Mab, it is needless to say, came down at once with Aunt Jane, utterly crushed and helpless with sorrow. Poor Cicely, who was only beginning to realize what it was, and to make sure that her father absolutely was dead, and beyond the reach of all bringing back, had to rouse herself, and take her sister into her arms and console her. Mab sobbed quietly when she was in her sister’s arms, feeling a sense of strong protection in them.
“I have still you, Cicely,” she said, clinging to her.
“But Cicely has no one,” said Aunt Jane, kissing the pale girl with that compassionate insight which age sometimes brings even to those who do not possess it by nature. “But it is best for you to have them all to look after, if you could but see it, my poor child!”
“I do see it,” said Cicely – and then she had to disentangle herself from Mab’s clinging, and to go out of the room where they had shut themselves up, to see somebody about the “arrangements,” though indeed everybody was very kind and spared her as much as they could.
After the first shock was over it may well be supposed what consultations there were within the darkened rooms. The funeral did not take place till the following Tuesday, as English custom demands, and the days were very slow and terrible to the two girls, hedged round by all the prejudices of decorum, who could do nothing but dwell with their grief in the gloomy house which crushed their young spirits with its veiled windows and changeless dimness. That, and far more, they were ready to do for their father and the love they bore him; but to feel life arrested and stopped short by that shadow of death is hard upon the young. Miss Maydew, whose grief naturally was of a much lighter description than that of the girls, and with whom decorum was stronger than grief, kept them upstairs in their rooms, and treated them as invalids, which was the right thing to do in the circumstances. Only at dusk would she let them go even into the garden, to get the breath of air which nature demanded. She knew all the proper ceremonials which ought to be observed when there was “a death in the house,” and was not quite sure even now how far it was right to let them discuss what they were going to do. To make up for this, she carried to them the scraps of parish gossip which she gleaned from Mrs. Joel and from Betsy in the kitchen. There had, it appeared, been a double tragedy in the parish. A few days after the death of the curate, the village schoolmistress, a young widow with several babies, had “dropped down” and died of heart disease in the midst of the frightened children. “It is a terrible warning to the parish,” said Miss Maydew, “two such events in one week. But your dear papa, everybody knows, was ready to go, and I hope Mrs. Jones was so too. They tell me she was a good woman.”
“And what is to become of the children?” said Cicely, thinking of her own burden.
“Oh, my dear, the children will be provided for; they always are somehow. There are so many institutions for orphans, and people are very good if you know how to get at them. No doubt somebody will take them up. I don’t doubt Mr. Ascott has votes for the British Orphans’ or St. Ann’s Society, or some of these. Speaking of that, my dears, I have been thinking that we ought to try for something of the same kind ourselves. Cicely, hear first what I have got to say before you speak. It is no disgrace. How are Mab and you to maintain these two little boys? Of course you shall have all that I can give you, but I have so little; and if girls can maintain themselves, it is all they are likely to do. There is a society, I am sure, for the orphans of clergymen – ”
“Aunt Jane! Papa’s sons shall never be charity boys – never! if I should work my fingers to the bone, as people say.”
“Your fingers to the bone – what good would that do? Listen to me, girls. Both of you can make a fair enough living for yourselves. You will easily get a good governess’s place, Cicely; for, though you are not very accomplished, you are so thorough – and Mab, perhaps, if she succeeds, may do still better. But consider what that is: fifty pounds a year at the outside; and at first you could not look for that; and you are always expected to dress well and look nice, and Mab would have all sorts of expenses for her materials and models and so forth. The cheapest good school for boys I ever heard of was forty pounds without clothes, and at present they are too young for school. It is a woman’s work to look after two little things like that. What can you do with them? If you stay and take care of them, you will all three starve. It would be far better to get them into some asylum where they would be well looked after; and then,” said Aunt Jane, insinuatingly, “if you got on very well, or if anything fortunate happened, you could take them back, don’t you see, whenever you liked.”
Mab, moved by this, turned her eyes to Cicely for her cue; for there was a great deal of reason in what Aunt Jane said.
“Don’t say anything more about it, please,” said Cicely. “We must not say too much, for I may break down, or any one may break down; but they shall not go upon charity if I can help it. Oh, charity is very good, I know; we may be glad of it, all of us, if we get sick or can’t find anything to do; but I must try first – I must try!”
“O Cicely, this is pride, the same sort of pride that prevented your poor papa from asking for anything – ”
“Hush, Aunt Jane! Whatever he did was right; but I am not like papa. I don’t mind asking so long as it is for work. I have an idea now. Poor Mrs. Jones! I am very very sorry for her, leaving her children desolate. But some one will have to come in her place. Why should it not be me? There is a little house quite comfortable and pleasant where I could have the children; and I think the parish would not refuse me, if it was only for papa’s sake.”
“Cicely! my dear child, of what are you thinking?” said Miss Maydew, in dismay. “A parish schoolmistress! you are dreaming. All this has been too much for you. My dear, my dear, you must never think of such a thing again!”
“O Cicely, it is not a place for a lady, surely,” cried Mab.
“Look here,” said Cicely, the colour mounting to her face. “I’d take in washing if it was necessary, and if I knew how. A lady! there’s nothing about ladies that I know of in the Bible. Whatever a woman can do I’m ready to try, and I don’t care, not the worth of a pin, whether it’s a place for a lady or not. O Aunt Jane, I beg your pardon. I know how good you are – but charity! I can’t bear the thought of charity. I must try my own way.”
“Cicely, listen to me,” cried Aunt Jane, with tears. “I held back, for the children are not my flesh and blood as you are. Perhaps it was mean of me to hold back. O Cicely, I wanted to save what I had for you; but, my dear, if it comes to that, better, far better, that you should bring them to London. I don’t say I’m fond of children,” said Miss Maydew; “it’s so long since I had anything to do with them. I don’t say but what they’d worry me sometimes; but bring them, Cicely, and we’ll do what we can to get on, and when you find a situation, I’ll – I’ll – try – ”
Her voice sank into quavering hesitation, a sob interrupted her. She was ready to do almost all they wanted of her, but this was hard; still, sooner than sacrifice her niece’s gentility, the standing of the family – Cicely had good sense enough to perceive that enough had been said. She kissed her aunt heartily with tender thanks, but she did not accept her offer or say anything further about her own plans. For the moment nothing could be done, whatever the decision might be.
CHAPTER XIX
THE RECTOR’S BEGINNING
MR. MILDMAY came to Brentburn the Saturday after the curate’s death. The Ascotts invited him to their house, and he went there feeling more like a culprit than an innocent man has any right to do. He fairly broke down in the pulpit next day, in the little address he made to the people. “God knows,” he said to them, “that I would give everything I have in the world to bring back to you the familiar voice which you have heard here so long, and which had the teachings of a long experience to give you, teachings more precious than anything a new beginner can say. When I think that but for my appointment this tragedy might not have happened, my heart sinks within me; and yet I am blameless, though all who loved him have a right to blame me.” His voice quivered, his eyes filled with tears, and all the Brentburn folks, who were not struck dumb with wonder, wept. But many of them were struck dumb with wonder, and Mr. Ascott, who was his host, and felt responsible for him, did more than wonder. He interfered energetically when the service was over.
“Mildmay,” he said, solemnly, “mark my words, this will never do. You are no more to blame for poor St. John’s death than I am or any one, and nobody has a right to blame you. Good heavens, if you had never heard of the poor fellow, don’t you think it would have happened all the same? You did a great deal more than any one else would have done – is that why you think it is your fault?”
Mildmay did not make any reply to this remonstrance. Perhaps after he had said it, he felt, as so many impulsive men are apt to do, a hot nervous shame for having said it, and betraying his feelings; but he would not discuss the question with the Ascotts, who had no self-reproach in the matter, no idea that any one could have helped it. They discussed the question now, the first shock being over, and a comfortable Sunday put between them and the event, with great calm.
“He was just the sort of man that would not even have his life insured,” said Mr. Ascott. “What those poor girls are to do, I do not know. Go out for governesses, I suppose, poor things! the common expedient; but then there are those babies. There ought to be an Act of Parliament against second families. I never had any patience with that marriage; and Miss Brown, I suppose, had no friends that could take them up?”
“None that I know of,” his wife replied. “It is a dreadful burden for those girls. It will hamper them in their situations, if they get situations, and keep them from marrying – ”
“They are pretty girls,” said Mr. Ascott. “I don’t see why they shouldn’t marry.”
“That is all very well, Henry,” she replied; “but what man, in his senses, would marry a girl with a couple of children dependent on her?”
“A ready-made family,” he said, with a laugh.
This was on the Sunday evening after dinner. It was dusk, and they could not see their guest’s face, who took no part in the conversation. To hear such a discussion as this, touching the spoiling of a girl’s marriage, is quite a commonplace matter, which the greater part of the world would think it foolishly fastidious to object to, and probably Mr. Mildmay had heard such talk upon other occasions quite unmoved; but it is astonishing the difference it makes when you know the girl thus discussed, and have, let us say, “a respect” for her. He felt the blood come hot to his face; he dared not say anything, lest he should say too much. Was it mere poverty that exposed those forlorn young creatures, whose case surely was sad enough to put all laughter out of court, to such comment? Mrs. Ascott thought it quite possible that Mr. Mildmay, fresh from Oxford, might consider female society frivolous, and was reserving himself for loftier conversation with her husband, and that this was the reason of his silence, so she went away smiling, rustling her silken skirts to the drawing-room, in the humility which becomes the weaker vessel, not feeling herself equal to that loftier strain, to make the gentlemen’s tea.
Her husband, however, came upstairs after her, by himself. Mildmay had gone out for a stroll, he said, and seemed to prefer being alone; he was afraid, after all, he was a morose sort of fellow, with very little “go” in him. As for the new rector, he was very glad to get out into the stillness of the dewy common after the hot room and the fumes of Mr. Ascott’s excellent port, which he disliked, being altogether a man of the new school. He skirted the common under the soft light of some stars, and the incipient radiance of the moon, which had not yet risen, but showed that she was rising. He went even as far as the back of the rectory, and that little path which the curate’s feet had worn, which he followed reverently to the grey cross upon Hester’s grave. Here a flood of peaceful and friendly thoughts came over the young man, bringing the tears to his eyes. He had only known Mr. St. John for about twenty-four hours, yet how much this short acquaintance had affected him! He seemed to be thinking of a dear old friend when he remembered the few moments he had stood here, six weeks before, listening to the curate’s simple talk. “The lights in the girls’ windows;” – there they were, the only lights in the dark house, a glimmer through the half-closed shutters. Then he thought of the old man, bewildered with death and death’s weakness, sitting with his wife’s cloak and hat ready, waiting for her to come who had been waiting all these years under the sod for him to come. “I shall go to her, but she will not come to me,” said the new rector to himself, letting a tear fall upon the cross, where the curate’s hand had rested so tenderly. His heart was full of that swelling sensation of sympathetic sorrow which is both sweet and painful. And she was, they all said, so like her mother. Would any one, he wondered, think of her sometimes as Mr. St. John had done of his Hester? Or would nobody, in his senses, marry a girl burdened with two babies dependent on her? When those words came back to his mind, his cheeks reddened, his pace quickened in a sudden flush of anger. And it was a woman who had said it – a woman whose heart, it might have been thought, would have bled for the orphans, not much more than children any of them, who were thus left in the world to struggle for themselves.
It was Mildmay who took all the trouble about the funeral, and read the service himself, with a voice full of emotion. The people had scarcely known before how much they felt the loss of Mr. St. John. If the new parson was thus affected, how much more ought they to be! Everybody wept in the churchyard, and Mr. Mildmay laid that day the foundation of a popularity far beyond that which any clergyman of Brentburn, within the memory of man, had enjoyed before. “He was so feelin’ hearted,” the poor people said; they shed tears for the old curate who was gone, but they became suddenly enthusiasts for the new rector. The one was past, and had got a beautiful funeral, carriages coming from all parts of the county; and what could man desire more? The other was the present, cheerful and full of promise. A thrill of friendliness ran through every corner of the parish. The tragedy which preceded his arrival, strangely enough, made the most favourable preface possible to the commencement of the new reign.
“Do you think I might call upon Miss St. John?” Mildmay asked, the second day after the funeral. “I would not intrude upon her for the world; but they will be going away, I suppose – and if you think I might venture – ”
He addressed Mrs. Ascott, but her husband replied. “Venture? to be sure you may venture,” said that cheerful person. “Of course you must want to ascertain when they go and all that. Come, I’ll go with you myself if you have any scruples. I should like to see Cicely, poor thing! to tell her if I can be of any use – We are not much in the governessing line; but you, Adelaide, with all your fine friends – ”
“Tell her I should have gone to her before now, but that my nerves have been upset with all that has happened,” said Mrs. Ascott. “Of course I have written and told her how much I feel for her; but say everything for me, Henry. I will make an effort to go to-morrow, though I know that to enter that house will unhinge me quite. If she is able to talk of business, tell her to refer any one to me. Of course we shall do everything we possibly can.”
“Of course; yes, yes, I’ll say everything,” said her husband; but on the way, when Mildmay reluctantly followed him, feeling his purpose defeated, Mr. Ascott gave forth his individual sentiments. “Cicely St. John will never answer as a governess,” he said; “she is far too independent, and proud – very proud. So was her father before her. He prided himself, I believe, on never having asked for anything. God bless us! a nice sort of world this would be if nobody asked for anything. That girl spoke to me once about the living as if it was my business to do something in respect to what she thought her father’s rights! Ridiculous! but women are very absurd in their notions. She was always what is called a high-spirited girl; the very worst recommendation I think that any girl can have.”
Mildmay made no reply; he was not disposed to criticise Cicely, or to discuss her with Mr. Ascott. The rectory was all open again, the shutters put back, the blinds drawn up. In the faded old drawing-room, where the gentlemen were put by Betsy to wait for Miss St. John, everything looked as usual, except a scrap of paper here and there marked Lot – . This had been done by the auctioneer, before Mr. St. John’s death. Some of these papers Betsy, much outraged by the sight of them, had furtively rubbed off with her duster, but some remained. Mr. Mildmay had something of Betsy’s feeling. He, too, when Mr. Ascott was not looking, tore off the label from the big old chiffonnier which Mab had called a tomb, and threw it behind the ornaments in the grate – a foolish sort of demonstration, no doubt, of being on the side of the forlorn family against fate, but yet comprehensible. He did not venture upon any such freaks when Cicely came in, in the extreme blackness of her mourning. She was very pale, keeping the tears out of her eyes with a great effort, and strung to the highest tension of self-control. She met Mr. Ascott with composure; but when she turned to Mildmay, broke down for the moment. “Thanks!” she said, with a momentary pressure of his hand, and an attempt at a smile in the eyes which filled at sight of him, and it took her a moment to recover herself before she could say any more.
“Mrs. Ascott charged me with a great many messages,” said that lady’s husband. “I am sure you know, Cicely, nobody has felt for you more; but she is very sensitive – that you know too – and I am obliged to interpose my authority to keep her from agitating herself. She talks of coming to-morrow. When do you go?”
“On Saturday,” said Cicely, having just recovered the power of speech, which, to tell the truth, Mildmay did not quite feel himself to have done.
“On Saturday – so soon! and you are going – ”
“With my aunt, Miss Maydew,” said Cicely, “to London for a time – as short a time as possible – till I get something to do.”
“Ah – h!” said Mr. Ascott, shaking his head. “You know how sincerely sorry we all are; and, my dear Cicely, you will excuse an old friend asking, is there no little provision – nothing to fall back upon – for the poor little children, at least?”
“Mr. Ascott,” said Cicely, turning full towards him, her eyes very clear, her nostrils dilating a little – for emotion can dry the eyes as well as dim them, even of a girl – “you know what papa had almost as well as he did himself. He could not coin money; and how do you think he could have saved it off what he had? There is enough to pay every penny he ever owed, which is all I care for.”
“And you have nothing – absolutely nothing?”
“We have our heads and our hands,” said Cicely; the emergency even gave her strength to smile. She faced the two prosperous men before her, neither of whom had ever known what it was to want anything or everything that money could buy, her small head erect, her eyes shining, a smile upon her lip – not for worlds would she have permitted them to see that her heart failed her at sight of the struggle upon which she was about to enter; – “and fortunately we have the use of them,” she said, involuntarily raising the two small hands, looking all the smaller and whiter for the blackness that surrounded them, which lay on her lap.
“Miss St. John,” said Mildmay, starting up, “I dare not call myself an old friend. I have no right to be present when you have to answer such questions. If I may come another time – ”
To look at his sympathetic face took away Cicely’s courage. “Don’t make me cry, please; don’t be sorry for me!” she cried, under her breath, holding out her hands to him in a kind of mute appeal. Then recovering herself, “I would rather you stayed, Mr. Mildmay. I am not ashamed of it, and I want to ask something from you, now that you are both here. I do not know who has the appointment; but you must be powerful. Mr. Ascott, I hear that Mrs. Jones, the schoolmistress, is dead – too.”
“Yes, poor thing! very suddenly – even more suddenly than your poor father. And so much younger, and an excellent creature. It has been a sad week for Brentburn. She was buried yesterday,” said Mr. Ascott, shaking his head.
“And there must be some one to replace her directly, for the holidays are over. I am not very accomplished,” said Cicely, a flush coming over her face; “but for the rudiments and the solid part, which is all that is wanted in a parish school, I am good enough. It is difficult asking for one’s self, or talking of one’s self, but if I could get the place – ”
“Cicely St. John!” cried Mr. Ascott, almost roughly in his amazement; “you are going out of your senses – the appointment to the parish school?”
“I know what you think,” said Cicely, looking up with a smile; but she was nervous with anxiety, and clasped and unclasped her hands, feeling that her fate hung upon what they might decide. “You think, like Aunt Jane, that it is coming down in the world, that it is not a place for a lady. Very well, I don’t mind; don’t call me a lady, call me a young woman – a person even, if you like. What does it matter? and what difference does it make after all?” she cried. “No girl who works for her living is anything but looked down upon. I should be free of all that, for the poor people know me, and they would be kind to me, and the rich people would take no notice. And I should have a place of my own, a home to put the children in. The Miss Blandys, I am sure, would recommend me, Mr. Mildmay, and they know what I can do.”
“This is mere madness!” cried Mr. Ascott, paling a little in his ruddy complexion. Mildmay made a rush at the window as she spoke, feeling the situation intolerable. When she appealed to him thus by name, he turned round suddenly, his heart so swelling within him that he scarcely knew what he was doing. It was not for him to object or to remonstrate as the other could do. He went up to her, scarcely seeing her, and grasped for a moment her nervous interlaced hands. “Miss St. John,” he cried, in a broken voice, “whatever you want that I can get you, you shall have – that, if it must be so, or anything else,” and so rushed out of the room and out of the house, passing Mab in the hall without seeing her. His excitement was so great that he rushed straight on, into the heart of the pine-woods a mile off, before he came to himself. Well! this, then, was the life he had been wondering over from his safe retirement. He found it not in anything great or visible to the eye of the world, not in anything he could put himself into, or share the advantages of. He, well off, rich indeed, strong, with a man’s power of work, and so many kinds of highly-paid, highly-esteemed work open to him, must stand aside and look on, and see this slight girl, nineteen years old, with not a tittle of his education or his strength, and not two-thirds of his years, put herself into harness, and take up the lowly work which would sink her in social estimation, and, with all superficial persons, take away from her her rank as gentlewoman. The situation, so far as Cicely St. John was concerned, was not remarkable one way or another, except in so much as she had chosen to be village schoolmistress instead of governess in a private family. But to Mildmay it was as a revelation. He could do nothing except get her the place, as he had promised to do. He could not say, Take part of my income; I have more than I know what to do with, though that was true enough. He could do nothing for her, absolutely nothing. She must bear her burden as she could upon her young shrinking shoulders; nay, not shrinking – when he remembered Cicely’s look, he felt something come into his throat. People had stood at the stake so, he supposed, head erect, eyes smiling, a beautiful disdain of the world they thus defied and confronted in their shining countenances. But again he stopped himself; Cicely was not defiant, not contemptuous, took upon her no rôle of martyr. If she smiled, it was at the folly of those who supposed she would break down, or give in, or fail of courage for her work; but nothing more. She was, on the contrary, nervous about his consent and Ascott’s to give her the work she wanted, and hesitated about her own powers and the recommendation of the Miss Blandys; and no one – not he, at least, though he had more than he wanted – could do anything! If Cicely had been a lad of nineteen, instead of a girl, something might have been possible, but nothing was possible now.
The reader will perceive that the arbitrary and fictitious way of cutting this knot, that tour de force which is always to be thought of in every young woman’s story, the very melodramatic begging of the question, still, and perennially possible, nay probable, in human affairs, had not occurred to Mildmay. He had felt furious indeed at the discussion of Cicely’s chances or non-chances of marriage between the Ascotts; but, so far as he was himself concerned, he had not thought of this easy way. For why? he was not in love with Cicely. His sympathy was with her in every possible way, he entered into her grief with an almost tenderness of pity, and her courage stirred him with that thrill of fellow-feeling which those have who could do the same; though he felt that nothing he could do could ever be the same as what she, at her age, so boldly undertook. Mildmay felt that she could, if she pleased, command him to anything, that, out of mere admiration for her bravery, her strength, her weakness, and youngness and dauntless spirit, he could have refused her nothing, could have dared even the impossible to help her in any of her schemes. But he was not in love with Cicely; or, at least, he had no notion of anything of the kind.
It was well, however, that he did not think of it; the sudden “good marriage,” which is the one remaining way in which a god out of the machinery can change wrong into right at any moment in the modern world, and make all sunshine that was darkness, comes dreadfully in the way of heroic story; and how such a possibility, not pushed back into obscure regions of hazard, but visibly happening before their eyes every day, should not demoralize young women altogether, it is difficult to say. That Cicely’s brave undertaking ought to come to some great result in itself, that she ought to be able to make her way nobly, as her purpose was, working with her hands for the children that were not hers, bringing them up to be men, having that success in her work which is the most pleasant of all recompenses, and vindicating her sacrifice and self-devotion in the sight of all who had scoffed and doubted – this, no doubt, would be the highest and best, the most heroical and epical development of story. To change all her circumstances at a stroke, making her noble intention unnecessary, and resolving this tremendous work of hers into a gentle domestic necessity, with the “hey presto!” of the commonplace magician, by means of a marriage, is simply a contemptible expedient. But, alas! it is one which there can be no doubt is much preferred by most people to the more legitimate conclusion; and, what is more, he would be justified by knowing the accidental way is perhaps, on the whole, the most likely one, since marriages occur every day which are perfectly improbable and out of character, mere tours de force, despicable as expedients, showing the poorest invention, a disgrace to any romancist or dramatist, if they were not absolute matters of fact and true. Pardon the parenthesis, gentle reader.
But Mr. Mildmay was not in love with Cicely, and it never occurred to him that it might be possible to settle matters in this ordinary and expeditious way.
Mr. Ascott remained behind when Mildmay went away, and with the complacence of a dull man apologised for his young friend’s abrupt departure. “He is so shocked about all this, you must excuse his abruptness. It is not that he is without feeling – quite the reverse, I assure you, Cicely. He has felt it all – your poor father’s death, and all that has happened. You should have heard him in church on Sunday. He feels for you all very much.”
Cicely, still trembling from the sudden touch on her hands, the agitated sound of Mildmay’s voice, the sense of sympathy and comprehension which his looks conveyed, took this apology very quietly. She was even conscious of the humour in it. And this digression being over, “her old friend” returned seriously to the question. He repeated, but with much less force, all that Miss Maydew had said. He warned her that she would lose “caste,” that, however much her friends might wish to be kind to her, and to treat her exactly as her father’s daughter ought to be treated, that she would find all that sort of thing very difficult. “As a governess, of course you would always be known as a lady, and when you met with old friends it would be a mutual pleasure; but the village schoolmistress!” said Mr. Ascott; “I really don’t like to mention it to Adelaide, I don’t know what she would say.”
“She would understand me when she took all into consideration,” said Cicely, “I could be then at home, independent, with the little boys.”