. Mr. Mildmay, whom the curate had met at the gate, looked with a surprise I cannot describe on this extraordinary scene. The white babies in the light had seemed to him at first an exquisite little “composition,” which went to his very heart; and the two other figures, half lit up by the stream of unwelcome light from the door, bewildered the young man. Who were they, or what? One indignant, holding her charcoal with artistic energy; the other, startled, gazing at himself with a hostile sentiment, which he could not understand, in her eyes.

“My love,” said the gentle curate, “you should not make a studio of the drawing-room.” Mr. St. John was not disturbed by the wailing of the little boys, to which, I suppose, he was used. “Cicely, this is Mr. Mildmay, from Oxford, who has come – to look at the parish,” he added, with a gentle sigh. “Let us have tea.”

Why did the girl look at him with that paleness of anger in her face? Mr. Mildmay’s attention was distracted from the drawing and the artist, who, naturally, would have interested him most, by the gleam of hostility, the resentment and defiance in Cicely’s eyes.

“Yes, papa,” she said shortly; and with merely an inclination of her head to acknowledge his introduction to her, she took up the children, Charley in one arm, who was half dressed; Harry under the other, whose feet were bare, and carried them out of the room. She had divined the first moment she saw him, a dark figure against the light, who he was; and I cannot describe the bitterness that swelled like a flood through poor Cicely’s heart. It was all over, then! There was no further hope, however fantastical, from College or Chancellor, or Queen! Fantastic, indeed, the hope had been; but Cicely was young, and had been more buoyed up by this delusion, even in her despair, than she was aware of. She felt herself fall down, down into unspeakable depths, and the very heart within her seemed to feel the physical pain of it, lying crushed and sore, throbbing all over with sudden suffering. The passionate force of the shock gave her strength, or I do not think she could have carried the two children away as she did, one in each arm, while the stranger looked on amazed. Little Charley, always peaceable, held her fast round the neck, with his head against her cheek; but Harry, whom she carried under her other arm, lifted his head a little from that horizontal position, and kept up his melancholy whine. She was not fond of the children; how could she be? and I think would gladly have “given them a shake” in the excitement and misery of her feelings. It was so hard upon the girl, that I think she might be forgiven for feeling that thus her young arms were to be hampered all her life; and, meanwhile, she felt that her father and sister would be perfectly amiable to the stranger, who was about to supplant them, and turn them out of their house. This, I am afraid, exasperated Cicely as much as anything else. “These two” would have no arrière pensée; they would be perfectly kind to him, as though he were acting the part of their best friend.

And, indeed, this was how it turned out. When she went back, having disposed of the children, to make the tea, Cicely found Mab and Mr. Mildmay in great amity over the uncompleted drawing. He had been criticising, but he had been praising as well; and Mab was flushed with pleasure and interest. She ran off laughing, to take off her blouse and wash her hands, when Cicely came in, and the elder sister, who felt that her eyes were still red, felt at the same time that her ungenial and constrained reception of him had struck the new-comer. She went and gathered up the account-books from the floor with a sigh. Despair was in her heart. How could she talk and smile as the others had been doing? As for Mr. St. John, he was as pleased with his visitor as if he had brought him something, instead of taking all hope from him. It was rarely the good man saw any but heavy parish people – the rural souls with whom indeed he was friendly, but who had nothing to say to him except about their crops and local gossip. The gossip of Oxford was much sweeter to his ears. He liked to tell of the aspect of things “in my time,” as I suppose we all do; and how different this and that was now-a-days. “I knew him when he was a curate like myself,” he said, with a soft sigh, talking of the dean, that lofty dignitary. “We were at school together, and I used to be the better man;” and this was spoken of the vice-chancellor himself; and he enjoyed and wondered to hear of all their grandeurs. He had met Mildmay on the road, looking through the gate at the rectory, and had addressed him in his suave old-world way as a stranger. Then they had talked of the church, that most natural of subjects between two clergymen; and then, half reluctantly, half with a sense of compulsion, the stranger had told him who he was. Mr. St. John, though he was poor, had all the hospitable instincts of a prince. He insisted that his new acquaintance should come in and see the house, and hear about everything. He would have given the same invitation, he said afterwards, to any probable new resident in the parish, and why not to the new rector? for in Mr. St. John’s mind there was no gall.

But to describe Mildmay’s feelings when he was suddenly introduced into this novel world is more difficult. He was taken entirely by surprise. He did not know anything about the curate in charge. If he thought of his predecessor at all it was the late rector he thought of, who had died on the shores of the Bay of Naples after a life-long banishment from England. He could understand all that; to go away altogether after art, antiquity, Pompeii, classic editings, and æsthetic delights was perfectly comprehensible to the young Oxford man. But this – what was this? The old man before him, so gentle, so suave, so smiling, his own inferior in position, for was he not rector elect, while Mr. St. John was but curate? Yet so far above him in years and experience, and all that constitutes superiority among gentlemen of equal breeding. Why was he here as curate? and why did that girl look at himself with so much suppressed passion in her eyes? and where had the other been trained to draw so well? and what was the meaning of the two children, so unlike all the others, whom his young enemy had carried off impetuously, instead of ringing the bell for their nurse as any one else would have done? Mildmay felt a thrilling sensation of newness as he sat down at the tea-table, and looked on, an interested spectator at all that was proceeding under his eyes. This in its way was evidently life; there was no mistaking the passion that existed underneath this quiet surface, the something more than met the eye. Was it a skeleton in the closet, as the domestic cynic says? But these were not words that seemed to apply to this calm old man and these young girls. It was life, not the quiet of books, and learned talk, and superficial discussion, but a quiet full of possibilities, full of hidden struggle and feeling. Mildmay felt as if he had come out of his den in the dark like an owl, and half blinking in the unusual light, was placed as spectator of some strange drama, some episode full of interest, to the character of which he had as yet no clue.

“You are looking at the furniture; it is not mine,” said Mr. St. John, “except the carpets, which, as you say, are much worn. The other things are all Mr. Chester’s. I am expecting every day to hear what is to be done with them. Most likely they will sell it; if you wanted anything – ”

Mildmay made a gesture of horror in spite of himself, and Mab laughed.

“You do not think Mr. Mildmay wants all that mahogany, papa? The catafalque there, Cicely and I agreed it was more like a tomb in Westminster Abbey than anything else.”

“What is amiss with it?” said Mr. St. John. “I always understood it was very good. I am told they don’t make things nearly so strong or so substantial now. Poor Chester! He was a man of very fine taste, Mr. Mildmay. But why do you laugh, my dear? That was why he was so fond of Italy; shattered health, you know. Those men who are so fond of art are generally excitable; a little thing has an effect upon them. Cicely, give Mr. Mildmay some tea.”

“Yes, papa,” said Cicely; and gave the stranger a look which made him think his tea might be poisoned. Mr. St. John went maundering kindly —

“You said you were going to London, and had left your things at the station? Why shouldn’t you stay all night here instead? There are a great many things that I would like to show you – the church and the school for instance, and I should like to take you to see some of my poor people. Cicely, we can give Mr. Mildmay a bed?”

Cicely looked up at her father quickly. There was a half-entreaty, a pathetic wonder, mingled with anger, in her eyes. “How can you?” she seemed to say. Then she answered hesitating, “There are plenty of beds, but I don’t know if they are aired – if they are comfortable.” Strangely enough, the more reluctant she was to have him, the more inclined Mildmay felt to stay.

“It is very kind,” he said. “I cannot think how it is possible that I can have had the assurance to thrust myself upon you like this. I am afraid Miss St. John thinks it would be very troublesome.”

“Troublesome! There is no trouble at all. Cicely is not so foolish and inhospitable,” said the curate in full current of his open-heartedness. “My dear, it is fine warm weather, and Mr. Mildmay is a young man. He is not afraid of rheumatics like the old people in the parish. He and I will walk up to the station after tea and fetch his bag, and I will show him several things on the way. You will tell Betsy?”

“I will see that everything is ready,” she said, with so much more meaning in the words than was natural or necessary. Her eyes were a little dilated with crying, and slightly red at the edges; there was surprise and remonstrance in them, and she did not condescend by a single word to second her father’s invitation. This settled the question. Had she asked him, Mildmay might have been indifferent; but as she did not ask him, he made up his mind it was quite necessary he should stay.

“I shall perhaps see you finish that group,” he said to Mab, who was interested and amused by the novelty of his appearance, as her father was.

“Ah, but I shall never get them into the same pose! If papa had not come in so suddenly, waking them – besides spoiling my light – ”

“I am afraid it was partly my fault,” he said; “but I did not expect to be brought into the presence of an artist.”

The colour rose on Mab’s cheeks. “Please don’t flatter me,” she said. “I want so much to be an artist. Shall I ever be able to do anything, do you think? for you seem to know.”

Cicely looked at her sister, her eyes sparkling with offence and reproach. “The people who know you best think so,” she said. “It is not right to ask a stranger. How can Mr. Mildmay know?”

How hostile she was! between her smiling pretty sister, who was ready to talk as much as he pleased, and her kind old suave father, what a rugged implacable young woman! What could he have done to her? Mildmay felt as much aggrieved when she called him a stranger, as if it had been a downright injury. “I know a little about art,” he said quite humbly; “enough to perceive that your sister has a great deal of real talent, Miss St. John.”

“Yes, yes, she is clever,” said the curate. “I hope it will be of some use to you, my poor Mab. Now, Mr. Mildmay, let us go. I want to show you the rectory fields, and the real village, which is some way off. You must not think this cluster of houses is Brentburn. It is pleasant walking in the cool of the afternoon, and, my dears, a walk will be good for you too. Come down by the common and meet us. Cicely,” he added in a half-whisper, standing aside to let his guest pass, “my dear, you are not so polite as I hoped. I wish you would look more kind and more pleased.”

“But I am not pleased. Oh, papa, why did you ask him? I cannot bear the sight of him,” she cried.

“My love!” said the astonished curate. He was so much surprised by this outburst that he did not know how to reply. Then he put his hand softly upon her forehead, and looked into her eyes. “I see what it is. You are a little feverish: you are not well. It is the hot weather, no doubt,” he said.

“Oh, papa! I am well enough; but I am very wretched. Let me speak to you when we have got rid of this man – before you go to bed.”

“Surely, my dear,” he said soothingly, and kissed her forehead. “I should advise you to lie down for a little, and keep quiet, and the fever may pass off. But I must not keep my guest waiting,” and with this Mr. St. John went away, talking cheerfully in the hall to his companion as he rejoined him. “It is trying weather,” they heard him saying. “I stopped behind for a moment to speak to my eldest daughter. I do not think she is well.”

“Will papa discuss your health with this new man?” cried Mab. “How funny he is! But don’t be so savage, Ciss. If it must be, let us make the best of it. Mr. Mildmay is very nice to talk to. Let us take whatever amusement is thrown in our way.”

“Oh, amusement!” said Cicely. “You are like papa; you don’t think what is involved. This is an end of everything. What are we to do? Where are we to go to? His name is not Mildmay; it is Ruin and Destruction. It is all I can do not to burst out upon him and ask him, oh! how has he the heart – how has he the heart to come here!”

“If you did I think he would not come,” said Mab calmly. “What a pity people cannot say exactly what they think. But if he gave it up, there would be some one else. We must make up our minds to it. And how beautifully poor papa behaves through it all.”

“I wish he were not so beautiful!” cried Cicely in her despair, almost grinding her white teeth. “I think you will drive me mad between you – papa and you.”

CHAPTER X

IN THE PARISH

MR. MILDMAY had a very pleasant walk. He went through Brentburn proper, which was a mile from the church on the rich woodland side of the parish, an ordinary little village, a mixture of old picturesque Berkshire cottages, with high sloping roofs and aged harmonious mossy brick walls, and very new square houses in the bilious brick of modern use – mean and clean and angular. The cottages, with their wild old gardens and mossed apple-trees delighted him; but the curate shook his head, “They will be the curse of your life,” he said solemnly, at which the young Oxford man was disposed to laugh.

A few people were standing about their doors enjoying the cool evening, at whom the new rector looked with curiosity. They were very commonplace people, with the set hard faces so common among the rural poor, half caused by exposure to the open air, and half by the dull routine in which their life is spent. Mildmay looked at them wistfully. Were they the kind of people among whom he could find the life he sought? A few of the women were gossiping, the men stared blankly at him as he passed, saluting the curate gruffly; and evidently the wag among them made some rough joke, received with loud laughter, upon the two blackcoats.

“Yes,” said the curate mildly, “that fellow Joe Endley is one of the worst in the parish. It was at us, no doubt, they were laughing. Anything above their own level, except money, they don’t understand; and they know I have no money. Good evening, Mr. Wilkins. What a sweet evening it is!”

“Good evening, sir,” said the grocer, coming, with his apron round him from his shop-door. “I thought perhaps as you was comin’ to me, sir, along o’ the letter I sent you.”

“I did not get any letter,” said Mr. St. John, looking at the grocer in a helpless, pitiful way, which his companion remarked wonderingly. The curate seemed to shrink somehow: a painful look came upon his face.

“I sent up this afternoon with my cart,” said Wilkins, “to say as, if it was quite convenient – ”

“My daughter will see to it – my daughter will see to it,” said the curate anxiously. “I am occupied at present, as you perceive, and in a hurry. She will see you, or I, to-morrow.”

And he shuffled on through the dust of the highroad, quickening his pace. His step had been the long, firm, manly step of a man still young, till they met with this interruption. But poor Mr. St. John fell into a shuffle when he met the grocer. His cheek got a hectic flush; he shrank visibly; his knees and his elbows grew prominent. He did not speak again till they had got beyond the village. Then he drew breath, and his natural outline came slowly back. “You will find much hardness among the people,” he said; “Heaven forbid that I should blame them, poor souls: they live hardly, and have hardness to bear from others; but when any question arises between them and one who has unfortunately the niceties – the feelings – that we are brought up to – ” (the curate stopped); “and I never was used to it,” he said, as if to himself, in a low voice.

What did it all mean? the new rector said to himself. I think it was easy enough to divine, for my part; but then the rector was young, and had always been well off, and it did not occur to him that a grocer, simply as grocer, could have any power over a clergyman; more and more he felt convinced that some drama, some domestic tragedy, must be connected with the St. Johns, and he felt more and more eager to find it out. They went to the station, and sent a boy to the rectory with Mildmay’s portmanteau, and then they strayed home by the common, across which the setting sun threw its very last slanting arrow of gold.

“This is delightful!” said Mildmay. “What freedom! what breadth of atmosphere! One feels oneself on the moors, in the great, ample world, not shut in by walls and houses.”

“No, there is little of these,” said the curate; “and it is very healthy, I have always understood: the common is what my girls love. But I don’t see them coming.” He arched his hand over his eyes as a defence against the light, as he looked along the road for his daughters. Mr. St. John had quite recovered himself. I don’t think that even the name of Wilkins would have discouraged him now. In the warm and balmy air he took off his hat, holding up his venerable bare head to the sky. It was a head which might have served for that of an old saint. His white hair was still thick and abundant, his eyes full of soft light, his expression tranquil as the evening. “I have come here in many troubles,” he said, “and I have always been refreshed. I don’t pretend to know much about art, Mr. Mildmay, but nature is always soothing. Greenness cools the eyes whether it is study or tears that have fevered them. But I wonder what has become of the girls.”

Mildmay was charmed by the meditative turn his companion’s remarks had taken, but the question about the girls embarrassed him.

“I am afraid,” he said, “that my intrusion has perhaps given Miss St. John some trouble.”

“No; there is the servant, you know, a very good sort of girl, and Cicely is like her dear mother – never taken by surprise. If you are here as long as I have been you will know how pleasant it is to see a new face. We country folks rust: we fall into a fixed routine. I myself, see, was about to take this little byway unconsciously, a path I often take, forgetting there was any one with me – ”

The curate looked wistfully along the thread of path; it had been worn by his own feet, and he seldom concluded his evening walk otherwise. Mildmay followed the narrow line with his eyes.

“It leads to the churchyard,” he said. “I like a country churchyard. May we go there before we go in? What a pity the church is so new! and this part of Berkshire is rich in old churches, I understand?”

“It is in good repair, and much more wholesome than the old ones,” said Mr. St. John. “They may be more picturesque. Here you can see into the rectory garden, the ground slopes so much; the church is very much higher than the common. It used to be sweet to me, looking back at the lights in the girls’ rooms, when I stood – there they are on the lawn now, Mr. Mildmay. They have not gone out, after all.”

Mildmay, looking down from the churchyard path, felt that it was dishonourable to spy upon the two girls unaware of his scrutiny, whom he could just see within the wall of the rectory garden; but he could not help feeling that this was more and more like a drama which was being played before him. He followed Mr. St. John along the narrow path to the little white stile which admitted to the churchyard. The curate ceased his tranquil talk as they entered that inclosure. He turned mechanically as it seemed, to the left hand, and went round to a white cross upon a grave turned towards the common. It was of common stone, grey with years. The curate took off his hat again, and stood by it quite simply and calmly.

“It used to be sweet to me, standing here, to see the lights in the girls’ rooms,” he said once more. The soft tranquillity of his tone suited the still twilight, the pensive silent plain. It was too still for sorrow, nor was there any touch of unhappiness in the gentle voice. Young Mildmay uncovered too, and stood wondering, reverent, with a swell of sympathy in his heart. Some men would have felt with anguish the unspeakable separation between the mother under the dews and the twinkle of the lights in her children’s windows; but Mr. St. John was not of that mind. Yet, somehow, to have this stranger here made his loss seem fresher to him. “Cicely is very like her mother,” he said, and touched the cross softly with his hand as if caressing it, and turned away. Mr. Mildmay could see that there were two paths up the mound to the white gate, and the meaning of them struck him vividly – one was that by which they had just come from the common, the other led down straight to the rectory. His heart was more touched than I can say, by the gentle fidelity, consoled and calm, yet always tender, which had worn that double line through the grass.