The Curate in Charge

Mr. St. John, however, made a hesitating pause at a corner before he took this second way home. “My other poor wife, poor Mrs. St. John, lies there; but that I can show you to-morrow,” he said, in his gentle unchanged voice, and quietly went on to the gate, leading the way. “Supper will be ready,” the curate continued, when they emerged again upon the turf. “We live a very simple primitive life here; our meals are not arranged quite as yours are, but it comes to the same thing. In short, whatever seeming differences there are, all ways of living come to much the same thing.”

Did they so? Mr. St. John’s meaning was of the simplest. He meant that whether you called your latest meal dinner or supper did not matter much; but his companion gave it a broader sense. With a jar of laughter in his mind that broke up the reverential respect of the previous moment, he followed his simple host into the house, which by-and-by was to be his own house. Poor Mrs. St. John, who was not the mother of the girls; whose grave could be shown to-morrow; for whose sake these paths had not been worn across the grass; the stranger gave her her little meed of human notice in that smothered laugh. Poor Miss Brown!

The supper was homely enough – cold meat and salad, and bread and cheese and jam – and would have been cheerful and pleasant, Mr. Mildmay thought, but for the absorbed looks of that elder daughter, who was still somewhat unfriendly to him. He went upstairs to his room, where a large mahogany four-post bed, with heavy moreen hangings, awaited him, before the night was very far advanced. When he had been there for a short time, he saw that his door was not shut, and went to close it. As he did so, he caught a glimpse of Cicely going downstairs. She had retired some time before he did, so that her reappearance struck him all the more; and she was quite unconscious that he saw her. She carried a candle in one hand, and a pile of tradesmen’s books in the other. She was pale, her look fixed, her nostrils a little dilated, like some one going to a painful task, he thought. As she moved down the dark staircase, a speck of light, with her candle shining on the whiteness of her face and dress, the walls, by which she flitted, looked more and more like the scenery of a drama to the young man. If they only would have opened, as in the real theatre, and shown him where she was going, what she was about to do! But this was very mean curiosity on Mr. Mildmay’s part. He shut his door humbly, that she might not be disturbed by the sound, and after a while went meekly to bed, trying to say to himself that he had no right to pry into the business of these good people, who had been so kind to him; though, indeed, she had not been kind to him, he reflected, by way of lessening his own sense of guilt. He heard subdued voices below for some time after, and wished more than ever that the scenery would open, and reveal this scene to him; but the substantial walls stood fast, and the moreen curtains hung grimly about him, shutting out everything. There was no compromise about the furniture at the rectory; the pillared bedposts stood square, and stern, and strong, till poor Mildmay, dozing within them in the warm August night, thought them Samson’s pillars in the house of Dagon, or the pillars of the earth.

Cicely went down to her father very resolute with her books. She had intended to say very little to him, but he had exasperated her, and she felt that she could not let him off. But her courage sank a little when she got into the study, and saw his white head in the light of the solitary candle. There were two candles on the table, but faithful to an old frugal habit, Mr. St. John had put out one of them when his guest left him. The room was good-sized, and full of huge mahogany bookcases; and as the table was at one end of it, there is no telling how full of gloom it was. One of the windows was open, and a great solid piece of darkness seemed to have taken its place, and to be pouring in. Mr. St. John was looking over some old sermons, bending his head over the papers, with spectacles upon his nose, which he took off when Cicely came in. He did not usually sit up so long, and he was rather aggrieved at the late interview she had asked for. He did not like to be disturbed out of his usual way, and he felt that she was going to speak to him about Wilkins, the most painful subject which could be suggested. Cicely, too, when he raised his head, and took off his spectacles, found the interview a great deal more difficult than in her excited feelings she had supposed.

“Well, my dear,” he said gently; “you wanted to speak to me.” He gave a little shiver when he saw the books in her hand.

“Yes, papa,” she said, laying them down on the table; and then there was a pause. The soft night air came in, and crept wistfully about the room, moving the curtains. When it approaches midnight, even in August, there is always something chill and mournful in the night wind.

“I wanted to speak to you,” said Cicely, catching her breath a little; “it was about the books. I don’t know if you have looked at them lately. Oh, papa! do you know that we are – in debt? I don’t know how to say it – a great deal in debt!”

“Not a great deal, my dear,” he said faintly; “something, I know. Wilkins spoke to me to-day – almost before Mr. Mildmay.”

“It is not Wilkins alone,” said Cicely solemnly; “it is everybody. The butcher, too; and, oh! so many little people. How are they ever to be paid? When I looked over the books to-day, not knowing – Oh! do you know how it has happened? Can they be cheating? It is my only hope.”

“My dear,” said the curate, faltering, “better that one should have done wrong than that a great many should have done wrong. Poor Mrs. St. John – nay, I should say both of us, Cicely; for I was also to blame. We were not like your mother, my dear; it all came natural to your mother; but she, or rather we – ” Mr. St. John’s voice sank into an indistinct confusion. He was too good to blame the poor woman who was dead, and he did not know how to meet the eyes thus shining upon him, youthful, inexorable, of Hester’s child. But even Cicely was moved by her father’s wistful looks, and the humility of his tone.

“If only one could see any way of paying them,” she said; “if even we had been staying here! I had a plan, and we might have done it. And it brings it all so near, and makes it so certain, to see this man.”

“My love,” said the curate remonstrating, “we knew that some one must come. It is not his fault. Why should we be unkind to him?”

“Unkind! Oh papa!” cried Cicely in her exasperation, “what had we to do with him? It was not our business to feast him and pet him. But that is nothing,” she said, trembling with excitement; “I will not blame you, papa, for that or anything, if only you will say now what you are going to do, or where you think we can go, or what I must say to these poor people. We cannot stay here and starve, or till they put us in prison – only tell me what we must do.”

“How can I tell you, Cicely,” said the curate, “when I do not know myself? I must advertise or something,” he said helplessly. “I am old, my dear. Few people want a curate of my age; I suppose it almost looks like a stigma on a man to be a curate at my age.”

“Papa!” Cicely stopped short in what she was going to say, and looked at him with strained and anxious eyes. She had meant to assail him for still being a curate, but his self-condemnation closed the girl’s lips, or rather roused her in defence.

“Yes,” said Mr. St. John, “you may say I ought to have thought of that sooner; but when things go on for a long time one asks one’s self why should not they go on for ever? ‘He said, There will be peace in my time.’ That was selfish of Hezekiah, my dear, very selfish, when you come to think of it. But I dare say it never seemed so to him, and neither did it to me.”

Cicely was utterly overpowered by this; her anger and impatience died out of her, and compunction and remorse rose in her heart. “That is not the right way to look at it,” she said. “It is a shame that a man like you should only be a curate – oh, a shame to the Church and every one! Mr. Chester, who never was here, never did anything, what right had he to be the rector? – and this other person – ” It was so necessary for poor Cicely in the disturbance of her mind to be angry with some one that naturally her wrath grew wild and bitter when she was free to pour it out upon strangers.

“Hush! hush! my dear,” said the curate, with a half smile at her vehemence; for indeed he was deeply relieved to have the tide of indignation turned away from himself.

“Why should I hush, papa? It is your own college, you say; but they never take the trouble to ask who is at Brentburn, who has been taking the duty, who has looked after the people when the rector has been so long away. When people have the patronage of a parish in their hands, ought they not to know about it? And how did they dare, how did they venture, to give it to anybody but you?”

“You don’t understand,” said Mr. St. John. “The livings are given to the Fellows, Cicely, to people who have distinguished themselves. The dons have no right to alienate a living, as it were, to put it away from those who have a right to it, and give it to one like me.”

“What have they distinguished themselves in, papa? In Latin and Greek – which will do a great deal in the parish, don’t you think? whereas you have distinguished yourself in Brentburn – ”

“I have not done very much, my dear,” said the curate, shaking his head.

“You have done all that has been done, papa; what are those college people worth? This fine gentleman!” cried Cicely, with scorn. (I wonder poor Mildmay did not feel himself shrink even within his four pillars and moreen curtains.) “He knows about art if you please, and shudders at the sight of Mr. Chester’s mahogany. Poor old things,” the girl cried, turning round to look at the old bookcases with her eyes streaming, “I only know how fond I am of them now!”

I cannot tell how thankful her father was that the conversation had taken this turn. He too felt tenderly towards the old unlovely walls which had sheltered him so long, and in the circumstances he felt it no harm to speak a little more strongly than he felt. He looked round upon the ghostly room so dark in all its corners. “A great many things have happened to us here,” he said; “this was the first room we sat in, your mother and I. What changes it has seen! I don’t know how to make up my mind to leave it.”

This brought back the girl to the original question. “But now,” she said, drying her eyes, “there is no choice – we must leave it. I suppose that is what this Mr. Mildmay has really come about? He will give you some little time, I suppose. But papa, papa!” said Cicely, with a stamp of her foot to emphasize her words, “don’t you see you must decide something – make up your mind to something? Hoping on till the last day will do no good to any one. And to think we should be so deep in debt! Oh, papa, what are we to do?”

“My dear, do not be hard upon me,” said poor St. John; “I acknowledge, indeed, that it was my fault.”

“It was not your fault – but I don’t blame anybody. There was illness and weakness, and some people can and some people can’t,” said Cicely, with that mercy and toleration which are always, I fear, more or less, the offspring of contempt. “Let us not go back upon that – but, oh, tell me, what is to be done now?”

Mr. St. John shook his venerable head piteously. “What do you think, Cicely?” he said.

This was all she could get from him; and, oh, how glad he was when he was permitted to go to bed, and be done with it! He could not tell what to do – anything he had ever done had been done for him (if it is not a bull to say so), and he had no more idea what independent step to take in this emergency, than one of the little boys had, to whose room he paid a half-surreptitious visit on his way to his own. Poor little souls! they were surreptitious altogether; even their father felt they had no right to be there in his daughters’ way. He went in, shading his candle with his hand, not to disturb the slumbers of Annie, the little nursemaid, and approached the two little cots on tip-toe, and looked at the two little white faces on the pillows. “Poor little things,” he said to himself. Miss Brown was well out of it; she had escaped all this trouble, and could not be called to account, either for the babies, or those debts, which thus rose up against her in judgment. A dim giddiness of despair had made Mr. St. John’s head swim while his daughter was questioning him; but now that the pressure was removed he was relieved. He sighed softly as he left the subject altogether, and said his prayers, and slept soundly enough. Neither the debts nor the babies weighed upon him – at least “no more than reason;” he was quite able to sleep and to forget.

When Mr. Mildmay came downstairs next morning, and looked in at the open door of the dining-room, he saw Cicely “laying the cloth” there, putting down the white cups and saucers, and preparing the breakfast-table with her own hands. He was so much surprised at this, that he withdrew hastily, before she perceived him, with an uneasy sense that she might not like to be caught in such an occupation, and went to the garden, where, however, he could still see her through the open windows. He was not used to anything of the kind, and it surprised him much. But when he got outside he began to reflect, why should she be ashamed of it? There was nothing in the action that was not graceful or seemly. He saw her moving about, arranging one thing after another, and the sight made somehow a revolution in his mind. He had been in the habit of thinking it rather dreadful, that a man should expose his wife – a lady – to be debased into such ignoble offices, or that any gentlewoman should have such things to do. This was the first time he had ever seen domestic business of a homely kind done by a lady, and my dilettante was utterly annoyed at himself, when he found that, instead of being hurt and wounded by the sight, he liked it! Terrible confession! He went up and down the garden walks, pretending to himself that he was enjoying the fresh air of the morning, but actually peeping, spying, at the windows, watching Miss St. John arrange the breakfast. She had not seen him, but, quite unconscious of observation, absorbed in her own thoughts, she went on with her occupation. There were more things to do than to put the table to rights, for Betsy’s work was manifold, and did not admit of very careful housemaid work. Mr. Mildmay watched her for some time, coming and going; and then he became aware of another little scene which was going on still nearer to himself. Out from a side door came the two little boys, hand in hand, with their hats tied on, and overshadowing the little pallid faces like two mushrooms. They were followed out by their little nurse, who watched their decorous exit with approval. “Now take your walk, till I come and fetch you,” said this small guardian; upon which the two little urchins, tottering, but solemn, began a serious promenade, so far along the gravel walk, so far back again, turning at each end as on an imaginary quarterdeck. The little boys tottered now and then, but recovered themselves, and went on steadily up and down, backward and forward, without a break. Mildmay was fond of children (so long as they did not bore him), and he was more amused than he could say. He made a few steps across the lawn to meet them, and held out his hands. “Come along here,” he said; “come on the grass.” The solemn babies paused and looked at him, but were not to be beguiled from their steady promenade. Their portentous gravity amazed him – even the children were mysterious in this romantic rectory. He went up to meet them on their next turn.

“Come, little ones,” he said, “let us be friends. What are your names?”

They stood and looked at him with their big blue eyes, holding fast by each other. They were unprepared for this emergency, as their father was unprepared for the bigger emergency in which he found himself. At last one small piping voice responded “Harry!” the other instinctively began to suck his thumb.

“Harry – and what else? – come, tell me,” said the new rector; “you are not both Harry.” He stood looking at them, and they stood and looked at him; and the two babies, three years old, understood as much about that quintessence of Oxford, and education and culture, as he did of them; they gazed at him with their four blue eyes exactly in a row. “Come, speak,” he said, laughing; “you have lost your tongues.” This reproach roused Charlie, who took his thumb out of his mouth and put his whole hand in, to search for the tongue which was not lost.

The sound of Mildmay’s voice roused Cicely. She came to the window, and looking out saw him there, standing in front of the children. Many schemes had been throbbing in her head all night. She had not slept tranquilly, like her father. She had been pondering plans till her brain felt like a honeycomb, each cell holding some active notion. She paused a moment, all the pulses in her beginning to throb, and looked out upon the opportunity before her. Then, after a moment’s hesitation, she put down the little brush she held in her hand, threw up the window a little higher and stepped out – to try one other throw, though the game seemed played out, with Fortune and Fate!

CHAPTER XI

CICELY’S APPEAL

CICELY ST. John was not in the least beautiful. The chief charm she had, except her youthful freshness, was the air of life, activity, and animation which breathed about her. Dulness, idleness, weariness, langour were almost impossible to the girl – impossible, at least, except for the moment. To be doing something was a necessity of her nature, and she did that something so heartily, that there was nothing irritating in her activity. Life (but for bills and debts, and the inaction of others) was a pleasure to her. Her perpetual motion was so easy and pleasant and harmonious, that it jarred upon nobody. When she came out, suddenly stepping from the dining-room window, all the sweetness of the morning seemed to concentrate in this one figure, so bright, so living, so full of simple power; and this, after the sombre agitation and distress in which she had been enveloped on the previous night, was the most extraordinary revelation to the stranger, who did not know Cicely. He could scarcely believe it was the same, any more than a man could believe a sunshiny, brilliant summer morning to be the same as the pallid, rainy troubled dawn which preceded the sunrising. Cicely had been entirely cast down in the evening; every way of escape seemed to have closed upon her; she was in despair. But the night had brought counsel, as it so often does; and to-day she had risen full of plans and resolutions and hopes, and was herself again, as much as if there were no debts in her way, as if her father’s position was as sure and stable as they had all foolishly thought it. The moment she came into this little group in the garden its character changed. Two poor little startled babies gazing at a man who understood nothing about them, and gazed back at them with a wonder as great as their own, without any possible point on which they could come into contact: this is what the curious encounter had been. Mildmay, as thinking himself much the most advanced being, smiled at the children, and experienced a certain amusement in their bewildered, helpless looks; yet he was not a bit wiser in knowledge of them, in power to help them, in understanding of their incomplete natures, than they were in respect to him. But when Cicely stepped out, the group grew human. Whatever was going to be done, whatever was necessary to be done, or said, she was the one capable of doing or saying. Her light, firm step rang on the gravel with a meaning in it; she comprehended both the previously helpless sides of the question, and made them into a whole. Her very appearance had brightness and relief in it. The children (as was natural and proper) were swathed in black woollen frocks, trimmed with crape, and looked under their black hats like two little black mushrooms, with their heads tilted back. Cicely, too, possessed decorous mourning for poor Mrs. St. John; but at home, in the morning, Mab and she considered it sufficient in the circumstances to wear black and white prints, in which white predominated, with black ribbons; so that her very appearance agreed with the sunshine. May would have suited her perhaps better than August, but still she was like the morning, ready for whatever day might bring. Mildmay saluted her with a curious sensation of surprise and pleasure; for this was the one, he perceived at once, who had looked at him with so much hostility – and the change in her was very agreeable. Even the children were moved a little. Charley’s mouth widened over his thumb with a feeble smile, and Harry took his gaze from Mildmay to fix it upon her, and murmured “Zat’s Cicely,” getting over her name with a run, and feeling that he had achieved a triumph. Little Annie, the nursemaid, however, who was jealous of the sisters, appeared at this moment, and led her charges away.

“Funny little souls!” Mildmay said, looking after them; then fearing he might have offended his hostess, and run the risk of driving her back into her former hostility, he said something hastily about the garden, which, of course, was the safest thing to do.

“Yes, it is a nice garden,” said Cicely; “at least, you will be able to make it very nice. We have never taken enough trouble with it, or spent enough money upon it, which means the same thing. You are very fond of the country, Mr. Mildmay?”

“Am I?” he said. “I really did not know.”

“Of country amusements, then – riding, and that sort of thing? We are quite near the race-ground, and this, I believe, is a very good hunting country.”

“But these are not clerical amusements, are they?” he said, laughing; “not the things one would choose a parish for?”

“No; certainly papa takes no interest in them: but then he is old; he does not care for amusement at all.”

“And why should you think amusement is my great object? Do I look so utterly frivolous?” said Mildmay, piqued.

“Nay,” said Cicely, “I don’t know you well enough to tell how you look. I only thought perhaps you had some reason for choosing Brentburn out of all the world; perhaps love of the country, as I said; or love for – something. It could not be croquet – which is the chief thing in summer – for that you could have anywhere,” she added, with a nervous little laugh.

“I hope, Miss St. John, there are other motives – ”

“Oh yes, many others. You might be going to be married, which people say is a very common reason; but indeed you must not think I am prying. It was only – curiosity. If you had not some object,” said Cicely, looking at him with a wistful glance, “you would never leave Oxford, where there is society and books and everything any one can desire, to come here.”

“You think that is everything any one could desire?” he said smiling, with a flattered sense of his superiority – having found all these desirable things too little to content him – over this inexperienced creature. “But, Miss St. John, you forget the only motive worth discussing. There is a great deal that is very pleasant in Oxford – society, as you say, and books, and art, and much besides; but I am of no use to any one there. All the other people are just as well educated, as well off, as good, or better than I am. I live only to enjoy myself. Now, one wants more than that. Work, something to exercise one’s highest faculties. I want to do something for my fellow-creatures; to be of a little use. There must be much to do, much to improve, much to amend in a parish like this – ”

A rapid flush of colour came to Cicely’s face. “To improve and amend!” she said quickly. “Ah! you speak at your ease, Mr. Mildmay – in a parish where papa has been working for twenty years!”

Mildmay gave her a startled, wondering look. To be thus interrupted while you are riding, full tilt, your favourite hobby, is very confusing. He scarcely took in the meaning of the words “working for twenty years.”

“Twenty years – all my lifetime and more; and you think you can mend it all at once like an old shoe!” cried Cicely, her cheeks flaming. Then she said, subduing herself, “I beg your pardon. What you say is quite right, I know.”

But by this time her words began to take their proper meaning to his mind. “Has Mr. St. John been here so long?” he said. “I hope you don’t think I undervalue his work. I am sure it must have been better than anything I with my inexperience can do; but yet – ”