THE girls I need not say had been engaged in calculations long and weary during these intervening days. Cicely, who had at once taken possession of all the details of housekeeping, had by this time made a discovery of the most overwhelming character; which was that the curate was in arrears with all the tradespeople in the parish, and that the “books,” instead of having the trim appearance she remembered, were full of long lists of things supplied, broken by no safe measure of weeks, but running on from month to month and from year to year, with here and there a melancholy payment “to account” set down against it. Cicely was young and she had no money, and knew by her own experience how hard it was to make it; and she was overwhelmed by this discovery. She took the books in her lap and crept into the drawing-room beside Mab, who was making a study of the children in the dreary stillness of the afternoon. The two little boys were posed against the big sofa, on the carpet. The young artist had pulled off their shoes and stockings, and, indeed, left very little clothes at all upon Charley, who let her do as she pleased with him without remonstrance, sucking his thumb and gazing at her with his pale blue eyes. Harry had protested, but had to submit to the taking away of his shoes, and now sat gloomily regarding his toes, and trying to keep awake with supernatural lurches and recoveries; Charley, more placid, had dropped off. He had still his thumb in his mouth, his round cheek lying flushed against the cushion, his round white limbs huddled up in a motionless stillness of sleep. Harry sat upright, as upright as possible, and nodded. Mab had got them both outlined on her paper, and was working with great energy and absorption when Cicely came in with the books in her lap. “Oh, go away, go away,” cried Mab, “whoever you are! Don’t disturb them! If you wake them all is lost!”
Cicely stood at the door watching the group. Mab had improvised an easel, she had put on a linen blouse over her black and white muslin dress. She had closed the shutters of two windows, leaving the light from the middle one to fall upon the children. In the cool shade, moving now and then a step backwards to see the effect of her drawing, her light figure, full of purpose and energy, her pretty white hand a little stained with the charcoal with which she was working, she was a picture in herself. Cicely, her eyes very red and heavy—for indeed she had been crying—and the bundle of grocery books in her apron, paused and looked at her sister with a gush of admiration, a sharp pinch of something like envy. Mab could do this which looked like witchcraft, while she could only count, and count, and cry over these hopeless books. What good would crying do? If she cried her eyes out it would not pay a sixpence. Cicely knew that she had more “sense” than Mab. It was natural. She was nineteen, Mab only eighteen, and a year is so much at that age! But Mab was clever. She could do something which Cicely could not even understand; and she would be able to make money, which Cicely could scarcely hope to do. It was envy, but of a generous kind. Cicely went across the room quite humbly behind backs, not to disturb her sister’s work, and sat down by the darkened window, through which a fresh little breeze from the garden was coming in. It distracted her for a moment from her more serious cares to watch the work going on. She thought how pretty Mab looked, lighting up the poetical darkness, working away so vigorously and pleasantly with only that pucker of anxiety in her white forehead, lest her sitters should move. “Oh, quiet, quiet!” she said, almost breathless. “He must not either go to sleep or wake right up, till I have put them in. Roll the ball to him softly, Cicely, quite softly as if he were a kitten.” Cicely put away the terrible books and knelt down on the carpet and rolled the big ball, which Mab had been moving with her foot towards little dozing Harry, who watched it with eyes glazing over with sleep. The light and the warmth and the stillness were too much for him. Just as the ball arrived at his soft little pink toes he tumbled over all in a heap, with his head upon Charley. Mab gave a cry of vexation. “But never mind, it was not your fault,” she said, to make up for her impatience. And indeed Cicely felt it was rather hard to be blamed.
“After all it does not matter,” said Mab. “I have done enough—but I shall never never get them to look like that again. How pretty children are even when they are ugly! What pictures such things make! how anybody can help making pictures all the day long I can’t imagine. It is only that you will not try.”
“I would try if I had any hope,” said Cicely; “I would do anything. Oh, I wonder if there is anything I could do!”
“Why, of course you can teach,” said Mab, consoling her, “a great deal better than I can. I get impatient; but you shan’t teach; I am the brother and you are the sister, and you are to keep my house.”
“That was all very well,” said Cicely, “so long as there was only us two; but now look,” she cried pointing to the two children lying over one another in the light, asleep, “there is them—and papa——”
“They are delightful like that,” cried Mab starting up; “oh, quick, give me that portfolio with the paper! I must try them again. Just look at all those legs and arms!—and yet they are not a bit pretty in real life,” cried Mab in the fervour of her art, making a fine natural distinction.
Cicely handed her all she wanted, and looked on with wondering admiration for a moment; but then she shook her head slightly and sighed. “You live in another world,” she said, “you artists. Oh, Mab, I don’t want to disturb you, but if you knew how unhappy I am——”
“What is the matter? and why should you be more anxious than papa is?” cried Mab busy with her charcoal. “Don’t make yourself unhappy, dear. Things always come right somehow. I think so as well as papa.”
“You don’t mind either of you so long as you have—— Oh, you don’t know how bad things are. Mab! we are in debt.”
Mab stopped her work, appalled, and looked her sister in the face. This was a terrible word to the two girls, who never had known what it was to have any money. “In debt!” she said.
“Yes, in debt—do you wonder now that I am wretched? I don’t know even if papa knows; and now he has lost even the little income he had, and we have given up our situations. Oh, Mab! Mab! think a little; what are we to do?”
Mab let her chalk fall out of her hand. She went and knelt down by Cicely’s side, and put one soft cheek against another as if that would do any good. “Oh, how can I tell?” she said with tears in her eyes. “I never was any good to think. Is it much—is it very bad? is there anything we can do?”
Cicely shed a few tears over the butcher’s book which was uppermost. “If we were staying here for ever,” she said, “as we were all foolish enough to think when we came—we might have paid it with a struggle. I should have sent away those two maids, and tried to do everything myself.”
“Everything, Cicely?” Mab was as much appalled at the thought of life without a Betsy, as a fine lady would be denuded of her establishment. The want of a maid-of-all-work represents a dreadful coming down in life, almost more than a greater apparent loss does. Her countenance fell, the corners of her mouth took a downward curve, and her pride received a crushing blow. Yet if you consider what Betsy was, the loss was not deadly. But as usual it was not the actual but the sentimental view of the case which struck the girls.
“Yes,” said Cicely, with a solemn paleness on her face. She felt the humiliation too. “I shouldn’t mind doing things,” she said, her voice breaking a little; “it is what people will think. Us, a clergyman’s daughters! But what is the use even of that?” she cried; “it will do no good now. Papa must leave Brentburn, and we have not a shilling, not a penny now, to pay those things with. I think and think—but I cannot tell what we are to do.”
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.”