The Curate in Charge by Mrs. Oliphant - HTML preview

CHAPTER XX.
 THE PARISH SCHOOLMISTRESS.

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

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

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

As for Cicely, she had not the slightest notion that any one thought of her so, or thought of her at all, and sometimes as the excitement of the beginning died away she felt her life a weary business enough. No society but little Harry, who always wanted his tea, and Charley, with his thumb in his mouth; and those long hours with the crowd of little girls around her, who were not amusing to have all day long as they used to be for an hour now and then, when the clergyman’s daughter went in among them, received by the schoolmistress curtsying, and with smiles and bobs by the children, and carrying a pleasant excitement with her. How Mab and she had laughed many a day over the funny answers and funnier questions; but they were not funny now. When Mab came down, now and then, from Saturday to Monday, with all her eager communications about her work, Cicely remembered that she too was a girl, and they were happy enough; but in the long dull level of the days after Mab had gone she used to think to herself that she must be a widow without knowing it, left after all the bloom of life was over with her children to work for. “But even that would be better,” Cicely said to herself; “for then, at least, I should be silly about the children, and think them angels, and adore them.” Even that consolation did not exist for her. Mab was working very hard, and there had dawned upon her a glorious prospect, not yet come to anything, but which might mean the height of good fortune. Do not let the reader think less well of Mab because this was not the highest branch of art which she was contemplating. It was not that she hoped at eighteen and a half to send some great picture to the Academy, which should be hung on the line, and at once take the world by storm. What she thought of was the homelier path of illustrations. “If, perhaps, one was to take a little trouble, and try to find out what the book means, and how the author saw a scene,” Mab said; “they don’t do that in the illustrations one sees: the author says one thing, the artist quite another—that, I suppose, is because the artist is a great person and does not mind. But I am nobody. I should try to make out what the reading meant, and follow that.” This was her hope, and whether she succeeds or not, and though she called a book “the reading,” those who write will be grateful to the young artist for this thought. “Remember I am the brother and you are the sister,” cried Mab. It was on the way to the station on a Sunday evening—for both of the girls had to begin work early next morning—that this was said. “And as soon as I make money enough you are to come and keep my house.” Cicely kissed her, and went through the usual process of looking for a woman who was going all the way to London in one of the carriages. This was not very like the brother theory, but Mab was docile as a child. And then the elder sister walked home through the spring darkness with her heart full, wondering if that reunion would ever be.

Mr. Mildmay had been out that evening at dinner at the Ascotts, where he very often went on Sunday. The school was not at all in the way between the Heath and the rectory, yet Cicely met him on her way back. It was a May evening, soft and sweet, with the bloom of the hawthorn on all the hedges, and Cicely was walking along slowly, glad to prolong as much as possible that little oasis in her existence which Mab’s visit made. She was surprised to hear the rector’s voice so close to her. They walked on together for a few steps without finding anything very particular to say. Then each forestalled the other in a question.

“I hope you are liking Brentburn?” said Cicely.

And Mr. Mildmay, in the same breath, said: “Miss St. John, I hope you do not regret coming to the school?”

Cicely, who had the most composure, was the first to reply. She laughed softly at the double question.

“It suits me better than anything else would,” she said. “I did not pretend to take it as a matter of choice. It does best in my circumstances; but you, Mr. Mildmay?”

“I want so much to know about you,” he said, hurriedly. “I have not made so much progress myself as I hoped I should; but you? I keep thinking of you all the time. Don’t think me impertinent. Are you happy in it? Do you feel the satisfaction of living, as it seems to me you must?”

“Happy?” said Cicely, with a low faint laugh. Then tears came into her eyes. She looked at him wistfully, wondering. He so well off, she so poor and restricted. By what strange wonder was it that he put such a question to her? “Do you think I have much cause to be happy?” she said; then added hastily, “I don’t complain, I am not unhappy—we get on very well.”

“Miss St. John,” he said, “I have spoken to you about myself before now. I came here out of a sort of artificial vegetation, or at least, so I felt it, with the idea of getting some hold upon life—true life. I don’t speak of the misery that attended my coming here, for that, I suppose, was nobody’s fault, as people say; and now I have settled down again. I have furnished my house, made what is called a home for myself, though an empty one; and lo, once more I find myself as I was at Oxford, looking at life from outside, spying upon other people’s lives, going to gaze at it enviously as, I do at you through the end window——”

“Mr. Mildmay!” Cicely felt her cheeks grow hot, and was glad it was dark so that no one could see. “I am a poor example,” she said, with a smile. “I think, if you called it vegetation with me, you would be much more nearly right than when you used that word about your life at Oxford, which must have been full of everything impossible to me. Mine is vegetation; the same things to be done at the same hours every day; the poor little round of spelling and counting, never getting beyond the rudiments. Nobody above the age of twelve, or I might say of four, so much as to talk to. I feel I am living to-night,” she added, in a more lively tone, “because Mab has been with me since yesterday. But otherwise—indeed you have made a very strange mistake.”

“It is you who are mistaken,” said the young rector, warmly. “The rest of us are ghosts; what are we all doing? The good people up there,” and he pointed towards the Heath, “myself, almost everybody I know? living for ourselves—living to get what we like for ourselves, to make ourselves comfortable—to improve ourselves, let us say, which is the best perhaps, yet despicable like all the rest. Self-love, self-comfort, self-importance, self-culture, all of them one more miserable, more petty than the other—even self-culture, which in my time I have considered divine.”

“And it is, I suppose, isn’t it?” said Cicely. “It is what in our humble feminine way is called improving the mind. I have always heard that was one of the best things in existence.”

“Do you practise it?” he asked, almost sharply.

“Mr. Mildmay, you must not be hard upon me—how can I? Yes, I should like to be able to pass an examination and get a—what is it called?—diplôme, the French say. With that one’s chances are so much better,” said Cicely, with a sigh; “but I have so little time.”

How the young man’s heart swelled in the darkness!

“Self-culture,” he said, with a half laugh, “must be disinterested, I fear, to be worthy the name. It must have no motive but the advancement of your mind for your own sake. It is the culture of you for you, not for what you may do with it. It is a state, not a profession.”

“That is harder upon us still,” said Cicely. “Alas! I shall never be rich enough nor have time enough to be disinterested. Good-night, Mr. Mildmay; that is the way to the rectory.”

“Are you tired of me so soon?”

“Tired of you?” said Cicely, startled; “oh no! It is very pleasant to talk a little; but that is your way.”

“I should like to go with you to your door, please,” he said; “this is such an unusual chance. Miss St. John, poor John Wyborn is dying; he has four children and a poor little wife, and he is just my age.”

There was a break in the rector’s voice that made Cicely turn her face towards him and silently hold out her hand.

“What am I to say to them?” he cried; “preach patience to them? tell them it is for the best? I who am not worthy the poor bread I eat, who live for myself, in luxury, while he—ay, and you——”

“Tell them,” said Cicely, the tears dropping from her eyes, “that God sees all—that comforts them the most; that He will take care of the little ones somehow and bring them friends. Oh, Mr. Mildmay, it is not for me to preach to you; I know what you mean; but they, poor souls, don’t go thinking and questioning as we do—and that comforts them the most. Besides,” said Cicely, simply, “it is true; look at me—you spoke of me. See how my way has been made plain for me! I did not know what I should do; and now I can manage very well, live, and bring up the children; and after all these are the great things, and not pleasure,” she added, with a soft little sigh.

“The children!” he said. “There is something terrible at your age to hear you speak so. Why should you be thus burdened—why?”

“Mr. Mildmay,” said Cicely, proudly, “one does not choose one’s own burdens. But now that I have got mine I mean to bear it, and I do not wish to be pitied. I am able for all I have to do.”

“Cicely!” he cried out, suddenly interrupting her, bending low, so that for the moment she thought he was on his knees, “put it on my shoulders! See, they are ready; make me somebody in life, not a mere spectator. What! are you not impatient to see me standing by looking on while you are working? I am impatient, and wretched, and solitary, and contemptible. Put your burden on me, and see if I will not bear it! Don’t leave me a ghost any more!”

“Mr. Mildmay!” cried Cicely, in dismay. She did not even understand what he meant in the confusion of the moment. She gave him no answer, standing at her own door, alarmed and bewildered; but only entreated him to leave her, not knowing what to think. “Please go, please go; I must not ask you to come in,” said Cicely. “Oh, I know what you mean is kind, whatever it is; but please, Mr. Mildmay, go! Good-night!”

“Good-night!” he said. “I will go since you bid me; but I will come back to-morrow for my answer. Give me a chance for life.”

“What does he mean by life?” Cicely said to herself, as, trembling and amazed, she went back into her bare little parlour, which always looked doubly bare after Mab had gone. Annie had heard her coming, and had lighted the two candles on the table; but though it was still cold, there was no fire in the cheerless little fireplace. The dark walls, which a large cheerful lamp could scarcely have lit, small as the room was, stood like night round her little table, with those two small sparks of light. A glass of milk and a piece of bread stood ready on a little tray, and Annie had been waiting with some impatience her young mistress’s return in order to get to bed. The little boys were asleep long ago, and there was not a sound in the tiny house as Cicely sat down to think, except the sound of Annie overhead, which did not last long. Life! Was this life, or was he making a bad joke at her expense? What did he mean? It would be impossible to deny that Cicely’s heart beat faster and faster as it became clearer and clearer to her what he did mean; but to talk of life! Was this life—this mean, still, solitary place, which nobody shared, which neither love nor fellowship brightened? for even the children, though she devoted her life to them, made no warm response to Cicely’s devotion. She sat till far into the night thinking, wondering, musing, dreaming, her heart beating, her head buzzing with the multitude of questions that crowded upon her. Life! It was he who was holding open to her the gates of life; the only life she knew, but more attractive than she had ever known it. Cicely was as much bewildered by the manner of his appeal as by its object. Could he—love her? Was that the plain English of it? Or was there any other motive that could make him desirous of taking her burden upon his shoulders? Could she, if a man did love her, suffer him to take such a weight on his shoulders? And then—she did not love him. Cicely said this to herself faltering. “No, she had never thought of loving him. She had felt that he understood her. She had felt that he was kind when many had not been kind. There had been between them rapid communications of sentiment, impulses flashing from heart to heart, which so often accompany very close relations. But all that is not being in love,” Cicely said to herself. Nothing could have taken her more utterly by surprise; but the surprise had been given, the shock received. Its first overpowering sensation was over, and now she had to look forward to the serious moment when this most serious thing must be settled, and her reply given.

Cicely did not sleep much that night. She did not know very well what she was doing next morning, but went through her work in a dazed condition, fortunately knowing it well enough to go on mechanically, and preserving her composure more because she was partially stupified than for any other reason. Mr. Mildmay was seen on the road by the last of the little scholars going away, who made him little bobs of curtsies, and of whom he asked where Miss St. John was?

“Teacher’s in the school-room,” said one unpleasant little girl.

“Please, sir,” said another, with more grace or genius, “Miss Cicely’s ain’t come out yet. She’s a-settling of the things for to-morrow.”

Upon this young woman the rector bestowed a sixpence and a smile. And then he went into the school-room, the place she had decided to receive him in. The windows were all open, the desks and forms in disorder, the place as mean and bare as could be, with the maps and bright-coloured pictures of animal history on the unplastered walls. Cicely stood by her own table, which was covered with little piles of plain needle-work, her hand resting upon the table, her heart beating loud. What was she to say to him? The truth somehow, such as it really was; but how?

But Mr. Mildmay had first a great deal to say. He gave her the history of his life since August, and the share she had in it. He thought now, and said, that from the very first day of his arrival in Brentburn, when she looked at him like an enemy, what he was doing now had come into his mind; and on this subject he was eloquent, as a man has a right to be once in his life, if no more. He had so much to say, that he forgot the open public place in which he was telling his love-tale, and scarcely remarked the little response she made. But when it came to her turn to reply, Cicely found herself no less impassioned, though in a different way.

“Mr. Mildmay,” she said, “there is no equality between us. How can you, such a man as you, speak like this to a girl such as I am? Don’t you see what you are doing—holding open to me the gates of Paradise; offering me back all I have lost; inviting me to peace out of trouble, to rest out of toil, to ease and comfort, and the respect of the world.”

“Cicely!” he said; he was discouraged by her tone. He saw in it his own fancy thrown back to him, and for the first time perceived how fantastic that was. “You do not mean,” he said, faltering, “that to work hard as you are doing, and give up all the pleasure of existence, is necessary to your—your—satisfaction in your life?”

“I don’t mean that,” she said simply; “but when you offer to take up my burden, and to give me all your comforts, don’t you see that one thing—one great thing—is implied to make it possible? Mr. Mildmay, I am not—in love with you,” she added, in a low tone, looking up at him, the colour flaming over her face.

He winced, as if he had received a blow; then recovering himself, smiled. “I think I have enough for two,” he said, gazing at her, as pale as she was red.

“But don’t you see, don’t you see,” cried Cicely passionately, “if it was you, who are giving everything, that was not in love, it would be simple; but I who am to accept everything, who am to put burdens on you, weigh you down with others beside myself, how can I take it all without loving you? You see—you see it is impossible!”

“Do you love any one else?” he asked, too much moved for grace of speech, taking the hand she held up to demonstrate this impossibility. She looked at him again, her colour wavering, her eyes filling, her lips quivering.

“Unless it is you—nobody!” she said.

THE END.